Politeness strategies in requests in the thorn birds

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY of POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO Politeness strategies in requests in “The thorn birds” (Chiến lược lịch lời thỉnh cầu "Tiếng Chim Hót Trong Bụi Mận Gai”) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI – 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY of OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO Politeness strategies in requests in “The thorn birds” (Chiến lược lịch lời thỉnh cầu "Tiếng Chim Hót Trong Bụi Mận Gai”) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Trần Bá Tiến, M.A HANOI – 2010 Declaration……………………………………………………………………………… Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………… Abstract Abbreviations Part A: Introduction Rationale Aims of the study Scope of the study Overview of the work Methods of the study Design of the study Part b: Development Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1 The Speech act 1.1.1 Speech act performance 1.1.2 Locutionary act, Illocutionary act, Perlocutionary act 1.1.3 Speech act classifications 1.1.4 The speech act of request 1.2 Politeness and indirectness in requests 1.2.1 Theory of politeness 1.2.1.1 Politeness principles 1.2.1.2 The face-management view on politeness 1.2.1.2.1 Face 1.2.1.2.2 Face threatening acts 1.2.1.2.3 Politeness strategies 1.2.2 Social factors affecting politeness 1.2.3 Scales of indirectness in requests ……………………………… Chapter 2: Politeness strategies in requests in “The Thorn Birds” 2.1 Positive politeness strategies in requests in “The Thorn Birds” 2.1.1 Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, good 2.1.2 Strategy 2: Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H) 2.1.3 Strategy 3: Intensify interest to H 2.1.4 Strategy 4: Use in-group identity markers 2.1.5 Strategy 5: Seek agreement 2.1.6 Strategy 6: Avoid disagreement 2.1.7 Strategy 7: Presuppose / raise / assert common ground 2.1.8 Strategy 8: Joke 2.1.9 Strategy 9: Assert or presuppose S‟s knowledge of and concern 2.1.10 Strategy 10: Offer, promise 2.1.11 Strategy 11: Be optimistic 2.1.12 Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity 2.1.13 Strategy 13: Give (or ask for) reasons 2.1.14 Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity 2.1.15 Strategy 15: Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, underst 2.2 Negative politeness strategies manifested in requests in “The Thorn Birds” 2.2.1 Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect 2.2.2 Strategy 2: Question, hedge 2.2.3 Strategy 3: Be pessimistic 2.2.4 Strategy 4: Minimize the imposition 2.2.5 Strategy 5: Give deference 2.2.6 Strategy 6: Apologize 2.2.7 Strategy 7: Impersonalise S and H 2.2.8 Strategy 8: State the FTA as a general rule 2.2.9 Strategy 9: Nominalize 2.2.10 Strategy 10: Go on record as incurring a debt, or as no 2.3 Politeness strategies in requests in “The Thorn Birds” seen from S-H relationship 2.3.1 Lovers 2.3.2 Family members 2.3.3 Acquaintances 2.3.4 Strangers …………………… 36 PARTC:CONCLUSION ……………………… 38 REFERENCES .…… 40 FTA H S S.A D P R e.g i.e et al Part A: Introduction Rationale The basic function of language is “very similar in different societies, though with different linguistic conventions, in all parts of the world, because all people have similar needs, similar relationships, and in general share the same world” Robin (1952:6) This idea must be shared by the fact that language is created as a necessary demand of human life with the final aim, that is for communication in which people exchange information and express their opinions and attitudes However, how people communicate successfully in certain contexts has inspired to the linguists whose research has contributed a lot to the development of communication among human beings Any beginning-level Vietnamese students of English easily form the following sentences correctly as firstly having a conversation with an Englishspeaking person: Are you married? How old are you? But it is rather difficult for that foreigner to accept such personal questions That is the reason why Richards (1992:32) makes a distinction between the two notions linguistic competence and communicative competence, which refers to “….the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom.” This statement highly appreciates the important role of cultural knowledge in contributing to a successful communication Being aware of the active part of communication competence is along with setting up appropriate strategies in teaching English for Vietnamese students by giving out variable cultural and social contexts in each English class And it is advisable to choose politeness situations to illustrate in such those cases because politeness is one of the most great elements