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people‟s feelings. This is probable, according to my personal experience, that cultural
differences might make something acceptable in one culture unacceptable or even
offensive in another. This might help understand why some CSIs are used in a specific
context, for example, to indicate the speaker‟s emotion (e.g., jealous, anxiety or
contempt), which is also related to the study.
Chinese may be said to be situation-centred while Americans may be said to be
more individual-centred (Jandt, 2004). In other words, Chinese pay more attention what
they are expected to do in given contexts rather than what they want to do (Pan, 2000).
This lends support to the collectivistic nature of Chinese society. Another implication is
that in the analysis of politeness of Chinese people, situational factors should be
considered. In other words, factors such as age, gender, social roles and social settings,
should be considered as well (Pan, 2000). The behaviour patterns shown in a family
setting might be different from those in a workplace.
Pan (2000) carried out a survey among Chinese respondents and collected their
views toward different requestive strategies. 59% of respondents consider “please help
me to open the window” as polite, 17.8% take it as neutral and 23.2% associate this
with bold, rude strategies. Over half of the respondents considered “we‟ll open this
window” rude, 31.5% as neutral and 21.9% as polite. “Can I open the window for a
while” is preferred as the best alternative. 79.2% of respondents accepted it as “polite”.
It is therefore clear that in daily communication, Chinese tend to perceive indirect
requests as polite, instead of direct request. Lii (1986 cited in Pan, 1994) argues that
different from western countries, politeness is very often taken as an important approach
to avoid conflicts, China links politeness as the creation of harmony and mutual trust,
which is particularly evident in business settings and social settings. According to Lii
(1986 cited in Pan, 1994), Chinese value modesty and empathy. Americans by
comparison, are sometimes said to have a much stronger sense of self-expression. They
might enjoy disclosing their knowledge and expertise and expressing their personal
opinions. In contrast, Chinese prefer to keep humble and give opinions only when
receiving such a request. For example, a Chinese businessman might state that he does
not operate his business well and does not have expertise in business although he might
be driving a Porsche. This is not the true representation of his business. Instead, it is an
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