A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Facework

With the development of globalization, cultural communication is prosperousbetween different regions and countries. People with different cultural backgroundscommunicate with one another, which brings about disagreement, argument as well asconflicts. In Chinese culture, mianzi has penetrated into every aspect of people’s life. It isnot the exclusive possession of Chinese culture, but a universal phenomenon. Therefore, itis critical to learn about different face issues and conflict management styles to ensuresuccessful communication and to build a harmonious and multicultural society. So far, theChinese and Western scholars have done a plenty of researches about face in the fields ofanthropology, psychology and sociology. Many linguistic scholars such as Goffman(1967), Ho (1976), Hu (1944), Brown&Levinson (1987) have done a lot of researchesinto this phenomenon. Based on the face theory of Goffman and Brown&Levinson,Ting-Toomey thought that face was an individual’s claimed sense of positive image in thecontext of social interaction. In essence, it is a projected image of one’s self in a relationalsituation. It is an identity that is conjointly defined by the participants in setting. In China,many scholars have also taken part in the research such as Hu Xianjin (2004), He Youhui(1976), Zhai Xuewei (2006). Hu Xianjin has done research about mianzai and face by themethod of semantic analysis for the first time.Based on Ting-Toomey’s face negotiation theory, this thesis has compared the faceconcern and conflict management styles of Chinese and American college students withregard to university campus love. The author hopes that the study can contribute to smoothand effective communication between Chinese and American people, and to avoidunnecessary conflicts. The survey is conducted by means of questionnaire which iscomposed of three parts. Part one is about basic information of the respondents, part twothe measurement of face concern, and part three the measurement of conflict management.Altogether208subjects are involved in this survey, including114Chinese college students and94American college students.Through quantitative analysis, the author has got the findings as follows. Chinesecollege students tend to protect mutual-face, while American college students tend toprotect self-face. As for conflict management styles, Chinese college students prefer toemploy avoiding, compromising, and obliging styles in conflict situations, whereasAmerican college students prefer to employ dominating style when dealing with conflicts.Besides, there exist gender differences on face concern and conflict management styles.Chinese and American male college students express preference for self-face and employdominating style to deal with conflicts, while Chinese and American female studentsexpress preference for other-face and mutual-face, and employ avoiding, compromising,obliging styles when they deal with conflicts in romantic relationship. In addition, Chineseand American college students all tend to use integrating conflict style. Based on theresults, some suggestions are put forward to help improve face and conflict managementin intercultural communication. Finally, the limitation of the study is discussed, and somesuggestions for further research are presented.