Analysis of linguistic politeness in the article "The loss of privacy" by Umberto Eco: “The loss of privacy, or the inutility of defending one's negative face”

Analysis of linguistic politeness in the article "The loss of privacy" by Umberto Eco:

“The loss of privacy, or the inutility of defending one's negative face”

Abstract

In this work it is highlighted how the will to defend one's negative face as a historical element of the concept of “person” is nowadays put in crisis by the culture of "being seen".
This new dimension of existence rejects the defence of one's own intimate territory intended as a negative face in order to push people to adhere only to the recognition of their positive face through a complete abandonment of their negative face. Understanding the mechanisms that make this phenomenon possible will be at the heart of this article.

The article "The loss of privacy" published by Umberto Eco inside the Newspaper “ Espresso” on 13 June 2014 will be the central reason for carrying out this analysis with the tools of linguistic politeness and cultural dimension. The concept of "privacy" falls in terms of linguistic politeness in the strong defence of one's negative face in terms of protection of my most intimate and personal territory. This prerogative is connected to a cultural dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty" because there is a need for clarity in the relations between my self, others and institutions in general term. Privacy is certainly an element linked to the cultural dimension of the "individualism" because everyone is considered as an individual, where “ I” is an indispensable word of our language, and the individual is a "sacrosanct" concept of our western civilization.

For Umberto Eco the starting postulate to understand his position is as follows:


"We are obsessed with defending privacy against The “Big Brother” who watches and listens to us. At least it seems so. In reality everyone wants to be seen. Because appearing, even showing the worst of oneself, is the only way to exist"

In this premise Eco performs an operation to enhance the collective face of his ideal reader / supporter with the use of we "are obsessed" in order to make a strong defence to a mass adhesion to the dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty, with a strong presence of stress and anxiety when our negative face is threatened, in terms of defending our need to save the healthy "individualism" present in the concept of "privacy". The enemy of privacy for Eco is the “big brother” wich mean (social network , facebook, entities that collect data on behalf of third parties) intended as a strong threat to our right\ need not to be associated with others in order to preserve our person. The behaviour of this Big Brother is to "observe and listen to others "at least so it seems in Eco views. In this way a form of scepticism is offered that offers a mitigation to the need for a positive face by this" Great brother ", which is the most advanced and fearful result for now of the cognitive economy. For Eco, the reality is different because in reality it says "everyone wants to be seen" using an "everyone" as a universal quantifier that represents “de facto” a threat to all those who intend to defend their need for a negative face and do not want to adhere to this description. of the reality present in this "statement". This "all" as an invariable pronoun is often used in Italian to offer a form of affiliation to a "collective face" to be defended or valued in order to carry out with greater force a certain type of description of reality. In this case, everyone's cultural model is "being seen" as a way to give a positive face and feeling culturally "satisfied" in the contemporary world where the media occupy the 24 hours a day space and where the working condition has become rare, poor and bureaucratic for many groups of populations with the impossibility for many people to have a job able to offer a positive face. All this make job culture inconsistent in the eyes of this people. It seems that nowadays the people needs to lose their negative face as a way of giving him a positive face in front of the "collective face" of a vast anonymous audience. In short, privacy and "being seen" seem to be visions of the world that are difficult to implement in a happy synthesis in today's landscape, where the enhancement of one's need for recognition in terms of a positive face occurs only if one is willing to abandon the need \ right to protect one's negative face. In other words, "social networks" as well as the media don't like the cultural dimension of the "individualism" but are interested in a "collectivism" dimension because making known people's stories is more important than defending their right to privacy or association with other people. The media are a form of adhesion to an "unconscious us" and without responsibility for the life of others. In this article Eco tries to contextualize his analysis with expressions like "one of the problems of our time" by creating a form of adhesion to a defence of the collective face present in the mind of the reader who reads the article. In this way, Eco manages to create a form of adhesion to a "collective" cultural dimension with the creation of a "conscientious type" of us in front of a verb with a notable force such as "obsessed", which it represents a verb bearing a threat for the protection of a right to "privacy" present within the group defended in the article by Umberto Eco. The concept of "privacy" is explained by Eco in this way:

"..... everyone has the right to do his own thing without everyone, especially of the agencies linked to the centers of power, to find out".

In other words, you have the right to protect your personal territory without therefore having to suffer the threat coming from centers of power very socially and geographically distant from the local life that almost everyone carries out in a given place. In essence, the concept of "privacy" is tied to the cultural dimension of "individualism", which is tied to a society with low social distance between its members in order to allow everyone to legitimize their choices and be treated equally .

Instead, these agencies are institutions that adhere to a vision of society with a high index of social distance because they do not intend to suffer any cost to for their positive face in the name of the significant costs inflicted on large groups of populations that lose their "negative face" without power. In other words, we don't get any element of mitigation from these agencies.

To avoid this situation, Eco mentions the presence of third-party or "anti-trust" institutions that have to perform a mitigation or repair function in the face of the costs incurred by many people.

His article does not lack the all-Italian controversy over the importance of calling “privatezza” in English "privacy" in order to give greater importance to this concept in light of the collective face of the Italian community. In this way, privatezza becoming "privacy" which can manages easily to integrate a dimension of high social distance index which should allow it to have more strength for facing those "agencies" that steal or misuse personal data.

The sensitive data for our privacy are linked to the possibility of tracking through the use of a credit card in order to know the purchases made, the hotels frequented and the lunches made.

 These are very strong threats for those who want to protect their need for a negative face, with the consequence of pushing people to join or to adhere to a cultural dimension of a "restrain" because you feel the loss of control of your life. .

