Puliteness Strategies Used In Persuasive Communication In Daily Liee

Persuasion is an important part of the daily life of every human being. To influence others, for influence attempts, whether explicit or implicit, is everywhere. To be effective in society today, a person needs to know as much as possible about the persuasion process. Persuasion involves FTAs (face-threatening acts), thus politeness strategies which are applied to reduce face-threatening are combined with persuasive communication. This paper, taking Brown and Levinson's model of politeness as a reference, makes an analysis on politeness strategies used in persuasive communication in daily life by studying a famous Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions. In doing so, the paper tries to find in what way politeness is connected with persuasive communication in Ching Dynasty when the novel was written.Shih once points out that although the Chinese social structure has changed, the basic human principles are still deeply rooted in the Chinese mind and color social life today (Shih 1975:31). Since ancient China is famous for face-saving and the application of politeness strategies to reduce face-threatening, what the paper does can provide nowadays people with some hints to make better use of politeness strategies in persuasive communication.