A Study On Mock Politeness Of Downton Abbey From Rapport Management Perspective

All along, politeness principle exerts an important role in the realm of pragmatics, along with the development of pragmatics and that scholars take some factors, like contexts into consideration, the importance and research of mock politeness has become increasingly prominent. Mock politeness refers to such behaviors that speakers could manipulate their utterances deliberately, and speakers almost apply token empathy to establish self-identity that he or she expects, which seems to intend to maintain the harmonious interpersonal relations, but implementation of the behavior does not possess absolute politeness, instead, refers to such politeness which is depend on specific context. Mock polite speech acts occur frequently in daily communication, the focuses by scholars are increasing.This thesis first has a brief introduction of politeness principle and impolite phenomenon, and then summarizes research of mock polite speech acts from the perspective of both domestic and foreign linguistics, which refers to different definitions of mock politeness. This thesis says the definition of mock politeness concluded by professors Li Chengtuan and Ran Yongping is attached to the specific context, which is relatively objective and also two professors sort out the embodiments and motivations of mock politeness.The rapport management theory of Spencer-Oatey refers to personal and social aspects, which constructs the theoretical framework through analysis of rights and face. On the basis of analyzing characters’ utterances from English TV Downton Abbey, using method of observation, qualitative method and induction etc. this thesis makes an analysis of characters’ mock polite speech acts combined with the theory of rapport management. The following three questions will guide the study: 1) How does mock politeness contribute to the management of face and rights proposed by Spencer-Oatey? 2) How is the theory of rapport management able to account for the option and use of mock politeness? 3) What are the communicative values of mock politeness?The thesis regards rapport management theory as theoretical framework and analyzes characters’ mock polite speech acts in Downton Abbey, research shows that mock politeness could contribute to the management of face and rights, and the theory could also account for mock polite speech acts. The thesis treats Downton Abbey as the blueprint for analysis, after which rapport management theory can also be used to analyze other domestic or foreign literary works or plays, so this thesis has some theoretical and practical significance.