A Study On The Politeness Of Request Speech Acts From The Perspective Of Force Schema

The request utterance plays an indispensable role in everyday communication.Request speech acts are regarded as face-threatening acts.So “politeness” plays a very important role in making a request,and it mattes a lot to the success of the request.While making a request speech act,the speaker exerts the illocutionary force on the hearer to make the hearer do the expected action that the speaker has intended in his utterance to change the world.The implementation of the illocutionary force actually threatens the negative face of the hearer since it interferes with the hearer’s freedom of action,so making a request is not polite in nature.However,the intensity or strength of the illocutionary force that different request speech acts exert on the hearer is different,so the face threat to the hearer is also varied.Therefore,different requests have different politeness degrees.This thesis is to make a study on the politeness of request speech acts in American TV series from the perspective of force schema with the qualitative research method,in order to obtain the different politeness degrees of different request strategies,and find out the motivations behind them.This thesis collects data from the first season of American TV series,Two Broke Girls,and then the illocutionary force of these requests is analyzed from the perspective of force schema in order to answer the following three questions:1.What is the politeness of request speech acts from the perspective of force schema?2.What are the reasons that different request speech acts show different politeness degrees from the perspective of force schema?3.How do different request speech acts show different politeness degrees from the perspective of force schema?The research shows that the politeness of request speech acts is closely related to the strength of the illocutionary force that the speaker imposes on the hearer.The politeness of request speech acts can be considered as that the speaker exerts an implicit illocutionary force on the hearer to make the latter do the expected action.The smaller the force is,the more polite the request is.The physical force in nature and the illocutionary force of requests have a lot in common.The physical force displays degrees of strength,so does the illocutionary force that the speaker exerts on the hearer.Therefore,different request speech acts show different politeness degrees.The illocutionary force of a request speech act is the metaphorical extension of the physical force to human’s cognition.Force schema is a general conceptualstructure abstracted from physical forces.As a result,the illocutionary force of request speech acts can be analyzed from the perspective of force schema to get different degrees of strength of it.The politeness degrees of different request speech acts can be obtained by comparing the strength of the illocutionary force that different request speech acts possess.Furthermore,the illocutionary force of different kinds of request strategies can be analyzed by different types of force schema.The illocutionary force of direct request strategy can be explained by compulsion force schema;the illocutionary force of conventionally indirect request strategy can be expounded by enablement force schema;the illocutionary force of non-conventionally indirect request strategy can be interpreted by removal of restraint force schema.This thesis is helpful to know the different politeness degrees of different request strategies,and can further reveal the motivations behind them.Besides,this thesis may also prove that the politeness of request speech acts can be strongly explained by force schema.By knowing the politeness degrees and the motivations of different requests,it is of great help to use requests more effectively,to promote the success of the communication,and to maintain good relationship.