Abstract:
In cross-cultural communication, Chinese and English people often encounter difficulties concerning both language usages and difficulties in communication, because they are from different cultural background. People are influenced by different cultures, social norms and values, so people from different cultural background have different politeness expressions in their mind. The discrepancy sometimes becomes the obstacle in cross-cultural communication. If people want to gain a deeper insight into the essence of cross-cultural communication, they should know the politeness principles, which explain to us what should people say and behave under certain circumstances. This paper tries to analyze and compare the Chinese-English politeness expressions to expound their content, usage, conflict and so on. It puts forward some suggestions to avoid the conflict and the ways to help students to learn foreign cultures well. It also aims at helping the English learners to understand English culture better and communicate in English more effectively.

Key words: cross-cultural communication; the differences of culture; pragmatic failures; politeness principles

摘  要：
在跨文化交际中，由于不同的文化背景，来自中西方的人们常常会遇到语言不通和交流困难的问题。这是因为受到不同文化，社会规范和价值观的影响，人们对于礼貌的理解有很大的差异，这常常造成跨文化交际的障碍。要深入理解跨文化交际的实质，就要懂得礼貌原则。礼貌原则我们解释了在什么场合下说些什么、做些什么的原因。本文通过对中英礼貌原则的跨文化对比分析，论述了中英礼貌原则的内容，用法，冲突等，并指出了如何避免这种冲突的方法，如何帮助学生学习国外文化。旨在帮助英语学习者更好的了解英美文化，能够用英语进行有效的交际。

关键词：跨文化交际；文化差异；语用失误；礼貌原则

1 Introduction
As a symbol of human civilization, politeness is not only a phenomenon of social culture, but also a linguistic phenomenon. It can be found in almost every aspect of our society all over the world. Linguists, psychologists and sociologists have paid attention to this phenomenon since 1960s. In the world, all of the nations have their own special and unique politeness principles or standards. Therefore, people from different countries have different cultural background. When they are in contact with each other and do not know others’ politeness principles, they are more liable to have some misunderstandings or conflicts and the communication will even end in failure. In the cross-cultural communication between English and Chinese people, if people don’t have a good knowledge of the background of others, they will find that they are very likely to get into trouble in communication. Therefore, a comparative study of the politeness expressions between Chinese and English is important to cross-cultural communication. It enables us to find an appropriate approach to communicate with the people from different cultural background.