Introduction

Gortkorlek and Mike Lentine talk about face and politeness. William Anis explains how the word is used to indicate someone's personal integrity in a variety of human languages. The phrase positive politeness refers to things we do to help others save positive face. Negative politeness is used to find strategies we use to help others avoid a threat to their negative face. And certain kinds of speech are inherently face threatening, requests, compliments, invitations among them.