A Study Of The Pragmatic Functions Of White Lies

As a speech act and social phenomenon, lies and lying arouses theinterests of many scholars in various fields. They study lies fromdifferent viewpoints such as psychology, sociology and linguistics.White lies, the well-meaning lies, are common pragmatic phenomenonin daily life. But studies particularly focus on white lies are not in a greatamount.In this thesis, the author attempted to explain and analyze white lies,a special type of lies, as a pragmatic strategy in daily communicationswith the cooperative principle and politeness theories from the pragmaticpoint of view. The data and examples in this thesis are collected from theauthor’s personal experiences and observations in daily life as well asliterary and video works in both English and Chinese which can reflecthuman daily life so as to make the analyses in a rather practical context.Through the analyses on white lies, we find that white lies violate thecooperative principle but observe the politeness principle and face-saving theory. At the same time, white lies can serve variouspragmatic functions in daily communications such as improvinginterpersonal relationship, expressing emotions, bringing psychologicalcomforts, indoctrinating function, phatic function and bringing abouthumorous effects.Through the study of the pragmatic functions of white lies, thisthesis aims at reminding people that lies are not always hurting. Whitelies can be taken as a pragmatic strategy in human daily communicationwhich has many positive functions. And this thesis may help peopleunderstand white lies more profoundly and offer some guidance oneffectively applying this strategy in daily communications to improvetheir communicative efficiency and abilities.