A Case Study of Politeness in Conversations between Customers and Shop Assistants in China

Abstract
The study of the conversations between customers and shop assistants dates back to the 1950s when Mitchell started carrying out researches. Though Mitchell managed to portray and explain the process of buying and selling under groovy context by means of language, his model has yet to be widely applied. The realization of each step is completed by means of body language rather than typical linguistic feature. The transition between steps has no linguistic markers. Besides Mitchell's work in buying and selling language, few other studies have been found related to this topic at home and abroad. The existential study covers partial features of conversations between Chinese customers and shop assistants and a holistic research is needed. Through the discussion of the examples, this article analyzed customers and shop assistants' conversation structure and discussed realizations of politeness in the conversations. Politeness principle plays a significant role in conversations between Chinese customers and shop assistants. Customers and shop assistants need to pay attention to each other's face wants. As for customers, their positive face and negative face are not invariable during an interaction; therefore shop assistants have to be aware of the ch无忧论文 【http://www.uklunwen.com】anges of customers' face wants and employ politeness strategies to protect them. To protect the customers' negative faces, shop assistants will show reluctance of impingement, state the face threatening act as a general rule and reduce coercion. To protect the customers' positive face, shop assistants will use in-group identity markers token agreements, small talks and seek safe topics.
Keywords: politeness, conversations between customers and shop assistants, structural analysis, strategies

Table of Content
Abstract1
1. Introduction2
2. Relevant Theories in Literature3
2.1 Discourse Analysis3
2.2 Structural Analysis of Conversations between Chinese Customers and Shop Assistants5
2.3 Politeness principles-positive politeness and negative politeness7
3. Case Study: Realization of Politeness in Conversations between Chinese Customers and Shop Assistants8
3.1 Customers and Shop Assistants' Face Wants: Positive and Negative8
3.2 Strategies used to protect customers’ negative face8
3.3 Strategies used to protect customers’ positive face9
3.4 Strategies used to lessen face threatening force towards shop assistants9
4. Conclusion10
Bibliography11
Appendix12

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研究方向：My major is Intercultural Communication. 这个作业是Cognition, Communication and culture这门课的课程作业.<