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In this paper, it mainly analyzes the cultural differences in face perception of China and Western countries. The comparison and contrast between Chinese and Westerners’ face view will aid to reflect the deep-rooted cultural differences and historical backgrounds between China and Western countries. As a result, only when we truly understand the historical backgrounds of cultural differences, can we foster the cultural awareness of the differences between China and the West. It is found that those differences between two cultures may cause misunderstandings and problems in cross-cultural communications. Therefore, this paper will resort to Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory as the theoretical basis to make a comparative analysis of the differences between Chinese and western face views in order to explore the methods to bridge the conflicts between two cultures during communications.
2 Face Values in China and Western Countries
Face is very important in Asian cultures, which means something close to honor or reputation and so it is in western cultures. The notion of face is universal. Face, in English, literally means the area between one’s forehead and one’s chin. Further it refers to the surface of an object. At last from the aspect of culture, it is the less tangible commodity related to a person’s dignity and prestige. In China, the Chinese face (mianzi) has three meanings: outer part or surface, reputation and favor, while Lianmian (face) means cheeks and favor. This chapter will present what face is in China and western countries so as to show their differences.
2.1 Face Values in Western Countries
Not only Chinese people have the concept of face, westerners also have. A general western face view is summarized from the viewpoint of Erving Goffman’s definition and B&L face theory.
Erving Goffman is one of the earliest scholars to study face, and his opinion could represent the early western face view. In 1955, he came up with the first definition of face. In his opinion, face work to each other is a mutual thing. It needs the cooperation between listeners and speakers. It pided into three parts. Firstly, face is the positive social value a person advocates. If a person believes that certain verbal acts do not have a positive social value, then he won’t do such acts. Only when a person acts positively can he require his face. Secondly, face is realized through social evaluation. Although face is a display of self image, yet what a person wanted is evaluation from others rather than self evaluation. Face is the reflection of others’ evaluation. Thirdly, face is shown in “particular contact”. Face is a product of social interaction in order to achieve different goals, and people communicate in various ways among various relationships with the different corresponding faces.
Based on Erving Goffman’s theory, two English scholars, Brown and Levinson, propose a concrete classification of face and link face to politeness strategies. In their book, Politeness: Some Universals of Language Usage (Brown & Levinson, 1987), they put forward those thought-provoking concepts like Face, Face-Saving Theory and Face-Threatening Acts. From their perspectives, face is defined as public images inpiduals pursue when interacting with others, and face is mutual. All people strive for public image so as to demonstrate their real social value.
One of Brown and Levinson’s most important contributions is that they distinguish a positive face from a negative face. Positive face is the positive image that every member wants which get from some others. Negative face means that inpiduals don’t like being forced or being interfered by others or sacrificing their own benefits to fawn on others. In another word, every one wants the right to be free from interference. A balance of positive and negative face must be found, but it is such a tough job since different people have their different tastes of positive face and negative face according to their own personalities and experiences. And according to their theory, some scholars point out that China, as a typical collective society, the conception of negative face does not exist.