A Study On The Speech Act Of Chinese Hinting

This thesis studies the speech act of hinting from the angle of pragmatics. The speech act ofhinting is a common language phenomenon and belongs to one kind of typical indirect speechact. Compared with other indirect speech act, it has distinguishing characteristic.On the basis of summarizing the documents of forefathers, we find that the hinting beingdiscussed in documents of foreign country and internal field of foreign language is too widely.Just belongs to indirect speech act. The hinting which the paper wants to study conforms to thehabit of Chinese speaking and is not so widely. We give this kind of hinting a definition: becauseof the reason that the speakers do not want to take responsibility or to be foiled, using theobscure language carries out the indirect speech act to let the listener to grasp. On the basis ofthis, the paper differentiates the hinting and other indirect speech act such as euphemistic andinnuendo speech act.In order to further understand what is hinting and what is not hinting, the paper studiesthe contents which are common in the speech act of hinting. They are: the content about the loveof men and women, the content about bribery, some content in diplomacy and negotiations, andsome sensitive contents. These analyses help us to better understand the reason of carrying outthe hinting speech act and the difference of hinting and other indirect speech act.Using the theory of pragmatics strategy, the paper generalizes the strategies that are oftenused in hinting. They are: comparing strategy (comparing the thing that the speaker want to sayto another things which is similar), to look on the listener as the third party, speaking withoutspecific reference instead of specific reference, using presupposition skillfully, to negate oneparty and affirm the other party and other strategies.From the studying, we find the Chinese hinting is not widely as the hinting of foreignpragmatics. It is often used in the situation that the speakers do not want to take responsibility orto be foiled. So it is one kind of speech act which often be used and has good effect, also it hasplentiful strategy.