英语论文网

The research subjects were Sino-American non-linguistic majors. Data analysis is focused on the central speech acts, subsidiary speech acts and modifiers. The article suggests evaluating degree of politeness according to the speech acts' positive and negative impact on face.

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

So far, most studies both at home and aboard about refusal speech acts on cross-linguistic or cross-cultural differences in performing such an speech act, while few studies have been concentrated on its gender differences. Considering this, the present study is designed to investigate the gender differences in refusal strategies and the possible reasons for those differences, by taking sample dialogues from English movies Pride and Prejudice as its data for analysis, within the framework of Austin’s and Searle’s Speech Act Theory, Brown & Levinson’s Face Theory, and Leech’s Politeness Principle. As is widely known, language in movies is usually based on the realistic life and reversely, it can also reflect the realistic life. The dialogues quoted from the movie Pride and Prejudice could reveal, more or less, the actual use of language in realistic world.

The present study aims at how female and male actually differ in the realization of refusal strategies and exploring the causes for such differences. The results of the research is beneficial to the studies between language and gender,and also could serve as a guidance for makingand a harmonious interaction between two genders. Furthermore,it can help ESL students improve the ability of choosing communicative strategies.

Chapter 2 Theoretical Bases

2.1 The Speech Act of Refusal

Speech act theory is an important theory in the pragmatic study of language. The formation of Speech Acts Theory is generally attributed to Austin ( 1962 ) who initiated the theory, and Searle who further modified and systematized the theory. Contrary to popular belief, such as"Actions speaker louder than words",Austinpoints out that there is often no clear distinction between the speaking and acting.

In his masterpiece How to Do Thing with Words,Austin ( 1962 ) presented that people are performing actions when they are speaking, and a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.The locutionary act generally refers to the literal meaning of an utterance;he illocutionary act refers to the speaker’s intention in performing the locutionary act such as requesting, warning, ete ; the perlocutionary act refers to the consequential effect of the locutionary act on the addressee such as convincing, surprising or deterring him or her. Among these three acts, illocutionary act is the most important one and has always been a great concern. Later on, Searle ( 1979 ) further classified illocutionary acts into five categories according to their communicative functions.

Based onAustin’s speech act theory, the American philosopher of language John Searle has introduced some revisionsAustin’s theory. His major contribution is working on speech act classification and indirect speech act,which is defin本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。