Face & dialogue
Been thinking about face and how we negotiate it on and off since rose_lemberg mentioned to me a few months ago that every interaction is a face challenge. (I don't remember her exact words, and I'm pretty clueless about this side of things, not being a sociolinguist, so my thinking is user-end only and anything I get wrong is Not Rose's Fault).
Lots of social-justice stuff to be said about this, I'm sure, especially in how privilege interacts with who expects to save face in an encounter and who has to be constantly aware of the negotiation and whether one is upset at a face challenge because it's surprising or because it's utterly unsurprising and just has happened too often, and how apparently "complimentary" microaggressions function as this sort of challenge. But. I haven't the spoons. And I have a cold & am being self-indulgent here. So I'm not gonna. Well, except for how it'll sneak in anyway :)
The thing I've been thinking about that I wanna babble about is how it affects writing*. Because I think this is an important aspect of narrative tension, and it's one I don't see discussed in most better-writing posts. And it's one that I, as a reader, love to see.
So basically my thought is this: having people working at cross-purposes is a great way to make dialogue tense, but it's not the only way, and it doesn't mean the tension has to sap out of conversations between characters who are on the same side. I don't think real-life tension-free companionable conversations (and silences) are all that common or certain, even among friends; we work pretty hard to build that up through culture-specific ritual.
---
I'm guessing that last part is less transparent to people who are primarily from one culture, and used to interacting with other people in the same culture, and not, like me, used to navigating always-foreign cultures on every side. So, yeah, guys, implicit politeness and impoliteness rules are pretty elaborate, and pretty aligned with power structures, everywhere. (The reason Those Other Cultures tend to be used as examples is that they're unfamiliar enough to draw attention.)
So looking at "standard" (i.e. privileged) US culture: who can say what when, where, and to whom is pretty constrained. Just try being the woman of color telling a group of men that their constant loud misogynistic jokes are not on -- suddenly, your impoliteness is shocking. Silence falls. Their impoliteness was supposed to go unremarked; the challenge to your face (and peace of mind) wasn't important. Your challenge to them is; an outsider calling one out on socially-sanctioned awfulness is a huge face challenge. And if even one member of the group is chastened, and doesn't respond with a return insult or laughter, the whole group loses some face. (Is this why the response to being called out is so often "it was a joke! Can't you take a joke?")
Because those jokes aren't just jokes, right, they're a way to deflect the potential face-challenge of an interaction onto a third party. Group impoliteness towards a less powerful Othered group often serves this function, which is why it's such a "bonding" thing to do. (So is subgroup impoliteness towards a more powerful in-group, but my sense is it's more fraught? More chances of losing face, and also more chances of facing major social or physical consequences. So it doesn't happen out in public in the same way.)
---
And I find impoliteness inherently interesting, narrative-wise. It's a real threat to characters' face, and how it plays out depends so much on the worldbuilding. This is a part of why I love Austen, and why that love glomps happily onto Regency-or-Victorian-inspired spec fic -- despite the fact that the base culture is implicitly one that not only has no place for people like me, but is parasitic upon people like me, gaining from their oppression and horrific treatment**.
any culture with strong power imbalances is going to have equally strong politeness rules to make them unspeakable, and that sets up so very much narrative tension implicit in the world. There's social tension when characters speak up, and internal tension when they don't. And that constant negotiation, in a culture distant enough from mine to not be the same work I do*** all the time, makes narrative crunchy for me.
Then there's the shock of privileged characters saying things I find unacceptable -- which, well, I love so long as I don't get the sense the author agrees. So long as it's problematized, I guess. This is a thing I find very hard to actually write, and quite hard to read, and I love it when it works. But well, yeah; I'm quite shockable.
---
This is also a reason I have problems with some modern-US-epic-fantasy in which nobles are all informal. It's a negotiation between setting and readership culture that doesn't work for me, because formality -- codified politeness -- is a way to mutually save face. The moment those rules are discarded, the potential face threat, and the physical danger of misstepping, is huge.
And It's one reason (SORTOF SPOILER WARNING) I love Megan Whalen Turner's A Conspiracy of Kings and am so happy it's on the Norton list -- the characters' re-negotiation of their positions and appropriate (im)politeness is spot-on. And fraught! And awesome.
---
So the story I wrote last month is All About Face, and I actually wrote a character who doesn't care about the other's face, and isn't trying to negotiate, and that was HARD for me! And is part of why I'm thinking about all this. I'm not sure if I'm walking the line right between appropriateness to character's culture and accessibility to reader.
---
I guess the tl;dr version is: interactions are always potential face threats; politeness helps everyone maintain face; cross cultural communication makes this fraught; so do some forms of impoliteness, esp. direct face-challenges; others are community-building by either turning the impoliteness on a third party or codifying it (I didn't talk about that did I); who gets to say what, and how the response plays out, tells us as readers a lot about cultures and where characters fit into them; so does 'who has to think about it', because they get the consequences; all of this can add layers of narrative tension to dialogue & help it carry a story. I get a huge kick out of reading this done right. And I like trying to write it.
Thoughts?
---
* Because, honest, I'm still a writer! I wrote a story last month! And edited it! And after another round or two will even send it off someplace! And start with the pro zines! -- something I haven't done in a year, at this point, with all the horrible health foo.
** Well, until the Nabob enters the scene, then I hate with hate. Any character who got rich in The Colonies, or wants to go do so, is as actively vile in my book as (e.g.) Heyer's anti-semitic characters; any author sympathy for them robs me of desire to read the author.
