A Comparative Study Of Face And Facework Of Chinese And Korean College Studnets

Intercultural communication literatures do a lot of research on comparing thedifferences between western and Asian cultures. Yet, the comparisons within Asia countriesare very few. China and Korea are not only deeply influenced by Confucianism but alsoclose in geography so they share many similarities in culture in contrast with westerncountries. It is easy to describe their common culture factors but the differences aredifficult to map out. This article aims at researching the face mentality and faceworkmanagement of Chinese and Korean college students. According to Ting-Toomey andKurogi (1998), face refers to a claimed sense of favorable social self-worth that a personwants others to have of her or him and facework means a set of communicative behaviorsthat people use to regulate their social dignity and to support or challenge the other·s socialdignity.The objective of this article is fourfold: firstly, try to find out what factors most affectface of China·s and Korea·s college students; secondly, compare facework strategies ofChinese and Korean college students in face-defending, face-attacking and face-honoring(differences are the author·s focus); thirdly, try to find out the degree of face mentality·simpacts on choosing jobs for Chinese and Korean college students; fourthly, reveal theculture reasons which explain the findings. Face is dynamic and face perception changeswith the development of society and culture. Therefore, except from the horizontalcomparison of these two countries, the vertical comparison between face perceptions ofChinese and Korean youth who accept higher education and that of traditional Chinese andKoreans can indicate the footprints of culture development.