| Speech Act Theory has become a very important subject in pragmatic studies.In the daily communication of human beings,people usually do not express their real meaning or true purposes in a direct way for some reason or for some purpose,but express them with the indirect speeches,so it is very important and necessary to research and study the Indirect Speech Act Theory.Indirect Speech Act Theory is developed based on Speech Act Theory.Speech Act Theory was first put forward by Austin,which aims to answer how language is used in “doing” rather than the “reference” and embodies the linguistic view that “uttering” is “doing”.(He Zhaoxiong,2000,p.86)Austin’s book How to Do Things with Words marks the establishment of Speech Act Theory.Austin established the Speech Act Theory,then Searle further studies,supplements and develops the Speech Act Theory,and put forward the Indirect Speech Act Theory,namely “a speech act is performed by way of performing another”.(Searle,1975,p.60)Over the years,Indirect Speech Act Theory has attracted the widespread attention of scholars abroad and at home in both fields of philosophy and linguistics.They have devoted themselves to the in-depth researches and analysis of the Indirect Speech Act Theory from philosophy,cognitive and semantic aspects and so on.From then on,Indirect Speech Act Theory has had a very good development.Friends is a humorous sitcom,broadcasted by the United States NBC television from 1994 to 2003 for 10 years,and has become one of the world’s most popular and the world’s most influential American TV series.It develops around six good friends,who live in New York-Manhattan,and it tells a series of stories from their acquaintanceship to their experience with each other in their daily life for 10 years.It shows vividly the life,friendship,love,happiness,troubles,contradiction,work and so on among these six friends.The American TV series shows an ordinary life,like our real life.It is like a mirror of our real life.Many speeches in the American TV series are also often used in our daily life,so they have a certain representation of the daily speeches and theoretical research value.This thesis chooses the discourse in the American TV series Friends as the study cases,takes the Indirect Speech Act Theory as the theoretical framework,and uses the qualitative analysis as the research method,to analyze the speeches in this TV series and further to explore two research questions of this thesis: 1)What linguistic characteristics demonstrate indirect speech acts of discourse in Friends? 2)What are the motivations for people to perform indirect speech acts in discourse of Friends?This thesis contains three parts: introduction,main body,and conclusion.The main contents are as followings:The first part is the introduction.It at first introduces the general study situation of the indirect speech acts abroad and at home.The indirect speech act as a common phenomenon in our daily life,more and more scholars at home and abroad have devoted themselves to the researches and the studies of the indirect speeches,in which one important study topic is to analyze the discourse in literary works based on the Indirect Speech Act Theory and it is more and more widely used to study and analyze literary works.Secondly,it puts forward the research questions of this thesis,briefly explains the purpose of the thesis and points out the theoretical and practical significance of this thesis.Then,it states the data collection and research method of this thesis.Finally,it illustrates the structure of the thesis.The second part is the main body of this thesis,and consists of three chapters.This section mainly uses the Indirect Speech Act Theory to analyze the discourse in the American TV series Friends and further to explore two research questions of this thesis: 1)What linguistic characteristics demonstrate indirect speech acts of discourse in Friends? 2)What are the motivations for people to perform indirect speech acts in discourse of Friends?The first chapter is the literature review.This chapter mainly introduces the origin and development of the Indirect Speech Act Theory and also introduces its conception and classification.At first,Austin put forward the Speech Act Theory for the first time,which is the theoretical basis for the Indirect Speech Act Theory,and then Searle had made some supplement and development to Austin’s Speech Act Theory,and further put forward the Indirect Speech Act Theory.At last,this chapter introduces the definition and the classification of the Indirect Speech Act Theory and its influence in pragmatic studies.The second chapter mainly uses the Indirect Speech Act Theory to analyze the discourse in the American TV series Friends.This chapter mainly analyzes the performance of indirect speech acts in the American TV series Friends from three aspects: the mismatch between the forms and functions of the syntax,the mismatch between the literal meaning and the pragmatic meaning,and the conventional indirectness.This chapter explains what linguistic characteristics demonstrate indirect speech acts of discourse in Friends.This helps people to better understand the real meaning of the speakers.The third chapter also analyzes the discourse in the American TV series Friends based on the Indirect Speech Act Theory.It mainly discusses and analyzes the motivations for people to perform indirect speech acts in discourse of the American TV series Friends from the following four aspects: politeness,concealment,strong passion expression and irony.It is helpful for people to better understand people’s true intentions or real purposes hiding in their speeches,and at the same time,it is helpful for people to use the indirect speeches appropriately to make sure that communication can be carried on successfully and to maintain a good relationship.The third part is the conclusion.This section mainly summarizes the above discussions and analyses.It illustrates some innovations of this thesis.This thesis innovatively makes a discussion and an analysis of the discourse in the American TV series Friends from the perspective of the Indirect Speech Act Theory,and this has a certain theoretical and practical research significance.Furthermore,it points out the limitations of this thesis.Lastly,it puts forward some ideas for the future studies of the Indirect Speech Act Theory. |
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