Politeness In English And Chinese Cultures

Politeness is a very important subject of study in modern linguistics, and it belongs to pragmatics. As a universal phenomenon, politeness plays a key role in establishing and maintaining social harmony, and prescribing individuals'linguistic behavior. It is not only language-specific, but also culture-specific. Due to cultural differences, languages differ greatly from one another in expressing and understanding politeness. Politeness contributes to the cross-cultural communication and Foreign Language Teaching and learning to a large extent. So a clear idea of the differences of politeness in English and Chinese culture is essential to the study of Linguistics. This thesis focuses on the contrastive study of politeness in English and Chinese culture and the cultural values which cause the differences. Some implications on Cross-Cultural Communication and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning are put forward in the thesis as well.The present thesis is composed of six parts. (1) to give brief introduction of politeness and the methodology and format adopted in this thesis, (2) to review and generalize the theories of politeness that have been proposed by scholars from home and abroad, (3) to identify the differences in terms of addressing; greeting; complimenting; apologizing and thanking; requesting and refusing through contrastive analysis, (4) to relate the identified differences with specific cultural patterns and backgrounds, (5) to put forward suggestions on how to cultivate one's cross-cultural communicative competence and to improve foreign language teaching and learning, (6) to give a conclusion of the whole thesis.