Running Head: POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Politeness Across American and Chinese cultures

Mengzi Cai

Colorado State University

POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

E522
Pragmatic paper
Mengzi Cai
12/05/2018

Politeness Across American and Chinese cultures

Politeness

Under the process of globalization, there are overlaps from different areas which have
various cultures. Language is an important tool in interaction and it is worthwhile to do research
on language in different perspectives. Cross-cultural pragmatics provide a way for us to study the
usages of language in different cultures and languages. Cross-cultural pragmatics is based on the
research of specific aspects of language use, like speech acts, behavior patterns and language
behavior (Kecskes, 2017). According to AlFattah (2010), cross-cultural pragmatics help us to
strengthen our understanding of speech acts across cultures, which could lead to understanding in
international communication. What’s more, AlFatttah (2010) says:

“Interest in the cross-cultural phenomenon of politeness and the ways in which it is realized in
language usage has certainly grown since Brown and Levinson's seminal article in 1978.
Evidence for this is provided in the number of publications that have appeared on the subject
during the nineteen eighties, which include at least three special issues devoted to the topic in
international journals, and more particularly to the republication of the article in book form in
1987 with 254 pages introduction surveying research in the field, in the intervening nine-year
period.”

Brown and Levinson’s study of politeness uses the idea of a “model person”. This
“model person” can defend their own face when threatened and defend their own face to threaten
another’s face. Maintaining each other’s face is in the best interest of every participant. Because
it is impossible to completely avoid face threatening acts, Brown and Levinson devised a
politeness super strategy model. Following the greater and lesser risk to face, there are several
strategies for model persons.

2
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Estimation of risk to face

Greater

5. Don’t do the FTA

4. off record 3. Negative politeness

With redressive actions
Do the FTA 5. on record 2. Positive politeness
Without redressive action, baldly
Lesser

FTA strategies (taken from Archer, Aijmer, Wichmann 2012)

The assessment of model persons has three influential elements:1) the social distance
between the model person and the interlocutor. 2) the relative power of both the model person
and the interlocuter 3) the size of imposition in the cultural context. The act without redressive
action means to speak precisely and directly. For example, if there is an earthquake, the teacher
might say to the students “Get out of the classroom!”. This bald-on-record expression is usually
heard in an emergency situation. Model persons could use the redressive action if they consider
the risk to the other person’s face to be minimal.
Redressive action is divided into positive politeness and negative politeness. Positive
politeness means people want to be accepted for their thoughts or actions. The method of
applying positive politeness is to treat the hearer like a friend or a partner in the conversation.
Other methods are to focus on the hearer, exaggerate approval of the hearer, seek agreement but
avoid disagreement with the hearer, and to make common ground with the hearer. Negative
politeness means that people don’t like to be imposed on in their actions or talking. Therefore, if
the speaker wants to make a request, they should pay attention to this feature and speak as
thought to lessen the imposition the hearer. For instance, model persons could apologize for their
interruption. However, the politeness principle also is affected by three other elements: the social
distance, relative power, the size of the imposition. To this point, when model persons make an
easy request, they would use less negative politeness than if they want a difficult request.

