A Study Of Politeness Under The Framework Of Halliday's Register Theory

Politeness, viewed as an important social phenomenon, occurs at almost every corner of the world. Being polite and courteous in communication is an important symbol of civilization and well-cultivation. Since it is an essential part of our social life, politeness has become one of the most important and productive areas of research in linguistics. Many famous linguists and scholars such as Lakoff, Leech, Brown and Levinson, etc., have already conducted a lot of researches on this language phenomenon. Their researches mainly specialize in the establishment of theories, models, strategies, etc. of politeness. Following the scholars mentioned above, piles of foreign and domestic publications on politeness have been constantly emerging, but their researches involve various contextual factors affecting the comprehension and use of politeness in communication, which are to some extent too scattered or overlapped to be systematic.And this thesis, as an academic attempt to apply Halliday's register theory as its basic theoretical framework, seeks to carry out a comprehensive and systematic study on politeness by taking the three dimensions of register, namely, field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse, which cover almost all the contextual factors, into consideration as a whole.At the beginning, the two basic theories of politeness and register are clarified, especially the author's preference to Halliday's register theory is specified, and what follows is the respective study of politeness in the three dimensions conducted in three chapters and a comprehensive study by analyzing the interrelationships between any two of the three dimensions and the relative importance of the three dimensions in a new chapter, shedding some light on how to appropriately use and understand politeness in different contexts especially when the three dimensions of register are in conflicts with one another.This thesis is the author's attempt to carry out a study on politeness from a new perspective and under a new theoretical framework, with the purpose to make the study more comprehensive and systematic so that it could be beneficial to the teaching and learning of English language, and to improve people's communicative competence by using and understanding politeness properly in various contexts differentiated by the three dimensions of register so as to facilitate the realization of the communicative purposes.