| It is said that nonverbal behaviors contribute 70% to our communication, while verbal languages only account for 30%, from which we know the importance of nonverbal communication for it conveys more information than verbal one. Nonverbal language has been extensively used in all activities of society and individuals. Nonverbal communication, as a popular linguistic and social phenomenon has attracted people's attention in recent 50 years.The previous studies usually pay attention to conversation, while this thesis studies the nonverbal expressions, and they are chosen as the carrier for their basic requirement of politeness. Lack of such knowledge may lead to misunderstanding and even serious offence because verbal expression reflects the surface meaning while nonverbal communication reveals deeper cultural traits from which people are able to collect clues about underlying attitudes and values.We all know that much of our communicative difficulty with people from other countries stems from the fact that so little is known about cultural communication. Formal study in the language, history, politics, and customs of another nation is only the first step. Of equal importance is an introduction to the nonverbal language that exists in every nation of the world and among the various groups within each country (Li Wei,2001). To positively introduce the study of nonverbal communication in the international contact can encourage the culture communication to be more effectively.Most of the studies simply concentrate on the nonverbal communication itself or the differences between cultures. However, to be aware of the cultural difference and use nonverbal communication properly under politeness theory is often neglected by the researchers. This thesis is supposed to probe into the polite nonverbal communication in different countries or cultural backgrounds and explore the features, functions and classifications of nonverbal communication. Also, since nonverbal language has been drawing more and more attention these years, in which politeness theory plays a very important role, this thesis will concentrate on how politeness theory is applied to nonverbal communication.Starting from the politeness theory of Leech, this thesis studies the features the nonverbal communication in interpersonal communications and handles the difficulties of communicating with the people who are not aware of the nonverbal expressions of other countries. Because of the flexible and diversified forms of nonverbal communication, the difficulties and obstacles cannot be removed just by publishing a few articles on the nonverbal communication but never unremitting efforts. And hopefully this thesis is a contribution to the interdisciplinary study of language, pragmatics and cultural communication.ChapterⅡelaborates on the study results home and abroad, it can be divided into two parts:the first part explains Leech carries out his research based on Grice's CP and takes Grice's theory into politeness explanation—clarifying how an utterance may be interpreted to convey indirect meaning, while PP is employed to explain why such indirectness exists. After a series of studies, Leech proposes six maxims of politeness:Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Approbation Maxim, Modesty Maxim, Agreement Maxim, Sympathy Maxim. He concludes that "politeness is focused more strongly on other than on self" (Leech,1983:133). Furthermore, all these maxims do not seem to be absolute rules, since different cultures may label different standards on each maxim and differ in their evaluation of each sub-maxim. The second part focuses on the studies of politeness in China. The Prof. Gu Yueguo who tests the characteristics of Chinese politeness based on traditional Chinese social and cultural background of li, and struggles to formulate its distinctive theories embodied the Chinese culture and modern ideas on the basis of Leech's politeness theory:Self-denigration Maxim; Address-term Maxim; Refinement Maxim; Agreement Maxim; Virtues-words-deeds Maxim. Prof. Gu states that the difference between East and West and the specialty should also be considered.Chapter III focused on the theoretical perspectives of this thesis:the definition, features, functions and its classification of nonverbal communication. First of all, Nonverbal communication cannot be simply defined as the movement of our bodies, for it is a kind of communication that people use their bodies and something else to convey meanings. So our first step is to make clear about the real meaning of what is the "nonverbal communication". Nonverbal communication "involves all those nonverbal stimuli in a communication setting that are generated by both the source and his or her use of the environment, and that have potential message value for the source or receiver" (Samovar,2000:149). The study of nonverbal communication is so universal that it covers many areas such as anthropology, physiology, psychology and public relationship studies. Next, the different features of nonverbal communication form because of the different perspectives:Full of Meaning; Cultural relativity; Ambiguity; Non-structure and Continuity. Then, the four functions of nonverbal communication are illustrated:Repeating function; complementing function; contradicting function and accenting function. Finally, different classifications of nonverbal communication of scholars are also cited in this thesis.Chapter IV emphasizes on the analysis of nonverbal communication under politeness principle. Because politeness is a popular social phenomenon that people are accustomed to obeying and maintaining it as a rule in their daily communication. At present, no matter what the cultural backgrounds of people are, they adhere to the Politeness Principle to minimize the use of impolite nonverbal expressions and maximize the use of polite ones. As an important linguistic phenomenon, nonverbal communication also contains the study of the six maxims of politeness principle. This chapter aims to apply the six maxims of politeness principle to the nonverbal communication and draw a conclusion on that:The nonverbal expression is regarded as an effective tool in the successful communication since it adheres to the maxims of Politeness Principle.The chapter V discusses the study of nonverbal communication under Politeness Principle. Politeness Principle acts as a principle line that runs through the nonverbal communications in different countries. Four main branches of nonverbal communication under Politeness Principle are the best proofs:the environmental language, body language, object language and paralanguage. Among which, the Agreement Maxim is the most popularly applied one while the other five depend on the situations, because the cultural communication is on the basis of bilateral respects for different cultural backgrounds. The thesis just focuses on Chinese and American culture; it also demonstrates some typical cases of conflicts caused by impolite nonverbal behaviors. Nonverbal communication is a perfect embodiment and good illustration of Leech's Politeness Principle for social communication is generally oriented towards being polite, and one of the fundamental rules in social communication is a tacit agreement between the different parties.In the chapter VI, the causes of the complexity of nonverbal communication are summarized according to the previous studies and analyses:The politeness theory to nonverbal behaviors is very complicated in cultural communication. Because on one hand, the nonverbal behaviors are really wide-ranging even in the same culture; sometimes they could be varied, let alone among two different cultures. On the other hand, nonverbal communication embodies complexity itself. We should firstly learn about what the nonverbal communication and its difference are at home and abroad, and then, how to use one or a group of nonverbal communication to appropriately display or communicate our thoughts, feelings or internal states according to the real context, so that, we can avoid offending others unconsciously. And aside from the nonverbal behaviors under the politeness theory elaborated in the thesis, there are still some polite nonverbal meanings remaining under cover; in the meanwhile, some new nonverbal communication under the politeness theory arises and comes into being, so the difficulty of the research is consequently on the increase. But as long as we are well aware of the importance of encouraging polite nonverbal communication, and making efforts to improve our nonverbal communication competence in cultural communication, it will not be a dream to live in harmonious world that concentrates on the idea of politeness. Due to the limitation of study scope, this exploratory study mainly focuses on the analysis and study of the nonverbal communication. Many efforts can be made to add more comprehensive nonverbal expressions in more different countries. Researcher's subjectivity is another inevitable flaw of this study. The analysis and study of the nonverbal communication are inevitably influenced by the researcher's subjectivity and personal knowledge background. |
PDF Full Text Request