A Study Of Politeness Generation From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Politeness has always been one of the focuses of study in the field of pragmatics, especially since Grice proposed his influential principle of conversation---the'Cooperative Principle'. Scholars in the field of pragmatics have conducted their research from different perspectives and have proposed their own theories. However, due to their limitation of visual angles, these previous approaches only touch on partial factors that explain politeness phenomena. So, none of them has been convincing.This thesis, based on the previous studies of politeness, attempts to analyze politeness in the light of Jef Vreschueren's Adaptation Theory. It points out that utterance politeness, rather than linguistic politeness, is the object of pragmatics. By studying politeness from the four aspects of contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation process, the author concludes that politeness generation is the result of language users'perfectly dynamic adaptation between contexts and various layers of structural objects with different degrees of consciousness. Compared with the previous studies, Adaptation Theory demonstrates wonderful interpretative power in interpreting politeness in the process of language use: It gives a more accurate perspective to interpret polite phenomena in communication; It provides abundant contextual connotation and makes the study on politeness phenomena have more realistic meaning, so, its abundant contextual connotation can interpret why speech acts polite in linguistic level turn out to be impolite, and why others impolite in linguistic level turn out to be polite and achieve communicative ends; Its interpretation of dynamic adaptation tallies with the actual communication, and, in theory, it can describe the generation of politeness more perfectly; The'salience'proposed by Verschueren can not only interpret why sometimes people with strong consciousness of politeness can communicate with each other successfully, but also account for the situation when people with little consciousness or even unconsciousness of politeness can express him/herself politely and achieve communicative ends. Therefore, Adaptation Theory not only interprets politeness phenomena in daily life convincingly but also provides theoretic guidance for people in both intra-lingual and inter-lingual communication. Understanding the process of politeness generation can help language users use appropriate language strategy, and avoid impolite,over-polite or under-polite utterances to promote communication and achieve communicative ends. In foreign language teaching, it can help language learners improve their pragmatic competence as well as reduce and avoid pragmatic failure, and finally promote China's foreign language teaching.