A Contrastive Study On English And Chinese Politeness Formulae From The Perspective Of Pragmatics

Politeness, as a universal and social phenomenon, plays a crucial role inconstraining people’s behaviors, establishing interpersonal relationships, andmaintaining social harmony. An effective communication largely depends on thechoice of the politeness formulae and politeness expression. Since1960s, the researchof politeness phenomenon has risen great attention from scholars and experts fromhome and abroad, including linguistics, psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists.With the rapid development of the researches of intercultural communication, how todefine politeness and how to behave appropriately and politely in cross-culturalcommunications have increased people’s awareness and interests worldwide. In themeantime, politeness is also a major subject in modern linguistics. Great importancehas been attached to studies of politeness phenomenon and politeness principles.Politeness possesses different features under different cultural backgrounds. Politenessformulae as a means for effective communication are closely related to cultural values,social conventions as well as some other culture factors. Due to cultural diversities,languages are different from each other in the way of expressing and understandingpoliteness. Failure in ross-cultural communication would occur if one behave or judgepeople from other nations just according to social conventions or culture values of hisown. Since politeness is indeed positive to intercultural communication and ForeignLanguage Learning, a clear contrastive analysis of the differences of politeness inEnglish and Chinese culture can be very crucial to the study of Linguistics. Via thePoliteness theories in Pragmatics, this thesis makes a contrastive analysis of politenessformulae in English and Chinese as well as the cultural values which cause thedifferences. Some implications and suggestions on Cross-Cultural Communication andForeign Language Leaching and are put forward in the thesis as well.The present thesis is composed of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion.Its main contents are as follows:The first part is the introduction, which briefly introduces the definition ofpoliteness, the proposed theories of politeness, as well as the methodology and the format adopted in this thesis. Contrastive analysis is adopted to make the contrastbetween Chinese and English more concise and obvious.The second part is the main body, which is made up of three chapters:Chapter One reviews and generalizes the theories of politeness that have beenproposed by scholars from home and abroad. There are many valuable theories putforward by scholars from both western countries and China. These scholars’ studiesinclude the theories of politeness strategies which help preserve face such as Brownand Levinson’s face-saving theory. Other scholars such as Leech and Gu Yueguo haveproposed some theories about politeness principles observed by people. All theseprinciples and theories have made great contribution to the later related researches.Chapter Two identifies through contrastive analysis the differences betweenChinese and English politeness formulae in terms of addressing, greeting and parting,complimenting, apologizing and thanking, requesting, as well as inviting and offering.In the culture of English-speaking countries, when being complimented and praised,people usually adopt the agreement principle instead of negative responses in order toavoid being inconsistent with others. While for Chinese people, they would rathershow modesty or even denigrate themselves.Chapter Three discusses the cultural factors which account for the differences ofpoliteness formulae, and to relate the identified differences with specific culturalpatterns, values and backgrounds. People from English-speaking countries pay muchattention to privacy and personal interests, while Chinese people give priority tocollective interest and are willing to help others.The last part is conclusion, which is puts forward some suggestions on ForeignLanguage Learning, gives a summary of the whole thesis and points out somelimitations in order to provide some advice for later researches.