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Vol. 5, No. 6 Asian Social Science Cultural Differences of Politeness in English and Chinese Lu Yin Foreign Language Department, Hebei Polytechnic University Tangshan 063000, Hebei, China Tel: 86-315-229-8170 E-mail: wxx_1015@126.com Abstract Politeness, as a universal phenomenon in society, is a reflection of specific cultural values, which can be observed in all languages and cultures. This thesis attempts to make a comparative study of politeness behavior between English and Chinese on the contrastive analyses on such linguistic behaviors as addressing, greeting, complimenting. Owing to different beliefs and values, and different cultural backgrounds, these cultural differences of politeness are of great importance in cross-cultural communication. Therefore, in language class, such differences, especially those concerning the basic aspects of daily life, should be introduced to students, and this can be done in different activities effectively and efficiently. Keywords: Politeness, Cultural differences, Intercultural communication 1. Introduction For a long period of time, the focus of EFL class in China has been on grammatical knowledge and vocabulary. There has been great neglect about the teaching of using the foreign language appropriately. As a result, students are engaged in specific lexical and grammatical items, far from being equipped with sufficient knowledge, or rather, competence to communicate. However, the ability to communicate with native speakers is far more than to know the English grammatical system. Cultural differences are one of the main causes that give rise to pragmatic failures. Many teachers and linguists have realized the importance of cultural teaching and there i