effecting the choice of language: “When learning a second language, one needs to acquire the new culture‟s politeness framework, which is very different from that of one‟s own culture” (Celce-Murcia et al 2000:26) Strategies to choose language politely, in fact, reflects most on the way people making a request because request shortly means “to ask your hearer whether he is willing or able to something” (Leech & Svartvik, 1975:147) Furthermore, during process of researching, we realize that so far little research has focused on politeness strategies in requests in a literature work Literature is, as being judged, a reflection of society and culture And the fact that the more a literary work reflects the present life truthfully and vividly, the more successful it will get, since it is said that art is for human sakes, not for art sakes Therefore language, especially daily language in the literary works will also be presented vividly And conversational language in a great novel, apparently, is reliable for our observation For those reasons presented above, we decided to choose the topic: “Politeness strategies in requests in “The thorn birds” Aims of the study - To explore how politeness strategies are manifested in the requests in the English language appropriately - To investigate the ways characters in a literary work operate their requests politely in their conversations Scope of the study Among linguistic, paralinguistic and non-verbal aspects related to politeness, our study only deals with the first one It focuses on positive and negative politeness strategies based on Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) theoretical framework And the data is based on all of the utterances containing the requests made by characters in “The Thorn Birds” Overview of the work “The Thorn Birds”- as the comment of Sweetie Pie in his “A Book Review of The Thorn Birds”: “Of all of Colleen McCullough's novels, The Thorn Birds made the greatest impact on my ideas of what a great book should be I was drawn into the story and could not put it down until I finished it a week later”- one of the great works of every time was written by an amateur writer- Collen McCullough in 1976 Being different from some previous works, all whose theme is also about the history of a family in Australia, but they almost reflect the development and the degeneration of the bourgeoisie class “The Thorn Birds” is the story of three generations in a labour family named Cleary The next generations, instead of refusing the tradition values left by the previous, inherit and develop those Simultaneously, getting good characteristics of family such as hard-working, 10 independence, steady enough to pass hard life, they also make some positive changes to catch up with the development of the age If Fiona- the first generation is brave enough to suffer from every misfortune but give no struggle for the fate, her daughter Meggie- a modern girl tries to get her happiness from the hand of God-having a baby with a priest who she loves, and Justine- Meggie‟s daughter has a quietly different moral standards There are many characters in the novel but the noble ones are Fiona (Fee), Meggie, a priest named Ralph and most of the incidents are surrounded by the love story full of hindrance but romantic between Meggie and Ralph The development of the novel is not only exposed via the meticulous description of the novelist but importantly, by the conversations among the characters in which we try to find how the characters operate their request politely Methods of the study Generally, the thesis employed the Quantitative Method, which is defined as a research method that relies less on interviews, observations, small numbers of questionnaires, focus groups, subjective reports and case studies but is much more focused on the collection and analysis of numerical data and statistics Counting and measuring are common forms of quantitative methods The result of the research is a number, or a series of numbers These are often presented in tables, graphs or other forms of statistics which is the science and practice of developing human knowledge through the use of empirical data Design of the study The thesis comprises three main parts: Part A: Introduction This part includes five sub- parts: the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study Part B: Content This is the nuclear part of the whole study containing three chapters Chapter 1: Theoretical background This chapter makes an overview of the theories on Speech Act, Speech Act of request and Politeness theory which are treated as the major grounds for the analysis work 11 Chapter 2: The study of politeness strategies manifested in requests in conversations in “The Thorn Birds” This chapter finds out how characters in the