Politeness in Restaurants of Different Grades

Xiamei PENG

Abstract


Based on the politeness theories proposed by Brown and Levinson, by Leech, and by Gu, this article tries to explore how environment affects waiters/waitresses and their language and behavior. A qualitative approach is taken in the research to analyze the data collected by the author. After a careful comparison of the language and behavior of waiters/waitresses, a conclusion can be drawn that environment plays a crucial role in the using of different strategies in the restaurants of different grades—middle-grade restaurants tend to use negative politeness strategies, whereas low- grade ones positive politeness strategies. Furthermore, the author wants to emphasize the importance of using different politeness strategies to explain the politeness phenomena in different environments.

Keywords


Politeness theory; Environment; Language and behavior; Pliteness strategies

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n

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