A Pragmatic Study On Indirectness In Communication

As an important language phenomenon, indirectness universally exists in communication. Many scholars have tried to explain this phenomenon from various angles and aspects. What pragmatics study is how people communicate by using language in the society. So indirectness should be discussed and illustrated from the aspects of pragmatics.In daily communication, people sometimes express their views and ideas employing the direct way, but frequently, also in an indirect and mild way. The focus of pragmatics study is not only to explain how language users convey their actual intention by employing indirect expression, but also to point out why they use indirectness to express their meaning. There are many motivations for the use of indirectness. In this thesis, we explore the indirect use of language, the reasons for the use of indirectness, and the responsive strategy of indirectness, etc.Chapter One presents an introduction to the whole thesis by describing the phenomenon of indirectness, and introduces purpose and objectives of the study and the organization of the paper. Indirectness of language is a very common phenomenon, which, to a great extent, reduces the negative effects caused by impolite or imposing utterances. Chapter Two gives a historical review of the studies of indirectness abroad and at home. It introduces the theories related to indirectness. Austin's"The Speech Act Theory", Searle's"The Indirect Speech Act Theory"--- two theories are the basic concepts to understand indirectness. Then Grice with his Conversational Implicature, has enriched the theory of indirectness. Chapter Three discusses the main theories concerning indirectness and politeness. It is intended to serve as the theoretical framework for the discussion on indirectness in later chapters. For example, Brown and Levinson regard indirectness as strategies of politeness. Chapter Four discusses the strategy of using indirectness, the factors of affecting its application in indirectness, and the relationship of the indirectness and politeness. In many cases, a speaker may say one thing, but mean another or something else. When the discrepancy between sentences meaning and utterance meaning occurs, we say the way of language use is indirect. Metaphor, irony, and other strategies may serve as good examples in this aspect. In this chapter we also explore the motivations for the use of indirectness and the factors that affect the applications in indirectness, including culture difference, power, imposition and obligation. Finally we discuss about the relationship between indirectness and politeness. Chapter Five is the conclusion of this study which summarizes the previous chapters and points out the limitations of this thesis and the suggestions for future studies.