ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIRECTNESS AND POLITENESS

Rohila Makhmarazhabova

Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)

www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-4-276-281

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIRECTNESS AND POLITENESS

Rohila Makhmarazhabova

Master student of Uzbekistan State World Languages University

ABSTRACT

It is generally believed that moderate indirectness is better and more easily acceptable than blunt and direct speech acts among both close friends and other acquaintances in everyday conversations, especially among strangers. Such indirect speech acts mean comparatively more politeness for the speech acts recipient. It is not at all an unusual phenomenon in everyday life. This paper focuses on exposure of how indirect speech act coming into being in terms of speech act theory and cooperative principles. It illustrates essential causes from the perspective of politeness, showing that communicators can utilize indirect speech acts to help convey their politeness to speech acts receivers so as to accomplish communicative purposes, facilitate interpersonal communication and maintain interpersonal relationship with mutual respect, to certain extent.

Keywords: indirectness; indirect speech act; implicature; politeness.

INTRODUCTION

Definition of Indirect Speech Act Indirectness and directness are antonyms. When we take a look at indirect speech act, we can never neglect direct speech act, since they are complementary antonyms, to be more exact. Direct speech act is defined as "there is direct relationship between a structure and a function.". It means that there is one-to-one relationship between the structure and the function. There are generally three basic forms of structure: declarative, interrogative and imperative as well as three correspondent communicative functions: statement, question, and command/request. For example:

(1) He is my husband. (declarative for a statement)

(2) Are you serious? (interrogative for a question)

(3) Shut up! (imperative for a command)

Yule then defines indirect speech act as "there is indirect relationship between a structure and a function". For example:

(4) It is noisy here.

(5) I hereby tell you that it is noisy here.

Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)

www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-4-276-281

(6) I hereby request of you that you turn down your radio a little bit.

(7) Could you turn down your radio a little bit? In the example (4), there are two functions when the speaker utters this declarative. Namely, on one hand the speaker just means what he or she expresses which is shown in (5). On the other hand, speaker means to show his or her conceived intention that the noise has already interrupted him or her, hoping that the listener or hearer could turn down the radio in (6). We can see obviously that (5) is the literal meaning or semantic meaning of example (4), while (6) is intended meaning of the speaker. The example (7) presents a request by uttering an interrogative. The speaker does not want a yes/no answer. Instead, the speaker wants the hearer to perform the action of turning down the radio rather than admit or deny his or her ability. Therefore, we conclude that (4) and (7) are indirect speech act.

However, a problem then arises. How does the hearer tell whether the speaker means (5) or (6) when only hear the utterance of (4) "Searle views indirect speech acting as a combination of two acts, a primary illocutionary act and a secondary one, where the primary act operates through, and in 2nd force of, the secondary one." In order to solve this problem Searle builds a ten-step pyramid of reasoning. He thinks that speaker can convey his implicature on the basis of mutual understanding including language, non-linguistic background knowledge and the capability of inference of the hearer during performing indirect speech act. For example:

(8) A: Let's go skating tomorrow. B: I have an exam tomorrow.

No matter what B says is true or not, both A and B know exactly that exam is much more important than go skating and it will take some time to prepare, so B successfully conveys his intention to A without disappointing A by using direct speech act of saying "no" and explaining the reason very clearly. It shows that B understands A's kind invitation and gives further understandable explanation instead of using direct speech act of refusal so as to save the invitation giver's face, which is more polite verbal utterance and more acceptable social conduct in human communication among friends.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Such Indirect speech act is as a matter of fact based on speech act theory. It is very necessary to mention some about speech act theory. It is Austin who launched his theory first in a set of lectures and then published in 1962 as How to Do Things with Words. He noted that some ordinary language declarative sentence contrary to

Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)

www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-4-276-281

logical positivist assumptions, are not apparently used with any intention of making true or false statements, which he called constatives, but do things. Austin termed these utterances as performatives. He set up a series of felicity conditions, under which performatives will come off. Violation of these conditions will cause misfires or abuses. Later, there are two crucial sliding definitions: explicit performatives and implicit performatives. Using adverb "hereby" separates performative verbs from others. Besides, all the implicit performatives can be put into the form of an explicit performatives. Secondly, there is a shift from dichotomy performative/constative to a general theory of illocutionary acts, of which the various performatives and constatives are just sub-cases. He put forward locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act with illocutionary act as its core.

Searle later classified the illocutionary acts into five types:

1. Representatives

2. Directives

3. Commissives

4. Expressives

5. Declarations

All those illocutionary acts express the speakers' intention, while among others many speakers would like to choose indirect ways, which lead the hearers to infer their real intentions.

METHODOLOGY

Most of us may give vote to indirect speech acts. "The occurrence of the imperative in orders or requests is dispreferred in many languages, including English, despite its status as the 'genuine' expression of the speech act 'order' or 'request'.". Levinson remarks that "most usages of requests are indirect", whereas "imperatives are rarely used to command or request"; in the same vein, Thomas observes that "in English, it is not usual to use the words I invite you to perform the act of inviting".

