Politeness is such an important and universalphenomenon in human communication that a considerable number of scholars havedefined and researched on politeness. Lauded as the mother of modern politenesstheory, Rabin Lakoff formulated two rules of politeness in The Logic of Politeness: or, Minding Your P’s and Q’s: “be clear”and “be polite” as an integration and extension of Grice’s politeness maxims.Later, Geoffrey Leech put forward Politeness Principle in Principles of Pragmatics based on H.P.Grice’s Cooperative Principleto account for “why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean”. Inhis theory, six maxims were proposed to elaborate on the operation ofpoliteness in conversational exchanges: Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim,Approbation Maxim, Modesty Maxim, Agreement Maxim, and Sympathy Maxim. Besides,some contemporary linguists, such as Brown and Levinson, who introduced theFace-Saving view and Face Threatening Act, have brought to light the definition,meaning, and application of politeness and extended and modified the politenessprinciple. Given the shortcoming of anterior researches on politenessprinciple, the researches after 1990s become more universal and practical, suchas Arndt and Janney’s Supportive Face-work and Interpersonal Politeness andWatt’s Politeness View. Though the foreign researches on politeness principlehave been profuse on the whole, most scholars analyze and describe thelinguistic politeness in the framework of the two most influential linguists’theories: Leech’s and Brown and Levinson’s.

Owing to the late international approval ofpragmatics, home attention to the research on politeness principle within thescope of pragmatics is not much paid until 1980s. And most scholars in ourcountry mainly focus on the discussion and comment on Leech’s and Brown andLevinson’s politeness theory. The two representative domestic theories aboutpoliteness principle is Xu Shenghuan’s New Concept of Politeness Principle,including the stimulation of involved interlocutors and the implementation ofpolite strategies, and Gu Yueguo’s politeness principle, including fouraspects: respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth, and refinement, of whichthe latter is much more innovative and suitable to Chinese environment.

In the past 40 years, the researches on politenessprinciple have reaped a good harvest and gained a lot of ground home andabroad. However, within the information age, the forms and methods ofpoliteness have been renewed so great in many fields. But as the surveys show,a rather abundance of domestic researches on politeness principle has beenlimited to the study of its application of translation, English teaching, andbusiness letter writing, leading to the homogeneity of domestic targetedresearch, the scarcity of outstanding papers, substantive researches, freshviews and fruition. In addition, considering that politeness is ubiquitous inour daily communication and its pertinent research is scanty, the authorproposes that new perspectives of politeness research should be cultivated toanalyze the application of politeness in human communication, especially indaily communication, as a complement and extension to the developing politenessprinciple. Besides, by analyzing the application of politeness principle indaily communication in information age, it is also conducive to supply a gap oflimited topics about politeness principle and find out the lifestyle of modernpeople.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

Basic content:

Given the homogeneity of domestic researches onpoliteness principle and the sweeping application of politeness in our dailycommunication in the information age, the paper will probe into the development and application of politeness principle in daily life in the information age. It will make an overview ofliterature about politeness principle at first, then it will illustrate andexplain the new features, forms and methods of politeness principle in our dailycommunication with examples. At last, it will summarize and analyze the researchresults, point out our innovation and weakness in research, and suggestionswill be given.

Aims and objectives:

It aims to provide new perspectives of research onpoliteness principle, analyze new forms of politeness and instruct people tobetter apply politeness principle to interaction in order to achieve asuccessful communication and interpersonal relationship.

Methodology:

1. Consulting the relevant literature and materials to haveadequate knowledge of previous and current research on politeness principle andapplying flexibly the relevant materials to the research to base the paper onsolid theories.

2. Recording and analyzing the typical cases to induct the newfeatures, forms and methods of politeness principle.

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