中国面子文化论文

The "face" culture in China

Ⅰ. Introduction

The "face" culture is a significant part of the traditional Chinese culture, which has deep and wide influence on many fields in China. As Russell said that westerners couldn't imagine the "face" culture of Chinese. Abstract and intangible, it is yet the most delicate standard by which Chinese social intercourse is regulated as it has been deeply rooted in our mind. In the following essay, I will make some explanation of the "face" culture and express my opinion on it.

Ⅱ. The exploration to the sources of the "face" culture

The "face", as a peculiar cultural psychological phenomenon, is a sense of worth that comes from knowing one's status and reflects concern with the congruency between one's performance or appearance and one's real worth. It can be emotionally invested, lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction.

From the literal level, the "face" refers to the former part of one's head, as physical symbol. As the improvement of society and history, it extended to the field of the social intercourse. Since the 4th century B.C., it has been a symbolic meaning in the relationship between people in history.

There are four factors in the Chinese history that causes the commonalty of the "face" culture. 1. The "face" and Confucian traditional culture

In Chinese traditional culture, "propriety" in Confucianism evolved into the secular etiquette. According to the Confucian theory, the "propiety" is the right attitude to get along well with people and the base to hold the rank correlation and personal relationship, that is to say, every person has his position in society, and our behaviour should befit our position. If not, we will lose our face. Therefore, the propriety is specialized as the "face".

The reason why the "face" is considered as the image to confirm one's achievement is that it is relevant to the aims of self-cultivation, namely, his social fame and influence. In the Confusion system, it is the social extension of personal

ethics. The "face" culture is influenced by the ancient Confucianism.

2.The "face" and the shame-based culture

In the sense of shame, people attach importance to the "face". The feeling of guilt is to judge the things whether conform to one's principles rather than the things themselves by self-examination. However, the pure "shame" is to pay more attention to the reactions of other people, which surrender the tendency of principle-based judgement.

In China, the shame in their mind is not only the shame caused by others' ridicule or awareness(the social "face"), but also the self-discipline(the moral "face"). The shame is an essential mechanism to control one's emotions and thoughts. In the socialism of the Chinese, we always are required not to lose their face by our precedents. All of these promote the formation of the "face" culture.

3.The "face" and social orientation

There are four orientations in the social orientations, including family orientation, relation orientation, authority orientation and other orientation in the context of family orientation, Chinese tend to emphasis on the collectivism rather than individualism in western countries. Relation orientation refers that to keep harmony in contact with others, the person endeavor to do what others expect to save their face and avoid the conflict. Authority orientation is a kind of behaviour orientation to respect the higher rank in history. The other orientation means that Chinese pay most attention to other people's opinion, standard and evaluation on them. All these orientations have great influence on the Chinese. They show that to save others' face is equivalent to save oneself's face to conform to collectivism.

4.The "face" and the ways of the world.

As a kind of resource to contact with people, is the social norm to get along well with each other for Chinese. There are two kinds of social behaviour: firstly, people deal with the relationship with others by giving gifts, greetings or visits; secondly, while the person in our relationship web suffers from hardship, we have the sympathy for him or her. "Courtesy calls for reciprocity", that is the plain performance of the