There are a lot of reasons why we tend to use indirect speech acts especially for requests and orders. It is because that requests and orders are considered as directives according to Searle's classification and they are considered highly competitive according to Leech's, which directly threaten the face of people involved in a conversation. Leech put forward six maxims known as polite principle from the aspects of "cost" and "benefit" in a broadest sense: 1. Tact maxim 2. Generosity maxim 3. Approbation maxim 4. modesty maxim 5. Agreement maxim 6. Sympathy

Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)

www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-4-276-281

maxim.

It means that people tend to follow such maxims in daily conversations unconsciously or consciously most of the time, and we do know that people talk trying to "minimize" one's own "benefit" and "maximize" the other's "cost" to be more polite. It is mutually understood as a more acceptable and expected social conduct from both parties involved in a comfortable conversation or exchange. Hence, the one who violates such maxims would be considered rude.

These maxims explain why some utterances are comparatively polite; some are not so polite and some others are impolite which are shown by anomalous language use. In these six maxims, the most basic one is the first maxim. It is because that tact maxim is used for directives, while directives can particularly reflect politeness and need it most. As we have mentioned above, requests and orders belong to directives. Now we set example of tact maxim, which is to minimize the cost of other, or maximize the benefit of other:

(12) Would it be possible for you to spare a minute?

(13) Could you spare a minute?

(14) Will you spare a minute?

(15) Lend me your ears!

(16) You must listen to me.

This series of requests that convey the same message, we can sense by intuition that the requests become more and more impolite from top to the bottom. Example (12) is the most polite one, while (16) is the most impolite one. Example (12) contains such auxiliary verb "would" and possibility word "possible" leaving enough room for the listener to make their choices. Example (16) is an order with auxiliary verb "must". This series of expressions is arranged from the one that minimizes the cost of other to the one that maximizes the benefit of other. It is a large set of expressions we can choose according to different situations or contexts. Under different circumstances, we can't neglect "appropriateness of language". The p olite ones are comparatively more desirable expressions for most occasions, but even among the polite utterances, we still need to make best choice according to different speech contexts.

Ervin-Tripp, has made researches about the differences of indirect requests and to what kind of degree they differ from each other. She analyzes that the degree of familiarity decides the way people speak. For example:

(17) Would you mind my opening the window?

Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)

www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-4-276-281

If someone utters this to a friend, his friend will surely wonders that there is something wrong with this guy, or the speaker just means to tell a friend that they are not intimate enough, or they are just kidding with each other by pretending to be polite. There would be more than one interpretation. These interpretations could be narrowed down, depending on different speech contexts. The context would define which interpretation is more applicable. However, it is indeed very polite to speak like this to a stranger or the one that is not familiar to the speaker.

(18) Shut the door!

This utterance is an obvious order, which definitely cannot be used to a superior boss or an elder person, if you are only a clerk or a youth. You would be fired except that you have good terms with your boss. You would be considered as spoiled younger generation and lack manners. However, you can say it to your intimate friend who knows your personality well and will never mind your direct manner and even enjoy your directness. Actually, for most of occasions, even among best friends, such utterances are not always desirable.

Therefore, we can only possibly infer the relationship between speakers and listeners based on how directly or indirectly they speak to each other. While it is not a policy that can be applied to all circumstances, since we all know that even among best friends, we should not take directness for granted. We have to be aware when it is appropriate to show our politeness by using indirect speech acts, in order to save both parties' faces, showing our good manners and smooth mutual communication.

CONCLUSION

In everyday communication, people talk differently based on different education backgrounds or for different purposes, etc. Some prefer direct requests and others indirect ones. This paper explains the indirect speech act from two theories: speech act theory of Austin and Searle as well as cooperative principle of Grice, we can see that indirect speech act is common though, it needs painstaking analysis to expose the features of them. Among lots of reasons, we apply politeness principle of Leech to explain the fundamental reason of using indirect speech for politeness. That is why we would like to choose indirect speech acts rather than the others. We generally admit that being polite is presupposition of communication. No one wants to talk with those who always use vulgar words all day long. No one is willing to be imposed to perform certain actions. No one deliberately violates this universal truth of mutual respect.

Central Asian Research Journal For Interdisciplinary Studies (CARJIS)

www.carjis.org DOI: 10.24412/2181-2454-2022-4-276-281

In addition, there are a large number of forms of indirect speech acts that contain profound implicatures. A structure of linguistic forms can be blessed with quite different functions and the same function can be exercised by quite different structures. All of them can fully convey a speaker's intentions on the basis of common ground and shared knowledge. Usually it is believed that the more indirect the more polite among strangers or acquaintances, while it could be unusual among friends sometimes. Therefore, the interpretations of them are of great importance to improve one's communicative competence, and maintain harmonious social relationship among people.

REFERENCES:

1. G, Yule, Pragmatics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000.

2. J, Searle, Indirect Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 1975.

3. J, Thomas, Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatic. London and New York: Longman, 1995.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIRECTNESS AND POLITENESS Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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