ABSTRACT
Considerable preconditions have to be in place before sharing can be successfully practised in face-to-face situations. One of these conditions entails that the situation is transformed so that it is in fact no longer of a face-to-face kind in the narrow sense. To prevent either the act of giving or that of receiving as a “face-threatening act” (see Brown and Levinson 1987), the two actions are often decoupled and transformed. The gift-giving sequence is inverted since the transfer is initiated by the recipient and “handing over” typically gives way to “allowing to take” so that the transaction does not affect the “face” of the people involved in the way that gift-giving does. It should not lead to the donor gaining face or the recipient losing face. The main modalities involved in the sharing transfers have been discussed in the first chapters of this book.
