论礼貌在间接言语行为中的体现.doc

On Politeness in Indirect Speech ActsAbstractIndirect speech act is a very common phenomenon in the use of language. When people choose indirect, euphemistic way in interpersonal communication rather than expressing themselves directly, language is used indirectly. Indirect speech act is not only a lingual phenomenon, but also reflects culture. Indirect speech can help avoid hurting the other partys feeling. When being used appropriately, indirect speech can also make communication more polite. On the basis of Austins Speech Act Theory, this thesis tries to analyze the features of indirect speech, explain the motivation and purposes of people using it, and discuss the linguistic effects it can achieve. Then, from the perspective of Leechs Politeness Principle, this paper defines what politeness is, and on what felicity conditions can politeness be achieved. Moreover, Face Theory is also mentioned to help better understand the different expressions of politeness in different cultures. So to understand the implied meaning of indirect speech acts, in a wish to better adapt Politeness Principle through indirect speech acts, and then to promote communication, this thesis firstly analyzes indirect speech acts and politeness respectively, and then probes the relations between them.KEY WORDS: Speech act theory; politeness; politeness principle论礼貌在间接言语中的体现摘要间接言语行为是语言使用中一种常见的现象，即指人们不是直接地表达自己所要表达的思想，而是通过间接，委婉的方式来实现人际沟通。间接言语行为不仅是一种语言现象，更体现着文化。它能有效避免直接言语行为会对另一方造成的可能的伤害。如果使用得当，间接言语行为也能使会话更为礼貌。本文在奥斯汀言语行为理论的基础上，分析了间接言语行为的特征，解释了人们之所以使用间接言语行为的动机和目的，探讨了间接言语行为的语用功能。接着，又从利奇礼貌原则的角度解释了什么是礼貌，在怎样的适切条件才能达到礼貌的目的。为了帮助理解礼貌在不同文化中不同的表现方式，文章对面子理论也稍作浅析。 本文通过分析间接言语行为与礼貌原则，探讨了两者之间的关系，以及如何更好地通过间接言语行为应用礼貌原则。关键词：言语行为理论；礼貌；礼貌原则ii181. Introduction In daily communication, politeness is seen as a behavioral pattern to save others face. To strangers, politeness shows respect; to acquaintances, politeness shows friendliness. Politeness is an important skill in interpersonal communication. It reflects a persons comprehensive quality, embodies his communicative skill and strain capacity, and reveals his being well-educated and elegant. Politeness also smoothes interpersonal relationship: people greet each other, behave appropriately in public places, and build harmony relationships between families, friends, co-workers and superiors. Politeness regulates not only verbal communication, but also non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication mainly refers to attitudes, actions, gestures, expressions and so on. While in verbal communication, people tend to express themselves implicitly, in order to be polite. Politeness exists in all languages. It reminds people of taking others feeling into consideration so that they will cautiously behave in communication. Grice proposed Cooperative Principle for conversation to carry on smoothly. However, in real-life communication, people break Cooperative Principle intentionally out of certain needs. To explain why people choose indirect ways over direct ones, Leech came up with Politeness Principle. Politeness, as a standard of behavior, protects and promotes harmonious interpersonal relations. Indirect speech is generally used to express oneself implicitly and ultimately achieve the goal of being polite. According to Speech Act Theory, direct speech act performs its real intention through the literal meaning; while indirect speech acts cause effects beyond the literal meaning. “Indirectness occurs when the sense does not coincide with the reference.” (Thomas, 1995). Under certain contextual conditions, utterance meaning is not merely the summation of vocabulary meaning. Moreover, utterance meaning is separated from the sentence meaning in indirect speech acts. Now with the development of human civilization and material life, greater importance has been attached to indirectness and politeness in daily communication. If being used correctly and appropriately, indirect speech act can remarkably promote communication. It can make conversation more polite, save both parties faces, and skillfully avoid words that may cause displeasure, misunderstanding, or embarrassment. In a modern society, indirect speech act has become an important standard whether a person has good communicative skills, strain capacity, and elegance. People who can subtly use indirectness are considered more polite and are therefore more popular. This thesis will analyze indirect speech act from the perspective of politeness and it consists of five chapters. Chapter one introduces the research background, and the importance of doing this research. Chapter two analyzes indirect speech act from its classifications, the motivations why people adopt it in communication and its linguistic functions. Chapter three introduces the definition of politeness, the felicity conditions for politeness to be achieved, as well as Face Theory. Chapter four makes a comparison between directness and politeness, probes the relationship between them, analyzing the factors that may influence the application of indirectness when trying to achieve politeness. Chapter five summarizes the relationship between indirect speech act and politeness, in order that readers can have a overall understanding and therefore better apply indirect speech act to achieve the purpose of politeness.2. Analysis of Indirectness2.1 Definition and Features of Indirect Speech ActsTraditional grammar divides sentences into three categories, declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives, respectively to state, quest, and plead. Actually from the point of view of application, such division cannot display the practical functions of sentences. Declaratives are usually used to state, warn, report, or order according to different contexts and out of different purposes. Linguists dont consider speech acts as the form of sentence, but a method for the speaker to perform a certain act.English philosopher J. Austin was the founder of speech act theory. According to his theory, the speaker may perform three kinds of acts when speaking: locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary. Locutionary act is the act of speaking out words, phrases and clauses. It conveys literal meaning through syntactic, vocabulary, and morphemes. Illocutionary act is the act to show the speakers intention. Perlocutionary act is the act performed after the speech, or caused by the speech. Though his divisions of speech acts were not widely accepted, it provided a new perspective to do language research, which is the relationship between the forms and the functions of language. Searle proposed indirect speech act in 1975. “One illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another are indirect speech act.”(John Searle,1979) Indirect speech acts have different features, including lexical features: “You are not supposed to behave like that.” syntactical features: “Would you please pass the salt to me?” semantic features: “Shall we go to the movie tonight?”“Sorry, but I have a math exam tomorrow.”rhetorical features:“A friend in need is a friend indeed.”Later on, linguists explained this theory with Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, and Face Theory. Traditional linguists believed that people use a certain kind of code as the unit for communication, but Searle preferred speech acts. He agreed that speakers use sentences to perform an act, but the act cannot be mixed with the sentence. Searle thought that any speech act contains at least three parts: words or sentences spoken; declaration and allegation to some items; statement, questions, or admissions. Searle emphasized one important feature of language communication, which is its intentionality. For example:“Can you please give me a hand?” Its function is not in line with its form, which is a question, asking whether the hearer has the ability to do something. But actually, the speaker is asking the hearer for help. And he made his request through inquiring. 2.2. Two ClassificationsIndirect speech act theory tries to solve the problem of how to figure out implied meanings of conversation, that is pragmatic meaning, through literal meaning. This problem can be explained by the following classification of indirect speech acts.2.2.1 Conventional Indirect Speech ActsConventional indirect speech acts can be inferred simply form literal meaning, which means people can deduce its implied meaning through the sentence structure or speech habits. The main purpose of conventional indirect speech acts is to show politeness to the speaker. For example, “Could you please close the window?” “Would you mind speaking louder?” It can be easily understood that the two sentences are not mere questions asking whether the hearer has the ability of closing the window or speaking louder, but requests. They are regarded as a certain speech act owing to the conventionality of the society and culture, and accepted by people. In these sentences, a marked word of politeness, “Please”, can be used.2.2.2 Unconventional Indirect Speech ActsUnconventional indirect speech act, on the contrary, is often used in rather complicated situations. Hearers cannot infer the speakers implied meaning from the linguistic forms mainly depend on the mutual knowledge among speakers and hearers and the contexts, unless they take conversational information, context and cultural background into consideration. There is no one-to-one relation between the structure and the illocutionary act of a sentence. The meaning is based more on context and the same sentence can have different illocutionary forces in different contexts. For example, “the window is open.”1) It can be used to suggest the hearer close it.2) It can be used to blame the hearer for not closing it.3) It can be used to remind the hearer that the speaker will go to close it.Therefore, unconventional indirect speech act is more indirect and flexible than conventional indirect speech act.2.3 Motivation of Indirect Speech ActsIn most circumstances, after confirming the act to perform, the speaker usually doesnt perform it directly, but perform it through an illocutionary act. This means that the speaker somehow regards indirect speech act more appropriate. The reasons may be as following:2.3.1 The Necessity of Polite Communication and Saving FaceIn daily communication, indirect speech act is often used to give out directives. As for the reason, Searle considered politeness as the main motivation, if not the only motivation for people to do so. No matter the directive is an order, requirement, request, suggestion or expectation, it asks the hearer to do something, to fulfill the speakers requirement. From the point of view of the speaker, even though his intention is reasonable and fair enough, he will feel sorry for the hearer. On the other hand, the directive imposed on the hearer is always beneficial to the speaker. Therefore, the hearer may refuse to do it. Moreover, there may be some obstacles that prevent the hearer from doing it, but the speaker is unaware of these elements. In this way, the hearer is likely to reject, and the speaker is aware of the possibility of being rejected. When the hearer refuses the speaker, especially for subjective reasons, the speakers face will be damaged. For examples, when people want to borrow some money but get rejected, they usually feel losing face. Therefore, in everyday communication, some speakers will choose indirect speech, in order to show politeness to the hearer, as well as protecting their own faces. In the same way, people usually reject directives with indirect speech. For example, when refusing to lend money to someone, people usually say “I just lend my spare money to a relative” or “I just bought a new house on mortgage”. From the literal meaning, the speaker is not refusing to lend money. However, he actually is. Because both sides know that the speaker is out of money, so that he cant say “yes” to the borrower. The literal meaning actually is a reason for the speaker to reject. It not only shows politeness to the borrower, but also saves the other sides face, because if the speaker directly refuses to lend money, he himself may be considered as stingy. In commissives, the speaker sometimes makes an indirect commitment to be polite or save face. For example, when speaker understands that the borrower is in desperate need of money, and that the borrower is sensitive and has a strong sense of self-respect, he may make an indirect promise, for example, “someone has just returned me an amount of money.”2.3.2 The Lack of Related InformationSometimes the speaker may wonder whether the condition of performing his intended act is mature and sufficient. In such situations, he may choose indirect speech. For example, if the speaker is not sure whether the hearer has the ability to help him, he may ask about it or state his own expectation, so as to make a request. For instance, when asking others to show the way to someplace, people usually say “can you tell me the way to the post office?” or “how can I get to the nearest post office?” In the same way, when helping others, the speaker may not be sure whether the hearer is willing to accept his help. When one side cant afford the rent for an apartment, instead of offering help directly, the other side may say that “I have an empty room in my apartment.” to provide the hearer a shelter.2.3.3 The Necessity of Flexibility in Daily CommunicationDirect speech acts usually use explicit performatives, as analyzed by Austin. For example, “order” in “I order you to stand up”; “ask” in “I ask you to close the door”; and “suggest” in “I suggest we go to a movie tonight.” In daily communication, explicit performatives may sound mechanic and rigid. However, indirect ways will be much more natural and softer. For example, a child can say: “Daddy, I want to go to the park”, but not “Daddy, I suggest we go to the park.”2.3.4 Other ElementsBesides the three motivations mentioned above, there still exist other elements, including the purpose of achieving an effect of humor, making the language more vivid, or avoiding taboos. For example, two women are talking about the young beautiful secretary:A: Linda has already been in the managers office for like, an hour!B: She has an affair with the manager.B doesnt really mean that Linda has something important to cope with manager, but implies that Linda is in relationship with the manager, or is the managers concubine. 2.4 Linguistic Functions2.4.1 To be PoliteGrice suggested both sides in a conversation obey Cooperative Principle, which means to express oneself and provide information honestly and reliably. However, on some occasions, people break CP intentionally. For example:A: I like our Chinese teacher and English teacher. How about you? B: Well, I like the Chinese teacher.B seems to break CP for not providing enough information. But he gets himself understood clearly. A can get the implied meaning that B doesnt like English teacher. But in order to be polite, B doesnt say it directly.2.4.2 To Make a RequestWhen making a request, a simple and direct imperative may sound hard and unacceptable. However, indirect expressions can be mild and roundabout. Usually the following ways can be used to make a request indirectly and politely. Firstly, interrogatives can be adopted, e.g. “Could you please open the window?” sounds much more polite than “Open the window.” Secondly, pre-request, which means to make sure whether the other person has the ability to offer help before making a request, will also make requests more indirect. For example: A: “Do you have Wifi account?”B: “Yes.”A: “Can I use it for a while?”B: “Sure.”A used a pre-request to find out whether B has the ability to accept his request. Since Bs answer is “yes”, A makes his request.2.4.3 To Criticize EuphemisticallyCriticize; especially criticizing in public may be quite embarrassing. Thus, language must be carefully selected when criticizing. Generally, indirect speech acts are adopted. For example:A: “How do you like my singing?”B: “Sorry, I dont sing a lot.” Its easy to tell B has no interest in As singing. However, itll be impolite to say it directly. So B deliberately breaks the CP, implies that he doesnt like As singing, and smoothly puts the topic to an end. 3. Understanding of Politeness3.1 DefinitionWhat is the reason for person constantly using indirect speech to achieve communication goal, ignoring Cooperative Principle? Not all the situations come out of the consideration for politeness, but generally indirect speech is selected in order to be polite.What is politeness and how to express it have always been important topics in pragmatics. In 1978, Brown and Levinson from Oxford University considered politeness as the basic condition on which human beings can live together. To learn how people express politeness is to learn the fundamental elements for human to survive. Then, what on earth is politeness? Brown and Levinson thought that everyone has “face”, including positive face and negative face. Positive face refers to be recognized by others, while negative face means to protect personal interests from being infringed by others. A speech act aimed at protecting face is a polite act. How to choose polite strategy? According to Brown and Levinson, there are three elements: distance between relationship, power and a certain culture imposed on the communication. As for politeness, Leech proposed six principles. First, tact maxim. It requires the speaker to reduce opinions that are harmful to others. Second, generosity maxim. It requires the speaker to reduce opinions that are beneficial to themselves. Third, approbation maxim: to derogate others a