Politeness, Cross-Cultural Communication and ELT

Politeness as a social phenomenon can be observed in all languages and cultures, but cultures vary in actual ways to realize politeness and also in the standards for its judgment. This paper attempts to make a comparison of politeness wording between English and Chinese from the following three respects: politeness and taboo, politeness and terms of address, politeness and compliment. From the results of the comparison, we can see that politeness is relative and culture -specific,and appropriateness should be regarded as the most important pragmatic principle of politeness. It is necessary to introduce into ELT the concept of politeness relevant to linguistic behavior and to lay much more emphasis upon the cultivation of students' politeness competence in cross-cultural communication so that they are able to master and apply communicative strategies appropriately and proficiently to avoid the possible occurrence of communicative conflicts . 