Pragmatic politeness and history of ideas: face and freedom

Brown and Levinson's Theory of Politeness (1978, 1987) has been criticized for its concept of negative face, a notion related to the idea of negative cult (Durkheim, 1982 [1912]) and to the idea of territory (Goffman, 1972 [1967]). The concept of freedom - freedom of action and freedom from imposition - however, which is actually a part of the definition of the theory, has so far not been taken into account by its critics. This idea of freedom is peculiar to Anglo-Saxon culture, and corresponds to the notion of negative liberty espoused by the historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin (2004). Later theories of politeness -those of Watts (2003), for example- are not based on a concept of freedom, but rather on a peculiarity of Brown and Levinson's theory that explains some of the criticism it has received.