Some Issues with the Concept of Face: When, What, How and How Much?

As this volume and numerous other works demonstrate, the concept of face has proved enormously stimulating to scholars of the interpersonal aspects of communication. Its ap-peal seems to lie in the possibilities it offers for examining instantiation both of the macro concept of identity and also of personal concerns such as self-esteem, self-image and rep-utation - things which in themselves have nothing to do with interaction - within interac-tion.