摘  要

礼貌是在各种语言、各种文化中表现出的共有的普遍现象。它在人际交往中发挥着重要的作用，它有助于建立、维持 和巩固和谐的人际关系，促进社会人类交往。通过礼貌可以观察到社会现象。但它只是一种表面现象，是特定文化价值在语言中的折射。因此，在承认礼貌的普遍性的同时，我们还必须认识到礼貌的文化特性，也就是说，由于文化价值的影响，表示礼貌的方式方法，以及人们用以判断礼貌的标准会因文化而有所不同。因此，探讨礼貌问题，必须考虑到礼貌的文化特性，只有深入到文化的深层，才能透过表象，揭示出礼貌的本质特征，才能成功地解释其跨文化差异。
在经济全球化的今天，跨文化交际日益频繁，然而由于各文化的差异，对礼貌的表达和理解不同，导致误会与冲突日益突出。本文对英汉礼貌进行跨文化研究，探讨它们之间的文化差异，增强交际者的文化敏感性，提高人们的跨文化意识，促进英汉跨文化交际。

关键词：礼貌；跨文化交流；文化差异

Abstract

Politeness is a universal phenomenon, for it can be observed in all languages and cultures. It plays an important role in human communication, it is conducive to establishing, maintaining or consolidating harmonious interpersonal relationship. Politeness is not only an observable phenomenon but also a reflection of specific cultural values in the language. While admitting the universality of politeness, knowing the characteristic of politeness is essential. In the living environment, customs, religious belief, people’s value system, pragmatic habits and other aspects exist great differences, which cause people to have different understanding of the politeness as well as different ways to show politeness. To explore the essence of politeness and explain the intercultural differences successfully，deepening cultural understanding is very important.
Nowadays, the international communication has increasing at the background of highly globalization. However, much cultural misunderstanding or some conflicts come along and tend to become more apparent. This thesis aims to research on English and Chinese politeness, through comparing the differences in the Polite Language and the Manner’s Expressions in the intercultural communication between English and Chinese, it can help people further undestand the importance of knowing the cultural differences in the cross-cultural communication, to raise the cultural awareness as to promote English-Chinese cross-cultural communication.

Key words: politeness; cross-cultural communication; cultural awareness

1    Introduction
What is politeness? “ Politeness is best expressed in the practical application of good manners or etiquette.” For instance，apologizing for interrupting a speaker or sending a birthday card to a friend or when one asks a stranger for direction, one should start with “excuse me ”. These examples suggest that politeness can be expressed verbally or non-verbally. Politeness is a cultural defined phenomenon, and therefore, sometimes, politeness in one culture can  be quite rude or simply eccentric in another cultural context.  This thesis will focus on this two aspects.