venient or even is humiliating to answer many questions involving national secretsor policy, yet the reporters always give a push; in this case, spokespersons tend tocleverly utilize some language strategies in order to achieve the face-saving effect.The appropriate use of Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies will not onlyachieve the purpose of proper communication but also protect a concerned party’s orcountry’s image and interests. Therefore, the use of politeness strategies on officialoccasions can insure the smooth going and success of press briefings, as well as canreflect a spokesperson’s excellent language skills.Face is a kind of basic but important demand of mankind. Politeness is a series ofsensible behaviors of people with normal communication ability aiming at meetingthe demand of “face”, and it is an important principle in human activities. It is one ofthe key symbols of human civilization, a tool to maintain the interpersonal harmony,and is a general phenomenon which exists in each group of the whole society. As oneof the politeness theories, the Face Theory of Brown and Levinson has a significantvalue for people to maintain the interpersonal harmony, understand the deep meaningof language, and effectively summarize rules and strategies of interpersonalcommunications. This theory can reasonably explain the application of face-savingstrategies and devices in the White House daily news briefings by spokespersons. Theappropriate use of face-saving strategies and devices by spokespersons will not onlyachieve the purpose of proper communication but also protect some concernedparties’ image and interests.In 1978, British scholars Brown and Levinson published a paper entitledPoliteness: Some Universals in Language Usage. They found, on the basis ofinvestigation, within three unrelated linguistic cultures—English, Mexico’s nativelanguage and indigenous languages in the southern India, the application of politelanguage is very common. The two scholars use Goffman’s concept of “face” and putforward the Face Theory which presupposes that people participating in socialactivities are typical. A typical person refers to a rational woman/man with the “face”demand, that is to say, a person with normal communication ability in the socialgroup.The “face” of a typical person is actually the image that every social membertries to earn for herself/himself in the public; it involves two aspects which are thepositive face and the negative face. The former one indicates that people hope to getapproval and love from others and involves rights of individuals; it is a basic andnormal communication principle that leads people to support and care for others insocial activities. The negative face means that people do not want to be imposed on,interfered with, or impeded by others. Negative face emphasizes that at least not all ofindividual rights would be subjected to or constrained by group or group values—donot push others and at the same time not be forced by them. In the daily life and socialinteractions, many speech acts are essentially face-threatening, so Brown andLevinson suggest many strategies and sub-strategies to reduce the threat posed by agood number of communicative behaviors.
1.2 Significance of the Research
Theoretically, the study of the White House spokespersons’ language willfacilitate the understanding of the U.S. official or government spokespersons’linguistic strategies and enrich the linguistic analysis of political news conferences;moreover, this study can help researchers to find out some deficiencies and problemsof the relevant linguistic theories in practical applications and put forward reasonablesupplementary suggestions; furthermore, ideas and views about governmentspokespersons’ language in press briefings will be added and expanded andresearchers’ concern with and attention to
