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ed as a primary illocutionary act which "is performed indirectly by way of performing another" ( Searle, 1979 : 31 ). Searle points out that in performing an indirect speech act, the speaker utters a sentence and means what he says, but at the same times he also means something more. In a direct speech act, by contrast, the sentence meaning and utterance meaning coincide with each other. In his speech act, Searle also argues that felicity conditionsshould not only be seen negatively as ways in which an utterance may go wrong, but also positively as rules, the observance of which constitutes or creates the speech act. And felicity conditions are sets of necessary conditions for illocution to "count". Searle establishes the five classes of speech acts : representatives ( also called "assertive" in Searle, 1979 ), directives, comissives, expressive and declaratives.

2.2 Face Theory

Erving Gofflllan states that the notion of "face" is related to the concepts of "embarrassment" "shame" and sort of feelings. Brown & Levinson (1987), the proposers of the Face Theory, define "face" as the public self-image that every competent adult member of society claims for himself. Brown & Levinson also make a distinction between two kinds of face: positive face and negative face. Negative face refers to the want of not being impeded, imposed or interfered by others. Positive face, on the other hand, refers to the want of being ratified,

Besides face, another central notion in Brown & Levinson’s theory is what is termed as face-threaten ( FTA ): the act whose propositional content threatens or runs contrary to the face wants of participants in an interaction. According to Brown & Levinson, in whatever cultural backgrounds, FTAs will necessarily occur throughout social interaction and are likely to generate interpersonal tensions or conflicts. As in the case of refusal, it is important to give such an impression that the speaker still cares about the hearer’s wants, needs and feelings althoughs he pefermed the act of refusal. In daily communication, the speaker will make a choice among various politeness strategies to save the face of both sides. In order to achieve the purpose of rejection while reducing the threat to the face to the minimum, a variety of politeness strategies are usually adopted in the performance of refusal speech acts, including both verbal strategies and non-verbal strategies.

2.3 Politeness Principle

Leech makes a distinction between relative politeness and absolute politeness. It refers to the degree of politeness inherently associated with a speech act, compared with those that highlights the fact that politeness is often relative to some norm of behavior for a particular setting. Leech puts primary focus on the study of absolute politeness. This brings out the general statement of the politeness principle :

( a ) Tact Maxim:

Minimize cost to other;

Maximize benefit to Other.

( b ) Generosity Maxim:

Minimize benefit to self;

Maximize cost to self.

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