Reconsideration Of The Relationship Between Indirectness And Politeness

Indirectness and politeness, as universal phenomena in communication, have lent themselves to no small dimension of discussion in pragmatics. However, all research and studies were limited within the cross-sentential multi-functionality under the name of indirectness and politeness of indirect directives. When it was concerned with the relationship between indirectness and politeness, many scholars such as Lakoff (1973), Searle (1975), Fraser (1978), Brown & Levinson (1978) held the view that the reason for being indirect was to be polite. Moreover, scholars like Leech (1983) implied that the best way be polite is to be indirect. As it stated in his masterpiece, "Another way of obtaining a scale of politeness is to keep the same prepositional content X and to increase the degree of politeness by using a more and more indirect kind of illocution" (Leech, 1983: 65). It seems that more indirect a speech is, more polite the speech it will be. However, if we examine indirectness and politeness further, many defects of such conclusion will be revealed.The thesis starts from a review of politeness-related and indirect speech-related theories. Once a critical view of the relationship regarding the traditional viewpoint of indirectness and politeness, it goes deeply to the explanation of indirectness and politeness respectively, for convincing conclusion can only be drawn on the basis of detailed examination of indirectness and politeness. Through explicit elaboration of these two topics, an all-round relationship between them is explored. In all, there are five chapters consisted in the dissertation.Chapter one raises the question based on a review of relevant literature works. In this chapter, theories related to the studies of indirectness and politeness are presented. And a critical view concerning the relationship between indirectness and politeness is announced at the end, which acts as a primacord to the following further explanations.Chapter two is a record of understanding the indirectness. Being indirect is a commonly seen phenomenon in communication. Here in this chapter, definitions predicted by scholars, the linguistic features, the classifications, the motivations and even the factors that affecting the application of indirectness are analyzed with illustrations. Observing the definitions and features, we may uphold a perspective that the indirectness is more manner-based. Considering the classifications and motivations, we may find that being polite is only one of the reasons of employing indirectness.Chapter three is an interpretation of politeness. Similar to the previous chapter, definition of politeness, which is a vacuum area in most theories, features, degrees and social determiners of politeness are introduced. Comparing to indirectness, politeness is more social-based or context-based. Whether a speech is an appropriate polite one is mostly a comprehensive judgment of cultural, social and contextual dependent. To provide a positive connection between the different levels of indirectness and politeness is unilateral and peremptory.Chapter four is an all-round examination of the relationship between indirectness and politeness. To get a better understanding of their relationships, the definition of cognitive expectation is introduced in this chapter, and the thorough development of indirectness and politeness laid a solid foundation for a more reliable and reasonable relationship between them. In all, there are three cases, indirectness is used to be polite, to be impolite or has nothing to do with politeness.Chapter five is the conclusion, in which some defects of the explorations are discusses.