A Study On The Politeness Acceptance Of The Speech Act Of “Ask For Leave” By Foreign Students In WeChat

Although the speech act of “ask for leave” only belongs to the sub-category of the requesting speech act,it is one of the most commonly used speech acts in life for foreign students.The verbal behavior of “ask for leave” may seem simple,but it involves a variety of strategy options.When foreign students ask for leave,they often express bluntly and rudely,or make listener feel uncomfortable.By studying the expression sequence,selection strategies,and politeness acceptance of the foreign students? behaviors of “ask for leave”,and comparing them with the speech behaviors of native Chinese speakers,we can understand what needs to be improved urgently in the foreign students? speech behaviors of“ask for leave” and their pragmatic proficiency.Under the guidance of pragmatics research theories and methods,this article takes the pragmatic performance of native Chinese speakers as the pragmatic standard for foreign students.Through questionnaires combined with interviews,we investigated the structural sequence,strategies and the use of We Chat symbols of 60 native Chinese speakers? speech behaviors of “ask for leave”,as well as the politeness acceptance of the speech behaviors of the native Chinese speakers.The survey showed that: in the speech act of “ask for leave”where the listener is a teacher,address term,head acts and the statement of the situation are the necessary components of the speech act of “ask for leave”.The politeness acceptance of a single strategy is lower than that of a combination strategy.The politeness acceptance of the direct explanatory strategy and hint strategy is the lowest,and sentences containing suggestive strategies are often considered to have a higher degree of politeness acceptance.However,in the actual speech act of “ask for leave”,the expression of highest degree of politeness is not the first choice of native Chinese speakers.When native Chinese speakers ask for leave,they often use the “declaration of needs” strategy,supplemented by supportive moves such as apology.Every time an address term or a supportive move is used,its politeness acceptance will increase by half a level.As for the emoji and other We Chat symbols in the speech act of “ask for leave”,native Chinese speakers generally hold a more tolerant attitude.After understanding the language performance of native Chinese speakers,we analyzed the collected speech behavior data of 55 foreign students in We Chat to explor the structural sequence,strategies,the use of We Chat symbols and their politeness acceptance of foreign students? speech behaviors of “ask for leave” in We Chat.The analysis found that although the verbal behavior of foreign students has necessary omissions,it basically conforms to the structural sequence of “address term + head acts + the statement of the situation”.Among them,foreign students pay more attention to “the statement of the situation” than native Chinese speakers.Compared to native Chinese speakers,foreign students are more inclined to use a single strategy,and often use the negative statement strategy in the direct strategy.The politeness acceptance of the speech act of “ask for leave” of foreign students is relatively low,which is only close to the “normal” level of politeness.Due to the inadequate language knowledge,the negative transfer of English mother tongue,and the lack of awareness of politeness,language bias that have a greater impact on polite acceptance often appear in the speech behavior of foreign students,mainly grammatical errors and pragmatic errors.Grammatical errors are manifested in the misuse of “有??”and the misuse of the trending verb “来/去”.Pragmatic failures can be divided into language failures and social pragmatic failures.Language failures include the misuse of the can-will verb “能/可/会” and the negative adverb “不/没”.The social pragmatic failure includes the omission of necessary constituents,single structure,misuse of “你/您” and improper statement of the situation.Combining the errors of foreign students,summarize the existing problems in the syllabus and teaching process.In the syllabus involving “request” functional items,the common sentence patterns of language functional items are only a simple list,lacking the classification of speech forms and the description of speech forms and frequency of use.In the teaching process,there are mainly the following problems: a lack of practice,a single scene setting,a lack of emphasis on politeness and a lack of pragmatic module teaching.At the same time,teachers have a high degree of tolerance of errors.In response to these problems,the awareness of pragmatic teaching and politeness should be further strengthened,and richer communication scenarios should be set to provide learners with more opportunities for practice and practical application.