Abstract:Politeness helps establish, maintain or consolidate harmonious interpersonal relationships. Politeness is a universal principle, which can be observed in all languages and cultures.While admitting the universality of politeness, we must realize the cultural characteristics of politeness. That is, due to the influence of cultural value orientations, the manifestations of politeness and the standards for its judgement vary substantially from culture to culture. Therefore, when people from different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other, they will have misunderstandings.This paper is based on a comparison of politeness theories both in English and in Chinese, attempts to examine the similarities and differences of politenss principles, to explore the deep reasons for the differences, and to put forward some strategies in the process of cross-cultural communication.

Key words: politeness, comparison, reason, strategy

摘要：礼貌有助于建立、维持和巩固和谐的人际关系。礼貌是各文化，各语言所共有的普遍现象。我们在承认礼貌的普遍性的同时，还必须认识到礼貌的文化特性。也就是说，由于文化价值的影响，表示礼貌的方式方法以及人们用于判断礼貌的标准会因文化而有所不同，因而不同文化背景的人在接触时，会遇到许多冲突和误会。因此本文要以东西方的礼貌理论对比为基础，试图探究英汉礼貌原则的异同，并探索差异的深层次原因，最后提出一些策略旨在最大程度上避免礼貌引起的语用失误。

关键词：礼貌，对比，原因，策略