A Pragmatic Analysis Of The Politeness Strategy In Requests

When people make requests, they always resort to the politeness strategy, which can be easily accepted by hearers, so as to achieve their goals of requests. In terms of politeness of requests, the requests strategies are grouped into four main super-strategies: direct strategy, conventionally indirect strategy, unconventionally indirect strategy and combined strategy.Politeness has different degrees. From direct requests, unconventionally indirect directs, combined strategy requests to conventionally indirect requests, the degrees of politeness of them increase. However, it just lies in the sentential-level of requests. In terms of the specific situation, the degrees of politeness vary with variations of interlocutors' power, social distance, sex, age and the cultures in which they are cultivated and also the specific time and place in which requests take place. That is, in a situation a polite request may be polite or impolite in another situation; on the contrary an impolite request in one situation may be polite in the other situation.The previous studies of requests have been focused on polite words or sentences without consideration of contexts. The present thesis studies polite requests in specific situation and draws a conclusion that contexts can affect the specific requests. With the theories of pragmatics the present thesis attempts to set up the framework of the analysis of the politeness strategy in requests.