Horizontes (Oct 2012)
Disagreement at the Academy: discursive strategies to protect and save speakers' face
Abstract
Our aim in this study is to investigate the linguistic strategies professors use at the University to mitigate their disagreements, reach their academic and scientific interests and save each others’ face. Disagreement is a threatening speech act which threatens the individual’s positive face. It implies criticism, disapproval and contradicts our desire to be socially approved and appreciated. At the Academy it seems to be much more complex, hence the necessity to be studied. Our study is based on Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory (1978, 1987); on Goffman’s idea of face (1967) and on some assumptions of Conversation Analysis. The result suggests that professors care about each other’s face and also about their social relationships and, to preserve them, use different mitigating strategies, but they will not hesitate to prove that their ideas are the most reasonable and must be adopted.
