Bloomsbury Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese: A Comparative Analysis

This book takes a comparative, diachronic perspective on Chinese politeness and its evolution up to the present day, linking diachronic and synchronic approaches. Kadar and Pan's exciting research compares traditional and contemporary Chinese polite communication norms and maps the similarities and differences between them. The approach is innovative, because whilst intercultural politeness has received considerable attention, intracultural comparative politeness is a neglected issue. Considering the importance of China on the world stage, this understanding of Chinese politeness norms is pivotal, to both experts of communication studies and those that have interactions with the Chinese community. The secondary objective of the book is to study the driving forces behind the large-scale diachronic formation of Chinese politeness norms. It takes a sociolinguistic approach to examining how social changes and changes in discursive practice lead to the change of politeness norms. The study will contribute to both politeness research and historical pragmatics by comparing traditional and contemporary Chinese politeness norms and analysing the driving force behind their diachronic shift. It will be invaluable to researchers and postgraduate students in the field of linguistics, in particular politeness research, pragmatics and historical pragmatics. It is clear, instructive and requires no prior knowledge of Chinese.