Volume 1, Issue 2

This paper focuses on the concept of facework and argues its usefulness as a research category, as this concept enables the accounting of different types of behaviour that affect the speakers’ face: politeness, impoliteness and self-facework. Based on sociopragmatic studies on Spanish that take a cultural perspective and on other studies in English from the past decade, this proposal will firstly discuss the concept of facework. This concept is characterised in accordance with two key concepts: the social effect that communicative behaviour achieves in the speakers’ face and the social continuum, the connection between their faces through interaction.Thus, the concept of facework is proposed in two related perspectives: the perspective of the direction of the social effect towards the interactants, and the perspective of the modality of this effect. The connection of both perspectives allows for the identification and description of the type of facework.

Traditional approaches have examined the study of phatic communion in terms of social function (Malinowski, [1923] 1984), language function (Jakobson, [1960] 1999) and their occurrence in the initial stages of openings and closings (Laver, 1981). Such attempts to categorise phatic communion in pre-determined universalistic terms (Svennevig, 1999) ran the risk of distancing the concept from everyday understandings where speakers and listeners engage in dynamic language use to achieve specific communicative goals in specific contexts. Contemporary approaches have attempted to reposition phatic communion in interpersonal terms. Less work has been carried out on phatic talk in Latin America, with some notable exceptions (Placencia, 2004, 2005). In order to investigate this concept in the Mexican context, where it is still considered in conventional terms, we examine a corpus of 88 instances of phatic communion collected in Guadalajara, Mexico. We argue that in this corpus, phatic communion is used to express positive politeness (Curcó, 1998, 2007) since it reinforces solidarity and supportiveness but that this is often done in unconventional ways given that the term has a wide scope since it embraces antipoliteness (‘anticortesía’), creative language use, language play, irony and anglicisms.

Resumen Nombrar implica ejercer el poder sobre lo nombrado, involucra coacción y coerción social. La atribución de nombres, adjetivos, designaciones, favorece la taxonomía cognitiva, pero también socio-ideológico-cultural. Cuando una Institución al servicio del Estado nomina, esas denominaciones tienen consecuencias en los sujetos nombrados. En México, a través de las prácticas semiótico- discursivas (Haidar, 1996, 1998, 2006) se llevó a cabo esta edificación del concepto de discapacidad con importantes implicaciones. El objetivo de este artículo es describir la construcción discursiva, a través de la historia de la nominación de la discapacidad (Valdés, 1948) para vincular este hecho con el imaginario social de México y revisar las implicaciones socio-ideológicas resultantes (Bourdieu, 2003; Pechêux, 1970; Foucault 1970, 2003; Goffman 1963, 1986). Para efectuar un primer acercamiento, estudiamos los términos con que se designa la discapacidad en los Censos de población y vivienda (Lerner, 2001) realizados por el organismo responsable y sustentamos la exposición del proceso a partir de las propuestas de Lyons (1980) y Serrano (1992) sobre las implicaciones semánticas vinculadas con la designación; de Thiebaut (1990) respecto a la articulación semántica del nombre con la pragmática del texto, y con apoyo en Koike (2002) para la co-construcción del significado. Abstract: Denominating implies the exertion of power over what is being named. It involves social coercion and compulsion. Assigning names, adjectives and designations, favors the cognitive but also the socio-ideological and cultural taxonomy. Whenever an Institution at the service of the State denominates, these denominations have consequences on the entitled subjects. In Mexico, this construction of the disability concept was carried out through the semioticdiscursive practices (Haidar 1996, 1998, 2006) with relevant implications. The purpose of this paper is to describe the discursive construction throughout the history of the designation of disability (Valdés, 1948) in order to bind this fact with the social imaginary of Mexico and to examine the resulting socio-ideological implications (Bourdieu, 2003; Pechêux, 1970; Foucault 1970, 2003; Goffman 1963, 1986). To carry out an initial approach, we studied the expressions used when naming disability in the population and housing census conducted by the responsible organization (Lerner, 2001) and we uphold the presentation of the process based on the proposals of Lyons (1980) and Serrano (1992) which discuss the semantic implications related with the act of designating; those of Thiebaut (1990), regarding the semantic articulation of the name with text pragmatics, and the paper was supported also by the approaches of Koike (2002) for the co-construction of meaning.

The ideological dimension in textbooks is evidenced at different levels and through different discursive mechanisms. Following this, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that certain social representations and politically correct attitudes (Courtine, 2006) are evidenced on the discursive materiality of textbooks. In this sense, we propose that politically correct gestures are not only configured through themes and words, present or silenced ones, but also through polyphonic and argumentative strategies. Among them, we focus on the forms identified as “autominic modalization” (Authier-Revuz, 1995) and we characterize them as modes of ideological positioning, in general, and as traces of a politically correct poses, in particular. Having a group of French authors as the theoretical framework for this study (Pêcheux, 1975, 1982, 1983; Courtine, 1982, 2006; Authier-Revuz, 1984, 1995; Amossy, 1999), we analyze a corpus of social science textbooks for secondary education, edited in Argentina between 1983 and 2005. On one hand, we show that one of the functions related to the “autonimic modalization” is based on having the locutor-author exhibiting disagreement when using a given disciplinary terminology. On the other hand, we corroborate that such ideological disagreement often evidences a politically correct attitude that is not necessarily accompanied with a transformation of the representations. In this way, stereotypes and social imagings are maintained through time and discourse, something that the “autonimic modalization” tried to avoid.

Because the term “face” is used so frequently in research in language pragmatics, one overlooks the fact that it is a metaphor. This article questions whether face is the best metaphor to use in representing either the phenomena that Goffman (1955) examined, or the broad range of social practices for relating to others in using language that are evident across cultural groups. As background for questioning the viability of the metaphor of face, this article argues that the individual and social aspects of human existence form a Yin and Yang dialectic, employs this dialectic to identify three modes of explaining pragmatic phenomena, and considers both the nature of metaphors and how they afford and constrain understandings of these phenomena and conducting research on them. Using this background, the article argues that the metaphor of face has focused theory and research on the individual aspects of human existence, so that its fundamental social aspects have been overlooked and/or inadequately addressed. Exploring and employing alternatives to the metaphor of face has important benefits for theory and for research, especially if those alternative metaphors are fitted to the particular communities of practice that one is studying. Resumen Dado que en la investigación de la pragmática lingüística usamos muy frecuentemente el término imagen social, pasamos por alto el hecho de que imagen social es una metáfora. El presente artículo se plantea si esta es la mejor metáfora para representar los fenómenos que Goffman (1955) investigó o representa la amplia gama de prácticas sociales para relacionarse con los demás a través de la lengua que son evidentes en todos los grupos culturales. Como base para plantear cuestiones sobre la viabilidad de la metáfora imagen social, en este trabajo se arguye que los aspectos individuales y sociales de la existencia humana forman una dialéctica Yin y Yang, la cual es usada para identificar tres modos de explicación de fenómenos pragmáticos, y que considera tanto la naturaleza de las metáforas como la manera en que facilitan y constriñen las formas en que entendemos los fenómenos y llevamos a cabo la investigación. Con esta base, en el artículo se arguye que la metáfora de imagen social ha centrado la teoría y la investigación en los aspectos individuales de la existencia humana, de forma que los aspectos sociales fundamentales han sido obviados y/o tratados inadecuadamente. El estudio y el uso de alternativas a la metáfora de imagen social ofrecen importantes ventajas para la teoría y la investigación, especialmente si esas metáforas alternativas son adecuadas para las específicas comunidades de práctica de nuestros estudios.