摘要

自人类进入文明时代，礼貌就被各文化社团及学者所广为重视。一方面，它是社会文明和进步的象征；另一方面，它又能帮助人们建立和维持良好的人际关系。作为一种可观察得到的社会现象，礼貌是一种表面现象，是由所有社会所认同的一种规范。人们在交流时，都会努力做到礼貌。同时，礼貌具有文化特性，是特定文化价值在语言中的折射，对于建立和保持良好的人际关系、维持社会的和睦及促进社会文明有着十分重要的作用。礼貌现象的普遍性有助于跨文化交际的顺利进行，而其文化差异则往往构成跨文化交际的障碍。因此，在日益增多的跨文化商务活动中，双方应重视那些具有文化差异的方面，加强对礼貌的语义差别的研究，以便我们理解跨文化商务活动中礼貌风格的差异，促进商务交际的顺利进行。

关键词：礼貌， 文化价值， 跨文化商务活动， 文化差异， 语义差别

Abstract

Since mankind entered the era of civilization, politeness has been highly valued in each culture, community and group. On the one hand, polite language is the symbol of social civilization and development, and on the other hand, it is helpful to establish and maintain a good relationship between each other. As an observable social phenomenon, politeness is something superficial and is recognized as a norm in all societies. People in every culture are trying to be polite when communicating. Furthermore, politeness is to some extent of cultural identity and is a reflection of specific cultural values, which plays an important role in establishing and maintaining good relationship. It is also helpful in keeping our society harmony and promoting the civilization towards a better direction. The catholicity of politeness contributes to the smooth progress of cross-cultural business actions, but the cultural differences usually become the obstacle, as is often the case. Therefore, in wide-spread cross-cultural business actions, both parties have to regard these cultural differences and do more research on semantic differences, so that we can understand the different politeness styles and promote the cross-cultural social intercourses.

Key words: politeness, cultural value, cross-cultural business actions, cultural differences, semantic differences

1    Introduction
What is politeness? Generally speaking, it is showing courtesy, respect and consideration to other people, acknowledging them, and not imposing unnecessarily on them. In this fast-shifting world, politeness is widely used in almost everywhere in our daily life. It can be showed in two aspects: verbal form and non-verbal form. Through all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, “politeness embodies cultural reality”, as is said by Kramsch Claire in his book “Language and Culture”.
All cultures require and value politeness. Although the notion of politeness is universal, it has different origins and thus different connotations in different cultures. In the first half of the 20th century, European linguists became aware that forms of linguistic behavior that we may now label as “polite” deserved attention in the study of language. From then on, linguists have made every effort to define “politeness” as a subject of study. They concentrated on its supportive features and said that politeness was for reaffirming and strengthening relationships. Politeness is a device used to avoid offense and reduce friction in personal interaction.