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One of the things that makes us afraid of communication is the prospect of embarrassing ourselves.

There's no way around it.

There's a lot of ways we can embarrass ourselves in ordinary interaction.

In fact, many of the structures in ordinary interaction are there precisely to give us a way to avoid embarrassment and to repair embarrassment, should it occur.

These are everyday actions you do that can embarrass yourself or the person you're speaking to.

I'm going to make this explanation using Erving Goffman's concept of face, and Brown and Levinson's concept of politeness.

At the same time, I will describe the fundamental mechanisms that cause all embarrassment.

I want to explain how even many of the common things we do, like making requests, compliments or apologies, can embarrass us or cause us to lose face or embarrass the person we're speaking to and cause them to lose face.

In order to do this, we have to review a couple of basic concepts that I've spoken about before. I'll link to some previous videos where you can learn about these basic concepts. I'll only describe them briefly here.

 

Face

The first idea is the idea of face or the positive social value that we claim for ourselves by acting in a certain way in a given interaction. This is the sense that I am somebody. I am someone worthy of respect. I am someone that has a particular social status and I need to be treated in a particular way. We claim this value for ourselves by acting in a certain way, in every interaction that we participate in.

The reason most of us even know the meaning of the word face in this context is because of the expression to “lose face.” To lose face is to be embarrassed or humiliated, to have your identity spoiled in some interaction. To be shown to be not who you want to be, not who you claim to be – this is to lose face.

Brown and Levinson in their book Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage define what they call face-threatening acts. A face-threatening act is just anything that I do or another person does that has the potential to threaten face, to cause us to lose face. I have made videos about politeness which you can watch to learn more about it. I also wrote a two-part blog post about politeness, check it out.

Brown and Levinson said that there were two aspects of face. There is positive face, which is the desire to be liked and approved of, to have your wants wanted by other people. And negative face, the desire to be left alone, to go about your business without being interrupted or impeded in any way. So there's two aspects of face, positive face and negative face. Leave me alone (negative), or like me (positive).

Face Threatening Acts

Now that we have these basic concepts in hand, we can understand all of the ways in which positive and negative face can be threatened in ordinary interaction. These face threats normally occur when the task goals of communication interfere with the relationship goals of communication. We need to get something done, but in doing so we may hurt the feelings of the person that we're talking to in some way. We're going to do something that might damage the relationship between ourselves and the person we're speaking to. We need to do that because of the task goals of the situation.

Brown and Levinson's book about politeness describes how we can use a variety of devices and language to manage threats to face. I'm not going to talk about how we avoid threatening face in this video. I've talked about it in other videos and I'll make some new videos about that too. Here I just want to talk about all the ways in which ordinary actions threatened positive or negative face of the speaker or the listener.

In the rest of this post, I'm going to talk about the two main roles in a simple face-to-face interaction. The speaker, the one who's doing the talking; and the hearer, the one who's listening to the speaker. Both the speaker's and the hearer's face can be threatened, so I'll use those terms throughout.

 

THREATS TO HEARER’S NEGATIVE FACE

1. Orders, Requests, Advice, Warnings, Reminders

Brown and Levinson first point out “acts that predicate some future act of hearer.” These are actions that can threaten the hearer's desire to be left alone, to go about their business in an uninterrupted, unimpeded way. This includes any act that predicates a future act of the hero, such as orders and requests, suggestions and advice, reminders, threats, warnings, and dares. All predicate some future action on the part of the hearer.

An order tells someone what to do. A request asks someone what to do. Even suggestions and advice are basically indirect ways of getting people to do things. Reminders are the same thing. You wonder why people are annoyed when you remind them of something? It is because the reminder is a face-threatening thing. Reminders threaten their desire to be left alone.

Remember people have this persistent desire to be left alone. Threats, warning, and dares are also things that demand some action on the part of the hearer because the hearer wants to be left alone. Any communicative act that demands a response threatens their desire to be left alone. If you don't want to threaten face, you need to do them politely.

2. Promises or Offers

There are some other actions that I think are less obvious in the way that they threaten the hearer's negative face. These are things like promises and offers. Brown and Levinson define these as “acts that predicate some act by speaker towards hearer and pressure hearer to accept, reject, or incur a debt to speaker.”

When you promise someone something, you would think that it's a nice thing and shouldn’t offend them. But this can cause someone to lose face. If you promise someone something, this imposes an obligation on him or her. When you promise someone something, they might feel a debt to you because you've made the promise. The promised future action might require some response by them. All of this threatens their negative face.

