A Speech-Act-Theoretic Analysis Of Impolite Utterances In The Drama A Streetcar Named Desire

Social communication never goes as smoothly as we expect it to be. There are such a number of potential divergences of interests or opinions in our social interactions that resonance is hardly reached in ever circumstance. Impolite behaviors, both verbal and nonverbal, are intentionally performed now and then and then ignite conflicts. In view of this, impoliteness is by no means marginal deviation from the commonplace. However, researches on impoliteness haven’t received sufficient attention compared with those on politeness. It is not until recent years that studies in various realms become involved in this topic, such as social psychology and sociology. As for linguistic research on impoliteness, most of the attention has been paid to the discussion on the framework of impoliteness strategies, which is mainly theory-based and detached from contexts. This thesis, therefore, tries to adopt a new perspective to carry out an interesting reading and analysis against the pragmatic ground on the linguistic impoliteness in conflict discourses extracted from the drama A Streetcar Named Desire authored by Tennessee Williams.In this thesis, linguistic impoliteness is considered as the basic component constituting the conflict discourses in dramas and attached with sufficient importance during the interpretation of the conflict. This thesis attempts to conduct the analysis under the framework of speech act theory, regarding impolite verbal behaviors as speech acts performing locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts simultaneously, among which illocutionary acts convey the discourteous intentions. Besides, since social communication is unavoidably involved with facework and some impolite behaviors are in essence deviations from conversational cooperation, the concept of face and the assumption of conversational efficiency in politeness theory will lend a hand to the identification and the analysis of linguistic impoliteness. Based on the analysis and reading, the author tends to elaborate on three aspects. Firstly, how the impolite intentions are communicated via performing speech acts. Secondly, how the linguistic impoliteness in conflict discourses functions to provoke or intensify the conflicts. Thirdly, the author attempts to verify if there is any definite bi-directional relation between directness/indirectness and politeness/impoliteness.After a detailed analysis of the data in the drama, the author finds that verbal conflicts are not actually triggered by the sentences uttered. Like other human behaviors, there is no doubt that speaking is a kind of action people usually take to fulfill certain purposes. Therefore, it is the performance of speech acts carrying impolite intentions that threatens the interlocutors’ positive or negative face, which in turn provoke conflicts. Aggressive performance of illocutionary acts and such grammatical and syntactic options as derogatory terms displayed in locutionary acts become the carriers for malicious intentions. Moreover, the interaction of different categories of illocutionary acts in the verbal exchanges intensifies the conflicts. Lastly, politeness is not the mere motivation for indirect utterances. In addition to the five categories of direct speech acts, indirect speech acts can also be performed to communicate aggressive intentions in conflict discourse. They may even increase impoliteness by flouting cooperative principles and utilizing linguistic devices such as sarcasm or rhetorical questions. These findings have shed lights on our interpretation and appreciation of the writer’s design in communicating impolite intentions and the esthetic value of language use. The study has also enriched the theoretical approaches towards the research on linguistic impoliteness in social communication.