A Study Of Directives In Chinese Workplace Conversations

Since the speech act theory was first put forward by Austin in the late1950s, much more attention has been attached to how language is actually performed by people. According to Austin, speaking something is actually doing something, and when people speak, three acts are performed:locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Simply speaking, locutionary act is the actual words speaker use in his or her utterance; illocutionary act is the speaker’s intention of speaking; and perlocutionary act is the effect of speaking on the hearer.Searle makes a further division between direct speech acts and indirect speech acts. He replaces locutionary act with utterance act and propositional act. Furthermore, five categories of illocutionary speech acts are classified through twelve rules. They are assertives, commissives, directives, expressives and declarations.This thesis is mainly focused on the directives used in Chinese workplace conversations through the analysis of data from film Go Lala Go! Based on the definition given by Fan Xiaoling, some specific linguistic features of Chinese directives are planned to be presented. Since language using is a social phenomenon, several social factors relative to the use of directives in Chinese workplace conversations are also pointed out.According to the study, the directives in Chinese workplace are mostly brief, clear and direct, but there are still some indirect ones. Besides, the three social factors relative to the use of those directives are position, social relationship and personality.