An Interpretation Of (Im)Politeness From The Perspective Of The Adaptation Theory

Politeness has always been one of the focuses of study in the field of pragmatics, especially since Grice proposed his influential principle of conversation - the 'Cooperative Principle Scholars in the field of pragmatics have conducted their research from different perspectives and have helped modify the politeness theory. However, none of the previous approaches has been satisfactory. In addition, impoliteness, which occurs quite often in daily communication and should have been studied as politeness has, has long been neglected. This thesis, therefore, based on the previous studies of politeness and impoliteness, attempts to interpret both politeness and impoliteness in the light of Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, primarily from four angles: context, structure, dynamics, and salience. After classifying politeness into superficial politeness, actual politeness, conscious politeness, and unconscious politeness, and impoliteness into superficial impoliteness, actual impoliteness, conscious impoliteness, and unconscious impoliteness accordingly, this thesis tries to interpret each of them from the perspective of the Adaptation Theory. It is found that the Adaptation Theory demonstrates wonderful interpretative power in interpreting both politeness and impoliteness in the process of language use and it is concluded in this thesis that both politeness and impoliteness are the result of language users' attempt to adapt to context and the communicative need.