*** Which isn't to say I do it well. Do most/all Third-culture kids end up falling on our faces relatively often by misjudging the assumptions we share with others? Or is that just me?
Lots of social-justice stuff to be said about this, I'm sure, especially in how privilege interacts with who expects to save face in an encounter and who has to be constantly aware of the negotiation and whether one is upset at a face challenge because it's surprising or because it's utterly unsurprising and just has happened too often, and how apparently "complimentary" microaggressions function as this sort of challenge. But. I haven't the spoons. And I have a cold & am being self-indulgent here. So I'm not gonna. Well, except for how it'll sneak in anyway :)
The thing I've been thinking about that I wanna babble about is how it affects writing*. Because I think this is an important aspect of narrative tension, and it's one I don't see discussed in most better-writing posts. And it's one that I, as a reader, love to see.
So basically my thought is this: having people working at cross-purposes is a great way to make dialogue tense, but it's not the only way, and it doesn't mean the tension has to sap out of conversations between characters who are on the same side. I don't think real-life tension-free companionable conversations (and silences) are all that common or certain, even among friends; we work pretty hard to build that up through culture-specific ritual.
---
I'm guessing that last part is less transparent to people who are primarily from one culture, and used to interacting with other people in the same culture, and not, like me, used to navigating always-foreign cultures on every side. So, yeah, guys, implicit politeness and impoliteness rules are pretty elaborate, and pretty aligned with power structures, everywhere. (The reason Those Other Cultures tend to be used as examples is that they're unfamiliar enough to draw attention.)
So looking at "standard" (i.e. privileged) US culture: who can say what when, where, and to whom is pretty constrained. Just try being the woman of color telling a group of men that their constant loud misogynistic jokes are not on -- suddenly, your impoliteness is shocking. Silence falls. Their impoliteness was supposed to go unremarked; the challenge to your face (and peace of mind) wasn't important. Your challenge to them is; an outsider calling one out on socially-sanctioned awfulness is a huge face challenge. And if even one member of the group is chastened, and doesn't respond with a return insult or laughter, the whole group loses some face. (Is this why the response to being called out is so often "it was a joke! Can't you take a joke?")
Because those jokes aren't just jokes, right, they're a way to deflect the potential face-challenge of an interaction onto a third party. Group impoliteness towards a less powerful Othered group often serves this function, which is why it's such a "bonding" thing to do. (So is subgroup impoliteness towards a more powerful in-group, but my sense is it's more fraught? More chances of losing face, and also more chances of facing major social or physical consequences. So it doesn't happen out in public in the same way.)
---
And I find impoliteness inherently interesting, narrative-wise. It's a real threat to characters' face, and how it plays out depends so much on the worldbuilding. This is a part of why I love Austen, and why that love glomps happily onto Regency-or-Victorian-inspired spec fic -- despite the fact that the base culture is implicitly one that not only has no place for people like me, but is parasitic upon people like me, gaining from their oppression and horrific treatment**.
any culture with strong power imbalances is going to have equally strong politeness rules to make them unspeakable, and that sets up so very much narrative tension implicit in the world. There's social tension when characters speak up, and internal tension when they don't. And that constant negotiation, in a culture distant enough from mine to not be the same work I do*** all the time, makes narrative crunchy for me.
Then there's the shock of privileged characters saying things I find unacceptable -- which, well, I love so long as I don't get the sense the author agrees. So long as it's problematized, I guess. This is a thing I find very hard to actually write, and quite hard to read, and I love it when it works. But well, yeah; I'm quite shockable.
---
This is also a reason I have problems with some modern-US-epic-fantasy in which nobles are all informal. It's a negotiation between setting and readership culture that doesn't work for me, because formality -- codified politeness -- is a way to mutually save face. The moment those rules are discarded, the potential face threat, and the physical danger of misstepping, is huge.
And It's one reason (SORTOF SPOILER WARNING) I love Megan Whalen Turner's A Conspiracy of Kings and am so happy it's on the Norton list -- the characters' re-negotiation of their positions and appropriate (im)politeness is spot-on. And fraught! And awesome.
---
So the story I wrote last month is All About Face, and I actually wrote a character who doesn't care about the other's face, and isn't trying to negotiate, and that was HARD for me! And is part of why I'm thinking about all this. I'm not sure if I'm walking the line right between appropriateness to character's culture and accessibility to reader.
---
I guess the tl;dr version is: interactions are always potential face threats; politeness helps everyone maintain face; cross cultural communication makes this fraught; so do some forms of impoliteness, esp. direct face-challenges; others are community-building by either turning the impoliteness on a third party or codifying it (I didn't talk about that did I); who gets to say what, and how the response plays out, tells us as readers a lot about cultures and where characters fit into them; so does 'who has to think about it', because they get the consequences; all of this can add layers of narrative tension to dialogue & help it carry a story. I get a huge kick out of reading this done right. And I like trying to write it.
Thoughts?
---
* Because, honest, I'm still a writer! I wrote a story last month! And edited it! And after another round or two will even send it off someplace! And start with the pro zines! -- something I haven't done in a year, at this point, with all the horrible health foo.
** Well, until the Nabob enters the scene, then I hate with hate. Any character who got rich in The Colonies, or wants to go do so, is as actively vile in my book as (e.g.) Heyer's anti-semitic characters; any author sympathy for them robs me of desire to read the author.
*** Which isn't to say I do it well. Do most/all Third-culture kids end up falling on our faces relatively often by misjudging the assumptions we share with others? Or is that just me?