Face-threatening And Face-saving Effects Of Body Language

Politeness is a research area that has attracted a worldwide interest. Researchers from different cultures have gained many achievements, among which Brown and Levinson's face and politeness framework is widely accepted as authoritative. But all the existing theories and strategies of politeness, including Brown and Levinson's, are constructed at the linguistic level, with no consideration of nonverbal behaviors. However, language and nonverbal behavior are integrated in human interactions. A study of face and politeness phenomena in nonverbal communication is of value and importance. With this idea in mind, we have conducted this study. Nonverbal communication covers a wide range. Our study is only focused on one aspect: body language.We take Brown and Levinson's face and politeness framework and Ekman's communicative functions of nonverbal communication as the theoretical foundation of our study. A hypothesis is made at the beginning of the study that when body language works to substitute, contradict, supplement and regulate the verbal information, the face and politeness effects inherent to speeches can be weakened, strengthened, or changed. The study aims to test this hypothesis and find out details about how body language serving different communicative functions weakens, strengthens and changes the face-saving and face-threatening effects in person-to-person interactions.Data is collected mainly from English films. It reveals nonverbal information on the one hand, and reflects face and politeness effects on the other hand. Transcription of data is done with words and pictures. The verbal part of data is transcribed into words, and the nonverbal film images are captured and edited through the computer software and stored as JPG files.Based on the analysis of the data, we have proved our hypothesis. When body language substitutes, contradicts, supplements and regulates the verbal messages, it can weaken, strengthen or change the face-saving and face-threatening effects in the communication. We come to more detailed ideas on how this is done. 1) Body language substituting words can reflect communicators'strong and obvious intention to save face or threaten face. It can also mitigate the face and politeness effect. 2) Body language contradicting words can either change or weaken the face and politeness effects of verbal messages. 3) Body language supplementing words can strengthen the face-saving effect, or aggravate...