might awe many people. They might win honour if they succeeded in acquiring any land or property from other warlords. But they were never respected as paternal figures in the Chinese tradition.
To sum up, face is an important concept in social interactions. In Goffman's words, to study face behaviour is to study the 'traffic rules' of social interaction. If face is concerned by participants in the intercourse, then face forms the 'rules of the group and the definition of the situation which determine how much feeling one is to have for face and how this feeling is to be distributed among the faces involved' (Goffman, 1969: 4). Concern for face would acquaint a person with the traffic rules of social interaction. Not only do the actions of an individual, but also the treatment of others relative to his expectations affect the face of an individual and also the face of his fellow interactants.
Although face does not render the person concerned with authority, it designates power and thereby power relationships in a social network. It is not legal control, but the social control function that face exercises could be of profound significance, for it is a set of internalized codes which people would abide by in order that he could maintain himself as a morally virtuous person before himself and the people with whom he interacts. The weakness of face also lies in its function of social control. Instead of being a means of legal control, it is only relevant to people who are concerned with face and to social networks which are concerned with face. Otherwise, face will not be evident.
A Nation's Face, Facework,
And Verbal Mass Communication Contents
Levels Of Face
It is generally agreed that face exists at the personal, or interpersonal, level. In social interactions, an individual would exchange goods, tangible or intangible, with others. But who are the "others"? "Others" may not just be an individual, it can be a group of people (Brown and Garland, 1971; Garland and Brown, 1972; Bond and Lee, 1978). This group of people may interact with another group of people. Then can face be collective? It seems yes. In fact, there has been evidence of collective face in previous literature. People talk about a family's face (Lao, 1982: 236), a village's face (Lin, 1935: 175), a team's face, a school's face etc.
16
might awe many people. They might win honour if they succeeded in acquiring any land or property from other warlords. But they were never respected as paternal figures in the Chinese tradition.
To sum up, face is an important concept in social interactions. In Goffman's words, to study face behaviour is to study the 'traffic rules' of social interaction. If face is concerned by participants in the intercourse, then face forms the 'rules of the group and the definition of the situation which determine how much feeling one is to have for face and how this feeling is to be distributed among the faces involved' (Goffman, 1969: 4). Concern for face would acquamt a person with the traffic rules of social interaction. Not only do the actions of an individual, but also the treatment of others relative to his expectations affect the face of an individual and also the face of his fellow interactants.
Although face does not render the person concerned with authority, it designates power and thereby power relationships in a social network. It is not legal control, but the social control function that face exercises could be of profound significance, for it is a set of internalized codes which people would abide by in order that he could maintain himself as a morally virtuous person before himself and the people with whom he interacts. The weakness of face also lies in its function of social control. Instead of being a means of legal control, it is only relevant to people who are concerned with face and to social networks which are concerned with face. Otherwise, face will not be evident.
A Nation's Face, Facework,
And Verbal Mass Communication Contents
Levels Of Face
It is generally agreed that face exists at the personal, or interpersonal, level. In social interactions, an individual would exchange goods, tangible or intangible, with others. But who are the "others"? "Others" may not just be an individual, it can be a group of people (Brown and Garland, 1971; Garland and Brown, 1972; Bond and Lee, 1978). This group of people may interact with another group of people. Then can face be collective? It seems yes. In fact, there has been evidence of collective face in previous literature. People talk about a family's face (Lao, 1982: 236), a village's face (Lin, 1935: 175), a team's face, a school's face etc.
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