Sociologist Erving Goffman appropriates the folk notion of face and re-characterizes it as fol- lows: “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (line meaning something like stance or attitude here), “an image of self, delineated in terms of approved social attributes” (Goffman, 1967). Properties ascribed to a person that evaluate their persona diagnose their face. When someone is generally regarded as “nice”, for example, this person has this degree of positive face. Being generally regarded as “polite” also constitutes an aspect of positive face.
Following Brown and Levinson (1978), we assume that being regarded as polite is achieved in part by maintaining, and, in case of threat, saving desired or conventionally valued aspects of others’ face. Brown and Levinson (1978) further define the following two notions, corresponding to two types of politeness:...........................