Leech’s Politeness Theories And Analysis Of Characters’ Utterances In Emma

Emma is perceived as Jane Austen’s the only classic work whose title is the name of the heroine in the novel. Many scholars have explored and reviewed it from the different perspectives. This thesis attempts to analyze and explore the main characters’utterances in Emma with Leech’s Politeness Principle and Grand Strategy of Politeness from the pragmatic perspective with the purpose of helping readers comprehend this classical work more deeply. This research expects to help readers master the essence of Leech’s old and new politeness principle more profoundly and guide people to apply the politeness theories into the daily communication more properly. Through the analysis of the main characters’ utterances with Leech’ s politeness theories, the author aims to offer people some effective and feasible communicative skills and strategies for the sake of improving people’s communicative abilities and facilitating the communication. The ultimate goal is to enhance and consolidate the interpersonal relationship and realize the effective and successful .ommunication.Firstly, the author introduces some influential politeness theories including the rules of pragmatic competence proposed by Lakoff, the conversational-contract view proposed by Fraser, the face-saving view advocated by Brown&Levinson and so on. Secondly, The author elaborates Leech’s politeness theories with real and vivid examples including Politeness Principle (PP for short), The Second-order Principles of Politeness and Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP for short). This part is the theoretical basis of this thesis. The final part is the main body of the thesis. This part focuses on the analysis of the main characters’ utterances in Emma so as to help readers grasp and master the characters’ personality, the intricate relationship among the characters and Austen’ s language style more profoundly and thoroughly. Most importantly, it will help people consolidate and strengthen their politeness awareness that people view politeness as a norm to regulate their behaviors so as to create the friendly and harmonious communicative atmosphere. Meanwhile, it will provide some communicative ways and strategies to make people behave politely and appropriately in the given situation. In a word, the successful communication asks speaker not only to convey the accurate and effective information but also to take the politeness into consideration in our daily life.