The Concept of Face
The role of face, shame and honour is crucial to Bruneians. Consequently they are very polite and well-mannered. Maintaining face is of upmost importance and they do their best not to cause issues or problems which could jeopardize this. In order to maintain face their communication style is very indirect and can come across as somewhat ambiguous to those from a culture where direct communication is the norm. By being indirect Bruneians avoid embarrassing another person, which would cause that person to lose face. Most Bruneians find emotions such as impatience, anger, or irritation embarrassing and try to avoid them since expressing them could result in a loss of face and disharmony.