An Empirical Study Of Chinese Teenagers’ Verbal Strategies For Face-saving

“Face” is regarded as one of the distinctive markers in Chinese culture. In order tomaintain a harmonious atmosphere in interpersonal communication, people need to doface-work. However, neither the concept of face nor face-saving strategy is inherent. Peopleacquire the notion and the social skill in the process of socialization. This empirical studytries to investigate the developmental features of Chinese teenagers’ use of face-savingstrategies by analyzing DCT questionnaires of320teenage subjects and160adult subjects.Following Hu Hsienchin’s (1944) miànzi and liǎn distinction of Chinese face,“face”appearing in my study refers to miànzi rather than liǎn. After data analysis and discussion,this thesis concludes the major findings as follows: developmental differences exist overdifferent ages of Chinese teenagers’ awareness of hearers’ face want and over their use offace-saving strategies. Compared with junior middle teenagers, fewer senior high teenagersuse face-saving strategies. However, for those senior high students who use face-savingstrategies, they have a better performance than junior middle ones in that they can expresstheir intention in politer ways. Compared with teenagers, many more adults would employface-saving strategies in interpersonal communication and their standard of using face-savingstrategies is much higher. What is more, both junior middle and senior high teenage girls arefar more likely to use face-saving strategies in communication than boys.