A Dream Of Red Mansions And "Li"

A Dream of Red Mansions is a magnificent encyclopedic book which unfolds before our eyes the rites, courtesy, etiquettes and customs towards the final phase of the feudal society. There are a multitude of characters that have their distinctive and characteristic language and behaviors, and this provides us with a vast stage to explore the feudal rites and politeness features of that period. We try to explore the main features of politeness in the Chinese traditional society, which differ from both those in the modern society of China and those in the western society.This essay has made a discussion about Politeness Principles put forward by the experts at home and abroad, and set out chiefly from the Face-saving Principles of Brown and Levinson, which has exerted the greatest influence and probably has the deepest insight into politeness. We have analyzed the concept of face in the contexts of Chinese traditional society, compared with that in the West, and on the other hand, we have analyzed the politeness features of different characters of the different levels in A Dream of Red Mansions by making using of the three factors in the Face-threatening Acts– social distance, relative power between the speaker and listener and absolute ranking of imposition, and by the way, have redefined the three factors in the context of Chinese traditional culture, and thus have tested and verified the temporal and spatial universality of Brown and Levinson's theory.Opposite to politeness is impoliteness. They are twins at the same level. We have to take notice of impoliteness when discussing politeness. Therefore, we have extended our vision from politeness to impoliteness to explore the social, cultural and other factors hidden behind the seemingly-abnormal phenomena by analyzing a couple of exceptions in A Dream of Red Mansions, for instance, the curse of Jiao Da, Jia Lian's"killing"his wife and Second Sister You's being decoyed into Grand View Garden, in the hope of expanding the boundary of politeness, making some amendments for Politeness Principles and having a deeper understanding of human being's behaviors.