Abstract:
 Phatic language, first used and demonstrated by the Polish-British anthropologist, B.Malinowski. He holds that phatic language is not intended to communicate information or opinions, but to perform a social task or keep social contact. Even so, phatic language still plays a vital role in people’s retaining social relationship. It appears in distinctive styles and contents across languages in the world. This paper attempts to discuss the differences between English and Chinese phatic languages by selecting many typical examples. First, a brief introduction of the phatic language is made. Second, the characteristics, especially the distributive features, of phatic language are analyzed. Finally, the differences of greetings in both English and Chinese are depicted and explained. Through a relatively systematic study, this thesis demonstrates the importance of phatic language in daily life and makes the functions of phatic language clear in the intercultural communication.

Key word: Contrastive study; English phatics; Chinese phatics; function

摘  要:
“寒暄语”这一术语由波裔英籍人类学家马林诺夫斯基首次使用并阐述其功能。他认为寒暄语指的是并非真正用来交换信息或意见,而只是一种为了完成社会任务的功能或保持社会接触的交流语。即便如此，寒暄语在人们维持社会关系中起着极其重要的作用。本文通过一些典型的案例来对比分析中英文寒暄语之间的差异。首先，本文简要介绍了寒暄语方面既有研究成果，然后讨论了寒暄语在对话交流中的分布问题，陈述中英文寒暄语中的一些差异，本文对于寒暄语在日常生活中的重要性，以及在跨文化交流中的功能研究有着重要意义。

关键词: 对比研究; 汉语寒暄语; 英语寒暄语;功能

1. Introduction
In social communication, one has to use phatic expressions if he wants to have a successful communication with others. Generally, phatic communication is an important social lubricant. It means to use the language to share feelings or establish a mood of sociability .Meanwhile; it is an informal type of discourse that does not cover any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed.
With the developing of human history, different nations have formed different cultures. Different cultures will influence the nation in the process of forming different phatic communication. As we all know, China and western countries have totally different cultures; as a result it is natural for them to form different maxims of using phatic communication. When the communication between China and western countries becomes more and more frequent, it is quite necessary for us to understand the different greeting words between them. In that case, both can help each other to develop well.