An Analysis Of Politeness In A Dream Of Red Mansions From The Perspective Of Face Theory

China is a country of etiquette since ancient times. There are all kinds of rulesand etiquette from weddings and funerals abided by royal family and also by ordinarypeople. Exchanges between people follow certain etiquette, which aims at saving facefor both sides. Only in this way can the harmonious development of the society bemaintained. Even now, we still follow the ancestors in manners, which are regarded asthe traditional virtue of the Chinese nation.Hong Lou Meng, as one of the four classic works in Chinese literature, it is well-known for its beautiful language, colorful characters and profound culturalconnotations at home and abroad. Its specific era background and social backgrounddecides that it contains rich etiquette and politeness. People from different levelsshow their politeness through behaviors and conversations, which fully demonstratethe feudal etiquette and politeness features, which all, provide a broad platform for usto explore the feudal ethical code. We try to explore the main politeness features oftraditional Chinese society through this encyclopedia.This paper summarizes some politeness theories at home and abroad and usesBrown and Levinson’s Face Theory as the theoretical foundation, I also use YangXianyi and Gladys Couple’s A Dream of Red Mansions as my research corpus toanalyze the different “face view” between traditional Chinese culture and the West.Through three parameters that threatens face raised by Brown and Levinson, that isthe social distance, the relative power and the absolute ranking of imposition of thespeaker and hearer, I will analyze people’s politeness features who are from differentlevels and give reinterpretation about the three parameters from the angle of Chinese traditional culture, aiming to verify whether Brown and Levinson’s theory hasuniversal meaning across cultures and time.