Grundlage ist eine analytisch angenommene 'Model Person' (MP):
a wilful fluent speaker of a natural language, special properties rationality and face: the want to be unimpeded and to be approved of in certain aspects
- All MPs have positive face and negative face, and all MPs are rational agents - i.e. choose means that will satisfy their needs
- Given that face consists in a set of wants satisfiable only by the actions (including expressions of wants) of others, it will in general be to the mutual interest of two MPs to maintain each otherīs face. So S will want to maintain H's face, unless he can get H to maintain S's without recompense, by coercion, trickery, etc.
- Some acts intrinsically threaten face; these 'face-threatening acts' will be reffered to henceforth as FTAs.
- Unless S's want to do an FTA with maximum efficiency (defined as bald on record) is greater than S's want to preserve H's (or S's) face to any degree, then S will want to minimize the face threat of the FTA.
- Given the following set of strategies, the more an act threatens S's or H's face, the more S will want to choose a higher-numbered strategy; this by virtue of the fact that these strategies afford payoffs of increasingly minimized risk:
- Since i-v are mutually known to all MPs our MP will not choose a strategy less risky than necessary, as this may be seen as an indication that the FTA is more threatening than it actually is. (p 59-60)
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Brown & Levinson 1987: Grundlagen