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F supportive. Facework includes the range of communicative strategies we use to maintain face. This is a two-directional process. That is, the process involves the efforts we expend to construct and maintain our own face as well as the efforts we expend to maintain the face of others and that we expect others to expend toward maintaining our face as well. If people did not cooperate to maintain their own and others’ face, interaction would become chaotic; the norms that guide interactions are predicated on the assumption that people respect their own and others’ face. In fact, Goffman used the term shameless to refer to people who consistently act inappropriately in public and seem to feel no embarrassment. He used the term heartless to refer to people who can watch others lose face and feel no compassion. Goffman illustrated concepts of face and facework with a theatrical metaphor. Much as actors have a backstage where they prepare for performance on a front stage, ordinary people have a backstage (e.g., their home or office) where they prepare for their performance in public. While on front stage, we are expected to perform appro priately by successfully managing our props, lines, and costumes—that is, not spilling our coffee, not tripping on the sidewalk, not referring to people by the wrong name, not wearing our gym clothes out to dinner. We are expected to display positive emotions (even when sometimes not genuinely felt) and to moderate displays of negative emotions (control our anger toward others). In Goffman’s sense, the people with whom we interact serve as the audience for our performance when we are on front
Facework If you have ever given a presentation and you forgot what you were going to say, dropped your notes, or stumbled as you began to move across the room, you know what it means to lose “face.” You were embarrassed because you were not performing as a competent publi