3
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Off record actions tend to be indirect, which means the model persons don’t show their
intention directly or they could have more than one intention. If one student says to his/her friend
that “I forgot to bring my pen, but we have an exam later.” The speaker doesn’t make a clear
request, but it can be interpreted that he/she needs to borrow a pen for the test. Therefore, in
some situations in which the face maintenance is most important, the model persons would
choose not to do the face threatening actions（Archer, Aijmer& Wichmann, 2012）.
What’s more, there is another politeness model from Leech (1983). Leech (1983)
complements Grice’s (1975) Cooperation Principle. There are four categories of this principle:
quantity, quality, relation, and manner. Quantity is related to information which could be
provided which means that the speaker should make their contribution as informative as is
required but not more than required. Quality means that the speaker makes their contribution one
that is true. Quality has two more specific maxims that are the speaker shouldn’t say things that
they believe to be false and the speaker shouldn’t say things for which they lack adequate
evidence. Grice (1975) made another maxim- for the speaker to be relevant. The supermaxim of
the category of manner is the speaker should be perspicuous. The Maxim of Manner also says
that the speaker should avoid obscurity and ambiguity, while being brief and orderly. The rule of
the politeness principle is that speakers try to minimize the expression of impoliteness and
maximize the expression of politeness. Leech (1983) paid attention to the way speakers avoid
discord and seek concord in the communication. Under the politeness principle, the speaker
should minimize the cost or uncomfortable feeling to the hearer. The speaker should maximize
the cost to self and give the most comfortable feeling to the hearer. More precisely, there are
three pragmatic scales. One is the cost-benefit scale, the second is the optionality scale and the
third is the indirectness scale. There are some strategies of the politeness principle.
• Tact maxim: minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other
• Generosity maxim: minimize benefit to self; maximize cost to self
• Approbation maxim: minimize dispraise of other; maximize praise of other
• Modesty maxim: minimize praise of self; maximize dispraise of self
• Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and other; maximize
agreement between self and other
• Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy
between self and other
Leech also pointed out that indirectness and optionality often work together because indirectness,
such as using the interrogative and could increase the degree of optionality for the hearer.
However, Archer, Aijmer& Wichmann (2012) indicated that there might be some argument that
combining indirectness with politeness because they thought that directness in a specific context
could be polite in present-day English.

Impoliteness

4
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Archer, Aijmer& Wichmann (2012) pointed out that Leech was interested in impoliteness
in his later work. The study of his politeness maxims could be used to analyze examples when
interlocutors obey the politeness principle. Bousfield gave the explanation that:
“We may be able to say that Leech’s PP maxims, or constraints, can be violated (covertly
broken), flouted (overtly broken), infringed, suspended or opted out of… intentional linguistic
impoliteness [would] occur at the level where one (or more) of Leech’s PP maxims is
flouted…[in order] to generate an impolite implicature. Accidental offences…would …occur at
the ‘infringement’ level. Emergency or other urgent situations would entail the suspension of the
PP (cf. bald-on-record…), and opting out of the PP would encompass those situations where
people choose to stay silent when politeness might otherwise have been expected…or
where…stated politeness may be considered to be offensive to the recipient (cf. don’t do the
FTA…)” (Archer, Aijmer& Wichmann,2012,p.90).

Culpeper (1996) focused on impoliteness. There is little research was conducted on the
topic of communicative strategy in impolite manner but in the opposite orientation, Culpeper (1996)
studied what would attack the faces of interlocutors and found three main directions: inherent
impoliteness, mock impoliteness and contextual factors which are related to impoliteness. Firstly,
Culpeper mentioned relative politeness and absolute politeness of Leech’s (1983) study and face
threatening actions raised by Brown and Levinson (1987). The differentiation between these two
concepts are whether politeness is independent from context. According to Leech (2007), there are
two kind of politeness scales. Absolute politeness scale means that interlocutors don’t use the
politeness principle but using another way of politeness. He gave one example: it is more polite if
someone asks “Could you help me?” than if someone uses the imperative like Help me. The reason
is that if a request provides more options for the hearer, it would be politer. The other scale is
relative politeness which is connected to the specific context or situation. For example, if the
relationship between the speaker and hearer is close, the utterance like “Could I possibly interrupt?”
would be regarded as too polite. Therefore, the relative politeness could be seen as overpoliteness
in some situations. Based on these studies, some utterances might be inherently polite while some
are inherently impolite. However, the argument is raised by Fraser and Nolan (1981) that the
expressions which are regarded as impolite are not because of the words themselves but the
specific situation that causes it. In other words, under different conditions, we might have different
judgements of the politeness and impoliteness. Culpeper (1996) held the opinion that the notion of
inherent impoliteness which is not affected by the context is for a minority of actions. For instance,
some actions which are considered to be anti-social activity in common sense, such as picking
one’s nose or ears. What’s more, he also stated that: “An inherently impolite act does not involve
virtual or potential offence.” (Culpeper, 1996, p.351).
Mock impoliteness is an expression which could be raised between people who have a
close relationship. This phenomenon could be interpreted through the Banter Principle from Leech.
The explanation is that in order to show solidarity with the hearer, the speaker would say a word
which is impolite but clearly untrue in that context and Leech argued that the more intimate a

