Face and facework in well-meaning clashes: How Americans manage face threatening acts in intercultural communication.

摘要

This study incorporates both observational and self-reported measures to examine American communicators' facework strategies in a problematic intercultural communication situation. Participants (N=103) completed two self-reported questionnaires and had an interaction with a confederate, who was supposedly an international student from China. The confederate made a comment regarding the subjects' weight gain to create a well-meaning clash. Subjects' strategies to manage the situation were measured with both the self-reported questionnaires including Likert-type scale items and open-ended questions, and the third-party observers who watched videotaped interactions. The main findings are: (1) avoidance is the primary facework strategy for Americans to manage a well-meaning clash caused by others; (2) negative face threat predicts avoidance facework, and attributing the face threat to intentional offense leads to aggression facework; and (3) disagreements with the face threatening comment in a non-aggressive and non-avoiding manner, jokes and sarcasm are strategies in addition to avoiding and aggression facework.;In view of the partially consistent results between the two measures, a post-hoc path model was proposed to further explore the relationship among general face needs, face threats, situational factors, and facework strategies. The final path model shows that negative face threat and situational factors mediate the relationship between other-oriented face needs and facework strategies. The results and the new variable relationship indicate that a mixed-method approach to study behavioral outcomes in how people manage problematic intercultural communication situations.