status, good role performance and virtuous behaviour, then there is potential for him to get a big face. That is why high officials, because of their positions in the bureaucracy; rich people, because of their performance in economic activities; and clergymen, because of their morally upright behaviour; are often found to have great face.
But a person's status, role performance and evaluation of his moral conduct are always externally determined. They have to be put against a set of standards of a social framework. The face so formed by status, role performance and moral conduct have yet to depend on others' reactions or imagination of these reactions in social intercourse (Figure 2).
KEY
FIGURE 2. An Optical Theory Representation Of Face
BASIC FACE/
NET FACE
ATTRIBUTES OF FACE
BASIC FACE AT D1
BASIC FACE
AT D2
NET FACE 1
... mun umgens im me
NET FACE 2
If others take note of a person's status, role performance and moral conduct, he may pay due respect to him. The respect and reactions to the basic face of the person concerned is just like a mirror, reflecting how big or how small it is. This mirror can have different curvatures depending on the characters of 'others', whether they are professionals, laymen, relatives, neighbours and so on. The distance of the basic face can be viewed as the context of the person's face, whether he stands in a group of sharp people or gulls. The curvatures of the mirror and the different against images differ according to the person's basic face. That is to say, the same basic face may be enlarged or diminished in social intercourse depending on the 'others' and the context.
Here, it is necessary to stress the manifest quality of face. As others' reactions, like time, form the fourth dimension of face, then actions concerning face have to be seen, they have to be externalized. This has been pointed out by scholars like Fei, who, from a normative approach, argues that face is apparent conformity (Fei, 1947:88). Whether we agree with him or not, it cannot be denied that face has a manifest character.