A Study Of Impoliteness In The Sitcom Friends Within Adaptation Theory

Impoliteness is as frequent as, if not more frequent than, politeness. Everyday interpersonal communications teem with face-threatening acts, let alone the central role impoliteness plays in debating, the army training progress, courtroom examination and the like. However, in spite of this pervasiveness, scholars choose to neglect impoliteness either consciously or unconsciously. A clear proof of this is the extremely serious imbalance between the study of politeness and that of impoliteness. In China, there is even doubt about the status of impoliteness study. What's more, the available theories on impoliteness are not watertight. Therefore more efforts are indeed needed in the study of impoliteness.The objective of this thesis is to investigate the phenomena of impoliteness in the American sitcom Friends. This thesis is of great significance both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, based on a critical review of the previous studies on impoliteness, an attempt is made through this study to enrich and extend the field of impoliteness study. Practically, it not only helps people have a better understanding of various impoliteness phenomena in communication but also helps with the appreciating and compiling of sitcoms.Verschueren's general functional perspective on pragmatics holds that language functioning is a process of choice making based on the variability, negotiability and adaptability of language. To investigate adaptability, located at the highest level of the three, four angles need to be included: contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability, salience of the adaptation process. His Adaptation Theory is especially proper in the investigation of impoliteness, which simultaneously involves physical, social and mental elements.In light of Adaptation Theory, in this thesis an attempt has been made to investigate impoliteness in Friends, which is a sitcom popular all over the world. The major findings of the thesis are: The multiple roles of the agents in a speech act especially the role switching and designating affect the production and interpretation of impoliteness to a great degree; Impoliteness occurs at every possible level: sound structures, words, sentences, suprasentential units etc.; Impoliteness helps a lot with the characterization of a sitcom; Playwrights'favor in impoliteness can be traced to human psychological elements; Impoliteness in a sitcom has peculiarities: at the producing stage, it is exaggerated whether in terms of frequency or intensity while at the interpreting stage, especially for the audience's part, it is much sanctioned, thus becoming less imposing.