novel cover politeness strategies in requests in their conversations Part C: Conclusion This part summarize somewhat has discussed in the above two parts and give some suggestions for further study 12 Part B: development Chapter 1: Theoretical background This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background of the research It is divided into main sections Section 1.1 discusses the key notions of speech act theory and how requests have been defined in speech theory Section 2.2 discusses the two major issues, politeness theory and indirectness in requests 1.1 The Speech Act theories 1.1.1 Speech Act performance S.A is always an interesting topic for many linguists such as Hymes (1964), Searl (1969), Levinson (1983), Brown and Yule (1983), Smith and Richards (1983) Their works about it seems to never end because, firstly it is related to language which may be changed time by time, and vary hugely from a place to another; secondly studying S.A is to find out how people deal with their own language to communicate effectively which indeed differs from society to society, even in the same region S.A was first introduced by Austin (1962), but before him, there were still some other theorists whose ideas, to some extent, are quite different from Austin‟s For example, Moore views “language of common sense” and Bertrand Russell sees everyday language as “is somehow deficient and defective” Then they have an ambitious to idealize language by removing its imperfections and illogicalities In contrast, Austin claimed that there is no point in depriving the imperfections of language, instead during communication process people should consider how to use and manage with it effectively and appropriately And this reaction performs as his background to approach the term “ Speech Act” which is defined in his famous book “How to things with words”(1962) as “ We must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued- the total Speech Act- if we are to see the parallel between the statements and performative utterances” (1962:52) Later, G.Yule explicits the term “total situation” that in order to reach an effective communication, both S and H are usually helped by the circumstances surrounding the utterances what he calls “speech event” Thus, they share one thing that S.A must be put in certain situation in order to be interpreted appropriately He 37 E.g “We‟ll find them all, you wait and see” (p.472) 2.1.11 Strategy 11: Be optimistic In order to indicate that S and H are cooperators, S can assume that H wants what S wants for himself and that H will help to obtain it This results in the use of presumptuous or optimistic expressions of FTAs and perhaps it constitutes the most remarkable difference between positive and negative politeness Such optimism markers when used together with understaters (e.g a bit, a little) imply that S and H are in so good cooperation that small things such as H‟s helping S can be taken for granted We find no occurrences for this strategy 2.1.12 Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity The cooperative assumption can also be called upon by the use of an inclusive „we‟ form when S really means „you‟ or „me‟ One typical form of the inclusive „we‟ is Let‟s E.g “Let’s go and see your Auntie Mary, shall we?” (p 369) “Now let us kneel and pray” (p 358) The frequency of occurrences of this strategy in requests in this novel is 6.27% 2.1.13 Strategy 13: Give (or ask for) reasons Actually, this is another aspect of including both S and H in the activity By giving or asking for the reasons why S wants what he wants, S leads H to the recognition of the reasonableness of the FTA Therefore, the threat to H‟s face is softened A conventional outcome of this strategy is the use of indirect suggestions E.g -“Don‟t you think it‟s time you went home No doubt everyone will sleep in, but if someone awake at the usual time you‟ll be in the soup And you can‟t say you‟ve been with me, Meggie, even to your own family” (p.187) - I don‟t want to leave church because I don‟t love you the way a husband will, you understand Forget me, Meggie” (p.276) The negative form is used here not only to demand reasons but also assume that if there is no good reason for H to refuse S‟s request or offer, H will accept it This strategy takes up 4.54% of the occurrences of politeness strategies that are used in this novel 1.1.14 Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity 38 The fact that S and H are cooperatively involved in the conversation can be claimed by giving evidence of reciprocal rights or obligations obtaining between S and H S points out that it is a habit that S and H FTAs to each other, then the face-threatening aspect of the act being performed is softer than it seems to be It seems to us that this is a