关键词: 农民工, 脸面共享, 家庭伦理, 消极义务

Abstract: “Face” is a traditional Chinese concept, and scholars have called for the examination of it. Face-sharing is one of the derivative concepts that founded by such research area. Face-sharing is a phenomenon when a significant other such as father, friend, etc., violates moral rule, an individual may feel the losing of his/her own face. Face-sharing is a very common phenomenon among Chinese people. In Confucian culture, family ethics and negative obligation are two types of moral rules that an individual is expected to oblige to abide by them. If an individual violates these two types of moral rules, not only she or he may experience a high intense feeling of losing face, intimacy others related with she or he may also share the feeling of losing their own face. Farmers in China are more inclined to hold traditional Chinese social values. They are more concerned with losing face. The purposes of the study was to investigate whether a rural migrant worker in modern China sharing face with specific others who involving in two particular types of negative moral events, violating family ethics or negative obligation. Six different scenarios designed by the researchers to measure respondents’ face-sharing and face-losing when three different person-in-relations (father, fellow-townsman, friend), violated family ethics or negative obligation. Data (N=1,778) for this study were collected with the six scenarios from rural migrant workers in six different provinces in China. Using 2 (moral events: family ethics, negative obligation) ×3 (relationships: father-child, fellow-townsman, fellow-worker) between subject design, six different scenarios were tested by six different groups. Valid number of participants in each group was 299, 296, 297, 298 and 292, respectively. Each participant should read one of the six scenarios first and then answer five questions about how they feel about face lost and face-sharing. By comparing relationships among “father-child”, “fellow-townsman” and “fellow-worker”, the study examines the influences of related dyad other’s violating “family ethics” or “negative obligation” on individual’s feeling of face-sharing. Results indicated that, 1) Two types of moral scenarios were evaluated violated moral code in a large extend. 2) When dyad others violated family ethics, subjects believed that the other party should feel face-losing, and they themselves also felt face-losing, that is face-sharing, but subjects shared face only with family members, but not with the outside family members. 3) When the other party of the relationship violated negative obligation, participants experienced different level of face-sharing, depending on the closeness of relationship, the strongest face-sharing occurred between father-child relationships, decreased along with fellow-townsman and fellow-worker relationships. Conclusions: when dyad others violated family ethics or negative obligation, rural migrant workers experience different intensity of face-sharing, due to the closeness of relationships, the strongest face-sharing lies in father-child relationships. Face consciousness not only affects the moral behavior of Chinese people deeply, it is also one of the most important moral standards. In a century, clarifies to it not only from philosophical reflection, but also from theory construction by a large number of scholars. The study adopted scenario approach and obtained results which used to be our common knowledge and experience.

Key words: rural migrant worker, face-sharing, family ethics, negative obligation