In this chapter we turn our attention to the role that pragmatics plays in the study of social interaction. When we communicate, we do not simply exchange information. We also manage relationships. As speakers, we can choose to be more or less direct, more or less formal, and more or less attentive to our hearers. The decisions that speakers make are often motivated by concern for how their hearers will react to the utterance, and by the effect that this might then have on the relationship. Perhaps the most influential work in this area of pragmatics is Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness. The first half of this chapter provides an overview of their framework and the politeness strategies that they propose. In the second half of the chapter, we discuss some recent developments that have arisen in response to Brown and Levinson’s work. These include analyses of impoliteness, consideration of how cultural variation might be incorporated into the pragmatics of interaction, and a shift to focus less on politeness and more on a broader notion of the relational work that speakers perform.

This chapter investigates the role that clichés play in the construction and articulation of face and entrepreneurial identity by examining transcripts from broadcast discourse TV show The Apprentice. Utilising insights from self-presentation theory, face theory and im/politeness, the chapter analyses a number of extracts from the show featuring clichés to explore what identities are construed by clichés and how they construe the participants’ (desired or actual) entrepreneurial identity. The first level of analysis explores the way in which clichés work ideationally as choices the speakers make to construe the version of the identity they wish to perform at the point of filming, known as single articulation. The second level of analysis discusses the juxtaposition between the interpersonal function clichés fulfil in the self-presentation extracts and in the representation of such self-presentation, known as double articulation.

In Chapter 6, I introduce hermeneutic phenomenology as a philosophical method relating to the description and interpretative analysis of experience. French phenomenology has become a dialogue partner for theology and religion because of its capacity to accommodate what might be given without appearing as such. For Marion, this opens the possibility of recognising phenomena that signify in excess of or counter to experience, including phenomena of r/Revelation. After sketching Marion's typology of saturated phenomena and considering some of the criticism that has emerged in response, I observe his deepening insight that the phenomenality of the event characterises each of the counter-experiences he describes, and so has a particular importance. If what exceeds intentionality is described in terms of the event rather than as a phenomenon of revelation, we avoid the difficulties of the r/Revelation distinction that Marion draws, and decrease the sense that revelation is being smuggled into phenomenology. I also note that the event is a figure used more broadly in contemporary thought and so enables us to connect Marion’s work with that of others in potentially fruitful dialogue.

This chapter looks at the thinking and practice of international relations and world order in China. It opens by setting China’s geopolitical context. In terms of thinking it covers Tianxia, the Mandate of Heaven, hierarchy, face, zhongyong dialectics, yin-yang, collectivism, and relationalism. In terms of practice it covers the warring states and the tribute system. It argues that China was the most different of the three cases in terms of international relations.

Chapter 5 examines a key phenomenon in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics, namely, linguistic politeness and impoliteness. While politeness popularly describes ‘proper’ behaviour, as a technical term it encompasses all kinds of behaviour by means of which language users express that they take others’ feelings into account. Similarly, impoliteness not only refers to rude language but rather it covers all types of behaviour that are felt to cause offence. Politeness and impoliteness have been the most researched phenomena in the field, and in chapter 5 we provide a summary of those politeness- and impoliteness-related phenomena which are particularly relevant for cross-cultural pragmatic inquiries.

Normative systems known as honor, face and dignity system may have evolved as cultural adaptations to the survival challenges posed by quite different ecologies. Theory that views culture as situated cognition (Oyserman, 2017) posits that regionally dominant systems provide environmental cues that preferentially elicit normative thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Systems of shared norms help people coordinate actions and manage conflicts within their group. In the United States, successive waves of European colonization established cultural legacies that survive as regional differences, currently reflected in crime statistics and behavioral research. This chapter examines potential mechanisms of high rates of vengeful aggression within honor systems. Individual influences may include emotion socialization, hostile attribution biases, beliefs that behavior is stable, criteria for self-worth, and masculine anxiety. Theory and research indicate that institutional failure to protect and provide justice to all group members creates conditions linked to the contemporary evolution of honor norms in social groups.

This chapter begins with an overview of several terms important to a discussion of meaning in language, and introduces the reader to the theory of linguistic relativism and the relationship between language and thought. This section transitions into a review of the extension, reference, and the features that begin to form a comprehensive theory of semantics. With this foundation, students turn to a deeper investigation of formal semantics, including definitions for logical expressions and relationships, and then to a presentation of word sense, and the interactions between various parts of speech in the lexicon. The principle of compositionality is introduced, and it is used to explore several examples of non-compositional language. The end of the chapter ties these concepts to an investigation of pragmatics, including politeness, Gricean Maxims, and implicature.

The concept of ‘face’ has received considerable attention in im/politeness research given the powerful influence of Goffman and Brown and Levinson, in particular. In recent years, mostly due to the discursive turn, researchers have questioned the tight yoking between face and im/politeness and have sought different ways to better understand these concepts. This chapter offers a brief critical exploration of the concept of ‘face’ and its derivative concepts of ‘face-threatening acts’ and ‘facework’. Furthermore, it discusses some of the developments in the area such as the needs for finer distinctions and alternative ways of conceptualizing ‘face’, the appeal to return to the broader Goffmanian concept and the needs for distinguishing between lay and scientific constructs of face and disentangling face from im/politeness. ‘Face’ is a term which is located in sociology, as it relates to the person, to the self and to identity, whereas the derivative ‘face-threatening act’ draws heavily on pragmatics and, more specifically, on speech act theory. The related term ‘facework’ may provide a kind of link between the two. This chapter offers an overview of these interconnections and suggests possible directions in the study of ‘face’.

