On Negative Effects Of Indirect Speech Act In Politeness Theory's Application

This thesis mainly studies the negative effect of indirect speech act in politeness theory's application, including in cross-culture communication, in daily life, and in EFL classroom teaching. The analysis of the study is carried out within the framework of theoretical models proposed by Lakoff, Leech, Brown and Levionson, and Gu yueguo. Before this I just make general overview about the definition of politeness and indirect speech act, and make a conclusion after reading some of the main Chinese journals to state the current situation of the study of politeness theory and indirect speech act in china. And further point out that indirect speech has negative effects in politeness theory's application, mainly in cross-culture communication, in daily life, in EFL classroom teaching.Why I propose this hypothesis? First, there are some factors affect indirect speech acts in politeness theory's application as I mentioned in chapter 4. They are culture variables and situational variables; there are still some other factors such as rights and obligations. I believe that the rules of politeness change with the changing of these factors. Then I use the examples to testify that indirect speech act has negative effects in cross-culture communication's politeness theory's application and in daily life's politeness theory. And most of the examples really happened around me, so they are more convictive. The emphasis of my thesis is in EFL classroom teaching, about this part, I make empirical studies to testify my opinion. The subjects of the study are 234 college students enrolled during the autumn semesters of 2005 and 2006 and 8 teachers providing instructions. All of them are located in liaoning Normal University. Two data collection instruments are used in the study: questionnaire and recorder. For data obtained from recorder, I just make a questionnaire for 234 college students, I make 15 questions for the testers, and then I make 3 tables to show the results. After the analysis, I find that most of the students prefer teacher's direct speech in EFL classroom teaching. Why? Because when teacher expresses with direct speech, it not only satisfied the need of efficiency and currency of classroom teaching, but also satisfied the need of harmonious atmosphere in EFL classroom. The direct speech becomes a perfect carrier for the factors: the teacher's relative social position and the efficiency and currency of classroom teaching. And the teaching destination weakens the impolite factors of direct strategy; meanwhile, indirect speech act depends too much on the hint of context, so the students have to undertake the pressure of understanding hardly. At this time, indirect speech act will lose its original polite intention. So direct speech act is more proper than indirect speech act in EFL classroom teaching's politeness theory's application. So I can make a conclusion that not all indirect speech act means politeness, sometimes, it has negative effects in politeness theory's application. In EFL classroom teaching, teacher should use direct speech act, which doesn't means impolite, but is the need of classroom teaching.