| Based on an empirical and quantified study, this paper seeks to portrait the cross-cultural facework communication pattern in American multinational companies in Beijing mainly in the light of Scollon and Scollon's theory of paradox of face, Stella Ting Toomey's face negotiation theory, and Geetzs Hofstede's cultural dimensions. As milestones in this field, theories of Erving Goffman, Brown and Levinson and Harry C. Triandis are also referred to guide my study. A questionnaire for 200 subjects is the main instrument. The major findings of this study are as follows: with plausibly different cultural characteristics, Americans care more about self-face and Chinese care more about other-face. The Americans are more likely to use independence and dominating strategies and Chinese are more likely to use involvement, avoiding and integrating strategies. The self-conception and face-concern are associated positively with cultural elements. More specifically, the independent-self concept and self-face is correlated positively with individualism while interdependent-self concept and other-face is correlated positively with collectivism; at the same time, the horizontal-self concept and self-face is positively associated with small power distance and the vertical-self concept and other-face is positively associated with large power distance. And the choice of independence and dominating strategies are positively correlated with cultural individualism tendency, independent-self concept, horizontal-self concept and self-face concern; choice of involvement, avoiding and integrating strategies are positively correlated with cultural collectivism tendency, interdependent-self concept, vertical-self concept and other-face concern. Through path analysis, the paper proves that there is a one-way linear cause-effect relationship between the cultural elements, self-conception, face-concern and strategy-choice of the staff working in American multinational companies in China.
|
PDF Full Text Request