It is an enduring theme of humanity that people are concerned about what others think of them. The notion of face has thus become firmly established as a means of explaining various social phenomena in a range of fields within the social sciences, including anthropology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and psychology. Yet face has also become increasingly entrenched in the literature as a kind of pre-existing sociocultural construct. This book offers an alternative in focusing on the ways in which face is both constituted in and constitutive of social interaction, and its relationship to self, identity and broader sociocultural expectations.There are three main themes explored in this volume. Part I, 'Face in interaction', encompasses contributions that deal with face as it emerges in interaction in various institutional and non-institutional settings. In Part II, the relationship between self, identity and face is investigated in the context of interpersonal communication. The final part considers various approaches to establishing links between individual interactions (the so-called micro) and broader sociocultural expectations or 'norms' that interactants bring into interactions (the so-called macro).

1. Face and interaction (Michael Haugh) Part I: Face in interaction 2. Face as emergent in interpersonal communication: An alternative to Goffman (Robert B. Arundale, University of Alaska) 3. How to get rid of a telemarking agent? Facework strategies in an intercultural service call (Rosina Marquez-Reiter, University of Surrey) 4. Analysing Japanese 'face-in-interaction': insights from intercultural business meetings (Michael Haugh and Yasuhisa Watanabe, Queensland University of Technology) 5. That's a mythA": Linguistic avoidance as face-saving strategy in broadcast interviews (Eric Anchimbe, University of Bayreuth) 6. Two Sides of the same coin: How the notion of 'face' is encoded in Persian communication (Sofia A. Koutlaki ) Part II: Face, identity and self 7. Face, identity and interactional goals (Helen Spencer-Oatey, University of Warwick) 8. Evoking face in self and other presentation in Turkish (A ukriye Ruhi, Middle East Technical University, Turkey) 9. Face and self in Chinese communication (Gao Ge, San Jose State University) 10. Face, politeness and interpersonal variables: implications for language production and comprehension (Thomas Holtgraves, Ball State University) 11. In the face of the other: Between Goffman and Levinas (Alexander Kozin, Freie Universitat Berlin) Part III: Face, norms and society 12. Facework collision in intercultural communication (Stella Ting-Toomey, California State University at Fullerton) 13. Face in the holistic and relativistic society (Tae-Seop Lim, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) 14. Finding face between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft: Greek perceptions of the in-group (Marina Terkourafi, University of Illinois) 15. Significance of 'face' and politeness in social interaction as revealed through Thai 'face' idioms (Margaret Ukosakul, Payap University, Thailand) 16. Facing the future: some reflections (Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini)