【正确答案】i. 1a), 2a) and 3a) are more polite because the speaker's thought is presented by use of these indirect expressions. According to Brown and Levinson and later Leech, indirect speech acts were more polite than direct ones because they minimize the degree of face threatening acts and thus save the hearers'face. Grice noticed that in daily conversations people do not usually say things directly but tend tO imply them. Therefore, in the first pair of sentences, 1a)"You could be more careful. " may be viewed as a suggestion or proposal for the hearer to be more careful, which implies 1b) "You weren't careful enough. " And the indirect expression in 1a) seems easier to be accepted. It is the same thing in the second pair of sentences. What the speaker wants to convey by using 2a) "Her performance was not so good as it might have been. " is 2b) "Her performance was quite poor. ", which sounds a bit difficult to be accepted by the hearer. Thus, we can say 2a) is more polite than 2b). In the last pair, in 3a) "I've tasted better apricots than these. ", the speaker may imply that" These apricots taste good, but I've ever tasted better ones. "or 3b) "These apricots taste awful". That's to say, 3a) can mean more than 3b). Thus 3a) is more polite than 3b).
ii. In the Chinese culture, politeness can be expressed by malay different means.
a)Politeness may be used to express politeness, such as “您”, “令尊/堂/fig/爱”, “高足”, etc. ; and derogatory or humble expressions describing the speaker's can be used to mean politeness, such as “犬子/女”, “拙荆”, “贱内”, “寒舍”, etc.
b)Politeness can be presented by using indirect speech acts which may indirectly convey the speaker's communicative intention. For example, indirect expression“你不戴眼镜的时候很漂 亮。”is more polite than its direct counterpart“你戴眼镜的时候很丑。”.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题考查礼貌及相关知识。礼貌是一种语用现象，这在语用学界已经成为人们的一种共识。礼貌通常被人们理解为说话人为了实现某一目的而采取的策略，比如增加或维护交际双方的和睦关系。它们包括一些常规礼貌策略，如本题给出的部分话语，其中包括间接性话语等。