Accounting for (strategically) ambiguous facework using Trump as a case study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24217149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dawn Archer (0000-0002-4547-6518, Manchester Metropolitan University , Manchester , UK), Samuel Bourgeois (0000-0003-1736-1622, University of Neuchâtel , Neuchâtel , Switzerland) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-09-28 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Politeness Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1612-5681 • E-ISSN: 1613-4877 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/pr-2025-0061 |
| OpenAlex | W7214308576 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 56 |
Archer’s (2015. Slurs, insults, (backhanded) compliments and other strategic facework moves. Language Sciences 52. 82–97) Goffman-inspired facework scale was designed to capture both overt im/politeness and, more importantly, strategically ambivalent facework strategies that afford users a level of plausible deniability, allowing them to manipulate others’ views of their target(s) without being found to have acted impolitely (Archer 2011. Cross-examining lawyers, facework and the adversarial courtroom. Journal of Pragmatics 43(13). 3216–3230). This paper nonetheless proposes an enhancement: the addition of a third “ambiguous-as-to-speaker-intent” space between the “intentional” face enhancing (FE) and face threatening (FT) zones. This third space complements the two “ambiguous-as-to-speaker-intent” spaces already sitting between the “intentional” and “incidental” FE zones and between the “intentional” and “incidental” FT zones of Archer’s original scale (cf. Goffman 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior . Garden City, NY: Anchor Books). We demonstrate the utility of what has effectively become a facework loop using fourteen comments made by Donald Trump – a globally known figure regularly associated with overt impoliteness – from the 1990s onwards (some of which were deemed more controversial than others). Our primary foci, in consequence, are those facework moves that leave targets and/or audiences uncertain as to whether praise and/or criticism and/or something more politic was intended by him.
Donald Trump · Erving Goffman · face-threatening acts · facework · impoliteness · plausible deniability · politeness scale · speaker intention · strategic ambiguity · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Linguistics and Language Analysis
Chapter 2. Reflections on impoliteness, relational work and power
Analysing Political Discourse
Impoliteness in Interaction
Forbidden Words
The Politics of Fear
Impoliteness
Logic and Conversation
Speech Acts
‘Just saying it like it is’
Face attack in Italian politics
Power and Politeness in Action
The complexity of non-seriousness
A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data
Conceptualizing conversational humour as (im)politeness
Shameless normalisation of impoliteness
Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication
Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being
The hollow man
Being Yourself
Politeness Theory and Relational Work
Politeness
Diachronic speech act analysis
The Pragmatics of Politeness
Impoliteness and Entertainment in the Television Quiz Show
Slurs, insults, (backhanded) compliments and other strategic facework moves
From bonding to biting
But seriously
Cross-examining lawyers, facework and the adversarial courtroom
Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English
The hands of Donald Trump
Truths, Lies, and Equivocations
Slipperiness, Evasion, and Ambiguity
Ex Malo Bonum
| Highly cited | No |
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