Presentation Of Indirect Speech Acts In College English Textbook

This thesis surveys college English textbook---College Experiencing Englishlistening and speaking. The aim is to explicate several problems in indirect speechacts for Chinese students to develop pragmatic competence better. Firstly, it brieflyanalyzes the theory of speech acts and indirect speech acts. In this part, it includes thetheory of Austin's performative hypothesis and his theory of speech acts; Searle'stheory of felicity conditions and the theory of indirect speech act; and Grice's theoryof conversational implicature and cooperative principles. Further, the paper discussesthe importance of indirect speech acts. Secondly, it analyzes the relationship amongpragmatic competence, linguistic competence and communicative competence.Because pragmatic competence is the most important competence in communication,the training of the pragmatic competence is very important in college English teaching.For improving the pragmatic competence, the ability to interpret and use indirectspeech acts underlying some social strategies is important. Thus for college Englishteaching and college English textbook compiling, presenting some knowledge ofindirect speech acts is necessary. From the aspect of second language acquisition, theinput of the knowledge and students'learning strategies also make contribution to theChinese students'pragmatic competence. During the college English teaching, weknow well that when we study indirect speech acts, the students must experience thegeneral procedures of pragmatic consciousness-raising. Therefore, the paper analyzeswhat and how indirect speech acts are showed in college English textbooks. In theanalysis, we realize that cross-cultural differences can affect our interpreting andusing of indirect speech acts. Through a survey about the students'pragmaticcompetence, we have a further discussion on the function of cross-culturalcommunication in improving pragmatic competence. Thirdly, according to thediscussion of indirect speech acts in college English textbooks, we give somesuggestions on how to improve the students'pragmatic competence and how toconduct the teaching of indirect speech acts which produce conversational implicature.Meanwhile, we make some comments on some textbooks used in college Englishteaching: it is necessary to show some knowledge about pragmatics such as indirectspeech acts and we should not neglect the principles of authenticity, continuity, andinspiration in our English textbooks (especially textbooks of listening and speaking).Finally, it points out that since there are still some aspects that have not been paidenough attention to in college English teaching and textbooks, we should do furtherresearch and discussion.