An Analysis Of Directives Employed In Marital Conversations

Directives as a subcategory of speech acts are hot points in linguistic research. Directives refer to the utterances that represent the attempts on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something. Directives are very common in daily life and social communication. Appropriate and courteous using of directives can contribute to the construction of harmonious interpersonal relationships. This thesis, in the light of Austin's and Searle's theories of speech acts, shifts attention to directives employed by Chinese couples in marriages. Through the investigation on the variables of couples'gender, age, educational background and the length of marriage time, this thesis makes analysis of the relations among four variables that influence couples'choice of direct and indirect directives they address to each other.The main instruments are a questionnaire with 150 participants and the transcript of the TV series: New Times of Marriage. The results show that the four variables mentioned above indeed influence couples'choice of direct and indirect directives and conclusions are drawn as follows:Couples'gender influences couples'choice of direct and indirect directives that they address to each other. Husbands are likely to use both direct and indirect directives and they use more direct directives than those of wives, and wives are likely to choose indirect directives when addressing to each other.Couples'age also influences the choice of direct and indirect directives couples talk to each other. The research shows that the proportions of direct directives used by wives don't increase gradually with couples'age. On the contrary, husbands are likely to use more direct directives with the growth of their age.Couples'educational background influences couples'choice of direct and indirect directives during their communication. Couples with above senior high school educational background are more likely to communicate with each other through indirect directives. By contrast, couples who graduate from junior high school use more direct directives. Last but not least, the length of marriage time also influences couples'choice of direct and indirect directives when they communicate with each other. The percentages of direct directives that the couples used increase gradually with the growth of their length of marriage time. The longer the couples have been married, the less they would care about their ways to communicate.Directives are widely used in daily life, especially in the communication between parents and children and also between couples. It is hoped that the present study can shed some light on the communication between couples to avoid language conflict and create democratic and harmonious atmosphere for marriages.