On (Im)politeness Of Discourses In Much Ado About Nothing

As an important literary genre, drama is known for its distinctive stylistic features. The language in the drama is not only an intelligent creation art, but also an imitation of daily communication, so that it has great value in linguistic study. However, It has been"the neglected child"(Culpeper, Short, Verdonk, 1998: 3) for a long time, for it has not aroused enough attention from linguists. Although quite a number of scholars become interested in drama in recent years, there are a few researches on drama from the perspective of politeness and impoliteness.Based on the relevant researches carried through by domestic and foreign linguists, the study is in an attempt to analyze the discourse in the drama Much Ado About Nothing, which is one of William Shakespeare's most successful comedies. The study is carried out from the perspective of politeness and impoliteness, by employing some pragmatic theories, including speech act theories, theories related to politeness and impoliteness, trying to reveal the hidden intention of a character so as to show the effect of his/her utterances, and attempting to tell whether the utterances are polite or not to the hearer.The study has elaborated the interpretation of utterances of the specific case by applying the theories mentioned above. Generally speaking, the characters tend to choose polite utterances to express their respect to the other and show their awareness of another person's face. But in some cases, their polite utterances communicate impoliteness to the hearer unintentionally. More often than not, polite utterances are employed as a pragmatic strategy to realize certain communicative objectives. On the other hand, impolite utterances might convey either impoliteness or politeness to the hearer in the play. Under certain circumstances, impolite utterances do not convey any unpleasant messages to the hearer, but contribute to enhancing the close sense of intimacy between the speaker and the hearer.By exploring the politeness and impoliteness generated from the characters'utterances in Much Ado About Nothing, this thesis may widen the application of pragmatics in the literary field and contribute to a better understanding of dramatic dialogues from a different perspective. Moreover, the study concludes that both politeness and impoliteness are relative to some degree. Thus it might also have some implications on human interaction. When communicating with others in daily life, the speaker should choose appropriate utterances to express his/her real meaning according to the object of communication; while the hearer should distinguish the literal meaning from the speaker's real intention in order to decrease or eliminate improper interpretation of the speaker.