摘  要

本文主要研究礼貌用语及其研究历史和相关学说，而后对中西方国家的礼貌原则和礼貌现象进行一个对比性的，并且完整的研究。礼貌的主要功能是维护社会秩序和保持友好的人际关系。跨文化交际无处不在，礼貌用语在交际中更是一个非常普遍的现象。若对中西礼貌用语的差异没有一定的理解，那么错误就会发生从而导致交际的失败，以至于交流者之间关系受损，生意失败，谈判无法进行，更严重的是会导致外交上的失利。本文主要采取的研究方式是查阅文献和搜索互联网，主要的研究方法是综合法和归纳法，同时，案例的研究也未被忽视。由于不同的文化，中西方国家间的礼貌用语有着许多差异，为了避免跨文化交际的失败，学习中西礼貌用语的差异是十分必要的。

关键词：礼貌用语；差异；跨文化交际

Abstract

This paper mainly study about polite language, including the history of the studies, main theories, then a contrastive study of politeness principles and polite phenomenon in China and western countries will be made. Though many scholars have studied this topic and put forward their own views, more detailed differences in polite language between China and Western countries can be found. This paper will make a complete study of polite language, including famous studies, reasons of the differences, and the pragmatic use. Inter cultural communication is everywhere, and politeness is a very universal phenomenon in society with the main functions of maintaining social order and friendly inter-personal relations, reducing and avoiding conflicts and misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication by means of polite speech acts so as to attain the aim of communication. Without the understanding of differences of politeness, mistakes will made very often, that will lead to communication failure. In a result, the relationship between communicators can broke, business can go to fail, negotiation can not go on, and more serious is disadvantage of diplomacy. This paper made a contrastive study on polite language between china and western countries in cultural, history, and other perspectives. The chief way is to review literature, and search the Internet. Synthesis and induction can said to be the two main methods, also, much attention have paid to case study. Due to different culture and cultural psychology, there are many differences in polite language between China and western countries. In order to avoid failures in cross-cultural communication, studying the difference in polite language between china and western countries is essential.

Key words: polite language; difference; cross-culture communication

1 Introduction
1.1 Background knowledge
Nowadays, with the development of globalization, intercultural communication happens every where, not only in our daily lives, but also in politics, transmission of culture, international business and so on. Actually, we are all in the time of across-culture. In intercultural communication, people in different culture, using different languages are trying to be polite when communicating. But due to the influence of cultural orientations, there are lots of difference in actual manifestations of politeness and the standards of politeness from culture to culture. As a result, we may find that misunderstandings or even breakdown will frequently occur in intercultural communication. Sometimes, kind words of speaker will make listener feel embarrassed, what’s worse, politeness will be misunderstood as absurd and vulgar behaviors.