earticle

영어

This paper investigates the pragmatic aspects of English polite expressions. As the communicative expressions of politeness may be different among countries, it is very important for Koreans to understand and acquire the correct polite expressions of English. The purposes of this paper are as follows. First, we review and find out what kinds of English polite expressions are and why they are regarded as polite. Second, we investigate what kinds of English polite expressions are treated in the Middle School English textbooks. Third, we explore the degree of the availability of pragmatics to explain the constructions concerning the polite expressions in the textbooks. Although we may think that English has very few polite expressions, there are many kinds of polite expressions. For example, they use direct, indirect, negative, and tag questions. And they change the verb forms to past and future tenses to distance from the immediate present reality and use progressives to make the expression sound more casual and less definite and something temporary and incomplete. They also express their opinions and intentions less directly (and therefore more politely) by using softening expressions like quite, kind of, I’ll think..., We’d like to.... Anyway the most important thing is to use the appropriate expressions which are neither too polite nor too rude according to the situation where you are.