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摘要：面子对于人们有着重要的意义，但不同文化背景下的人们对于面子有着不同的理解。对于如何准确定义面子至今仍存在争议。笔者以Goffman和Helen Spencer-Oatey的面子理论为依据，从跨文化角度分析了中美文化中面子观的不同，并进一步分析了产生这种差异的原因。 1.引言 Face is a concept that is intuitively meaningful to people，butone that is difficult to define precisely.It is concerned with people’ s sense of worth，dignity and identity，and is associated with issuessuch as respect，honor，status，reputation and competence（cf.Ting-Toomey and Kurogi，1998）. 2.面子理论 Goffman defined face as“the positive social value a personeffectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has tak-en during a particular contact.Face is an image of self delineatedin terms of approved social attributes”（Goffman，1955）.Brown andLevinson（1987），in their seminal work on politeness，propose thatface is the key motivating force for politeness，and they maintain that it consists of two related aspects，negative face and positiveface.In their model，negative face is a person’s want to be unim-peded by others，the desire to be free to act as she/he chooses andnot be imposed upon；and positive face is a person’s want to beappreciated and approved of by selected others，in terms of per-sonality，desires，behaviour，values，and so on.In other words，neg-ative face represents a desire for autonomy，and positive face rep-resents a desire for approval.Helen Spencer-Oatey follows Goffman’s definition of face.Furthermore，she suggests that face has the following two interre-lated aspects：Quality face：we have a fundamental desire for people to e-valuate us positively in terms of our personal qualities，e.g.ourcompetence，abilities，appearance etc.Quality face is concernedwith the value that we effectively claim for ourselves in terms ofsuch personal qualities as these，and so is closely associated withour sense of personal self-esteem.Identity face：we have a fundamental desire for people to ac-knowledge and uphold our social identities or roles，e.g.as groupleader，valued customer，close friend.Identity face is concernedwith the value that we effectively claim for ourselves in terms ofsocial or group roles，and is closely associated with our sense ofpublic worth.（Helen Spencer-Oatey，2000） 3.中美文化中面子观的差异 Face is a universal phenomenon：Everyone has the same fun-damental face concerns.However，culture can affect the relativesensitivity of different aspects of people’s face，as well as whichstrategies are most appropriate for managing face（cf.Ting-Toomeyand Kurogi，1998；Gudykunst）.Goffman’s allusion shows that the differences among culturesare not in the variety of components of face，but in varying empha-sis on the components（Goffman，1967）.Prestige，honor，status，dignity，and authority are all attributes given by others.The differ-ence is whether one thinks those attributes belong to the individualor to the interface between the individual and the others.In China’s collectivistic culture，where people are supposedto have a thick layer of“social self”（Mead，1934）or“interde-pendent mutual self”（Morisaki&Gudykunst，1994），they tend toascribe these attributes to“social self”or“interdependent mutualself”.On the other hand，in U.S.American individualistic culture，people tend to ascribe these attributes to individual self and con-sider them to be their own prestige，honor，status，dignity，and au-thority. 4.分析中美文化面子观存在差异的原因 4.1儒家思想一直是中国传统哲学体系的基石，两千多年来，它塑造了中国文明，并对中国人的思想观念产生了深远的影响，其影响已深深烙印在中国人的民族性格中。儒家思想的核心是“三纲”、“五常”。“三纲”是指“君为臣纲，父为子纲，夫为妻纲”，要求为臣、为子、为妻的必须绝对服从于君、父、夫，同时也要求君、父、夫为臣、子、妻作出表率。它反映了封建社会中君臣、父子、夫妇之间的一种特殊的道德关系。“五常”即仁、义、礼、智