ABSTRACT
The “face” theory and politeness principle are widely known pragmatic principle used to interpret the literal sense. English –speaking and Chinese culture are different in the choice of pragmatic principles as the different sense of value. Therefore, this thesis aims to compare the pragmatic phenomena in English-speaking and Chinese culture in the hope of broadening the field of comparative study and helping people to communicate appropriately in cross-culture communication.
This paper falls into five chapters. The Chapter One and Chapter Two introduce the definition and categories of politeness.
Chapter Three specifies Brown and Levinson’s “face” theory and Leech’s politeness principle, all together forming the theoretical foundations of the present thesis.
Chapter Four reviews the major researches on politeness and politeness principle done by scholars in West and in Domestic. And point out the relation between politeness language and pragmatic research..
Chapter Five reads the reason why the author choose this theory, and do a analysis of greeting and response to compliment which stand for two categories of politeness language use.
The last chapter draws a conclusion of the thesis and point out its meaning.
Keywords：”Face” theory; politeness principal; politeness language
Contents
1.Introduction 1
2. Definition and categories of politeness 3
2.1 Definition of politeness 3
2.2Categories of politeness language 3
3.Theoretical framework on politeness 5
3.1Brown and Levinson's "Face" theory 5
3.2 Leech’s politeness principle 5
4.Research on politeness on broad and at home 8
4.1Research on politeness in west 8
4.2 Domestic reasch on politeness 8
4.3Relation between pragmatics and politeness 9
5.Analysis for politeness 10
5.1 Analysis for politeness in greeting 11
5.2 Analysis for politeness in response to compliment 15
6.Conlusion 18
Acknowledgements 19
References 20
