Modal expressions as facework in refusals to comply with requests: I think I should say ‘no’ right now

Abstract

A central goal of interaction is face, the maintenance/creation of desired images of self, other, and relationship. When face is threatened, cooperative speakers typically act to mitigate that threat by doing facework. Linguistic expressions of modality, such as have to, should, and can, convey speakers' claims about the necessity, probability, or possibility of beliefs and actions. We suggest speakers use modality to do facework. To assess this claim, we examined modal expressions in 70 acts of refusing to comply with a request. RCps. Modal expressions were highly frequent and approximately equally distributed across types of RCps. Only three modal structures occurred; namely, modal expressions of epistemic probability/possibility exclusively (e.g., I don't think so), root necessity/probability exclusively (e.g., I have to work), plus the combination (e.g., I don't think I can). We propose that refusers used these modal structures to repair face-damage by conveying, respectively, their reluctance, obligation, or both reluctance and obligation to do the RCp. Examination of an additional 101 RCps provided evidence for the generality of these findings. The research demonstrates the importance of social psychological pragmatics, the psychological analysis of how linguistic resources are used to do interpersonal work.