Giving and Not Giving Face. Can Face be given or withheld? Of course
it can. Take for example my disclaimer above. I made a
disclaimer to Save Face for myself. However, it is still up to you
whether you wish to Give or Not Give Face. You can Give me Face by
politely agreeing even if you don't agree with what I said or Not Give
me Face by critically commenting on how wrong I am. Friends honor each
other by giving Face. For example, when invited to a dinner party, I
might Give Face to my friend and attend his party despite a prior
engagement because I value the friendship. The more difficult it is to
attend because of prior engagements, the more Face I give. If I had to
climb mountains, swim oceans and cross deserts to attend I would be
paying my friend the greatest of compliments.
This is the least understood part of Face I think. Often you see
subordinates helping their Bosses Save Face in front of others so that
others will not look down on their Bosses. This can take the form of
making the Boss look good or shielding the boss from criticism. Then
the guest would Give Face by taking one of the offered ways of Saving
Face and hence allow the Boss to be "Da BOSS".
So how do you Not Give Face? Basically if you really don't like the
person, or you intend to destroy the person's reputation, or sometimes
as a joke among friends (friendly ribbing), you can proceed to Not
Give Face to a person. This would be a blatant, sarcastic, blunt and
verbal open attack on the person's work, character etc. A common
phrase you will hear when this happens is when a 3rd person steps in
and says, "Eh, give him/her some face." This really means, "You've
gone a bit too far, let him/her retain what's left of his/her dignity
or reputation and stop your critism/attack." Not Giving Face can also be
a simple snub. Taking the same example of a dinner party invite, I could
snub the host and Not Give Face by declining. The snub is made worse
when the reasons for declining are small or non-existant.
Obviously Face is a compromise type of solution to a meeting of two
people. The English have something similar in their "Gentlemanly
Conduct". It allows for foes to meet in the middle ground. You can
compete with a person but you must be careful to maintain his Face.
If you damage his Face, you had better be prepared to go all the way
because you would have "pulled off the gloves" and he would have no
recourse but to attack you to Save Face in front of others. This
incidently is one reason why the Japanese Samurai perform Hara-kiri
when they lose in battle. They cannot stand the humiliation of
defeat, ie. they lose so much Face that they believe they can no
longer salvage their reputations and death becomes preferable.
