Facework as a Chinese Conflict-Preventive Mechanism -- A Cultural/ Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Goffman’s model of facework and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory have been found inadequate in helping understand communicative behaviors of Far Eastern peoples for their culturally biased etic perspectives. This paper synthesizes an emic framework of Chinese facework on the basis of a critical review of significant literature. Chinese facework is conceptualized as a typical Chinese conflict-preventive mechanism and a primary means to cultivate harmonious human relations in Chinese social life. This mechanism is identified through a micro-interpretation of a naturally occurring interactive episode among a group of Chinese professors and students in the United States. The results indicate that facework is a cultural force that reproduces typical Chinese communities. Moreover, the unique Chinese perspective of conflict and conflict prevention is analyzed on the basis of this micro-interpretation. Implications of the study are also discussed. The study of face and facework is growing, especially in the field of communication and related fields. Several lines of research have emerged. One is the etic approach (Brown & Levinson, 1978; Goffman,1967; Scollon & Scollon, 1981) in an attempt to discover a grand theory to account for all human interactions regardless of culture. Another line is to interpret human interactions situated in different cultures with two subcategories: one is the mechanical application studies without any critical reflections upon the theoretical model used (Cupach & Metts, 1994; Zhan, 1992); the other is the critical application studies with varying degrees of criticism in light of the emic perspective(Chang & Holt 1994; Gu, 1990; Matsumoto, 1988;;

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