5
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

relationship, the less necessary and important politeness is. Based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987)
FTA strategies, Culpeper (1996) came up with some impoliteness strategies which are opposite to
supporting face. This is attacking face.
• Bald on record impoliteness: It would be a politeness strategy and appears generally in an
emergency situation where the face threat is small. In addition, the speaker has no intention to
attack the face of the hearer, e.g. “Watch out!”
• Positive impoliteness: To attack the hearer’s positive face wants,
e.g. using the derogatory terms to call another names.
• Negative impoliteness: To attack the hearer’s negative face wants,
e.g. interrupt the conversation.
• Sarcasm or mock politeness: could be described as irony which is opposite to social harmony
and is indirect. However, Culpeper used the word sarcasm instead of irony because irony could
be used for enjoyment but this impoliteness strategy is not related to the social harmony, e.g.
“Well, this day was a total waste of dressing up.”
•Withhold politeness: withhold the politeness strategy deliberately.
e.g. don’t say “thank you” if you ask someone for help or don’t say “sorry” if you interrupt and
cause trouble to someone else.
Culpeper (1996) identified the positive impoliteness output strategies and negative
impoliteness output strategies. The positive impoliteness output strategies are：
“• Ignore, snub the other - fail to acknowledge the other’s presence.
• Exclude the other from an activity.
• Disassociate from the other - for example, deny association or common ground with other;
avoid sitting together.
• Be disinterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic.
• Use inappropriate identity markers - for example, use title and surname when a close
relationship pertains, or a nickname when a distant relationship pertains.
• Use obscure or secretive language - for example, mystify the other with jargon, or use a code
known to others in the group, but not the target.
• Seek disagreement-select a sensitive topic”. (Culpeper, 1996, p.357)
Negative impoliteness output strategies are：
“• Frighten - instill a belief that action detrimental to the other will occur.
• Condescend, scorn or ridicule- emphasize your relative power. Be contemptuous.
• Do not treat the other seriously. Belittle the other (e.g. use diminutives)
• Invade the other’s space - literally (e.g. position yourself closer to the other than the
relationship permits) or metaphorically (e.g. ask for or speak about information which is too
intimate given the relationship).
• Explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect - personalize, use the pronouns I and you.
• Put the other’s indebtedness on record.” (Culpeper, 1996, p. 357-358).

6
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

In the next section, I will focus on the politeness and impoliteness in different identities
and try to use the models or principles introduced above to explain the different uses of
politeness and impoliteness. Moreover, I will use different examples from China, other Asian
countries and America.

Gender Identity of Politeness

Lakoff (1973) pointed out that the marginality and powerlessness of women could affect
women’s speech. There are some differences between women’s and men’s speech. Recently, the
differences between the language use of men and the language use of women have become one
popular topic for research. Politeness is an important feature in social communication, thus the
different usages of cross-gender politeness would be one vital area of study in pragmatics.
Lakoff (1973) argued that the appropriate way for women to speak is to avoid strong expression
of feeling. Women also prefer to choose the expression of uncertainty and means of expression
which are elaborated. Lakoff’s beliefs and stereotypes about differences in the way of being
polite between men and women in daily conversations is the basis of research. Then
Montgomery (1998) concludes that women tend to have more polite speech than men.

Not only do the differences exist, but they also appear to exist across cultures. The
research from Keikhaie & Mozaffari (2013) made the conclusion that people would use different
politeness to female and male. The research is taken among the native speakers of Kermanshah.
The authors concluded the patterns the participants will use in their apologies: “1. Expressing
sorrow that can be in long utterances or short ones such as saying just sorry. Using long
utterances for apologizing is the indication of a more polite way to express the sorrow. 2.
Explaining the reason of their faults. 3. Offering compensation.” One interesting finding is that
females would use different politeness patterns when they are speaking with male strangers and
female strangers. The example of female responses to the male strangers is that：
“Vay bebæxšid patono leh kærdæm, xeili šærmændeh, hævasæm nabod
( Excuse me; I stepped on your foot. I am so sorry, my mind was elsewhere.)
The example of female responses to female strangers：
Šærmænde xanom.”
（ I am sorry lady.）(Keikhaie & Mozaffari, 2013)

This shows that female speakers will use more words to express their sorrows and they also
explain more reasons when they respond to the male strangers than female strangers. The social
distance between the listener and speaker causes the change of the politeness strategies.

