A Polite Study Of Indirect Speech Acts In Downton Manor

Indirect speech act is very common in verbal communication and has a variety of forms. The speaker usually uses indirect speech act to express his or her intentions indirectly out of politeness in communication. Using indirect speech act properly can help the communicators achieve their intentions better. This paper takes the first three quarters of the British T.V show, “Downton Abbey” as the object of the study,studying the indirect speech acts of its conversations from the perspective of politeness and making a detailed classification of the indirect speech acts of Downton Abbey in order to make people understand the indirect speech acts and use them properly, then contribute to the success of communication. The research methods of this paper are exemplification and qualitative and quantitative combining method.Through the study of this play, we can find that the use of most indirect speech acts are out of politeness, and there are also some indirect speech acts' use are out of strengthening the expressive effect and making the words more vivid.