rather rare way of doing redress actions, since we can only find one sentence in request in “The Thorn Birds” that manifests it: Eg: “If I saddle the horse, will you ride with me until dawn.” (p 201) 2.1.15 Strategy 15: Give gift to H (good, sympathy, understanding, cooperation) A final way of satisfying H‟s positive-face wants proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987) is to satisfy some of H‟s wants Giving H gifts, showing sympathy, understanding, paying H compliments are examples of ways to satisfy H‟s wants to be liked, to be cared about, to be understood E.g “Mum, you must be tired Come and lie down; I‟ll lie a fire for you in your room Come on and lie down” (p 148) 6.6% is the occurrences of this strategy in this novel 2.2 Negative politeness strategies manifested in “The Thorn Birds” 2.2.1 Strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect Negative politeness involves both on-record expression and redress of an FTA However, to go on record coincides with conveying a message directly, whereas to be direct conflicts with being negatively polite This opposition can only be solved, in this case, by the compromise of conventional indirectness, “the use of phrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from their literal meanings” (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 131) Conventional indirectness correlates with indirect speech acts esp in requests It is believed that the more indirect an utterance is, the more effort S puts to the face-preserving work, and therefore the more he will be seen as trying to satisfy H‟s face wants For example, to say “Would you help me up the stairs, please?” (p 180) or “Would you bring it to me, please?” (p.183) is more polite in terms of negative politeness than to just simply say, “Help me up the stairs ” or “Let bring it to me” Even its popularity in theory of increasing politeness in requests, the characters in this novel are not really prefer using this way in their requests-they 39 employ much more imperative form instead However, compared with the other ones, the frequency of occurrence of this strategy 4.45% is not too low 2.2.2 Strategy 2: Question, hedge Generally, questions can be used to perform different speech acts such as offering, requesting and showing surprise Therefore, questions can be considered one form of indirectness, which has already been discussed above In this section, we will be discussing the use of hedge in more detail This strategy is used at rather high rate with 8.5% in requests in “The Thorn Birds” There are different kinds of hedges: a) Hedges on illocutionary force: In satisfying the speaker‟s want, DON‟T ASSUME H IS WILLING TO DO A, performative hedges are the most important linguistic means E.g “I don‟t want to say this but I think I have to It‟s time you found yourself a girl” (p 114) b) Hedges on the felicity condition: “If” clause is a very productive source of hedges of this kind E.g “If I saddle the horse, will you ride with me?.” (p 201) “If her life is in danger, you‟ll call me?” (p 372) c) Hedges addressed to Grice‟s Maxim: S‟s want to show politeness by avoiding presumptions can be partially satisfied by not assuming that H wants to cooperate This non-presumption may be communicated by a set of hedges addressed to Grice‟s Maxims: non-spuriousness (Quality), saying neither more nor less than is cooperatively necessary (Quantity), being „to the point‟ (Relevance), and being perspicuous, neither vague nor ambiguous (Manner) For example: Eg: “Perhaps we could have coffee together sometimes and discuss your plan” (p 537) (Quantity hedge) These hedges are frequently used and have direct applications, for example, Quality hedges can be used to soften the commitment of advice or criticisms; Quantity hedges can be used to redress complaints or requests Relevance hedges can be used to redress offers or suggestion, and above all, Manner hedges are useful in all kinds of FTAs 40 d) Hedges addressed to politeness strategies: These communicate that S notices the violations of H‟s face wants For example: Frankly, To be honest, To tell the truth… They indicate that S is aware that the FTA being performed on record should best have been performed off record E.g: “As a matter of fact, I have a brother with a large and thriving family of sons.” (p 75) e) Prosodic and kinesic hedges Apart from verbal hedges, FTAs can also be performed together with some prosodic and kinesic means such as facial expressions, gestures and the sounds „Hmm, Umm, Err…‟ 2.2.3 Strategy 3: Be pessimistic This strategy accounts for 8.8% of the total occurring times of politeness strategies in requests in “The Thorn Birds” It expresses the suspicion of the condition for S‟s speech acts to be accepted as appropriate In this way, it softens the