摘要

礼貌是人类社会的普遍现象，不同国家、不同文化对其概念及内容的理解不尽相同，对“礼貌”的判断标准以及所实施的礼貌策略也有所差异。礼貌现象的普遍性和内容的文化差异性使得礼貌研究错综复杂。随着中外语言研究者对“礼貌”现象的深入研究，一系列理论相继推出，其中Brown和Levinson的“面子理论”和Leech 的“礼貌原则”影响深远，应用广泛。然而，在现实应用中，由于缺乏对中西礼貌现象的认识，从而导致跨文化交际失误乃至失败的例子数不胜数。随着中国的对外开放，跨文化交流的增多和比较语言学的逐步发展,礼貌现象的英汉对比研究显得越来越重要。本文旨在帮助人们了解中西方礼貌现象的差异，并在分析发掘形成差异的社会文化背景过程中,增强人们的语言对比分析和跨文化意识,提高跨文化交际能力，促进跨文化实践的顺利进行.

关键字：礼貌；差异；文化；对比
 
Abstract

Politeness is an epitome of human civilization, known as a social-cultural and linguistic phenomenon. Since1960s, politeness has drawn much attention from sociologists and linguists, and different views on politeness held by different people from different cultures. Misunderstanding or even breakdown may occur if the cultural differences of politeness are neglected in cross-cultural communication. And this paper will focus on politeness in Chinese and English language, offers a general idea of some important theories which previously proposed by Western and Chinese scholars firstly, and then gives several comparisons of these two languages to demonstrate the differences. Therefore, it is very necessary and vital for the Chinese learners of English to have a good knowledge of politeness in both Chinese and English. This thesis is intended to make a comparative study on politeness in English and Chinese, and analyze the cultural reasons behind the differences deeply, excepted to be some help to people in communicative competence during cross-cultural activities.

Key Word: politeness; difference; culture; comparison