An Exploration Of Racial Slurs On Uncle Tom’s Cabin

For a very long time people have focused on the discussion of politeness, whileimpoliteness has been rarely discussed and studied by researchers. Besides, it is generallyconsidered that impolite language will only produce negative effects. In recent years,however, more and more scholars begin to realize the significant research values ofimpoliteness since it is such an important language phenomenon widely found in ourdaily communication. Actually, politeness and impoliteness are two opposite sides of oneproblem. Impoliteness has the same important position as politeness and can also producepositive effects under certain context. Generally speaking, impoliteness includes verbalimpoliteness and non-verbal impoliteness. This thesis attempts to pay more attention toverbal impoliteness, especially the language that reflects racial discrimination, whose aimis to explore the positive effects that is produced by racial slurs under certain context.Due to the different perspectives and focuses of the scholars, they do not reach anagreement on the technical term and definition for this specific impolite languagephenomenon. In view of this, this thesis first chooses racial slurs as its term and proposesits definition after analyzing the studies of the previous researchers. Besides, it is going totake the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the language data of this study. Furthermore, thisthesis, enlightened by Searle’s classification on speech acts, attempts to divide racial slursinto four categories in terms of representatives, directives, commissives and as well asexpressives. In addition, the theories of power and context also shed light on the languagefeatures (vulgarity, directness and typification) and positive functions of racial slurs whichwould be explained from the speakers and the hearers as well as the novel respectively.A large number of examples from the novel show us some new findings. Firstly, theclassification of those examples tells us the abundant information and its unique way ofexpression of racial slurs. Secondly, the classification and language features reflect theoffence and rudeness degree of this impolite language. Thirdly, it is exactly the offence andrudeness of language that produce the positive effects on the speaker, the hearer, and thenovel under certain context. As to the speakers, emotion manifestation and emotion releasing are good for them; as to the hearers, it helps to make a personal identification andachieve an unintended perlocutionary act; as to the novel, it can intensify the conflict of theplot and characterize the impressive figures. Through this research, a conclusion can bedrawn, that is racial slurs can produce positive effects under certain context in spite of itsoffence and rudeness.