A Social Pragmatics Approach To The Use Of Indirect Request Speech Act In Chinese And English

With the development of globalization,communication between countries has become closer.Language as a medium and bridge of communication is playing an increasingly significant role in our daily life.As is known to all,request is one of the expressions that need euphemism and implicit most,in the course of the conduct of request,how to perform politely,how to maintain a friendly social relationship,how to act as an educated person,how to leave a civil impression when cooperating with other countries,these are topics that appeal plenty of scholars to pay much attention on indirect request speech act.However,in the comparative studies on those topics,more energy was put on the discrepancy of the use of language,such as style,grammar,syntax,etc.Based on the social status of the speaker,this research has studied the relationship between speakers and their indirect speech acts,and has taken "request" indirect speech acts as an example to carry out a comparative study between English and Chinese.This research intends to clarify three questions by combined methods of comparative study and survey research:(1)Whether the use of indirect speech acts has something related to speaker’s identity?(2)In indirect speech acts,you can use interrogative sentences and declarative sentences to express requests.Which of these two sentence patterns is more gentle and polite?(3)Are there differences between Chinese and English to question(2)?This thesis used a combined methods of survey research and comparative study,and produced the following three questions below according to the answers through the analysis of data:(1)There is an inevitable connection between the identity of the speaker and their use of indirect request speech act.As the social pragmatics scholar Ige(2010:3047)believed that language reflects the mind and it is the embodiment of people’s thinking mode and identity.The relationship between the speaker’s use of indirect request speech act and the his identity is manifested as: When the speaker’s status is high,he is more likely to use declarative sentence pattern to put forward a request in order toshow good manners and politeness;when the speakers’ status is low,the frequency of their use of declarative sentence for making requests is relatively less.(2)As for the comparison of the degree of politeness between the declarative sentence pattern and the interrogative sentence pattern,by analyzing the data from the two British plays,the author found that the people in higher social status tend to use declarative sentences more frequently when expressing requests.And the results of the survey in general also show that declarative sentence is more polite than the interrogative sentence,more suitable for persons with higher status.(3)Both Chinese and English share the common view on the degree of politeness of declarative and interrogative sentences,and both native Chinese speakers(NCSs)and native English speakers(NESs)agree that the degree of politeness of declarative sentences is higher than that of interrogative sentences.Although there are differences in preference of options between Chinese and British research subjects in some scenarios,the main reason for the discrepancy is in sentence structure.On the whole,both English and Chinese users hold the view that declarative sentence patterns are more polite.This thesis focuses on indirect request speech act,links the use of language with speakers’ identity,discusses the discrepancies of people with different identity when uttering indirect request speech,and makes a comparison between English and Chinese,which is the key point as well as the innovation of the thesis.The research from the perspective of social pragmatics has broad prospects and practical value.It is hoped that the research contents of this thesis will play a positive role in promoting the development of linguistics in the future.