A Pragmatic Analysis Of Face Management In Selected English Televion Interviews

Abstract

Face management is crucial during speech exchanged between the participants. When the interviewer and the interviewee start communicating and turns are transmitted between them, each tries hard to protect his/her own face from being threatened, but this social value is not always protected as it is often threatened on purpose. This paper hypothesizes that the ability to manage face by the interviewer and the interviewee is affected by activating pragmatic knowledge. It also postulates that face threatening act dominates face saving act in TV interviews.      The paper is limited to the investigation of face management between the interviewer and the interviewee while they exchange turns from a pragmatic perspective focusing on British English. It is specified to the study of selected English interviews from local British Channels, and uses certain concepts depending on Leech’s politeness principles (1983), Brown and Levinson’s (1987) introduction to positive and negative face, and face threatening acts with the strategies for reducing them.  The paper is of theoretical value for those who like to study face management during turn transitions between people generally, and the interviewer and the interviewee in particular while they interact socially on TV.