Abstract: Face exists in all human communications. But in different cultural contexts, people hold different ideas of the concept of "face". Moreover, face and facework have been employed in intercultural communication widely, playing very important roles in intercultural communication, while the using style and principles vary a lot according to different culture backgrounds. The present thesis analyzes the concept of "face" under Chinese culture and that in the individual-oriented western culture, and makes a comparative study between their respective causes and speech strategies. On the other hand, it aims at distinctions of facework employment and its impact on the intercultural communications between Chinese and western culture, with the trend of leaning towards mixing.
Keywords: face view; cultural difference; Chinese culture; western culture
摘要：人类的交流中都存在面子问题，但不同的社会文化有着不同的面子理念。同时，面子观方面的研究已经在跨文化交流中得到广泛的探讨，并扮演着十分重要的地位，所以我们应该根据不同的文化背景采用不同的面子观进行交流。本文分析了中西文化面子观的概念，并比较了两者的区别，研究了相关原因与策略。本文的研究目的是通过探讨中西文化面子观的差异为中西文化交流提供参考和借鉴。
关键词：面子观；文化差异；中国文化；西方文化
