Dissension and Face-work Strategies in German Dialogues

Dissension in German discussions and the Face-work strategies (Goffman 1967, 1986; Brown/Levinson, 1978, 1987) used for expressing them are identified and analyzed in the study. Dissension, defined as a propositional attitude of the speaker''s disagreement is deemed to be highly threatening to the social image of an individual and is to be uttered using specific Face-work strategies and/or a higher degree of redress for the social image.

After a discussion of the concepts ''Dissension'' and ''Face-work'', the corpus and methodology, the results of an analysis of about eight hours of recorded conversation and about 370 occurrences of Dissension are presented. According to their scope, they were classified into four categories, which proved relevant for the set of 38 Face-work strategies found to express them, as well as the elements employed in their linguistic expression. No specific linguistic means for expressing Dissension was found, although most cases display semantically negative lexical components. Linguistic elements from many word classes as well as devices such as Deixis manipulation were used for Face-work. The results are also interpreted in regard to the relationship between Dissension, its different categories and the several strategies used to express them. An appendix presents all occurrences of Dissension found in the corpus as well as a detailed examination of their categories and linguistic forms, Face-work strategies and linguistic means used to convey them.