Polite Language

Politeness is a common social phenomenon in peoples' life. Although there are many ways of expressing politeness, language is the most effective and frequently used means. Therefore, polite language is a common phenomenon in interpersonal communications. It represents peoples' efforts in maintaining harmonious relationship between each other. And it also indicates peoples' morality and ethic principles. This thesis aims to offer a detailed and overall study of polite language from the perspectives of philosophy of language, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and cultural linguistics.