| In Cross-cultural communication, interlocutors have a strong desire to make the communication go successfully. Under the influence of the mother tongue, the second language used in communication is more or less accompanied with cultural trait. The difference between two cultures may cause misunderstanding or even a breakdown of the communication, which leads to a communicative failure. Thomas terms this kind of communicative failure as pragmatic failure, and points out that pragmatic failures aren't the grammatical errors of the language, but improper ways, improper utterance, or incorrect expressions. Many linguists and scholars both at home and abroad have studied and analyzed the cross-cultural pragmatic failures from several aspects, among which politeness is an important aspect. That politeness is a pragmatic phenomenon is a common knowledge among the pragmatic circle. Politeness is always understood as a strategy used by speaker to realize a certain goal. Whether the verbal communication is successful or not, to a great extent, depends on the use of proper expressions and polite forms. However, politeness is culture-oriented. Because of the cultural difference, people have different ideas of the meaning of politeness. Therefore, they observe different politeness principles and social norms. When people from different cultural background communicate, they habitually judge the other's behavior according to their own social norms and politeness principles. What is polite in one culture may not be polite in another, thus pragmatic failures arise inevitably. This paper is intended to study the pragmatic failures that Chinese learners of English are apt to commit from politeness principle's point of view under Thomas's framework, and make a contrastive analysis of Chinese and western polite norms and expressions from six aspects in the hope of improving Chinese learners'pragmatic awareness and help them use proper polite expressions to achieve their desired communicative goals.
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