The gender differences in the politeness strategies also exist in Chinese. The first point is
the intonation. Compared to males, females tend to have a general higher pitch and weaker sound
intensity to make the words more acceptable (Guo, 2017). Females have advantage on the

7
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

manner of articulation than males because female tend to have a more precise articulation than
male in Mandarin. It is similar to the example in Kermanshah, the prosody of intonation is
mentioned in Archer, Aijmer& Wichmann’s study (2012). Important function of intonation is to
convey the speaker’s attitudes and emotion. The second aspect is the word usage. According to
Guo (2017), females would use more implicit expression. For example, when people want to
make request in China, females use the word Nengfou, which will change the sentence to the
interrogative, more frequently than males. Males prefer to use direct request and point out what
they thought in Chinese. For instance, they will use imperative, like Na shui guo lai, which
means “Give me the water”. Females use implicit expression which could provide optionality to
the hearer, so the request seems to be more polite and receptible. However, the request made
from the male is rude by contrast with the implicit requirement. In ancient China, men had higher
status than women. Social distance existed between males and females. Males made demands to
females and females rarely had social status. It might cause some differences in the language use
between males and females in China currently. However, as the ideology of equality developed,
the implicit request changed to be a polite pattern because it is more acceptable.

Japan has similar culture to China. The usage of honorifics is different based on gender.
Japanese honorifics could be regarded similarly to the English title prefix, like Mrs or Mr.
However, the honorifics in Japanese are suffixes which are used at the end of a name and other
labels (Dais, 2015). Honorifics show the manner of respect and modesty to hearers. Women in
Japan use honorifics more frequently than men and wives would use more frequent honorifics
than their husbands (Liu & Zhang, 2015). It appears to be similar to the study of form of address
to some extent. “An interesting linguistic phenomenon that has pragmatic consequences is the
address form. This can include the use of first name or last name with a title (John/Susan or
Mr/Mrs/Ms/Dr/Professor Smith).” (Archer, Aijmer& Wichmann, 2012, pp.112). They also
mentioned that “the main problem is that if there is any violation of a norm in form of address,
whether in the choice of V or T, in the use of family or given names, or in any other form
(Madam, Sir, mate, my dear) ‘the meaning of the act will be sought in the attitude or emotion of
the speaker’(Brown and Gilman, 1960)’.” Honorifics show respectful attitude and modest
emotion for the addressee.

The Differences of Politeness Principle in Chinese culture

In pragmatics, the politeness principle in Chinese is from Gu (1992). And his politeness
principle can be used generally in China. He came up with five principles of politeness. The first
principle is similar to the Modesty Maxim from Leech. This principle could appear in the many
ways. For example, when some people have to use the pronoun to call themselves, they would
use Biren which has the meaning of I but it is in a lower rank than the hearer. If he/she has to use
a pronoun to call someone else, they would use Nin which play a same function of Ni (you) but
the usage of Nin raises the rank of the hearer more than speaker. This strategy is to maximize the
rank or respectful status of others but minimize the rank and status of self. The hierarchy was

8
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

important in ancient Chinese culture but it still has influence on politeness currently. It could be
shown in the hierarchy of social position, age and relationship. The vocative for people in
different hierarchies is the second principle. For example, if students want to call to the teacher,
they cannot call the full name of the teacher and they should use the pattern of last name
+teacher. This is similar to the honorifics. In addition, if someone has several roles, then they
have different vocatives. For instance, a man could be father in the family but a teacher in the
school. The boy is his son in the family but a student in the school. The reference would be
changed according to the situation. Therefore, the son should call his father “last name +
teacher” when they are at the school and “dad” when they are at home. The third principle is
using a polite word instead of a rude word. People should use the polite pattern and words rather
than rude words. Gundan means “get out!” but it uses the rude word. In this principle, we should
avoid such rude words. Moreover, implicit sentences should be used to avoid unpleasant or
uncomfortable feeling of the hearer. The next principle is the face threatening and agreement
principle. The speaker should meet the positive face desires and maximize the agreement
between the speaker and the hearer. However, if it is necessary to raise the opinion or suggestion
in a conversation, the speaker should try to figure out the advantage of the hearer firstly, then
come up with the suggestion in modest manner. The last principle is minimizing the cost of other
and praise of attribution from self but maximizing the benefit for other and praise of attribution
from other.

