A Contrastive Study Of Politeness Principle In Chinese And English Public Political Speeches

Public political speech is now becoming a major way of international communication. Over the past decades, dozens of studies carried out on public political speech have mostly focused on content analysis, stylistics and critical discourse analysis. Other areas should be of at least equal importance to draw our attention, such as pragmatics. Based on primary observation, the author finds that, as an important pragmatic device, the Politeness Principle proposed in pragmatics often plays an essential role in public political speeches. Thus, this thesis analyzes the Politeness Principle used in Chinese and English public political speeches, discusses the effects of the Politeness Principle, and proposes some implications in international communication.The theoretical framework of this thesis is Leech's Politeness Principle, which is a development based on Grice's Cooperation Principle. Leech goes on to subdivide Politeness Principle into six maxims and they are Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Approbation Maxim, Modesty Maxim, Agreement Maxim and Sympathy Maxim. Leech once claims that all these six maxims can enable the participants in a communication to create a harmonious atmosphere.This thesis analyzes Politeness Principle in both Chinese and English public political speeches in the light of Leech's Politeness Principle. One of these speeches is selected from President Hu Jintao's speech in Yale University and the other speech is President George Bush's speech in Tsinghua University. The findings of this thesis show that the most widely used Politeness Principle in Chinese speech is Agreement Maxim while in English speech the most widely employed Politeness Principle is Approbation Maxim. Second, in both Chinese and English speeches, Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Modesty Maxim and Sympathy Maxim show much less frequency compared with Agreement Maxim and Approbation Maxim. Third, this thesis also explores lots of cases where Chinese and English speeches violate Politeness Principle on purpose.The effects of these maxims are discussed. Tact Maxim and Generosity Maxim can build up the image as a responsible big power, while Modesty Maxim can help avoid being arrogant. Approbation Maxim, Agreement Maxim and Sympathy Maxim can achieve the effect of shortening distance. Breaking of the Modesty Maxim can achieve the effect of revealing facts.Based on the effects of those maxims, this thesis goes on to draw some implication for Chinese speaker when making international communication. The first implication is "facts speak louder than boasts", which asks us to always avoid being arrogant. The second implication is "harmony is the ultimate goal", which asks us to find a common ground. The third implication is "understanding is the basis of trust", which asks us to provide truth to audience.All in all, this thesis makes a contrastive study between Chinese and English public political speeches. It provides a new angle for the study on public political speech. And readers can have a new level of understanding of public political speech. Still this thesis brings about some implications based on the analysis when it comes to international communication.