Face and politeness: new (insights) for old (concepts)

The article re-examines Erving Goffman’s concepts of face and face-work and their roots in the ritual and sacred essence of the social order as expounded in the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Both Goffman and Durkheim are referred to in Brown and Levinson’s classic work on politeness but the originality of their ideas has become somewhat diluted. Using three of Goffman’s early essays, the article argues that his observations on the interactional order and his sophisticated notions of face and face-work could be the starting point for a re-appraisal of politeness and its fundamental role in the social order.