Functions Of Non-verbal Communication In Face-saving And Face-threatening Effects

Politeness and face are of great importance and they arouse the study interest of the scholars from home and abroad. They put forward different theories, principles and strategies according to different cultures. Of all the theories, Brown and Levinson’s theory of face is considered to be the most influential one. However, most of the existing theories deal with the verbal communication with little or no consideration of the non-verbal one. However, verbal and non-verbal communication is integrated in human interaction. Therefore, studying politeness and face based on both verbal and non-verbal communication is of value and importance.This dissertation takes Brown and Levinson’s theory of face and Malandro&Barker’s communicative functions of non-verbal communication as the theoretical foundation and answers the following questions:(1) How do verbal and non-verbal behaviors work together to keep polite?(2) How do non-verbal behaviors affect face effect created by verbal information? Or to be more detailed, how do non-verbal behaviors change, weaken or strengthen the effect of face and politeness in interpersonal communication when non-verbal behaviors substitute, contradict, supplement and regulate verbal information respectively?Data is collected from "Friends" which is quite popular and closely related to daily life. Meanwhile, data has to reflect both verbal and non-verbal information on the one hand, and reveal face and politeness effects on the other hand. Transcripts are dealt with words and pictures. That is the verbal parts of data are edited into words and non-verbal ones are shown in the form of images.The analysis shows that:(1) Non-verbal behaviors substituting verbal information often reveal strong intention of communicators to save or threaten others’ face.(2) Non-verbal behaviors contradicting verbal information can weaken face-saving effect when verbal information is face-saving; or weaken face-threatening effect when verbal information is face-threatening.(3) Non-verbal behaviors supplementing verbal information can either strengthen face-saving effect or aggravate face-threatening effect or mitigate face effect.(4) Non-verbal behaviors regulating verbal information mainly control the conversation flow, but sometimes they also have face-saving or face-threatening effect.Therefore, it is natural to draw the conclusion that non-verbal communication could play the functions of substituting, contradicting, supplementing, and regulating the verbal communication to fulfill the communicative aim of being face-saving or face-threatening. These four functions could change, weaken or strengthen the original face and politeness effects created by the verbal communication. Thus, in order to keep polite in daily communication, we should take both verbal and non-verbal communication into consideration. Studies on face and politeness based on either verbal or non-verbal communication are not comprehensive enough to explain the complexity of communication itself.