中英礼貌用语的语用差异 .docVIP

【标题】中英礼貌用语的语用差异 【作者】李兴举 【关键词】礼貌；差异；语用；文化 【指导老师】廖东红 杨 波 【专业】英语 【正文】I. Introduction“As a universal phenomenon, politeness is observed in every society; its main functions are maintaining social order; maintaining friendly interpersonal relations; reducing conflicts and misunderstandings by means of polite speech acts so as to attain the aim of communication.”1In both the East and the West cultures, politeness has long been regarded as an indispensable part of language. There exists a wide-ranging use of politeness and polite language that have clearly demonstrated people’s fondness and importance of this particular linguistic device. Also, in both cultures of English and Chinese, politeness has the same social functions in these two different cultures, and common polite languages in these two cultures are also the same, but they are different in practical use. These differences often become the source of pragmatic failures in intercultural communication.As we all know, different people hold different views about politeness and different cultures may lead to pragmatic differences in understanding politeness. Because of the cultural differences, sometimes what the Chinese people consider to be polite may not be true according to western culture. To be polite, there are some principles to follow, such as Geoffrey N. Leech’s Politeness Principle, and in China, there are Prof. Gu Yueguo’s five notions of politeness based on the Chinese conception of limao(礼貌)?.Politeness Principle is the base which makes sure that intercultural speech interaction can go through successfully. It is also the civilized communication means used by many societies. However, in an intercultural communication, interlocutors bear the different cultural backgrounds; the manipulation of politeness strategies is even more challenging, because it is human natural tendency to evaluate other’s behavior with the reference to one’s own criteria. Therefore, the comparative study of Politeness Pri