A Pragmastylistic Study Of Fictional Discourse Under Frame-based Politeness Theory

In the 1970 s,politeness received extended attention in the field of pragmatic study.Moreover,the recent decade witnessed the tendency of interdisciplinary studies,which combine the study of politeness with other subjects such as socio-psychology,stylistics,and discourse analysis.Besides,the research hotspots,including the boundary between politeness and impoliteness,the west-east variation of politeness have been under heated discussion.Politeness studies at home and abroad indicate the space for further exploration in this particular field of study.In addition,it is the flourishing research direction that to apply politeness theory into fictional discourse analysis in recent years in academia.The Remains of the Day,a novel written by the winner of Nobel Prize in literature Kazuo Ishiguro,is selected as discourse data,establishing the frame-based style analysis model with character-character and reader-author tiers,which is based on Terkourafi’s(2007)frame-based approach to politeness and Leech and Short’s(2007)multilevel model in analysing the stylistic features of fictional prose to testify how politeness is achieved in these levels of conversation.This study dedicates to probe the intrinsic nature of politeness in literary discourse,the inference process of calculating the implicatures of politeness under this model,as well as the realization of polite linguistic scheme in character-character and reader-author level of conversation,ultimately,the validity and reliability of the model.The analysis of politeness in The Remains of the Day finds out that:(1)Politeness is a perlocutionary effect achieved by the hearer once the hearer holds the belief that the speaker is being polite.However,in literary context,the hearer’s interpretation of politeness is largely restrained by utterance of the context set by author.Therefore,relativity is the intrinsic nature of politeness in literary discourse;(2)Under character-character level of conversation,the process of calculating implicatures of four types of utterance,including indirect utterance,ambivalent but not conventionalized utterance,conventionalized utterance in conventionalized context,and conventionalized utterance in unconventionalized context is constrainedby social conventions and historical factors.In The Remains of the Day,author adopts a good deal of marked politeness expressions to depict the social status and characteristics of characters,as well as the setting of the story;(3)Under reader-author level of conversation,author uses second person address to enhance the familiarity between the narrator and the reader and reinforce the readability from readers’ perspective.At the same time,it is demonstrated that unconventional writing pattern of reference of address can be a powerful tool for depicting the extreme sense of order between Stevens and his father,as well as his employers.To conclude,this study has both theoretical and practical implication on politeness study,as well as the stylistics in analyzing fictional discourse,in that firstly,it provides the clues for analyzing the characters from academic perspective.In addition,it enriches the interdisciplinary research in the field of pragmastylistic studies.Also,from practical perspective,the hearer-oriented view of frame-based politeness can be an instructional guide for readers to admire and interpret literary works.