Different countries， different views of face and face work

余也

In my mind， the meanings of face and face work vary from country to country. The face work is an important phenomenon which exerts great influence on cross-cultural communication. So I choose the topic about the difference views of face and face work. According to my knowledge and some documents， I found that， due to the different cultural backgrounds， different countries may have different views of face. Here I mainly talk the different views of face and face work among China， American and Japan.

During social life and communication， the Americans pay more attention to themselves， while Chinese and Japanese people care more about team face than personal face. The different cultural backgrounds may be the reason that Chinese people， Japanese people and Americans hold the distinct views of face and face work.

In fact， the individualistic culture is a salient characteristic in American culture.

Obviously， under the influence of individualistic culture， people in Americans pant for outstanding. As the notion of self-spirits is of great significance for Americans， Americans strongly value personal freedom and selfinterest （Hartzell， 1988）.So they generally concern about their own face more than a group unless they are the members of community like church. They like to give more credits to leader， hero， so they work hard to gain what they want， to present their personal abilities and display the personal value through competitions.（But what needs to explain here is， I do not mean that American people are bellicose.）I mean that in American， the individual is believed to be the basic unit of the society， where the “I” is usually emphasized.

While when talk to Chinese， many foreign people's first reaction will be a word "unit". Because the Chinese culture always emphasizes the union is the strength. The honor and the benefit of team must be highest. In China， the "we" culture is established. This kind view of face and face work in China is called collectivism. One of the character of collectivism is "teamwork". Everyone gets the credit for some sort of accomplishment（ Po-Yang Shen， 2017）. Also Japanese is very particular about the collective spirit of cooperation. Because in the imperium， without relying on the collective strength， personal hard to survive. Japanese lifetime employment system arising from the sense of collective ownership. So Japanese value the spirit of teamworkthe collectivism as one of the ultimate views of face and face work.

Above these as we can see， different countries have their own different views of face and face work. The individual face and self face are more valued by Americans than that by the Chinese and Japanese. So we need to pay more attention to these why are making a culture-cross communication and choosing different styles and attitudesof different people from different countries. So in some special occasions of the cultureacross communications， we need to keep our eyes open and respect different cultures， different customs like the different views of face and face work in different nations.

It's brilliant to use the difference but complementary cultural characteristics or other kinds of difference to achieve our personal purpose， even we can reach a win-win station if we had mastered the skill in culture-across communication.