Cultural “Faces” of Interpersonal Communication in the U.S. and China

Assuming that interpersonal communication is a “deeply cultured process,” (Philipsen, 1992) this essay illuminates the different ways interpersonal communication is conceptualized in the U.S. and China through reviewing studies of one core symbol — face — in the two cultures. It demonstrates that embedded in the face concept are culture-specific notions of personhood that give rise to culturespecific models of interpersonal communication: the individual based, self-oriented, and rational American face is enacted through an “information game” model of social interaction whereas the relation-based, other-directed, and emotional Chinese face is performed via a “relationship game” model of interpersonal communication. A call for more empirical research of Chinese interpersonal communication from a cultural perspective is also made.