Power, integrity, and mask - An attempt to disentangle the Chinese face concept

•Goffman drew his face and dramaturgical approach to facework from Chinese face.•Chinese face concept is multifaceted and complex.•Its complexity is under-explored and misunderstood.•Three facets in Chinese face: moral/honor, favor/relation, and image/mask face.•They are different but share some similarities.

Using the term face to explain interactional phenomena has been important in language pragmatics since Brown and Levinson (1987) adopted Goffman's (1955) concept in their theory of politeness. Haugh (2013:46) argues that face needs to be theorized it in its own right, apart from im/politeness, and that in order to have a better conceptualization of face, it is essential to draw “from various other emic understandings” to provide new and “under-explored analytical opportunities in the study of interpersonal phenomena”. This paper identifies and explores three distinctive facets entangled in the Chinese face concept that are not fully apparent in Goffman's face conceptualization nor examined in the research on Chinese face: (1) power/favor/relation face - one's social power and connection, (2) moral/honor face - one's dignity and integrity, and (3) mask/image face - one's façade to impress others. Understanding the complex and multifaceted Chinese emic notion will enrich our knowledge of the face conceptualization and provide more effective analytical tools for explaining social and interpersonal interaction in general.