Face in Intercultural Communication: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

Although the concept of „face‟ has recently been the focus of attention in language pragmatics, face theory and research have dealt with the individualistic rather than social aspects of human interactions (Arundale, 2013). In order to assess the epistemological and methodological dimensions of the face in recent literature, this qualitative meta-synthetic study examines the concept of the face in intercultural and multicultural communicative interactions. A total of 13 intercultural face studies published in two leading journals, Journal of Pragmatics and Intercultural Pragmatics, were identified, and a thorough qualitative content analysis was conducted to identify the core themes and commonalities. The emerging themes portrayed the concept of face as culture and language specific, relational, interactional, and location-specific, co-constructed, and negotiated by the participants in the ongoing discourse activities. The study nominates some methodological aspects of face for further studies in the intercultural pragmatics research area.