中国面子文化论文

1、the face culture in china. introductionthe 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 couldnt imagine the face culture of chinese. abstract and intangible, it is yet the most delica

2、te 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. the exploration to the sources of the face culture the face, as a peculiar cultural psychologi

3、cal phenomenon, is a sense of worth that comes from knowing ones status and reflects concern with the congruency between ones performance or appearance and ones real worth. it can be emotionally invested, lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction. from the lite

4、ral level, the face refers to the former part of ones 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 fact

5、ors in the chinese history that causes the commonalty of the face culture. 1. the face and confucian traditional culturein 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 wel

6、l 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 cons

7、idered as the image to confirm ones 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-

8、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 ones 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 su

9、rrender 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 ones emotions and thoughts. in the socialism

10、 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 orientatio

11、n 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 avoi

12、d 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 peoples opinion, standard and evaluation on them. all these orientations have great influence on the chinese. they show

13、 that to save others face is equivalent to save oneselfs 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

14、 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 chinese face culture. the typical examples of t

15、he face culturein the spring and autumn period, yan ying was appointed as ambassador to the state of chu. when the king of the chu was so informed, he wanted to humiliate him. while he was across the gate of the palace, he was asked to cross the smaller gate next to the bigger one in the excuse of h

16、is shorty and he rejected implicitly by saying,i only cross the dog door while i am sent on a diplomatic mission to the dog country. his smart utterance dealt with the awkward position and gained the respect from others, which was also a way of saving his face, even his nations face. what man was ev

17、er immune from death? let me but leave a loyal heart shining in the pages of history this was a famous saying of our national hero wen tianxiang. in the most dangerous period of our country, he took the nations benefit as the highest goal. even the thought of surrender had spread at court, he insist

18、ed the independence of the authority at any time. he faced execution bravely and got his deserved honor. he is a positive model of chinese peoples face culture, which could also be understood as self-respect.the overlord in the west chu period xiang yu was a typical chinese who pay most attention to

19、 the face. even though he made all his efforts to hold his field, liu bang took the upper hand and pushed him to the verge of total failure. while he was in dilemma in the bank of wu jiang river, he rejected the fishermans beg to cross the river by his little boat, saying that he was too ashamed to

20、go back to see his countrymen. there is no wonder that he was a person who takes his face as his whole life. if he had creep as well as soar, there would have had another history.ah q, the well-known character written by lu xun, is the prototype of many chinese people. one spring, while he was walki

21、ng along in a state of happy intoxication, he saw whiskers wang sitting stripped to the waist in the sunlight,catching lice. ah q sat beside him and had a long search yielded only three or four lice. however, he felt disappointed, then resentful: the despicable whiskers wang could catch so many whil

22、e he himself had caught so few - what a great loss of face！there is no wonder he is the typical person of the bad side of the face culture in china. the most remarkable event in the chinese culture is beijing olympic games. what impressed us most was the grant opening ceremony of beijing olympic gam

23、es. even though we enjoyed the great performance it offered to us, even the world, many western critics held that whole ceremony was too pomp and cost too much money, which should resulted from our face culture. all of these above show the preference to the face in the chines culture. the face is co

24、nnected with many aspects, such as personality or position. to save face, he would get respect from others and also conform to his own principles. he might lose his career, even his life and fame. whatever they get or lose, chinese hold the face at very important place all the time, forming the chin

25、ese peculiar face culture. . the influence of the face culturethe face culture has its social functions. a person gets the respect and admiration from the society by his talents or endeavor, which means he gains his deserved face. the individual acts by conforming to his position to join in the soci

26、al activities and that is helpful to build up the right etiquette. besides, chinese make full use of the face in social interaction. it can be used as a exchangeable resource and we are able to build up our social relation by giving or taking the face.also, to some extent, it promotes the harmony in

27、 humans relationship. the face culture affects the ways to deal with social relationship in a positive way among the chinese.however, the chinese tend to emphasize the external patterns rather than the internal entity under the influence of the face culture.we must choose the best position, employ the french designer, all of these are the testimony of our face concept. whats more, it may contribute to the growth of those unhealthy practices, such as corruption. the more power a person has pr the richer the p