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CHAPTER 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
instantiating the notion of shared ethnicity constructs a platform of solidar¬
ity enabling the customer and the clerk to leave the social frame of a service
encounter and to carry out a task violating the official rules.
4 The principle of face management [FACE]
Adopting Goffman’s stance on face, “an image of self delineated in terms of
approved social attributes — albeit an image that others may share”'”, Bolonyai
and Bhatt claim that face is “the social value and standing a person claims”!*®,
Relying on this proposition, they have classified such instances of code¬
switches under the principle of Face Management which enable “to maximize
effective maintenance of ‘face’, or public image of self in relation to others,
i.e., [social] actors switch to a language that is best positioned to manage their
interpersonal relations consistent with face need of self and/or others (e.g.,
appreciation, tact, deference, and respect, positive or negative politeness).”!”’.
In other words, face is the constructed and approved public facade of a person
that determines their social status and their interpersonal relationships. Face¬
work is the embracing term for all social and interactional practice that an
individual gets engaged in to achieve or orient themselves to a desired social
status. Face-work is a bidirectional activity: it involves certain social practices
that challenge the self’s face schemas by others (face-threatening acts) as well
as the practices deployed by the self in order to minimize or avoid face threat
(mitigating, minimizing, avoiding face-threatening acts). Politeness is assumed
to be a typical social practice aimed at minimizing face threats!®. Positive
politeness is aimed at creating a positive face, with such practices involved as
“appreciation, approval, liking and connection”’*’. Negative politeness, though,
including such social practices as “maintaining distance, restraint, autonomy,
freedom from imposition”! are considered to be aimed at managing negative
face needs.
Therefore, all those code-switched instances which pose a potential threat
to the positive and negative needs of the speaker’s face as well as all those
mitigating these threats are listed under the category of face management.
47 Goffman, Footing, Semiotica, 5
Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 532
Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 531-532
Penelope Brown — Stephen C. Levinson, Politeness: some universals in language usage,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, 67
Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 532
Bhatt — Bolonyai, Code-switching and the optimal grammar of bilingual use, Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 532
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