Politeness Principle Of Universality And Particularity

The western pragmatics researchers and scholars have performed a great deal of work and laid a quite solid foundation on politeness research in the last century. Especially, the minute that Politeness Principle (P.P) was put forward by an English linguist, Leech (1983), researchers in linguistic fields are elated at its establishment. It seems that P.P by Leech (1983) has become the generally recognized pragmatic principle guiding and instructing everyday social interaction to a large extent. Nevertheless, with the deepening of research on pragmatics, people in different countries, communities, classes come to know that there are their own respective P.Ps with their typical cultural characteristics. Then people wonder whether there exist a great many different P.Ps in the world. One of the typical representatives is the Five Maxims of Politeness put forward by a Chinese linguist, Gu (1992). Simultaneously, if the above-mentioned argument holds water, how many principles/maxims should there be in the world in an attempt to meet the different needs Are these existent politeness principles sufficient or not As for the above-mentioned problem, we take the P.P by Leech (1983) and the Five Maxims of Politeness with the Chinese cultural characteristics by Ou( 1990,1992) as examples to interpret and prove that they share the nature in common. However, they display their own distinctions in their respective mainstream cultures, which is the different application in the concrete context. Based on this, we, tentatively, conclude that a P.P appropriate for any context ought to be that an addresser may converse, talk more or as much as possible if an addressee likes, vice versa. Or rather, it to cater to other taste and thus be other-oriented, which is the means to attain the ocial goal in the speech communication. Accordingly, its genuine ersonal goal can be accomplished.