Chapter 8 explores the second major component of the evaluation warrant: the socio-moral order that underpins judgements and complements the other major component – interpersonal sensitivities. The chapter starts by considering theorising on morality and the moral order, since recent work in politeness theory has focused particularly on this. First, it discusses pragmatic theorising on the moral order before turning to work in moral psychology and describe two well-known moral frameworks in psychology. The chapter then explores possible links between face, values and moral foundations/motives from an interdisciplinary perspective, in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of their interconnections. Finally, the chapter argues for the inclusion of a social order that is primarily convention-based (i.e. relates more to descriptive norms and ‘social oughts’) and proposes that there is a continuum between the social and moral warrants to participants’ judgments. The chapter labels this the socio-moral order. As with concepts discussed in previous chapters, the issue of universality and cultural variability is central. There are three main sections to the chapter: morality and the moral order; moral foundations, values and face; social transgressions and morality.

Chapter 7 explores three bases that people draw on when they make evaluative judgements of breaches of norms and expectations: interactional goals; face sensitivities and concerns; sociality rights and obligations. Together, these three elements form the first major component of the evaluation warrant: interpersonal sensitivities. For each of the bases of rapport, the chapter first considers how the facet has been conceptualised, and then considers the impact that cultural factors may have on the associated evaluation criteria. Lack of familiarity with norms and differing interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of certain behaviour are key ways in which culture can have an impact. The chapter three main sections: interactional goals; face sensitivities; sociality rights and obligations. In relation to the latter, the chapter considers the notion of conventions and conventionalisation, and note that breaches may or may not lead to negative evaluations. Sometimes they may simply be regarded as amusing or quaint, sometimes the behaviour may cause confusion, sometimes the breach may be (very) negatively evaluated.

Reversing the familiar nostrum that religion – with its omniscient omnipotent onto-theological God - is the buttress of ethics and of all things of value; Levinas follows Kant’s enlightened claim that ethics is the real truth of religion, that the imperatives of kindness (“love thy neighbor”) and of social justice are religions highest teaching, the very essence of holiness, religion for adults. The Akedah is thus a test as much of God’s justice as of Abraham’s faith. Rituals, holidays, traditions, halakha, sacred texts, Talmudic learning, and so on, retain their worth as service to kindness and justice, else, taken sacramentally, they devolve into superstition and fanaticism.

As a crucial concept for understanding Chinese social behavior, face derives from the complicated structure of Confucianism and has continued to develop as a consequence of modernization. This chapter aims to present a series of culture-inclusive theories from the psychological perspective to illustrate face dynamism in Chinese societies. Specifically, the aims of this chapter are threefold: First, to present culture-inclusive theories of face dynamism in Chinese societies as potential materials for intercultural training related to social interactions with the Chinese. Second, to present a glossary of face-related concepts, each defined and reinterpreted in the context of current culture-inclusive theories, and to illustrate their usage as language games by Chinese people in daily social interactions. Third, the discussion of face extends from the interpersonal level to the international level, in order to highlight its cultural significance in intercultural interactions with the Chinese. We focus on the most significant and unique cultural element during intercultural interactions with the Chinese, namely face, by illustrating various roles it plays in Chinese societies. From traditional to modern usage, from personal to national level, we hope that the discussions will shed light on the why and how of face in Chinese social interactions.

Little thought per se has been given to women as agents of violence in antiquity, let alone to the role of the royal harem as the site of revenge-fuelled violence and murder. This chapter addresses this gap by exploring how royal women in the Persian Empire could be instruments of violence. While acknowledging the Greek obsession with this topos, it goes beyond the Western preoccupation with the harem as a site of Oriental decadence and attempts to put stories of women’s violence against women into its ancient Near Eastern context. It explores the mutilation of the body and is particularly focused on the Herodotean tale (which has genuine Persian roots) of the revenge mutilations of Amestris, wife of Xerxes I.

This chapter reviews important notions and results on hyperplane arrangements required in the book. The discussion includes: 1) geometric objects such as faces, flats, bifaces, partial-flats, nested faces, lunes, bilunes, cones; 2) algebraic objects such as the Tits monoid, Birkhoff monoid, Janus monoid and their linearized algebras; Lie and Zie elements; 3) combinatorial objects such as distance functions and Varchenko matrices; descent, lune, Witt identities; incidence algebras, zeta and Möbius functions along with their noncommutative and two-sided analogues, the Zaslavsky formula and its noncommutative analogue.

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Bou-Franch’s chapter aims to throw light on emic understandings of face1 and imagen1 in Peninsular Spanish, and to compare such understandings with etic approaches to imagen and identity. A three-pronged methodology is used to tease out lay meanings of imagen from different first-order sources, and includes the examination of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, the analysis of a corpus of Spanish newspapers, and the analysis of data from focus groups discussing situated experiences of imagen1. The results show that imagen1 and face1 are not related in a straightforward manner. Whereas imagen2 draws on Goffman’s and Brown and Levinson’s seminal definitions of the construct, imagen1 does not always evoke imagen2; when it does, it is more closely related to Goffman’s than to Brown and Levinson’s conception. Microanalysis of naturally-occurring discourse focusing on experiences of imagen1 shows how uses of imagen1 pointed to the centrality of identity and its relationship with face1. The author’s findings thus give credence to that fact that face and identity co-constitute each other and are hard to separate theoretically and analytically.