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At the same time, Brown and Levinson put forward the concept of “face threatening acts”. They believe that most of the speech acts are threatening face essentially. Sometimes, they may cause embarrassment. That’s why people use courteous language in social communications to reduce the rate of threatening face. Brown and Levinson (1987:65) further categorized the face threatening acts, as follows:
1) Acts threatening the listeners’ negative face: speakers show their command, request, advice, threat and warning to listeners.
2) Acts threatening the listeners’ positive face: speakers do not agree on listeners’ opinions, and show their criticism, contempt, insults, complaint and charges.
3) Acts threatening the speaker’s negative face: a speaker shows his gratitude to the listener, accept criticism, and make reluctant promise or help to the listener’s response.
4) Acts threatening the speaker’s positive face: a speaker makes apology and confession and accepts criticism.
All in all, combining with the above characteristics, we can find that the concept in westerners’ mind, can be pided into mutual benefits and personal pursue. People want to earn public image so as to show their personal value, while the face is achieved by the mutual cooperation between the speaker and listener. Listeners or speakers should notice their actions or words during communication, or otherwise they will confront with face threat.
2.2 Face Values in China
In Chinese culture, face has the quality that can not be found in western cultures or even other Asian ones. There are many definitions of face, and here listed are the most representative one.
The word face in China is a typical phenomenon bearing the Chinese features, so lots of scholars tried to give a clear definition to face culture. But strictly speaking，Hu Hsienchin, a Chinese anthropologist，is the first person who tried to explain Chinese face. In his famous work: The Chinese concepts of face, Hu Hsienchin (1944) said face represents important social reputation which people gain through their continuous hard work and accumulated wisdom in their life experience. Chinese have always been valuing face with that standard.
Firstly, face is dynamic. Face is not a fixed image of oneself that a person portrays in the stage of life. Face can change with time and concrete settings and can be enhanced or damaged. Everyone hopes to get a higher status to enhance one’s face. Face can be given or lent. In another word, a person can give or borrow the other’s face. Face can be used to change rules in interpersonal relationships.
Secondly, face is emotional. In China, the word face has the same meaning as ren-qing (human emotions). It is well-known that Ren-qing has a great important function in Chinese society. The social hierarchy in China display varying degrees of human emotions among them. Close friends tend to save their face by showing emotional support to others. Human emotion motivates the personal willingness to work for acquaintances or friends, to give them mianzi, and to make them happy. So if one does not have a good relationship in China, it will be difficult for one to claim sufficient face in the presence of another because there is so little human emotion involved. During cooperation, two sides always do something to foster emotions so as to move on smoothly. In all face is the emotional support mutually given according to different orders of relationship.
Thirdly, face is hierarchical. The face of a Chinese is determined by his social status. The degree of concern will reveal one’s social positions. Liu Jing (2007) thinks that the sense of face is showed by the status granted to a person in a certain relationship according to the social hierarchical system. Fan Hongtao (2008) believes that the use of face is also determined by the status granted to a person in a certain relationship according to the social hierarchical system. The degree of concern will determined one’s social positions. To some extent, it will show one’s social positions. The degree of concern will display one’s social states.