The variability of moral conduct owes to itself the fact that each society may have a set of standards different from another. Longitudinally, women were not to work in society in the past. But today, working women are not regarded as any peculiar species.
The variability of this factor can also be seen in the light of a person's actions in different matters. In one event, a person, being kind to his children, may be seen as a good father. But in another, trading heroin, he may be considered as a vicious person.
Even within the same society, there could be different social segments and different combinations of people in social activities. Today, a person may board on the sixth car of a train, but tomorrow, it may be the ninth. The latter provides an external environment to the person. This externality may be of different components and may exercise a different mix of standards against the person's actions. Thus, there is a fourth variable factor of face, the 'others' and then reactions towards the person concerned.
But before going to the fourth factor, a diagrammatic representation of these three variables may be useful to illustrate their contribution to face. They may be expressed in the form of a triangle. (Figure 1).
FIGURE 1. A Diagrammatic Presentation Of Basic Face
KEY
---➤ variable length
magnitude positively related to size of triangle (face)
STATUS
HONOUR
ROLE PERFORMANCE
INFLUENCE
DEFERENCE
MORAL CONDUCT
This triangle can be in any shape. With moral conduct as the base, it can be an equilateral triangle, an isosceles triangle, a right-angled triangle etc. The shape of a person's face will be determined by his status, role performance and moral conduct now expressed in the length of each side of the triangle. Higher status and better role performance would be represented by the lengthened legs of the triangle in Figure 1. As such, the size of the triangle would be enlarged. Likewise, if a person has high
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