CHAPTER II REVIEW OF
RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Meaning
of Face
Undubitably, words can vehemently have a dramatic
effect, either positive or negative, on our relationship among others. Goffman (1967: 5) defines faces as ‘the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others
assume he has taken during a particular contact’. In other words, face is associated with
personal/relational/social value, and is concerned with people’s sense of
worth, dignity, honour, reputation, competence, and so on.
Similarly, Brown and Levinson (1987), propose their
own definition about face. They define that face is the key motivating force for ‘politeness’, and they
maintain that it consists of two related aspects, negative face and positive
face. In their model, negative face is a
person’s want to be unimpeded by others, the desire to be free to act as s/he
chooses and not be imposed upon; positive face is a person’s want to be
appreciated and approved of by selected others, in terms of personality,
desires, behavior, values and so on. In other words, negative face represents a
desire of autonomy, and positive face represents a desire for approval.
However, Scollon and Scollon (1983) on Brown and
Levinson (1978) state that : when people interact in public they are concerned
to preserve and present a public image that also has two aspects
1.
Positive politeness (solidarity politeness)
2.
Negative politeness (deference politeness)
Nonetheless, Spencer-Oatey (2000) has her own
different definition about face. Since she noted that all language has a dual
function; the transfer of information, and the management of social relation, she
affirmed that management of social relation is an aspect of language use which
she called rapport management. She tends to use the phrase rapport management albeit face
management due to its broader scope. The
term ‘face’ seems to focus on concerns for self, whereas rapport management
deals between self and other (the management of harmony-disharmony among
people). She also noted that akin to face
management, it observes the way that
language is used to construct, maintain and/or threaten social relationship.
Furthermore, Spencer-Oatey (2000) proposed three
main interconnected components of rapport management; the management of face,
the management of sociality rights and obligations, and the management of
interactional goals. All three component
has to be enhanced positively to create a harmony among people in society.
1.
The management of face; involves the management of
face sensitivities
2.
The management of sociality rights and obligations;
involves the management of social expectancies
3.
The management of interactional goals; involves the
specific task and/or relational goals that people may have when they interact
with one another.
2.2.
Face
Threatening Acts (FTA)
In addition, the positive rapport would somehow be
threatened and the disharmony among people could occur. This is naturally
happened. We do not always accept the
respect from others which we would favor for.
People might criticize us or boss us around, insult us and call us names;
and when they do, we indeed feel embarrassed or uneasy. Brown and Levinson (1987), in their politeness
model, propose the idea of face-threatening
acts to explain this phenomenon.
They claim that certain communicative acts integrally threaten the face
needs of the interlocutors, and that these illocutionary acts can be called face-threatening acts (FTAs).
Nonetheless, Spencer-Oatey (2000) suggests that
positive rapport among people can be threatened in three main ways; through
face-threatening behavior, through rights-threatening/obligation-omission
behavior and through goal-threatening behavior.
Since people jeopardize our goals, they impede in some way what we want
to attain.
Brown and Levinson (1987) discuss FTAs primarily in
relation to speech acts, such request, offers, compliments, criticism and so
on, which they designate as inherently face-threatening. But their conceptualization hence could be
interpreted as implying that certain communicative acts intrinsically threaten
face whereas others not. So Matsumoto
(1998; 219) argues in relation to Japanese that all use of language is
potentially face threatening:
Since any Japanese utterance conveys information
about the social context, there is always the possibility that the speaker may,
by the choice of an inappropriate form, offend the audience and thus embarrass
him/herself. In this sense, any
utterance, even a simple declarative, could be face-threatening.
Tsuruta (1998) takes Matsumoto’s argument a step
forward by suggesting that Brown and Levinson (1987) and Matsumoto (1989) are
each discussing different ‘domains’ of politeness. She argues that Brown and Levinson’s model
deals primarily with illocutionary politeness’, whereas Matsumoto’s discussion
deals primarily with ‘stylistic politeness’.
Research by Spencer-Oatey and Xing (1998, 2004) support this contention
that politeness is managed through multiple aspects of language use:
1. Illocutionary
Domain; it concerns the rapport-threatening/rapport-enhancing implications of
performing speech acts, such as apologies, requests, compliments, and so on.
2. Discourse
Domain; it concerns the discourse content and discourse structure of an
interchange. It includes issues such as
topic choice and topic management, for example, the inclusion/exclusion of
personal topics, and the organization and sequencing of information.
3. Participation
Domain; it concerns the procedural aspects of an interchange, such as
turn-taking (overlaps and inter-turn pauses, turn-taking rights and obligations),
the inclusion/exclusion of people present, and the use/non-use of listener
responses (verbal and non-verbal).
4. Stylistic
Domain; it concerns the stylistic aspects of an interchange, such as choice of
tone (for example, serious or joking), choice of genre-appropriate lexis and
syntax and choice of genre-appropriate terms of address or use of honorifics.
5. Non-verbal
Domain; it concerns the non-verbal aspects of an interchange, such as gestures
and other body movements, eye contact and proxemics.
2.3
Politeness in Tolaki Language
Tolaki language, To’olaki, Lolaki, Lalaki, Laki, Kolaka,
“Noie”, “Noihe”, “Nehina”, “Nohina”, “Nahina”, “Akido”) (Tarimana, 1993) is one of the native languages residing in Southeast
Sulawesi, which is still fully functioned by Kendari’s local inhabitants. Of 92,
6% Kendari’s local residents, district of Konawe, South Konawe and North
Konawe, Tolaki language is used as a medium of spoken communication aimed to
state the intimacy and respectancy, to converse locally, or to relate to local
custom regulation, customary celebration and traditional wedding. Tolaki language is dominantly used in the
district area that of bahasa Indonesia, particularly in colloquial
language. The use of bahasa Indonesia is
normally applied in formal meetings.