A Cognitive Perspective On Politeness

This MA thesis within the theoretic framework of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory focuses on the study of politeness arising in verbal interaction. This study tentatively attempts to explain utterance politeness in terms of relevance, intentionality, ostension and subsequent inference, and mutual manifestness.Traditionally there are four principal perspectives on the treatment of politeness: the social-norm view, the conversational-maxim view, the face-saving view and conversational-contract view each of them with both merits and demerits. They have left us some questions unanswered. Is politeness always strategic? Is politeness a mere matter of face-saving? Does politeness mean the observance of rigid conversational maxims? Does more directness of an utterance suggest more politeness of that? A reexamination of politeness phenomena from a pragmatic cognitive perspective will deepen the understanding of them. After being introduced to China from abroad Relevance Theory has been assessed and employed to account for various linguistic phenomena as a powerful tool. In spite of criticisms that it has received, we, aware of its defects and limited applicability, will effectively carry out investigations and draw correct conclusions. Relevance Theory being based on rationalism the main problem with it is that it ignores emotional elements and the influence of human interests involved in verbal interaction. In Xu Shenghuang's (2002) view The theoretical frame of Relevance Theory has presupposed that interlocutors are completely rational and that their interests are consistent (p. 8). Its limitations manifest themselves especially in the course of its accounting for utterance politeness. As Nan Zuomin (1997) puts, various sorts of the primary motivations of parole involve more or less emotional elements (p. 40). Similarly, according to Verschueren (2000) language usage involves both cognitive elements and emotional elements (p. 90).Some relevance theorists have applied Relevance Theory to politeness research and their work is fruitful. On the relevance of utterance politeness M. Jary (1998) suggests...