An NPR pundit commented on the Dubai ports situation this morning by noting that the Arab owners of Dubai Ports World would not want to lose face, since not losing face is important to Arab leaders.
I recall Americans saying the North Vietnamese were pursuing the war to avoid losing face, because not losing face was important in Asian cultures. Similar comments used to be made about Japanese businessmen.
Are there cultures that like losing face? Why single out Arabs or Vietnamese or Japanese as particularly concerned about losing face? Isn't "losing face" a common English idiom? The existence of this common idiom means that English speakers are quite familiar with this concept in their own lives, without reference to foreign cultures.
Googling on the term "save face" returns "about 99,500,000 entries". Maybe that's as high as Google's numbers go.
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