The Structure of Face Engagements
Earlier it was suggested that a consideration of situational proprieties
can be divided into two analytical parts - unfocused interaction, concerned
with what can be communicated between persons merely by virtue of their
presence together in the same social situation; and focused interaction,
concerned with clusters of individuals who extend one another a special
communication license and sustain a special type of mutual activity that
can exclude others who are present in the situation. It is this focused
interaction that will now be considered.
1. Civil Inattention
When persons are mutually present and not involved together in conversation
or other focused interaction, it is possible for one person to stare openly
and fixedly at others, gleaning what he can about them while frankly
expressing on his face his re sponse to what he sees--for example, the
"hate stare" that a Southern white sometimes gratuitously gives to Negroes
walking past him. 1 It is also possible for one person to treat others as
if they were not there at all, as objects not worthy of a glance, let
(p.84)
alone close scrutiny. Moreover, it is possible for the individual, by his
staring or his "not seeing," to alter his own appearance hardly at all in
consequence of the presence of the others. Here we have "nonperson"
treatment; it may be seen in our society in the way we sometimes treat
children, servants, Negroes, and mental patients. 2
Currently, in our society, this kind of treatment is to be contrasted with
the kind generally felt to be more proper in most situations, which will
here be called "civil inattention." What seems to be involved is that one
gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one appreciates
that the other is present (and that one admits openly to having seen him),
while at the next moment withdrawing one's attention from him so as to
express that he does not constitute a target of special curiosity or
design.
In performing this courtesy the eyes of the looker may pass over the eyes
of the other, but no "recognition" is typically allowed...
...
When two persons are mutually present and hence engaged together in some
degree of unfocused interaction, the mutual proffering of civil
inattention - a significant form of unfocused interaction - is not the only
way
they can relate to one another. They can proceed from there to engage one
another in focused interaction, the unit of which I shall refer to as a
face engagement or an encounter. Face engagements comprise all those
instances of two or more participants in a situation joining each other
openly in maintaining a single focus of cognitive and visual attention-what
is sensed as a single mutual activity, entailing preferential communication
rights. As a simple example -and one of the most common-when persons are
present together in the same situation they may engage each other in a
talk. This accreditation for mutual activity is one of the broadest of all
statuses. Even persons of extremely disparate social positions can find
themselves in circumstances where it is fitting to impute it to one
another. Ordinarily the status does not have a "latent phase" but obliges
the incumbents to be engaged at that very moment in exercising their
status.
Mutual activities and the face engagements in which they are embedded
comprise instances of small talk, commensalism, love-making, gaming, formal
discussion, and personal servicing (treating, selling, waitressing, and so
forth) . In some cases, as with sociable chats, the coming together does
not seem to have a ready instrumental rationale. In other cases, as when a
teacher pauses at a pupil's desk to help him for a moment with a problem he
is involved in, and will be involved in after she moves on, the encounter
is clearly a setting for a mutual instrumental activity, and this joint
work is merely a phase of what is primarily an individual task. It should
be noted that while many face engagements seem to be made up largely of the
exchange of verbal statements, so that conversational encounters can in
fact be used as the model, there are still other kinds of encounters where
no word is spoken. This becomes very apparent, of course, in the study of
engagements among children who have not yet mastered talk, and where,
incidentally, it is possible to see the gradual transformation of a mere
physical contacting of another into an act that establishes the social
relationship of jointly accrediting a face-to-face encounter. Among
adults, too, however, nonverbal encounters can be observed: the significant
acts exchanged can be gestures, or even, as in board and card games, moves.
Also, there are certain close comings-together over work tasks which give
rise to a single focus of visual and cognitive attention and to intimately
coordinated contributions, the order and kind of contribution being
determined by shared appreciation of what the task-at-the-moment requires
as the next act. Here, while no word of direction or sociability may be
spoken, it will be understood that lack of attention or coordinated
response constitutes a breach in the mutual commitment of the participants.
Where there are only two participants in a situation, an encounter, if
there is to be one, will exhaust the situation, giving us a fully-focused
gathering. With more than two participants, there may be persons officially
present in the situation who are officially excluded from the encounter and
not themselves so engaoed. These unengagedl" participants change the
gathering into a Partly-focused one. If more than three persons are
present, there may be more than one encounter carried on in the same
situations multifocused gathering. I will use the term Participation unit
to refer both to encounters and to unengaged participants; the term
bystander will be used to refer to any individual present who is not a
ratified member of the particular encounter in question, whether or not he
is currently a member of some other encounter.
In our society, face engagements seem to share a complex of properties, so
that this class of social unit can be defined analytically, as well as by
example.
An encounter is initiated by someone making an opening move, typically by
means of a special expression of the eyes but sometimes by a statement or a
special tone of voice at the beginning of a statement's The engagement
proper begins when this overture is acknowledged by the other, who signals
back with his eyes, voice, or stance that he has placed himself at the
disposal of the other for purposes of a mutual eye-to-eye activity even if
only to ask the initiator to postpone his request for an audience.