Leech’s (1983) theory has similar opinions with Gu’s (1992) study which is based on
Chinese culture. However, there are some differences between these two cultures. For instance,
lowering the speaker’s rank or using self for mocking is a pattern of showing modesty in Chinese
culture but it doesn’t work in American culture. The vocative like Ayi (aunt), Yeye (grandpa) or
Shushu (uncle) could be used to be both T-form and V-form in China. This means not only can
these vocatives be used to address family members, but also they could be used to address
strangers. These vocatives also could be a mark of respect to someone else. However, in Western
culture, these vocatives would not be used to address people who don’t have that relationship
with the speaker.

Based on Liu & Yang (2013) list of the differences of politeness between Chinese culture
and Western culture and opinions from my friends who are in Western Culture:
1) Expressing thanks to others: “Thank you” is a frequently used in English communications
while it is also a common usage in Chinese. However, in Chinese culture, hierarchy is an
important social rule for Chinese society. In other words, lower rank people need to help
people of a higher rank. In addition, family members have to cooperate thus they rarely
say thank you to each other. People in Western countries accept the ideology of equality
and they don’t think it is necessary to help someone who has equal or higher status, so
people in Western countries prefer to use thank you when someone offers to help them.
Because of this reason, Chinese people generally respond to the hearer with “Buyong Xie,

9
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Zhe shi Yinggai De” (No thanks, this is my job) when they receive someone’s thanks,
while people in Western countries would likely say “You are welcome. It’s my pleasure”.
2) Responding to praise：People in Western culture think that it is impolite to refuse
another’s praise. They will receive the praise and say their thanks for the praise.
However, Chinese people would refuse or negate the praise from someone to show
modesty. For example, if one Chinese student is given the compliment that “You sing
well”, he/she would say “Meiyou, Meiyou, Wo Chang De Buhao” (No, I am not good at
singing).
3) Referring to someone (vocative): In America, people prefer to call the name of others
directly even if they are in different ranks but in most of Eastern countries, honorifics
would be used instead of calling the person by their full name. For example, in China,
University students refer to their teachers by their last name and the title “teacher”. In
Western countries, University students may refer to their teachers by their first names.

Liu & Yang (2013) also analyze the reason of the differences between these two cultures. It is
important to combine the politeness principle and the context. Social culture could be one type of
context. For example, the traditional culture of China is different from the culture of equality in
Western countries. Therefore, the strategy of politeness is not the same in these two cultures.
Chinese people have different determinations of positive face and negative face. Negative face
means that people hope that their actions will not be interfered with, that is, they have freedom to
do what they want and not be imposed on by others. Any speech act that violates the
communicator's freedom is an infringement on the communicator's negative face. Positive face
means that every member of society wants his/her desire to be obeyed and his/her behavior to be
appreciated and approved by others. Western culture focuses on freedom and individualism thus
the negative face receives greater attention by people who are in Western culture. However, the
unimpeded actions seem to be not as important. Negative face is not a vital judgement of
impoliteness in Chinese culture. For instance, if a teacher interrupts a student’s utterance, this
behavior would not be regarded as impolite in a Chinese classroom.

Cai (2006) stated that in the communication across cultures, if the cultures are totally
different, it is impossible for them to communicate with each other if they stick to their own
politeness values. Only by grasping the common points of politeness in the two cultures and
understanding their good intentions from the other's perspective, can communication be carried
out successfully. That is to say, we should try to identify with the cultural atmosphere and try to
use the cultural politeness standards. In intercultural communication, it may be the most effective
positive politeness strategy to get to know the other’s culture and hopefully lead to a successful
communication.

10
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Conclusion

This paper is an overview of the typical politeness and impoliteness models and
strategies. Based on these theories, this paper focuses on the politeness phenomenon across the
cultures of China and Western countries. Finally, the paper put emphasis on the comparison of
the politeness principle in Chinese and the politeness principle in Western culture. One important
point should be clarified is that Chinese culture and Western culture which are discussed in this
paper are general concepts, which means that I focus on the both general characters of Chinese
and Western cultures but the specialties of different parts of China and different countries in
Western in cultures do exist.