They'd rather, "Don't promise me anything, because I don't want to be obliged to you, and I don't want to have to respond to whatever this promised action is in the future." Similarly, offers threaten the hearer's negative face, because an offer demands either an acceptance or a rejection of the offer, and you don't want to be offered something you want to just be left alone. 

3. Compliments, Expressions of Envy/Admiration/Strong Emotion

The third set of actions I think is the least obvious. When you compliment someone, you say, "Oh, what a lovely dress that is. What a beautiful pair of shoes, what a nice car." This forces the person to accept the compliment because they want to be left alone and don't want to have to accept the compliment, or they’re forced to reject it. Brown and Levinson call these “acts that predicate some desire of the speaker towards the hearer and force the hearer to take action to protect object of desire.”

I made a separate video about why responding to compliments is so difficult. The person is coveting the thing that you like, and you may be forced to take action to protect the object of their desire. This is why a compliment to your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife might be seen as face threatened, because you have to take action to protect the object of the desire that the speaker is talking about.

All of these actions, by requiring the hearer to take action and response, threaten negative face. If you're going to do them at all and want to be someone with tact and social skill, you have to do them politely. That is, if you want to do them and not threaten face. Sometimes the whole object of a threat or a dare is to threaten face, but if you want to do these actions and not threaten face, you have to do them politely.

 

THREATS TO HEARER’S POSITIVE FACE

Remember the hearer's positive face is their desire to be liked, to be approved of, and to be wanted by other people. Any action that indicates the speaker doesn't care about the hearer's feelings will threaten the hearer's positive face.

1. Disapproval

Criticism, contempt, and ridicule will threaten the hearer's positive face. Expressions of disapproval – complaints, contradictions, disagreements, challenges – all suggest or imply or overtly state that the speaker does not share the hearer's wants and does not like or approve of the speaker. These directly threaten face.

There are many times in life where we have to express disapproval or criticism, or we have to make complaints or express contradiction or disagreement, or challenge what other people say. I'm a college professor, an academic and a scientist who sometimes has to express disagreement, but if I want to do that and not threaten face, I must do it politely.

2. Irreverence

There are other ways in which you can threaten to hear hearer's positive face, or their desire to be liked and approved of. For example, mentioning of taboo or divisive topics, being very irreverent, and using profanity are things that can also threaten the hearer's positive face. These suggest that you don't care about their sense of propriety or social norms or what's proper in polite company.

Being irreverent or profane or mentioning taboo subjects shows a certain disregard to the other person's wants and beliefs and norms. Any act of blatant non-cooperation, like where someone asks you to pass the salt and you don't pass the salt, threatens the hearer's positive face because it suggests that you don't want their wants to be fulfilled. Mistakes in forms of address, like in medicine where a female physician is called nurse instead of doctor, also threaten positive face. Positive face is threatened here since the speaker fails to recognize the proper social status of the hearer.

 

THREATS TO SPEAKER’S NEGATIVE FACE

Now let's move to the speaker's face wants. The speaker has negative face wants and positive face wants. The speaker has a desire to be left alone and the speaker has a desire to be liked and approved of. So the speaker's face wants can be threatened in ordinary interaction too. And there are certain communicative actions that we do that threaten the speaker's face.

1. Expressing or Accepting Thanks

Having to give thanks or accept thanks both threaten our desire to be left alone. There is, “I don't want to express or accept thanks, I just want to be left alone.” That's why as parents we have to tell our children to, “say ‘thank you’!" we are imposing a burden on them. They just want to be left alone to eat their cake or open their presents, so the parents always remind them, “say ‘thank you’!"

To express thanks or to accept thanks impose a burden on you to take some action when of course you'd rather just be left alone or your negative face wants dictate that you'd like to just be left alone.

2. Excuses and Acceptance of Offers

Having to make excuses threatens your desire to be left alone. Remember we said before that when you have to accept an offer, you're think, "Oh no, no, no, please don't make me any offers, because if you make me an offer I either have to accept or refuse, and what I'd really like to do is be left alone.” 

3. Making Unwilling Promises or Offers

Sometimes the speaker is put in a position of having to make a promise or make an offer when they really don't want to. So unwilling promises and unwilling offers are also things that threatened the speaker's desire to be left alone, their negative face.

 

THREATS TO SPEAKER’S POSITIVE FACE

Finally, we come to the last category: the communicative actions that threaten the speaker's positive face. These are things that you have to do as the speaker that threaten your own desire to be liked and approved of.

