A Contrastive Analysis Of Politeness Formulae In English And Chinese

This paper is a contrastive study on the use of politeness formulae in English and Chinese. As a universal phenomenon, politeness plays a key role in establishing and maintaining social harmony, and prescribing individuals' linguistic behavior. It is not only language-specific, but also culture-specific. Due to cultural differences, languages differ greatly from one another in expressing and understanding politeness. The breakdowns of cross-cultural communication may occur if people from one culture impose their own principles and criteria of politeness formulae on the people from another culture. We are convinced that, with more and more cross-cultural interactions, the discussion of the differences between English and Chinese in the area of politeness realization will definitely be significant for the purpose of increasing interlocutors' cultural awareness and communicative competence.The present thesis is composed of three parts: (1) to review and generalize the definitions and theories of politeness that have been proposed by scholars from home and abroad, (2) to identify the essential similarities as well as differences in addressing, greeting, complimenting, apologizing, requesting, inviting and expressing thanks through contrastive analysis, (3) to relate the identified differences with specific cultural patterns and assumptions, and put forward suggestions on how to cultivate and improve one's communicative competence in the hope that the findings of this study can be applicable to language teaching and learning, translation practice and cross-cultural communication.