A Study On The Phenomena Of Not Using Polite Language To Express Politeness From The Perspective Of Cultural Linguistics

Polite behavior in linguistic communication is a focus in the field of pragmatics. Inrecent years, many scholars at home and abroad in the field of linguistics have clarified politeexpressions from different perspectives. Their main concern goes to the normally typicalexpressions that are used to express politeness. Some focus on the linguistic feature of politelinguistic behavior, others pay attention to the development of polite language, still othersconcern the different applied features of polite language under different backgrounds. Thisthesis aims to make a study on the phenomena of not using polite language (using untypicalpolite language) to express politeness from the perspective of cultural linguistics. Gazdar’sImplicature Cancellation Procedure and some politeness principles are chosen to analyze suchphenomena. Culture (e.g. customs and habits, religion) is chosen as a main factor influencingthe different application of the seemingly impolite and neutral expressions to expresspoliteness.Three research questions are addressed:(1) Under what contexts do interlocutors choosenot to use polite language to express politeness?(2) What special cultural elements existunder such contexts?(3) Why under such cultural backgrounds do interlocutors choose not touse polite language to express politeness?Accordingly, three hypotheses are made in this thesis:(1) When the conversationshappen in some informal contexts (e.g. during family dinners, on parties held by intimatefriends, in casual conversations between family members or intimate friends), interlocutorstend not to use polite language to express politeness.(2) Such phenomena of not using politelanguage to express politeness are heavily influenced by the special cultural factors (e.g.customs and habits, religion) that belong to that language. As a result, what is regarded in oneculture as impolite is not necessarily regarded as impolite in another.(3) Such ‘impolite’ andneutral expressions could express the meaning of politeness. Such ‘impolite’ and neutralexpressions have better pragmatic effect of expressing politeness than the normal politeexpressions.Qualitative method is mainly used in this study, which is discourse analysis. This thesisanalyzes how ‘impolite’ linguistic behavior is used to express politeness under Chinese andAmerican cultures from the perspective of cultural linguistics, and then concludes thedifferences of such phenomena between Chinese and American cultures. The data are chosenfrom novels and scripts of TV plays. Both Chinese data and American English data areincluded. Most of the data are chosen for analysis and a bit of them are chosen only for theusage of comparison. The Chinese data that are chosen are translated into English by free translation.The findings could help readers have a thorough understanding of such phenomena ofnot using polite language to express politeness. Culture is the decisive reason for suchphenomena. Gazdar’s Implicature Cancellation Procedure can be used to calculateconversational implicature in different cultural backgrounds. The meaning of politeness isdynamic, not static.