From primate faces to pragmatic face. The emergence of symbolic intersubjectivity

Abstract

In this article, I aim to analyze the conceptual relationship between facial expressions – an evolutionary adaptation crucial for communication in certain primate species – and the notion of face as central to pragmatic studies of politeness. Facial expressions, and emotional expressions more generally, can fulfill various communicative functions, including – but not limited to – the regulation of social relationships. These communicative functions not only appear analogous to those characteristic of human verbal communication, but also seem to depend on partially shared cognitive mechanisms (Bar-On 2013, 2024; Scarantino 2017, 2018, 2019; Scotto 2022)[1]. Therefore, there appears to be a line of continuity between the role of facial (and nonverbal) emotional expressions in relationship regulation among nonhuman animals and face in human communication. From this perspective, I will discuss Terkourafi’s (2007) suggestive proposal, which reinterprets Grice’s cooperative principle in terms of the notion of face. Although this reformulation runs the risk of narrowing the scope of the cooperative principle by placing exclusive emphasis on social interaction regulation, it has the significant merit of highlighting the fundamental continuity between expressive and distinctively human communication. At the same time, acknowledging this continuity allows us to focus on a distinguishing feature of human communication: a specific form of intersubjectivity, coupled with a specific form of normativity, which finds a paradigmatic manifestation precisely in the pragmatic notion of face.

[1] The expression «human verbal communication» is used here as a convenient simplification: in reality, human communication is typically multimodal. However, for the purposes of this article, which focuses on the comparison between expressive and specifically human communication, we can set this qualification aside.