| The present study discusses the politeness and impoliteness phenomena in judicial judgments. At its most basic level, politeness seems to refer to the consideration for other persons. While it is usually regarded as a means of restraining feelings and emotions in order to avoid conflict, people are not forced to be polite, especially in the situation where the speaker possesses greater power than the hearer. If we consider acts in the abstract, we may broadly concur with the idea that some acts are inherently polite, while others are inherently impolite. The scope of politeness theory, therefore, can be extended to include confrontational communication. For reasons stated above, this project probes into both politeness and impoliteness phenomena in judicial judgments.Judicial judgments are the official and authentic decisions of a court of justice upon the respective rights and claims of the parties to an action. Judgments in the present study refer to decisions issued by both trial and appellate courts, which are compulsory, normal and stable documents with legal effect. Once a judgment is published, the judge's decision cannot be changed at will, so it should be objective and reasonable to convince its audience. For this purpose, judges should pay more attention to the use of language and linguistic style, which enables them to communicate appropriately as well as accurately. The present study also looks into the (im)politeness phenomena as exemplified in agreement and disagreement in judicial judgments. The (im)politeness phenomena are also closely associated with appropriateness.With B&L's face management model and the idea of impoliteness strategies proposed by Culpeper as the bases of the theoretical framework and Chinese judicial judgments as the data, the present study aims to find out how politeness is realized in judgments, which strategies are frequently used and why such strategies are favored by judges. At the same time it is to reveal the function...
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