2.2 Features of Politeness
He Zhaoxiong is a Chinese scholar, and he has figured out the features of politeness.” Politeness is phenomenal, instrumental, and normative by nature” (95). In terms of Gino Eelen’s idea, he` thinks politeness has some features, including (1) evaluativity, where he holds the view that politeness and impoliteness are related with social values and always evaluative in nature; (2) argumentativity, meaning it is always associated with situations where there is something to lose or gain; (3) politeness, where he thinks that every person believes himself and his cultural group as polite and others as impolite ; (4) normativity, which means that politeness is the outcome of social norms; (5) modality and reflexivity, meaning the optionality of polite interactional strategies for the actor (116). It is true that politeness is observable and evaluative as a universal social phenomenon. As for the people who are from a specific cultural context, they usually have a scale in their brain to estimate the behavior of themselves and others according to their own comprehension of politeness. Thus, it’s really necessary for us to grasp the distinction and differences of polite language between western and eastern countries. 中西文化中礼貌用语比较研究(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_39225.html