A Sociolinguistic Study Of The Politeness Phenomena In Cape No.7

As a universally social phenomenon,politeness varies from culture to culture and each region features it with strong ethnic,local and age flavor.Therefore,the study of politeness language in a certain culture also emerges continuously.Among all the relevant politeness studies,Leech's politeness principle and Brown and Levinson's face theory are widely used to analyze literary texts,however,it is seldom used to interpret the politeness phenomena in Chinese movie.Therefore,the present study attempts to examine the politeness language in the movie Cape No.7and the behind politeness culture.On February 14,2009,the movie Cape No.7 created a new record of Taiwan film.As a movie with local flavor,it is the result of the localization of Taiwanese culture.The dialogues in the movie sound like the conversations in the real life in the town of southern part of Taiwan .Besides,the varied behaviors of the characters and the rich conversations reflect the unique culture of the town in the southern part of Taiwan as well as the harmony among the ethnic groups.Ma Yingjiu,"the previous president of Taiwan" once said that Cape No.7 can serve as a basis for mainland Chinese to have a glimpse of the lives of the Taiwanese grassroots,even the majority of Taiwanese.Therefore,it is convinced that the movie Cape No.7 can be regarded as an invaluable data source for studying politeness culture unique to Taiwan.Taiwan region is an inalienable part of China,but it remains separated with China since1949 due to historical reasons.Therefore,it deserves more thinking whether Taiwanese subculture is closely related to traditional Chinese culture or there exists great difference.This article takes dialogues in the movie Cape No.7 as the research corpus to focus on the politeness language of the town of Hengchun in the southern part of China which is a representation of Taiwanese culture so as to find out the relationship between Taiwanese culture and traditional Chinese culture.Basing on Brown and Levinson's face theory and politeness strategies,thisarticle displays the politeness strategies used by people from different age,gender and social status in the movie.After calculating the frequency of each politeness strategies employed,it is found that the town of Hengchun in the southern part of Taiwan has formed its own unique politeness culture due to the long separation with China and other historical reasons.Aside from the influence of social factors such as power,social distance and gender,it is believed that the traditional Chinese culture plays a vital role in developing the unique Taiwanese politeness culture which reflects Taiwan's allegiance to traditional Chinese culture.