ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that sociological analysis of the concept of face can continue to benefit from discussion of Chinese conceptualizations. It demonstrates the value of drawing on the Chinese experience of face and the understanding of face in its conceptualization in the Chinese language. The concept of face is basic to social sciences, as we see in the discussion of the early Scottish thinker Adam Smith and the pioneer American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, as well as in the discussion of Erving Goffman's account of face. In bringing the Chinese concept of face to an elaboration and development of this notion as it is discussed in the social sciences, the remote and exotic become familiar, cultural distance is bridged in social analysis and the possibility arises of a global social theory, which ceases to be either 'Western' or 'Eastern'. The experience of face generates emotions of various sorts within the individual, which are significant in understanding the mechanisms of face.
