The Indirectness and Politeness

刘采邑

【中圖分类号】G64 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089（2018）08-0113-01

In our daily life sometime people are likely to say what they mean directly， however there are some occasions that people may use indirect utterances to hint their meaning， and there seems to be some reasons for speaking indirectly. Indirectness appears to help the speaker to gain some advantages such as using indirectness tends to be a way to show politeness. This passage aims to explore the reasons why indirectness is connected with politeness.

Sometimes people tend to hide their real thoughts under the sentences they say， which may be because indirectness tends to be a way to show politeness（Brown & Levinson， 1987）. Here is an invented example， if a guest would like to leave a party early， it seems more polite to say “I still have some work to do， so maybe I should leave earlier.” Rather than just simply told his/her friends “I have to leave early！” without any reasons or explanation， and this may cause others unhappiness or embarrassment.

In addition， this kind of behavior is likely to be regarded as impolite， however indirectness sometimes tends to be a way for a speaker to show politeness and make the utterance more pleasant （LoCastro， 2013）. Besides， it is stated that using more indirectness in communication is likely to enhance the politeness， because the more indirectness the more options for the hearers（Leech， 1983）. Thus the main reason why people sometimes dont simply say what they mean is to show their politeness.

Theres an inevitable link between politeness and indirectness. Politeness is an important principle in communication， and there are two kind of politeness positive politeness and negative politeness （Yan， 2014）. In addition it is stated that politeness is any behavior including verbal behavior of a communicator to maintain his or her face and their interlocutors face （Yan， 2014）. According to Brown and Levinson （1987） face is “the public self？鄄image that every member wants to claim for himself”. people are likely to choose to use indirect or direct way before they begin to say something， if they choose indirect way， it may be because they want to be polite and to benefit both of them.

Moreover indirectness is a way to avoid face？鄄threatening acts. It is contend that some speech acts are very likely to threaten others face such as complaints， disagreements， and requests （Angouri & Locher， 2012）. Additionally those speech acts damage the hearers face are likely to threaten the speakers face as well （Brown & Levinson， 1987）. It is also argued that the more face？鄄threatening the speech act is the more polite the strategy a speaker may choose in order to mitigate its effects （Yan， 2014）. For example， as Brown and Levinson （1987） noted that there are various ways to give a face？鄄threatening act such as a request， however therere some methods to avoid it. And all of these solutions involve indirectness， and the reason why use such indirectness is to show the speakers politeness. Thus people tend to use an indirect way to make a request or complain， as its a way to show their politeness.

In conclusion， there are lots of reasons why people dont simply say what they mean， the main reason is that indirectness tends to be a more polite way to express something. Generally speaking， the main cause of indirectness is the speaker attempts to gain some advantages and avoid some negative consequences by using indirect speech. As indirectness is very significant for every speaker， so sometimes people dont simply say what they mean.

Reference

[1]Angouri， J.， & Locher， M. （2012）. Journal of Pragmatics 44（12）. Special issue on theorizing disagreement.

[2]Brown， P.， & Levinson， S. C. （1987）.Politeness： Some universals in language usage（Vol. 4）. Cambridge university press.

[3]LoCastro， V. （2013）. Pragmatics for language educators： A sociolinguistic perspective. Routledge.

[4]Leech， G. （1983）. Principles of pragmatics. London and New York： Longman. Yan， H. （2014）. Pragmatics. Oxford Univer？鄄sity press.