1. Apologies

When you apologize, you're obviously saying that you did something wrong. The reason that so many of us are reluctant to apologize is because it damages our ego. It's a threat to our identity to have to apologize.

An apology is an explicit admission that we're not perfect, and positive face is the desire not exactly to be perfect, but to be desirable, liked, and approved of. To apologize is to acknowledge explicitly that we've done something regrettable and threatening to our positive face. That's why apologies are so hard to make.

2. Accepting Compliments

Accepting a compliment is threatening the positive face. This is a strange one. If you go back to my video on compliment responses, you'll see why in detail. But briefly, when someone compliments us we have two choices, we can accept the compliment, or we can decline the compliment.

Declining the compliment is sort of threatens a negative face because we'd rather just be left alone. “Don't compliment me because I don't want to have to brush off the compliment.” But accepting a compliment threatens positive face, because one of the things we want to maintain about our identity is the idea that we're humble or modest.

Many of us were brought up to believe that humility and modesty were virtues, and explicit acknowledgement of our own strengths and virtues was bragging a or a show of conceit and should be avoided. So when someone compliments us and we accept the compliment, it threatens our own image of ourselves as a humble modest person. That's why accepting compliments is so difficult for so many people because they feel the face threat.

3. Breakdown of Physical or Bodily Control

Examples of this are farting, burping, falling asleep, vomiting, etc. In a previous video, I show a clip of the President George Bush on a state visit to Japan. He ate something he didn't like or he had the flu, and he vomited right in the lap of the prime minister of Japan. This was tremendously threatening to his positive face, to his desire to be liked and approved of and to be seen as a person with tact and skill and diplomacy and so on.

Any break down a physical or bodily control – burping, belching, crying, farting, falling asleep, vomiting – threatens positive face because we want to maintain for ourselves an image of someone who's under control. Any breakdown of control damages that self-image.

4. Self-Humiliation

Any act of self-humiliation will by definition threaten positive face. These are acting stupid, contradicting ourselves, mispronouncing a word, using a malapropism, stumbling, falling, having food in our teeth or having our fly open. Any of these is an act of self-humiliation, which will embarrass the speaker and caused them to lose positive face.

5. Emotional Leakage

I've already referenced these to a certain extent when I talked about bodily breakdown. This is a form of psychological breakdown, like inappropriate laughter or tears, etc. At the wrong time, these will be embarrassing because they show a lack of control.

 

Summary

I hope to illustrate two things in these examples of routine actions that threaten positive and negative face for the speaker and the hearer.

Firstly, I hope to demonstrate how common and ubiquitous threats to face are, and therefore how common and ubiquitous the need to use language to be polite and manage threats to face is. Face is at stake in every single interaction, and the need to manage threats to face and be aware and alert to them is in my opinion the core social skill.

Now you’ll have an awareness that beneath the surface of every interaction, there are people who have these persistent positive and negative face wants. The desire to be liked and approved of is positive face, the desire to be left alone and to go about their business unimpeded is negative face. In every interaction these desires are present. Yet in almost every interaction, these desires are threatened. The need to do things with one another, the task goals that we have to pursue at work and at home and in everyday life threaten our desire to be liked and approved of, and our desire to be left alone.

Threats to face are ubiquitous. They're everywhere. Therefore, be polite. Be sensitive to other people's face threats. We have to use politeness. We have these resources of language to manage face threats so that we can do these face threatening actions and still pay respect to people's face wants. I don't think it's possible to go around in the world and never threaten face. But I think it is possible to do all these routine face threatening actions but use politeness so that we express and dramatize to people that we care about their face wants.

We may have to violate face because that's the way life is. We may have to violate the desire to be liked and approved of. We may have to violate the desire to be left alone. But we recognize in violating those wants, we're damaging the person in a way. We still want to pay respect to them. Basically say, "I'm sorry, I have to do this thing that threatens your face. But, I'm going to do it politely in order to express to you that I recognize you are a person with value and substance who has faced wants, even though in this interaction I have to threaten or violate them."

The second reason I list all of these threats to positive and negative face for the speaker and the hearer is to show that the social world is a minefield. Almost everything we say or do has the potential to threaten face, and developing a sensitivity to face threats is essential to becoming a socially skilled person.

In a related way, I want to reveal the underlying structure of social interaction. A somewhat invisible layer of meanings that has to do with face and face wants is always stake in every interaction – face-to-face interactions, especially. We have to be attentive to this hidden layer of meaning and use politeness and other devices to manage threats to face. This is what it means to be a skillful person socially, to be of social skill, to have tact, poise, and diplomacy.