| “The1980s†was first officially proposed in the American magazine TIME,referring to the people who were born between1980to1989. The1990s is anextension of the1980s. In China, the1980s and the1990s represent the modern wayof life in our country, reflecting two kinds of cultures which are similar, but at thesame time, have their own characteristics respectively. People have different opinionsabout the1980s and the1990s. Generally speaking, the1980s are regarded as beingimpolite; the1990s are regarded as not understanding politeness. As far as the authorconcerns, the criticism on the1980s and the1990s should be based on the basis ofunderstanding them, and understanding is more important than criticizing. Thegrowing environments of the1980s and the1990s are different from that of their pastgenerations. The two generations themselves are different either. Different growingenvironments lead to different face views.As a code of conduct in people’s daily lives, politeness exists in various kinds of languages. Lots of researches and studies have been made on it by linguists both athome and abroad. Face theory is a branch of politeness principle. The researches ofBrown&Levinson can claim the most influential ones on face theory. But theirresearches are generally based on English context and relate little to Chinese context.This paper intend to explore the face views of the1980s and the1990s in China. Itspurpose is to study the applicability of Brown&Levinson’s face theory in Chinesecontexts through empirical researches, to be more specifically, the tendency of the1980s and the1990s toward positive face and negative face and the correspondingspeech acts they adopt to meet their face needs.Questionnaires, interviews and film lines are adopted in the study. As for thecollection of languages of the1990s, the author mainly uses questionnaires, whosegreatest benefit is their easily controlling on the backgrounds of the speakers. What’smore, the author also collect data by interviewing the1990s so as to make theresearch results as objective and all-sided as possible. Regarding the1980s, data isacquired from two aspects: the first are questionnaires and interviews. Since nearly allof the1980s have graduated from colleges, the author focuses on the graduates of the1980s as the testees. The second are films. Through observing and analyzing the filmand television works of about ten years ago that describe college students, andcollecting the relevant dialogues, the author studies the languages used by the collegestudents of the1980s in those years.After analyzing and studying the data, the paper finds that the college students ofthe1980s and the1990s do hold the positive and negative face views put forward byBrown&Levinson. When they are in the face-threatening situations, they will alsouse the redressive strategies proposed by Brown&Levinson unconsciously. But theirtendencies towards the strategies are different. The researches suggest that both of the1980s and the1990s pay more attention to maintaining the negative face than thepositive face. However, comparing to the1990s, the1980s are more straightforward,using bald-on-record strategy more frequently. Besides, Through the investigation andstudy, the author also finds that the variable of gender has great influence on the faceviews of the1980s and the1990s. Statistical data indicates that the females of the1980s are more euphemistic than the males in most cases. In face-threateningsituations, most of the females choose the negative politeness strategy, while themales prefer to use the bald-on-record strategy. The females and the males of the1990s are different in their attention paid to the negative face or the positive face. Inface-threatening situations, the females mostly tend to choose the negative politeness strategy, while the males value the positive politeness strategy most intensively.This paper consists of five parts. The first chapter is the introduction part inwhich the background, significance and the organization of the study are presented.The second chapter is literature review in which works concerning face theory by theresearchers both at home and abroad are talked about. The third chapter is assigned tointroduce the methodology of this paper. In this chapter the research questions, datacollection and research procedure are introduced in detail. The forth chapter presentsthe research results and carries out a detailed analysis of them. The last chapter is theconclusion part in which the findings of this paper are proposed, besides, thelimitations of the paper and the suggestions for further studies are also mentioned. |
