Accounting for (strategically) ambiguous facework using Trump as a case study

Abstract

Archer’s (2015. Slurs, insults, (backhanded) compliments and other strategic facework moves. Language Sciences 52. 82–97) Goffman-inspired facework scale was designed to capture both overt im/politeness and, more importantly, strategically ambivalent facework strategies that afford users a level of plausible deniability, allowing them to manipulate others’ views of their target(s) without being found to have acted impolitely (Archer 2011. Cross-examining lawyers, facework and the adversarial courtroom. Journal of Pragmatics 43(13). 3216–3230). This paper nonetheless proposes an enhancement: the addition of a third “ambiguous-as-to-speaker-intent” space between the “intentional” face enhancing (FE) and face threatening (FT) zones. This third space complements the two “ambiguous-as-to-speaker-intent” spaces already sitting between the “intentional” and “incidental” FE zones and between the “intentional” and “incidental” FT zones of Archer’s original scale (cf. Goffman 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior . Garden City, NY: Anchor Books). We demonstrate the utility of what has effectively become a facework loop using fourteen comments made by Donald Trump – a globally known figure regularly associated with overt impoliteness – from the 1990s onwards (some of which were deemed more controversial than others). Our primary foci, in consequence, are those facework moves that leave targets and/or audiences uncertain as to whether praise and/or criticism and/or something more politic was intended by him.