Identity Implications 3
Wilson and colleagues’ revised analysis (Cai & Wilson, 2000, Wilson et al., 1998;
Wilson et al., 2000; Wilson et al., 1999; Wilson et al., 1991/1992; Wilson & Kunkel, 2000)
makes assumptions about: (a) the origins of face threats during compliance-gaining episodes and
(b) how participants manage face threats.
Assumptions About the Origin of Face Threats
Drawing from politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), it is presumed that
individuals in all cultures desire to maintain "face," which can be subdivided into two wants.
Positive face is the desire to have one's attributes and actions approved of by significant others.
Negative face is the desire to maintain one's autonomy and be free from unnecessary constraint.
Face wants are interdependent; hence, persons have motives to support their interaction partner's
face while maintaining their own.
It is also presumed that many speech acts "intrinsically" threaten face, or by definition
run contrary to the face wants of the speaker or hearer. Speech act theory, with its analysis of the
constitutive rules that define speech acts, contains part of the answer to how face threats arise
from seeking compliance. Directives (Searle, 1976), or speech acts designed to get a hearer to
perform an action that s/he otherwise would not have performed (e.g., requests,
recommendations), are defined by a set of constitutive rules, including that: (a) there is a need for
the desired action to be performed; (b) there is a need for a directive (i.e., the target already was
not planning to perform the action); (c) the target plausibly might be willing or obligated, as well
as able, to perform the desired action; (d) the source has the right to issue this directive; and (e)
the source sincerely wants the desired action performed (Labov & Fanshel, 1977, pp. 77-82;
Searle, 1969, pp. 64-71). Seeking compliance presumes that the message target plausibly may be
willing to perform a desired action (or else there is no sense in asking) and that the target was not
Convention