FTAs and gives redress to H‟s negative face There are several ways to realize this strategy For example, using negative forms (with a tag) in requests E.g “You can‟t tell me, can you?” (p 461) “You won‟t leave me alone, will you?” (p.295) Generally, being pessimistic serves to limit the coercion of the speech acts and save his negative face 2.2.4 Strategy 4: Minimize the imposition, Rx As we have discussed, there are three social factors affecting politeness: D, P, and R The choice of strategy encodes the danger of the FTA but does not indicate whether D, P or R is most responsible in that danger One way to reduce the danger is to indicate that the intrinsic seriousness of the imposition (R x) is not in itself great, and thus to imply that D and P are most responsible for that FTA Therefore, reducing the size of imposition may pay H redress and, as a result, may be considered as a strategy of negative politeness There are numerous expressions in English which can serve this purpose, such as: a tiny little bit, a bit, a little, a sip, a while, a drop, etc E.g “Give a little, Justine, cooperate?” (p 533) 41 This strategy is used less frequently than the previous three negative politeness strategies This one takes up only 3.29% of the total times politeness strategies occur in the characters‟ requests 2.2.5 Strategy 5: Give deference About the realization of deference, Brown & Levinson (1987) state that there are two sides, “one in which S humbles and abases himself, and another where S raises H (…that which satisfies H‟s wants to be treated as superior)” In both cases, it is conveyed that H is of higher social status than S Emphasizing the high P differential, deference indicates that the addressee‟s rights to relative immunity from imposition are recognized Moreover, it implies that S is certainly not in a position to coerce H‟s compliance in any way In this way, deference serves to defuse potential FTAs and to redress H‟s negative face Deference is realized in the form of honorifics – direct grammatical encodings of relative social status between participants, or between participants and person or thing mentioned in the talk For example, „Dr Adams, dine, gentleman, bestow, piece, …‟ are used instead of „Adams, eat, man, give, bit,‟ to show respect to H‟s things Realizing deference, S tends to raise those referents that are directly associated with H (e.g., his children, his possessions, his career, his house, etc.) by using honorific labels and to humble when referring to those associated with H by using dishonorific labels Eg: “Your Grace, I think you ought to step outside now” (p 373) “Please, talk it, Father” (p 276) We observe that this strategy is used in majorly by Christian believers to show their the respect toward their priest even in requests It takes 4.5% of the total 2.2.6 Strategy 6: Apologize According to Brown & Levinson (1987), by apologizing for doing an FTA, the speaker can indicate his reluctance to impinge on H‟s negative face and thereby partially redress that impingement This is a straightforward way to communicate that S is aware of H‟s negative face demands and is bearing it in mind when performing the FTA Eg: “I‟m sorry, please take one for yourself” (p 401) 42 This negative politeness strategy is used rather frequently in the novel, as 8.5% of the FTAs are redressed by using this strategy 2.2.7 Strategy 7: Impersonalize S and H Apart from apologizing, another way to indicate that S doesn‟t want to impinge on H is to perform the FTA in such a way that it seems the agent were other than S, or at least probably not S or S alone, and the addressee were other than H, or only inclusive of H that means avoiding the pronouns “I” and “you” in the utterances Eg: “Here, here there is no need to cry…” (p.8) In general, plural pronouns can be used to give respect to singular referents When plural pronouns are used, the agent and the addressee are not singled out and thus they provide a conventional “out” for H in interpreting the utterance The plural „you‟, therefore, when used to refer to a single addressee, is understood as indicating distance or deference So is „we‟ when used for „I‟ E.g “We‟ll have to find them, won‟t we?” (p 9) “We had better pray, hadn‟t we?” (p 521) * Reference terms as „I‟ avoidance E.g “But the President should not be involved in any part of this case.” (Richard Nixon, New York Times, 1973: 87, Quoted in Brown & Levinson 1987:204) This strategy is used in requests in this novel with the frequency of 6.8% 2.2.8 Strategy 8: State the FTA as a general rule To state the FTA as an instance of some general social rule, regulation or obligation is one way to isolate S and H from the particular imposition in that FTA, and to communicate that S doesn‟t want to impinge but is forced to so by the