A Comparative Study Of Politeness In English And Chinese Language

As a universal social phenomenon, politeness extensively exists in all human societies, which is not only a norm of social activities, but also a symbol of civilization. Generally speaking, politeness has its binding effect on every member of the society, which plays a crucial role in helping establish, maintain friendly interpersonal relationship and facilitate social interactions. Linguistic politeness is a vehicle for the maintenance of social equilibrium, therefore the appropriate use of politeness forms will make communication successful.Since politeness is a complicated social and cultural phenomenon, researchers home and abroad have done plenty of researches. In order to account for this commonest social interactional phenomenon, many scholars attempt to map out a universal application of politeness theory. But to some extent, politeness bears strong cultural characteristics, that is, politeness is culture-specific and each culture has its own standards on what politeness is and what impoliteness is. Inspired by numbers of original studies on politeness and motivated by the concern for the issue of politeness, the author intends to make a contrastive study on politeness in English and Chinese culture and point out some distinctive features carried in English and Chinese politeness, which might be simply grouped as follow: assertiveness & non-assertiveness, directness & indirectness, modesty &self-denigration, and privacy &attitudinal warmth. In order to explain these distinctive features carried in English and Chinese politeness, cultural values and patterns of thought are explored. To be exact, individualism tends to predominate in English culture and collectivism in Chinese culture. The power distance in English culture is low; on the contrary, Chinese culture is oriented toward high power distance. English speakers'thought patterns tend to be"linear", while the oriental pattern is like a"gyre".Besides the value orientations of culture and different patterns of thought, context plays a decisive role in interpreting the actual meaning of language politeness. Politeness, without the consideration of cultural values, patterns of thought, social factors and context, is just like a tree being cut off its root. If people from one culture impose their own criteria of politeness on the people from another culture, the breakdown of cross-cultural communication may occur. Therefore it's believed that further researches and more explorations need to be done on the issue of politeness, especially from cross-cultural perspective.