Co-operative and territorial imperatives

So, on the one hand, for communication to take place at all, you have to co-operate, but, on the other hand, there is always the risk that this will compromise your own individuality.

So this co-operative imperative (refers to the instinctive need for people to make contact and co-operate with others) is countered by another that acts against it---a territorial imperative, a need to preserve and protect one's own space---just as powerfully instinctive in humans as in other creatures, and there is continual tension between them which has to be somehow reconciled.

Position---refers to the attitude or point of view taken up by P1 in producing a text, or by P2 in interpreting it .

Co-operation involves encroachment, and this will often need to be tactfully managed. An incursion into the other's space may not be welcome. 

It may involve an adjustment the other is not prepared to make, or a threat to face or self-esteem, and this may cause offence, or embarrassment, a 'loss of face'.

The other may react in ways that threaten your own face. It is generally in our interests to maintain good relations by a mutual respect for face and the territorial rights of the other.

This kind of co-operation which, paradoxically enough, calls for the non-cooperative departure from the maxims, goes under the general name of politeness .

Although the violation of the maxims of the kind we have been considering have to do with small-sale adjustments that are made in conventional negotiation, they are symptomatic of how the co-operative and territorial imperatives operate in discourse as a whole, written as well as spoken, for the assertion of self and the manipulation of the other, and generally of how language is used for persuasion and the control of opinion.