ABSTRACT
This paper re-examines theories of linguistic politeness in Japanese, and
holds that linguistic politeness is a very complicated issue influenced by
multiple factors in different layers including general face wants of
participants, the participants’ societal positions and social relationships, social
norm that the interactants share, the interactants’ discernment or
interpretation of the social rules, immediate context of the interaction, and
possible strategies for the interactants to choose under the constrains of the
other simultaneously functioning factors. Based on the data collected from
recent Japanese TV dramas, this study maintains that, as a general principle, Brown and
Levinson’s (1978, 1987) theory of face
does apply to Japanese language and culture and forms the base of politeness.
Similarly as in any other culture, facework in successful communication in
Japanese is a result of choice by an interlocutor in accordance with normative
polite practices. What makes linguistic politeness in Japanese unique is not
that Japanese speakers need to act appropriately according to their social norm,
but that their discernment (wakimae)
and recognition of the social position and relationship (tachiba) of the participants, which form the second layer of the
determining factors of politeness, make speakers of Japanese always attend to
and try to fulfil the other participant’s face want including both positive and
negative face, and, at the same time, maintain their own positive face but
rarely claim their own negative face especially when an interactant has less
power and in a lower social position in an interaction. The data also suggest a
model of face-redressing strategies co-occurring with face threatening acts
(FTA) in Japanese.