A Pragmatic Study of Chinese and Western Linguistic Politeness

Abstract

Politeness is a social and linguistic phenomenon that exists in almost every culture. Despite its universality,the interpretation and understanding of politeness, the ways to realize politeness, and the standards of judgment differ in different cultures. Based on an analysis of Leech's Politeness Principle and Gu Yueguo's Politeness Principle, which can represent the Western and Chinese politeness theory model respectively, this paper intends to make a contrastive study of Chinese and Western linguistic politeness in terms of their responses towards praises and compliments , terms of address, privacy and taboo, value and modesty. We find that linguistic politeness strategy bears obvious cultural traits and is largely influenced by its culture, namely, religion, value and ethics etc. The contrastive analysis of the Chinese and Western linguistic politeness can hopefully boost cross-cultural communication.