Towards an emic understanding of Mianzi giving in the Chinese context

Abstract Face-giving is an understudied notion among the studies of face and facework. This article aims to enhance the understanding of the concept by exploring how the first-order concept of mianzi giving is understood by native members. By examining native discourses in which mianzi giving is explicitly mentioned, we find that in addition to being based on the actor’s intention or the recipient’s feeling, the interpretation of mianzi giving can also be based on the interpersonal consequence of an act grounded in the understanding of the (meta)participant, who takes the footing of the author in the Goffmanian sense. In the (meta)participant’s understanding, mianzi giving is understood as a marked and favorable alternative act with reference to the empirical or moral parameter evoked in the local interaction.