Face, its correlates, "reticence", and alienation : the communication of Chinese international students in the U.S. classroom

This study investigates how face concerns influence Chinese international students (CISs, n = 137) who study in the United States. The study argued that different face concerns (positive, negative, collective) determine whether Chinese students remain "reticent" or choose to actively participate in classroom communication. The majority of results were found in the collective face condition and collective face concern is referred as CISs' concern with how Americans generalize from CISs' classroom performance to judge the image of entire CISs group and of China. Correlations between perceived CISs' feelings of alienation, perceived CISs' reticence, and typicality of CISs were also found. The results will be helpful for future research about how CISs' classroom communication is associated with their perception of the image of all CISs and of China.