Brown and Levinson (1987) define politeness as behaving a way that attempts to take into account the feeling of people being addressed. In other words, being polite means that we try to keep our manners or behaviors and our language not to hurt other people’s feelings. Moreover, they proposed the concept of politeness strategies which are developed to save hearer’s face. Face refers to the respect that an individual has for him or herself and maintaining that ‘self esteem’ in public or in private situations.
Face
Brown and Levinson (1987)22 state their notion of “face” is derived from that of Goffman (1967) and English people which is related to the idea of being embarrassed, humiliated, or losing face. Thus, face is something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, and enhanced. In general, a person has to pay attention to his interlocutor’s face. In other words, the speaker and the hearer must cooperate in maintaining each other’s face in interaction based on the mutual vulnerability of face.
There are two kinds of face as divided by Brown and Levinson that everyone possesses. They are positive face and negative face. Positive face is defined as the desire of every member that his selfimage, wants, and opinion be liked and approved. Take for the example, a woman who spends most of her time gardening and takes care of her roses. She is proud of her and expects people admires her. Second, negative face is defined as the desire of every member that he has Freedom of Action as well as Freedom of Imposition. For example, there is a boy who loves watching TV but at the same time he has problem with his eyes’ health. Therefore, the mother warns him not to watch TV too much since it is not good for his eyes. Here, the boys has freedom to watch TV as much as he likes (Freedom of Action), but considering his eyes’ health, the mother forbids it which means the mother disturbs the boy’s freedom of watching TV.
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