Analysis Of Politeness In Hotel Service Discourse

As everyone knows: "Courtesy is a bridge as well as a wall." As a wall, it can prevent communication from being over-casual; As a bridge, it is a means to maintain harmonious interpersonal relationship and facilitate successful communication. After publications entitled "Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena" by Brown and Levinson in 1978, politeness phenomenon has gained concentration from many linguists, anthropologists, socio-linguists, socio- psychologists and pragmatists with exploration of its definition,ways of realizing it and some general theories and even cross-cultural studies,especially by the famous linguists Brown and Levinson(1978) and GN.Leech(1981).In China, some important figures have also studied politeness phenomenon. They are Liu Runqing (1987),Gu Yueguo(1990),Xu Shenhuan (1992) ,Gao Hang(1996) and Wang Jianhua(2001),etc.The thesis collects from concerned dialogues between hotel service staffs and guests at different units.Under the influence of Brown and Levinson's theory of face want anlysis and FTAS estimation formula, it makes a tentative analysis of the social subculture embraced in the hotel service field and tries to find out the inadequacy in Brown and Levinson's theory in hotel service discourse.After a detailed description of politeness realization in hotel service context, this thesis proposes some strategies feasible for the hotel service discourse.