Abstract

Along with the reform and open policy in our country, there are more and more exchanges with foreign countries, and politeness is more and more important as a link and connecting communication bridge. However, because western history and culture are different from those of China, there are many differences in politeness between Chinese and western countries. Because we are not familiar with these differences, in the process of communication, communicative frustration or misunderstandings occur sometimes and even cause the worsening of relations. Therefore, understanding the differences of courtesy between Chinese and western countries has extremely vital significance to improve the ability of cross-cultural communication and to better communicate and cooperate with westerners, to better establish the image of Chinese people. 

This article tries to analyze the cultural differences between Chinese and Western courtesy languages in their causes and effects on the cross-cultural communication from the following four aspects: addressing, greeting, compliments and taboos. The purpose is to know the use of the courtesy language and improve cross-cultural communication.

Keywords: politeness; cross-cultural communication; addressing

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

2.1 What is courtesy -1

2.2 Previous studies-2

3. Theoretical Framework-3

3.1 The specific factors causing the differences of courtesy language in China and the West-3

3.2 The concrete manifestation of the courtesy language differences between China and the West-4

3.2.1 Addressing-4

3.2.2 Greeting-6

3.2.3 Compliments-7

3.2.4 Taboos-8

4. Results-10

4.1 The causes of different courtesy language-10

4.2 The characteristics of Chinese and Western courtesy culture-11

5. Conclusion-12

5.1 Main results-12

5.2 Educational significance-12

5.3 Study of defects-13

5.4 Suggestion-13

References-15