The politeness principle of Brown and Levinson (1987) is based on face threatening
actions and Leech’s (1983) study focuses on avoiding discord and seeking concord in
communication. The impoliteness principle is based on the politeness principle but violates the
politeness strategies. What’s more, Culpeper (1996) came up with the idea of inherent
impoliteness, mock impoliteness and some impoliteness strategies. The strategies include the
threats to positive face and negative face. Gender difference is an important point in the
politeness across the cultures. Because of the different cultures, which are mostly social
strategies, people have different ways to communicates with males and females. Moreover,
females tend to use the polite pattern when they talk to others. This paper introduces different
politeness patterns in three distinct cultures: Iran, China, and America. Lastly, this paper shows
the Chinese politeness principles which are based on the traditional Chinese culture. In addition,
this paper explains the differences of politeness between Eastern and Western cultures and
reasons for these differences. The strategy of solving the different politeness principles when we
have intercultural communication is to try to understand the politeness influences in each culture.

11
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

References

AlFattah, M. H. A. (2010). Politeness Strategies Across Cultures. Language in India, 10(9),

238–254.

Archer,D., Aijmer, K. , &Wichmann, A. (2012). Pragmatics, facework and im/politeness. In

Candlin, C. N. & Carter, R. (Ed.), Pragmatic: An advanced resource book for students
(pp.84-94). New York: Routledge Applied Linguistics.

Archer,D., Aijmer, K. , &Wichmann, A. (2012). Prosody: intonation. In Candlin, C. N. & Carter,

R. (Ed.), Pragmatic: An advanced resource book for students (pp.217-224). New York:
Routledge Applied Linguistics.

Archer,D., Aijmer, K. , &Wichmann, A. (2012).. In Candlin, C. N. & Carter, R. (Ed.), Cross-

cultural pragmatics. Pragmatic: An advanced resource book for students (pp.110-116).
New York: Routledge Applied Linguistics.

Cai, X. Z.(2006). Cultural Differences between Chinese and Western Politeness Principle cross-
culture under pragmatic analysis. Journal of Lanzhou University 25(2),117-120

Culpeper, J. (1996). Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996), 349-

367

Dais, J. (2015, July 20). Japanese Honorifics: Formal &Informal Name Suffies. Retrieved from
https://takelessons.com/blog/japanese-honorifics-z05

Essays, UK. (2013, November). Gender Differences In Politeness. Retrieved from

https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-language/gender-differences-in-politeness-in-
daily-conversations-english-language-essay.php?vref=1

Fraser, B. & Nolen, W. (1981). The association of deference with linguistic form. Intl. J. Soc.
Lang 27 (1981), 93-109

Gu, Y. G. (1992). Politeness, pragmatics, and culture. Foreign language teaching and research 4

Guo, W. Y. (2017, April 17). The differences of communications cross-gender. Retrieved from
http://www.bfwx.org/a/yishu/yj/2017/0414/6705.html
http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697960.001.0001/oxf
ordhb- 9780199697960-e-29.

12
POLITENESS ACROSS AMERICAN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Kecskes, I. (2017). Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics. The Oxford Handbook of

Pragmatics. : Oxford University Press,. Retrieved from
Keikhaie, Y. & Mozaffai, Z. (2013). A Socio-linguistic Survey on Females’ Politeness Strategies
in the Same Gender and in the Cross-Gender Relationship. Iranian Journal of Applied
Language Studies 5(2), 51-82

Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman’s place. Language in Society 2, 45-80

Leech, G. (1983). Principle of Pragmatics. London: Longman

Leech, G. (2007). Politeness: Is there an East-West Divide? Journal of Foreign Languages 6, 1-

30

Liu, K. H. & Zhang, C. (2015). The research on the usage of Japanese cross-gender. Aichi
University Chinese and Japanese Dictionary Compilation Institute 5, 91-98

Liu, L. H. & Yang. L. (2013). Differences in polite speeches and behaviors between east and
west and its influence factors. Journal of human agriculture university 14(5), 86-89

Montogomery, M.B. (1998). Multiple modals in LAGS and LAMSAS in from the Gulf States
and beyond: The legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama.

13