A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Politeness And Their Interaction

With the increasing contact between our country and foreign countries, not only people's interests of learning foreign languages and communicating with foreigners have developed quickly, but also foreign language educating institutions spring up rapidly. But due to the misunderstanding of the differences between languages, people always have difficulties in communicating with foreigners and learning foreign languages. Beginning with the discussion of modern theories of polite speeches both at home and abroad, the paper deals in details with the achievements and differences in every theory concerning politeness. Then it continues to study, with contrastive method, the differences between English and Chinese in the following aspects: addresses; greetings and partings; compliments; and how to apologize, pay gracefulness and how to give offers and invitations. In addition, it shows, from different angles, how different languages interact with each other and what their rules in the interaction are. The result tells us that people with different cultural background should not assess the politeness with their own cultural standard, they must work hard to make themselves understand their counterparts'culture, Only in this way can they finally understand their politeness and use the target languages freely. The development of language is very complicated and it is affected by varieties of elements: the people speaking it, and many other social factors. The final result of language interaction will probably be a state of inter-inclusion.