Abstract:

Courtesy exists in every society and every culture. As a universal phenomenon, it plays a crucial role in establishing social contacts and maintaining friendly interpersonal relationship. To judge whether the communication is successful or not, it depends on whether the courtesy language is used appropriately. Courtesy language is not only a social phenomenon, and it is also the reflection of cultural value. Therefore, when admitting the universality of courtesy, we should also know the cultural specialty of it. Due to the differences of cultural backgrounds, conventions and values, and some other reasons, people from different cultures may have different understandings about courtesy and they deal with it in different ways. This thesis will firstly introduce courtesy language in terms of definition, and relevant theories, and then make a contrastive study of courtesy language in English and Chinese from the perspectives of terms of address, apologies, appreciation, and euphemism, and finally analyse the reasons for the differences between English and Chinese courtesy language.

Key words: contrastive study; courtesy language; Cooperative Principles; Politeness Principles; cross-cultural communication  

摘要：

礼貌存在于每一个社会，每一种文化。作为一种普遍现象，它在建立社会人脉和维护友好的人际关系起着至关重要的作用。判断交际是否成功, 这一切取决于是否正确使用礼貌用语。礼貌语言不仅是一种社会现象，也是文化价值的体现。因此，承认礼貌具有普遍性的同时，我们必须了解它的文化特性。由于文化背景，习俗和价值观等因素的不同，来自不同文化背景的人可能对礼貌的理解不同，他们处理这个问题的方式也会不同。本文首先介绍了礼貌用语的定义和相关理论，然后从称呼语、道歉语、致谢语和委婉语的角度对比研究了中英文化中礼貌用语的差异，最后分析了产生礼貌用语差异的原因。

关键词：对比研究；礼貌用语；合作原则；礼貌原则；跨文化交际

Introduction
As members of social communities, all the people need to keep in touch with others, communicate and interact with other members of the communities. Yet the process of communication is not that simple because it involves lots of elements such as the subjects of the communication, the situations, the gestures, the facial expressions and so on. Most importantly, cultural differences and value orientations are the decisive factors that affect the results of the cross-cultural communications. If one knows little or even knows nothing about the other’s cultural background, he or she will have difficulty understanding the other person, in which case communication failures may occur. Everyone in the world can not live without communicating and interacting with other social members, which reveals the importance of communication. Yet in this process, it is unavoidable to meet conflicts or even failures. Therefore, the appropriate use of courtesy language is becoming necessary and significant.