 In practice, the elements of enhancement of one's positive face can be used against people in order to create damage to their negative face.

This significantly increases the culture of suspicion and therefore adherence to the dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty" as a reaction to this situation. Furthermore, we have not talked about the wiretapping carried out against us by making the "warned" population pay very high costs in terms of loss of face without being able to obtain any form of rebalancing in this interaction between abstract entities and private individuals. In essence we find a large cultural adhesion towards a cultural dimension of strong social distance adopted by these entities, with a weak avoidance of uncertainty, with a form of "unconscious" collectivism and finally a clear adhesion to the "satisfied" type dimension used to their advantage in this kind of operation while the rest of the population finds itself suffering such damage finding themselves forced to join in many parts of the world (not in Italy) to a world where it becomes irrelevant to legitimize their work, accept ambiguity, where others are perceived massively as "out-group" and therefore far from my sense of loyalty towards them. These entities live within a "long-term orientation" while the rest of the population is forced to adhere to a short-term temporal dimension. The agencies fully experience the control dimension of their own life and that of others, thus obtaining positive emotions by pushing others to live globally in the "tied" dimension due to a widespread feeling of abandonment. Furthermore, the sense of freedom of speech is lost, which no longer becomes essential. This kind of generalized situation has put people who live in a world in crisis where it is important to legitimize their actions in order to gain recognition for their positive face. Furthermore, it inevitably pushes people to feel the hierarchy as a form of generalized existential inequality, while in many parts of the world people expect to be consulted as a way to get a positive face. The majority of the population needs to live clearly the relationships between the network's services and their private life while these agencies push to accept ambiguity and chaos in this historical moment.

My right to "privacy" as a value present in the dimension of "individualism" is greatly reduced and the entities that collect data on behalf of companies like Facebook adhere to a cultural dimension with a long-term orientation while many people suffer from the impossibility to adhere to the idea of ​​universal lines about what is good or bad in situations. Eco's question in this article is to start from this premise where everyone wants their right to "privacy" and therefore to their negative side to ask themselves the question of whether "do so many people really care about privacy?"

Before, there was gossip as a form of threat to our negative face, endangering the possibility of obtaining any recognition for our positive face in the future, given the poor reputation in terms of collective face. Basically, the risk was to "wash dirty clothes in public instead of washing them in the family". In other words, dirty clothes are the costs incurred or damage inflicted on our person in terms of defending his own negative face which must find reparation not in the space of the collective face of a given community but only within a restricted circle of family members . In this way it is possible to regain a positive face to a family group that had suffered high costs for the erroneous behaviour in terms of maintaining harmony within a given family.

In practice, the moments "deviant" to the "collectivist" norm of the family must be traced back to this dimension in order to re-emphasize belonging and the return to harmony and a "conscientious type". All of this seems lost today because within a liquid society to put it in Bauman, that is, in full adhesion \ constraint with the cultural dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" it is necessary to live every day as it comes, in harmony with the presence of ambiguity and chaos. We note, in fact, how all these parameters are very high costs for the protection of one's negative face for the majority of the population while this seems to provide many advantages for the agencies. For a long time, the population was accustomed to wanting to live within a short-term temporal orientation because the stability of the person as always the same was a positive fact to defend their negative face, where there are universal lines to understand what it is good or bad. In today's world it seems that all of this has been reversed with a constraint towards the long-term orientation in which people are forced to adapt to circumstances, good or bad depend, everything is modifiable to the detriment of our need for recognition for many sacrifices in daily life imposed and suffered for our need for a positive face. In addition, this climate has pushed the world to make freedom of speech less important with the "constrained" dimension while the population would like to have a feeling of control over their life in harmony with the "satisfied" dimension. In practice, the liquid society has adhered to a dimension of weak avoidance of uncertainty as a value form and the only way to regain a positive face in a context where no one confers the necessary recognition in our interactions are therefore sought in the light of a recognition obtained before the "collective face" of a given community of speakers. In short, a form of reparation is possible only with the adhesion to a recognition by an enlarged group to signal our desire for loyalty with a given group in terms of "collectivism" of an almost "unconscious" type. This translates into "public" recognition as a way to regain a feeling of control of one's life in a partial and limited way over time. For this reason we have the appearance in the public space understood as a "collective face" the figure of the escort who does not hide but takes on his public role, the spouses who tell their disagreements on television instead of keeping them for them, the people who speaks aloud of what he thinks of his sister-in-law or his accountant, the suspects who go on television prefer to be a known thief than an honest ignored by everyone.

In essence, these people have in common the idea of ​​adhering to a cultural dimension of weak avoidance of uncertainty in order to obtain in exchange an adherence to a "satisfied" dimension. In short, it is necessary to lose the negative side in order to be able to access the benefits granted by the enhancement of one's positive face in the light of the recognition granted by the public face. Therefore to "exist" and therefore adhere to the "satisfied" dimension, one must accept being seen as incompetent and join with enthusiasm in wanting to be an "out-group" within an "in-group" in terms of size. "collectivism" type. The only damage these agencies suffer in terms of loss of face is only the excess of information that leads to confusion, noise and silence in Umberto Eco's interpretation. In other words, we find it impossible to manage this mass of data coming from the collective face of humanity that has found these "social networks" as the only tool to exist. So to take back the words of Eco "why worry about privacy, or why worry about this need for a negative face, when nobody cares to protect this private and intimate space while to" exist ", that is, to obtain benefits for the enhancement of the own negative face (loved, appreciated and recognized) it is necessary to "be seen".