A Study Of Directives Employed In Chinese Families

Speech act theory has been playing an important role in linguistic field and holding researchers' attention since it was first put forward by John Austin. Directives, as a subcategory of speech acts, come to some researchers' attention as well.The previous studies of directives have mainly concentrated on such aspects as politeness and the differences of Chinese and English directives. However, few people have conducted studies of directives in the content of families. Based on an empirical and quantified study, this paper seeks to analyze the directives employed in Chinese families in the light of Austin's and Searle's theory of speech act. By analyzing the variables of parents' gender and their educational background, their children's gender and age, and culture differences, we intend to find out the relations among five variables influencing the choice of direct or indirect directives parents address to their children.A questionnaire for 140 participants and a case study of two sitcoms: Growing Pains and Home with Kids (家有儿女) are the main instruments. The major findings of this study are as follows:Parents' gender influences the choice of direct and indirect directives they address to their children. Generally speaking, fathers don't care much for the way of communication and choose either direct or indirect directives to their children, whereas mothers are inclined to use indirect directives.Parents' educational background influences the choice of direct and indirect directives in their communication with their children. We find that parents whose educational backgrounds are above high school are almost apt to communicate with their children via indirect directives. And the way to communicate doesn't vary with the change of their educational background. On the contrary, parents who graduated from middle school are more likely to give direct directives. Therefore, middle school diploma is a marker.Children's gender influences the choice of direct and indirect directives in their parents' talk. It seems that parents would give direct or indirect directives to boys; however, they are more willing to give indirect ones to girls.And children's age also influence the choice of direct and indirect directives parents address to them. We find that the proportion of direct directives increases gradually with children's age, especially for mothers' choice. On the contrary, fathers' choice of direct or indirect directives is not much influenced by the aspect.Last but not least, culture differences have effects on how parents use directives. We compare the directives employed in American families and Chinese families and find that American parents are apt to use more indirect directives when they communicate with their children; while Chinese parents tend to use more direct ones.Directives have been widely employed in families. It is hoped that, the present study would shed light on the communication between parents and children and would arouse more and more scholars' interests in this field.