Listeners' Recognition Of Politeness In Chinese Context

Politeness phenomena are universal in all languages but the connotation of politeness varies from culture to culture. Lakoff, who proposes that mere are two prior rules of pragmatic competence, initiates the pragmatic study of politeness."Be clear"and"Be polite". Brown and Levinson hold a face-saving view of politeness. According to them, to be polite is to save face, or to use redressive strategies to reduce the threat to face. Geoffrey Leech introduces his Politeness Principle(PP) in Principles of Pragmatics. He argues that politeness is realized by the observance of six maxims. The Politeness Principle is criticized both at home and abroad for the conflicts between its maxims, insufficient concern for the third party and insufficient consideration for situational and social constraints after the publication of Principles of Pragmatics. And Chinese linguists Gu Yueguo, Xu Shenghuan and Wang Jianhua put forth new theories of politeness in addition to some suggestions to revise the Politeness Principle, which make up the inadequacies of the Politeness Principle to some extent. However, due to the confinement of their angles of view, these theories only come down to partial factors that function in politeness phenomena Therefore, the inadequacies of the Politeness Principle remain unsolved.The author of the thesis tries to do a research on the applicability of Professor Gu Yueguo's politeness maxims(the self-denigration maxim, the address-term maxim and the refinement maxim) in the current Chinese context The study of the use of the polite language in the current Chinese context enriches the study of speech act, which has certain theoretical and practical significance in people's use and understanding of the polite language in daily life.The originality of the study lies in the following aspect. This thesis is devoted to exploring the applicability of Gu Yueguo's Politeness Principle from the hearers' view point, which is different from the previous study of this field. The hearers' recognition of the polite utterances is an important aspect in exploring the applicability of the polite maxims. The hearers' recognition is considered as an important standard by which the degree of polite utterances is judged. However, according to the survey this study has not been conducted in China and no doctoral dissertation and postgraduate thesis has touched upon this topic.Quantitative approach has been adopted in the study, which ensures the objectivity of the results. Investigation has been carried on and data collected have been analyzed to study the applicability of polite language in Chinese context. Data are collected through Questionnaires distributed among altogether 200 people from different walks of life(the family members of the students from Hefei Shouchun Middle school). The effect of the variables, such as gender, age and education background on the use of the polite language in daily communication has been analyzed in the thesis.And with detailed analysis the following conclusions have been drawn. People are more likely to accept the other-elevation referring words and address terms, while they are less likely to accept the self-denigration words and address terms. There are no significant differences in subjects of different genders, ages and education backgrounds. Besides, foul words have been used in people's daily communication and are considered neither polite nor impolite.This thesis comprises five chapters. Chapter one serves as a general introduction, including motivation of the study, approaches and objectives of the study. In Chapter two, previous study on politeness and politeness theories are discussed. Chapter three is ascribed to dealing with research methodology and procedures. Chapter four is concerned with the detailed analysis. In the last chapter, a conclusion is drawn and the significance and limitations of the research are stated.