Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese

This paper is a critical examination of the theory of linguistic politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987). The paper focuses on the notion, fundamental to their theory, of ‘face’, and questions the universality of the proposed constituents of ‘face’ in the light of the Japanese language and culture. First, results from anthropological studies on Japanese society are presented to illustrate the discrepancy between Brown and Levinson's assumption and the Japanese notion of ‘face’, Secondly, linguistic evidence is given that Brown and Levinson's theory provides wrong predictions for Japanese politeness phenomena. Examples are drawn from formulaic expressions, honorifics and the verbs of giving and receiving. One conclusion from these observations is that a universal theory of linguistic politeness must take into account at a more fundamental level the cultural variability in the constituents of ‘face’.