A Critical Study Of Mr.Gu Yueguo's Politeness Maxims

Politeness is a complicated social and cultural phenomenon. Researchers home and abroad have done plenty of researches into this phenomenon. Based on Goffman's face theory, Brown and Levinson define face as basic wants and raise the Face-saving Theory and politeness strategies. Leech studies politeness within an "interpersonal rhetoric" and emphasizes the regulative function of politeness. Scollon and Scollon study face and politeness from the interpersonal view. In China, many researchers have participated in the research. The researchers have studied the politeness theory and the politeness strategies in English. They also have done some research by connecting politeness theory with theories in pragmatics and other subjects, such as translation, cross-cultural communication and foreign language teaching, etc.. Of all the studies, Gu Yueguo's study is one of the most influential. He is the first to propose the Politeness Maxims with Chinese characteristics.This paper attempts to conduct a critical study on whether Mr. Gu Yueguo's Politeness Maxims conform to the linguistic reality in the mainland of China from a pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspective. Fieldwork has been carried out and data collected have been analyzed for the first time to study the application of Gu's Politeness Maxims critically in the mainland of China and the effect of social variables on the uses of the polite language forms. This study adopts a quantitative approach. Data are collected through questionnaires distributed among altogether 180 people with different educational backgrounds from different occupations and different ages.The paper investigates three maxims of Gu's Politeness Principle: the Self-denigration Maxim, the Address-term Maxim and the Refinement Maxim. In addition, the social variables affecting people's uses of polite language forms are also concerned. The results show that with the change of the situation home and abroad, the polite language forms in the mainland have changed: the polite expressions such as "biren (鄙人), bixing (鄙姓), xiaoer (小儿), shedi (舍弟), beizhi (卑职), bichang (敝厂). bixiao (敝校), linglang (令郎), lingdi (令弟), lingmei (令妹) and zunzhi (尊 职)" are seldom used by people in their daily face-to-face communication and so havebecome obsolete. "nin" (您) and "guixing" (贵姓) have become the basic polite expressions for common people. " laopo" (老婆) is no longer the address form for one's own wife to show one's self-denigration; it can be used to refer to other's wife when the social distance between the speaker and the interlocutor is very close. Respecting other people is still Chinese people's tradition, but we Chinese do not always denigrate ourselves. Influenced by the culture of the foreign country, modern Chinese people attach much importance to individuality and self-expression, so they do not always denigrate themselves when they are complimented. But the acceptance of the compliments from others depends on what is complimented and the social distance between the complimenting person and the complimented person. People do not always use self-referring words to express self-denigration and other-referring words to express their respect for others. Context plays a decisive role in determining the meaning of the referring words, "biaojie / biaoge" (表姐/表哥) are seldom used by people born in the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century with the change of our society and the adoption of the one-couple, one-child family-planning policy. People do not always use refined language forms in their daily face-to-face communication. Foul language forms are often used among people who have close relationship with each other to express solidarity.The paper consists of five chapters. First, a brief introduction is presented to the study of politeness phenomenon home and abroad. Then Gu's politeness theory is introduced. Chapter 3 is ascribed to dealing with aims of the study and methodological problems focusing on research methods and procedures of the investigation. In Chapter 4, detailed data analysis is made. Finally, a conclusion is drawn: The Self-denigration Maxim, the Address-term Maxim and the Refinement Maxim of Gu's Politeness Maxims do not conform to the linguistic realities in the mainland of China. Besides, the four variables (age, occupation, gender and education) considered in this study have an influence on the uses of polite language forms, and social distance and context play a significant role in whether people choose to speak politely or not.