Study Of Face-saving Strategies On The U.S. Whitehouse Spokespersons

The United States is a nation which early starts the spokesperson system andwell develops the government information publicity system, and the pressspokesperson system is a product of the U.S. political reform and mediapopularization. On one hand, the political reform requires government to publicizeinformation and set up the spokesperson system to control public opinion, solvegovernment crisis, and establish government image; on the other hand, the mediamassification urges American press to actively strive for the right to know and forcesthe United States government to introduce a series of regulations protecting thespokesman system. In the combination of the two forces, the press spokesman systemgradually matures and shows a positive impact on the modern national political lifeworldwide. Thus, study of the language of the U.S. White House spokespersons indaily press briefings will be conducive to better understanding and improving of thelanguage of China’s spokespersons.Face and politeness are studied in a good variety of fields like social linguistics,pragmatics, and many other disciplines. Face is a kind of basic but important demandof mankind, and politeness is the sign of human civilization, one of the importantcriteria of human behaviors, a tool to save face of the speaker, the audiences or thethird party, and a method to build a harmonious interpersonal relationship. In1978,Brown and Levinson put forward the “Face Theory” in their book, which, as one ofthe popular type of politeness theory, plays a dominant role in western culturalsituations, including the White House spokespersons’ speeches in press briefings.Brown and Levinson point out that almost all normal people have face want but mostspeech acts threat people’s face in a certain extent. So in verbal communications,various politeness strategies are always used to maintain face of the speaker, thehearer or a third party in order to create a harmonious communication atmosphere.This theory can reasonably explain the application of face-saving strategies anddevices in the White House daily news briefings by spokespersons. The appropriateuse of face-saving strategies and devices by spokespersons will not only achieve thepurpose of proper communication but also protect the country’s image and interests.Therefore, the employment of politeness strategies by the White House spokespersonscan insure the smooth going and success of press briefings, as well as reflect aspokesperson’s excellent language skills.Though massive literature reviews, one can see that studies on spokespersonlanguage have achieved a lot, and many of them are about the institution, history, construction of spokesperson system, practical skills of spokespersons at the surfacelevel, and in-depth analyses on the underlying linguistic principles and theories of thespokesperson language, especially the domestic diplomatic spokespersons’ language.However, linguistic studies on authoritative foreign government spokespersons’language not or not only in the diplomatic field are few, and studies concern faces ofboth communicators and concerned parties are few.This thesis attempts to solve the following questions:(1) what are the mainface-saving strategies and devices used by White House spokespersons in daily pressbriefings and what is the frequency and communicative effect of each strategy;(2)what are the reasons or factors affecting the application of the face-saving strategiesand devices by the White House spokespersons? In this thesis, on the basis ofpredecessors’ research and theoretical achievements, with advanced language analysissoftware HyConc V3.9.8, more updated and comprehensive linguistic data thanbefore, five White House spokesperson speeches in2013press conferences, areanalyzed, and finally conclusions about the above questions can be drawn andproblems and shortages of the research will be found.As to the research methodology of this thesis, the author first collect articles,books, and linguistic data about the press briefing, spokesperson language and facetheory or politeness theory and then classifies and summarizes the materials. Next, theauthor carefully explores the connection between the theory and research data, anddoes a quantitative research on these data to find out frequencies and percentages ofdifferent face-saving strategies and devices applied by the White Housespokespersons. Then lastly, a qualitative study on the research data is done in order toget reasons and factors affecting the selection of various face-saving strategies anddevices by the White House spokespersons in press briefings.After a descriptive study on the five transcripts randomly chosen of White Housespokespersons’ language in press briefings in2013in detail, it can be concluded that:1) Positive politeness strategy and negative politeness strategy are more highlyfrequently used by White House spokespersons in daily press briefings. Under thepositive politeness strategy, devices including inclusive pronouns, common ground orreciprocity assertion, agreement seeking, and optimistic words can be frequently seen,and under the negative politeness strategy, devices of minimizing imposition, beingconventionally indirect, using hedge, and impersonalizing S and H are frequentlyemployed.2) As for reasons for the above application, it is considered that the dailypress briefings of White House is a quite formal and important occasion, which aimsat spreading official information to the public and the media and establishing a greatgovernment image and friendly relationships with people and other nations; therefore,to bring the public and other significant concerned parties close to the speaking partyand to minimize any imposition on the negative face of people and a third party aretwo most essential aspects in national or international affairs. In addition, it isinappropriate to employ some other face-saving devices such as making jokes orstories or exaggerating facts to save face of participants of a communication by theWhite House spokespersons.In this thesis, how politeness is presented to enhance the spokespersons’ language in White House press briefings through various face-saving strategies anddevices is discussed and analyzed based on Brown and Levinson’s Face-savingTheory. There are five parts to present the research: Part one is introduction, whichdescribes the topic background, research significance, research question and thestructure. Part two reviews the literature of domestic and foreign researches onspokesperson language and face theories or politeness theories. Part three introducesthe face-saving principle and strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson as thetheoretical basis of this research in order to properly explain the face-saving strategiesapplied in the White House spokespersons’ language in daily press briefings. Part fourillustrates the research questions, research methods and steps of this study， andpractically uses B&L’s Face Theory to do a pragmatic study on the face-savingstrategies and devices of the language of White House spokespersons in daily pressbriefings in2013. Finally, part five summarizes the results and the significance of thisstudy, points out its enlightenments and limitations, and makes suggestions for furtherresearch.