Assumptions: Properties of interactants
We make the following assumptions: that all competent adult members of a society have (and know each other to have)
(i) ‘face’, the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself, consisting in two related aspects:
(a) negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction — i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from imposition
(b) positive face: the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality’ (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants
(ii) certain rational capacities, in particular consistent modes of reasoning from ends to the means that will achieve those ends.
Face. Our notion of ‘face’ is derived from that of Goffman (1967) and from the English folk term, which ties face up with notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or ‘losing face’. Thus face is something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction. In general, people cooperate (and assume each other's cooperation) in maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face. That is, normally everyone's face depends on everyone else's being maintained, and since people can be expected to defend their faces if threatened, and in defending their own to threaten others' faces, it is in general in every participant's best interest to maintain each others' face, that is to act in ways that assure the other participants that the agent is heedful of the assumptions concerning face given under (i) above.
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