There is a tendency for the initial move and the responding "clearance"
sign to be exchanged almost simultaneously, with all participants employing
both signs, perhaps in order to prevent an initiator from placing himself
in a position of being denied by others. Glances, in particular, make
possible this effective simultaneity. In fact, when eyes are joined, the
initiator's first glance can be sufficiently tentative and ambiguous to
allow him to act as if no initiation has been intended, if it appears that
his overture is not desired.
Eye-to-eye looks, then, play a special role in the communication life of
the community, ritually establishing an avowed openness to verbal
statements and a rightfully heightened mutual relevance of acts. In
Simmel's words:
Of the special sense-organs, the eye has a uniquely sociological function.
The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual glances. This
is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which exists anywhere.
This highest psychic reaction, however, in which the glances of eye to eye
unite men, crystallises into no objective structure; the unity which
momentarily arises between two persons is present in the occasion and is
dissolved in the function. So tenacious and subtle is this union that it
can only be maintained by the shortest and straightest line between the
eyes, and the smallest deviation from it, the slightest glance aside,
completely destroys the unique character of this union. No objective trace
of this relationship is left behind, as is universally found, directly or
indirectly, in all other types of associations between men, as, for
example, in interchange of words. The interaction of eye and eye dies in
the moment in which directness of the function is lost. But the totality of
social relations of human beings, their self assertion and self-abnegation,
their intimacies and estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways
if there occurred no glance of eye to eye. This mutual glance between
persons, in distinction from the simple sight or observation of the other,
signifies a wholly new and unique union between them.
It is understandable, then, that an individual who feels he has cause to be
alienated from those around him will express this through some "abnormality
of the gaze," especially averting of the eyes. And it is understandable,
too, that an individual who wants to control others' access to him and the
information he receives may avoid looking toward the person who is seeking
him out. A waitress, for example, may prevent a waiting customer from
"catching her eye" to prevent his initiating an order. Similarly, if a
pedestrian wants to ensure a particular allocation of the street relative
to a fellow pedestrian, or if a motorist wants to ensure priority of his
line of proposed action over that of a fellow motorist or a pedestrian, one
strategy is to avoid meeting the other's eyes and thus avoid cooperative
claims. And where the initiator is in a social position requiring him to
give the other the formal right to initiate all encounters, hostile and
teasing possibilities may occur.
As these various examples suggest, mutual glances ordinarily must be
withheld if an encounter is to be avoided, for eye contact opens one up for
face engagement. I would like to add, finally, that there is a relationship
between the use of eye-to-eye glances as a means of communicating a request
for initiation of an encounter, and other communication practices. The more
clearly individuals are obliged to refrain from staring directly at others,
the more effectively will they be able to attach special significance to a
stare, in this case, a request for an encounter. The rule of civil
inattention thus makes possible, and "fits" with, the clearance function
given to looks into others' eyes. The rule similarly makes possible the
giving of a special function to "prolonued" holding of a stranger's glance,
as when unacquainted persons who had arranged to meet each other manage to
discover one another in this way.
Once a set of participants have avowedly opened themselves up to one
another for an engagement, -an eye-to-eye ecological huddle tends to be
carefully maintained, maximising the opportunity for participants to
monitor one another's mutual perceivings. The participants turn their
minds to the same subject matter and (in the case of talk) their eyes to
the same speaker, although of course this single focus of attention can
shift within limits from one topic to another and from one speaker or
target to another. A shared definition of the situation comes to prevail.
This includes agreement concerning perceptual relevancies and
irrelevancies, and a "working consensus," involving a degree of mutual
considerateness, sympathy, and a muting of opinion differences. Often a
group atmosphere develops - what Bateson has called ethos. At the same
time, a heightened sense of moral responsibility for one's acts also seems
to develop. A "we-rationale" develops, being a sense of the single thing
that we the participants are avowedly doing together at the time. Further,
minor ceremonies are likely to be employed to mark the termination of the
engagement and the entrance and departure of particular participants
(should the encounter have more than two members). These ceremonies, along
with the social control exerted during the encoun. ter to keep participants
"in line," give a kind of ritual closure to the mutual activity sustained
in the encounter. An individual will therefore tend to be brought all the
way into an ongoing encounter or kept altogether out of it.
Engagements of the conversational kind appear to have, at least in our
society, some spatial conventions. A set of individuals caused to sit more
than a few feet apart because of furniture arrangements will find
difficulty in maintaining informal talk; those brought within less than a
foot and a half of each other will find difficulty in speaking directly to
each other, and may talk at an off angle to compensate for the closeness.
In brief then, encounters are organised by means of a special set of acts
and gestures compromising communication about communicating. As a linguist
suggests:
There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to
discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works ("Hello, do
you hear me?"), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm
his continued attention ("Are you listening?" or in Shakesperean diction,
"Lend me your ears!" - and on the other end of the wire "Um-hum!").
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