Do Unto Others?.

Abstract

Despite a widespread acknowledgement of the relationship between account offerings and facework, little research has provided evidence showing that different types of accounting moves actually foster diverse assessments of attentiveness to face. Following Goffman (1955, 1967), we coded the primary types of challenges, offerings, and evaluations from interactions between friends who discussed a previous failure event by the speaker. We analyzed the codes—and the complexity of the sequences—for differences in participants’ judgments of attentiveness toward other-face. Not every accounting form resulted in significant differences; nevertheless, either the speakers or their partners perceived most forms differently in some way. Additionally, elicitors viewed more complex (i.e., longer) account sequences as less attentive to their own negative face, but accounters viewed more complex (i.e., more varied) offerings as more attentive to others’ negative face. Qualitative analyses revealed additional discourse forms that may count as offerings and evaluations, including a more direct form of self-oriented facework, requests for advice from the accounter, rejections of account suggestions, and requests for information and acceptance.

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