Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese

Cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness: A study of impoliteness events reported by students in England, China, Finland, Germany and Turkey

“…One is the long-standing influence of Confucianism in Chinese culture, something which other scholars have noted and discussed (e.g. Scollon and Scollon 2001 (Hwang 1987;Gu 1990;Spencer-Oatey 2002). This is shown in Chinese expressions like tou tao bao li ["if one gives you a peach, you should requite his favour with a plum"] and di shui zhi en yong yuan xiang bao ["If you have received a drop of beneficence from other people, you should return to them a fountain of beneficence"].…”

“…For instance, Brown and Levinson's (1987) notion of face has been criticised for being biased towards an individualistic perspective, and one that cannot adequately account for the group dynamics of at least some "non-Western" cultures (cf. Matsumoto 1988;Gu 1990;Nyowe 1992;Mao 1994). In our view, it makes sense to put notions that may assist in understanding how impoliteness works to the cross-cultural test as a matter of priority, the objective being to let the mechanisms of variation help define impoliteness, rather than let a definition of impoliteness obscure variation.…”

Conversational Maxim View of Politeness: Focus on Politeness Implicatures Raised in Performing Persian Offers and Invitations

“…Based on the previous works (Gu, 1990; Pfister, 2010), we hypothesized that using both direct and indirect invitations and offers give rise to implicatures in Persian. Therefore the researchers identified both direct and indirect offers and invitations.…”

“…B&L's claim about correspondence of indirectness (violation of CP) and politeness in giving rise to politeness implicature is criticized by other scholars such as Gu (1990). He argues that formulaic entreaties like excuse/ forgive/ pardon me in which bald on-record strategies (in which indirectness are absent) are regarded as polite utterances in Chinese.…”

On historical Chinese apology and its strategic application

“…Historical Chinese apology (henceforth HCA), however, has remained a regrettably understudied topic. Although some attempts have been made to study Chinese apology, e. g., Gu (1990) and Mao (1994) (and Li and Okumura 2000 for apology in intercultural contexts), these do not usually involve historical Chinese culture in their analysis. Nevertheless, HCA deserves attention because its study can reveal much about how apology works in a hierarchical and considerably closed society.…”