1。 Introduction

 With the rapid development of society the communication between people of different cultures is becoming more and more necessary。 During a communication the politeness principles are part and parcel。 In modern age people have stronger self-esteem and call for more respect which in turn require more politeness。 The issue of politeness refers to almost every aspect of society。 Politeness means the spirit and behavior of interpersonal harmony and your respect and friendliness toward others。 Being polite is a discipline used to deal with interpersonal relationships and is a routine observed by all in daily social intercourses。 For a person it is the outer manifestation of one’s level of ethics and culture and ability of social intercourses。 As is known to all politeness principles are of great importance in daily life。 Although the use of politeness is a common phenomenon in daily communication, politeness principles of different culture have different focuses and explanation。 There is existing many a differences of the politeness principles in Chinese and English as a result of which the pragmatic discrepancies is ineluctable。 When people from different culture communicate, it is difficult to achieve mutual-understanding if not knowing the pragmatic discrepancies。 To avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and make a successful cross-cultural communication, it is supposed to get to acquire some knowledge of the different principles of politeness in Chinese and in English and their pragmatic discrepancies。 The knowledge can help people know more about other countries’ culture as well as that of their nation。论文网

2。 Literature Review

In the 1950s, Erving Goffman, American scholar, pointed out the face behavior theory and formed modes of politeness。 In 1960s, on the basis of the theory of verbal behavior of Austin and Searle, Grice, American philosopher, came up with Conversational Cooperative Principle involving four maxims。 After that aiming at the behavior of people who deliberately violate a certain maxim in the conversation, Grice added the conversational implicature。 However Grice’s Conversational Cooperative Principle and conversational implicature still can not offer an reasonable explanation of the meaning of language itself and the power of language。 Leech, English linguist, classified pragmatic principles into interpersonal rhetoric and textual rhetoric。 The politeness principle he put forward falls into interpersonal rhetoric and has six maxims。 GuYueguo, Chinese linguist, pointed out five politeness principles to confine Chinese verbal behavior。 The politeness principles of Grice and GuYueguo are both generalizations of manners of man’s verbal behavior and are both other-oriented。 Although they have some similarities, the discrepancies is not negligible。 It is of great importance to know their differences in order to make a successful intercultural conversation。文献综述

3。The Politeness Principles in English

In 1980s, on the basis of cooperative principle, Leech, renowned English linguist, came up with the famous politeness principle from rhetorical and pragmatic perspective which is also the major point of the paper。 In general, the principle suggests the minimum of impolite belief and the maximum of polite belief under other same conditions。 These maxims can help explain why some utterances are more acceptable than others。 Leech’s politeness principles fall into six parts each of which has two maxims。