Abstract

In intercultural communication, people from different cultural backgrounds have some methods of expressing politeness with different features, which leads to misunderstanding of the other party’s polite expressions in the process of communication. For the differences between Chinese and Western countries in terms of mindset, social custom and value concept, there is a great divergence between Chinese and English. Therefore, this paper is to start to take the different politeness principles put forward by Leech and Gu Yueguo as the guide to analyze the differences between the both, and then further to make a comparative analysis of the expression of Chinese and English address forms, greetings, compliments, thanks and farewells during cross-national communication. After that, it explains the leading reasons for the above differences phenomenon in detail, separately from the values, customs and modes of thinking, ethics and some other aspects. The final step is to clearly put forward the solutions to the cultural conflicts caused by differences of polite expressions in cross cultural communication. Analyzing the Chinese and English courtesy languages in this way can cut down the cultural misunderstanding and conflict, and better facilitate the development of intercultural communication.

Keywords: intercultural communication; Chinese and English; courtesy languages; contrastive analysis 

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

3. The Differences of Politeness Principles between Chinese and English Cultures-2

3.1 Politeness Principles in English-3

3.2 Politeness Principles in Chinese-4

3.3 Differences between Chinese and English Politeness principles-4

4. The Differences between Chinese and English Courtesy Languages in International Communication-5

4.1 The differences between Chinese and English address forms-6

4.2 The differences between Chinese and English greetings-7

4.3 The differences between Chinese and English compliments-8

4.4 The differences between Chinese and English thanks-9

4.5 The differences between Chinese and English farewells-10

5. Reasons for cultural differences between English and Chinese courtesy languages-11

5.1 Different values-11

5.2 Different customs and modes of thinking-11

5.3 Different ethics-12

6. Solutions to the Cultural Conflicts Caused by Differences of Chinese and English Courtesy Languages-12

7. Conclusion-13

Works Cited-14