社会语言学女性面子.doc

Gender Language Difference: A New Interpretation Abstract: Face-saving theory (FST) advocated by Brown and Levinson emphasizes the universality of human beings to treat fhce and to take strategies so as to save face. Nevertheless, humans are quite different from one another, especially male and female. This article mainly concerns FST from gender difference in language and puts forward some new ideas about FST in order to make it a better system. Key words: face-saving theory; face; gender difference in language 1? Introduction Language exists in society. It must reflect phenomena in society. Spoken by human beings in society, it will be carved by different characteristics of human beings, among which gender is an aspect, which cannot be neglected. In fact, gender difference in language has long been heated discussed. At the beginning of the 20th century, people began to pay attention to this phenomenon and ever since the 1960s especially after the womans movement; many articles concerning this phenomenon appeared in the world. During this period, people discussed the problem from different aspects and got great achievements. In this article, we will analyze FST advocated by Brown and Levinson in a perspective of gender language differences. 2. Face-saving Theory The word “face was first introduced into the west by a Chinese Anthropologist, named Hu Hsien Chin. The western socialists began to analyze this phenomenon from the 1950fs. It was Erving Goffman who first explained this word. He believed that face^ was connected with some emotional concepts, such as embarrass, and shy, losing face. Later two linguists Brown and Levinson presented specifically the Face-saving Theory55. They divided face5 into two kinds: negative face and positive face. Negative face means that a person does not want others to enforce their ideas upon his/hers or to interfere in his/her behavio匚 Positive face is the hope that a person wants others to agree with him/her or to praise him/he匸 Br