The Pragmatic Study On The Speech Act Of Suggestions In Chinese Communication

The speech act of suggestions is an instruction speech act properly chosen by the speaker to express views or opinions to the listener without obligations.It usually exists in the speaker-listener communicative subjects with the directive,altruistic and lowly compulsory characteristics.The discourse structure of suggestion speech act is usually composed of three parts: attention,suggestion and auxiliary parts.it can be classified into simple suggestions and complex suggestions according to whether there are auxiliary words in the discourse structure,and it can be divided into direct and indirect suggestions according to the literal consistency and discourse meaning.Suggestion speech act formally has certain linguistic characteristics in phonology,vocabulary and grammar.In Phonology,it is mainly manifested in prosodic features including emphasis,pause and sentence tone.In vocabulary,it is usually manifested as suggestion verbs,address forms,hedges,politeness markers and modal particles.At the syntactic level,according to the different mood of the sentence,there are different expression forms,such as declarative sentences,interrogative sentences and imperative sentences.Language forms are often influenced and restricted by many factors including power relationship,social status distance,and the face-threatening degree.Taking the suggestion speech act,the speaker should choose appropriate language forms together with politeness and proper expression strategies.Based on the face theory and politeness principle,the expression strategies of suggestion speech act can be divided into four types: direct expression strategy,explanatory strategy,face-saving strategy,and indirect expression strategy.Each of them can be further divided into several subclasses.In order to communicate smoothly,the speaker can simultaneously use various of expression strategies to meet the needs of specific expression.