Abstract: Politeness is a sort of practical aim among people’s communication as well as an inner force of people’s speech acts. Polite languages are intimately associated with social cultures. This paper aims to make a study of the different principles of Chinese and English polite languages, the reasons of the differences, and the differences in their addressing, apologies, compliments and so on to disclose roundly the differences in politeness compared between Chinese and English, in the meantime to reveal the cultural origins of the differences, which can help people to avoid failures and conflicts in communication.

Key words: comparative study, Chinese, English, polite languages

摘要：礼貌是人们在交际中的一种现实目的，是人们言语行为的一种内在动因。礼貌用语与社会文化有着密切的关系。本选题拟通过对汉英礼貌用语的不同准则，其出现差异的原因及其在称呼语，道歉语，称赞语等方面的差异进行研究，更为全面深入地揭示汉英礼貌用语的差异及其社会文化根源，以帮助人们避免交流中失误或冲突的出现。

关键词：比较研究，汉语，英语，礼貌用语