Identity work and face work across linguistic and cultural boundaries

Abstract

AbstractIdentity and face are each an imagining of the self, or of another, within a public sphere involving multiple actors. Because they have come into language and discourse research from different directions, researchers frame them in such a way that they can seem only tangentially related. This article examines what binds and distinguishes them, by approaching a set of conversational data – all from Scotland, yet crossing perceived cultural and linguistic boundaries – from the point of view of both the face work and the identity work undertaken by the participants. Identity and face are often taken as representing durative and punctual ways of looking at the same phenomena. Yet explanations of punctual actions and events always have recourse to durative characteristics of those who perform them; and evidence for those durative characteristics is drawn from the punctual actions and events interpreted as embodying and indexing them. This complexity is multiplied by that of the different scales on which face and identity are observed and indexed.