A Comparative Analysis Of Thanking In English Under Politeness Principle In Chinese TV Talk Show With That In America

It is often assumed that learners can appropriately express thanking in the target language, for expressing gratitude is a speech act taught at an early age and commonly used by speakers of most cultures. However, previous studies show that even advanced learners have difficulties in expressing gratitude due to different cultural orientations. Given the increasing cooperation and contact between Chinese and America, misunderstandings or even communicative conflicts may often arise in intercultural communications. Since speech act reflects cultural norms and values, the present thesis makes a comparative study of thanking expressions under the Politeness Principle.This thesis focuses on two TV talk shows in China and America, namely,Crossover and The Ellen Degeneres Show, as the research targets, and selected 20 issues from the two talk show programs respectively as the data. To identify differences and similarities in thanking expressions between Chinese English speakers and American native speakers, it uses the Politeness Principle to classify thanking and incorporates the four constructs of individualism and collectivism theory to analyze thanking in those two TV talk shows.The research reports that thanking speech act performs important social functions in both America and China. Although they share some features in common on thanking speech act, some significant intercultural differences can be found, such as the different frequency, preference of thanking strategy, specific selection of realization patterns, the weight of social distance, familiarity and so on. Due to great economic development and rapid social change in China, together with a shrinking family size, more exposure to foreign cultures and more intense Sino-US interactions,difference of parental educational style, Chinese English speakers are converging with American style as well. All in all, four factors, namely, cultural value orientations,social status, familiarity and imposition, shape the styles of thanking expressions.