circumstances This strategy is realized in the avoidance of pronouns Nevertheless, there is no frequency of occurrence for this strategy in requests in this novel 2.2.9 Strategy 9: Nominalize Brown & Levinson (1987) claim and prove that degrees of negative politeness are asymmetric with degrees of nouniness; that is to say, formality is associated with the noun end of the utterance For example, Your good performance on the examinations impressed us favorably is more formal and therefore more negatively polite than You performed well on the exam and that impressed us favorably 43 This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that as an expression is nominalized, the actor is removed from the action, the feeling, the status being described, since he is no longer attributed by the predicate but becomes an attribute for the noun The further the “doing” part of an FTA is removed from its actor, the less dangerous its threat seems to be Yet, we found no example for this strategy in the data 2.2.10 Strategy 10: Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H An FTA can be redressed by S‟s explicitly claiming his indebtness to H (in requests) and disclaiming of H‟s indebtness (in offers) The use of this strategy accounts for 4.81% of the total use of politeness strategies in this novel E.g “Father, be so kind as to help me dismount” (p 118) The frequency of occurrence of positive and negative politeness strategies in requests in “The Thorn Birds” can be summed up in the following table: Positive politeness strategies 10 11 12 44 Table 1: The frequency of occurrence of positive and negative politeness strategies in requests in “The Thorn Birds” 2.3 Politeness strategies manifested in conversations in “The Thorn Birds”, seen from S-H relationships There are main kinds of relationship between the characters in this novel: lovers, family members, acquaintances and strangers The proportion of politeness strategies employed by those people in their conversations can be summed up in the following table: Relationship Lovers Family members Acquaintances Strangers Table 2: The frequency of occurrence of positive and negative politeness in requests seen from S-H relationship Graphically, the comparison between the use of positive and negative politeness can be illustrated in the following chart: 45 Positive Politeness strategy NegativePoliteness strategy Chart 1: Politeness strategies in requests seen from S-H relationship L: Lovers F-M: Family members A : Acquaintances S: Strangers 2.3.1 Lovers It can be clearly seen that between lovers, positive politeness is not really dominant over negative politeness Positive politeness accounts for 60%, remarkably higher than negative ones with 40% This significant difference in the rate between the manifestation of positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies is rather unusual as the relationship between lovers is one of the most intimate because normally, they know each other very well and their relationship is built up on the grounds of sharing common desires, interests and even knowledge, thus they tend to use strategies that mark the closeness of their relationship However in this novel, there is a complicated relationship among these couples For example, the love between Ralph and Meggie is of priest and Christian believer, therefore the way Meggie utter her requests toward Ralph still has to keep a respect on him by using honorific labels Eg: “Please, talk it, Father”(p 276) Or due to the reluctance of the love between Meggie and Luke, they tend to use negative strategies in their requests: Eg: “You won‟t leave me alone, will you” (p 295) 2.3.2 Family members Different from conversations between lovers, requests among members in the family in this novel (e.g between Meggie and her brothers, wife-husband…) employ 46 a far higher rate of positive politeness than negative 72.01% of the politeness at work in this group‟s utterances is positive, and 28.91% is negative Like lovers, family members are intimately related people, thus positive politeness is more common in their talk However, in comparison with lovers‟ conversations, the rate of positive politeness strategies moves up remarkably A suggested explanation for this phenomenon may be that family in a family are closer to each other, in terms of relationship than lovers Therefore no need for them to draw their relationship go further via their requests Especially, as we observe the frequency of using in-group markers is rather high E.g Daddy, I want you to contest (p.210) Mum, stay home (p.258) 2.3.3 Acquaintances This group of people belongs to some kind of “neutral” relationship, i.e their relationship is neither formal nor informal Therefore, the proportion of positive politeness versus negative politeness is lower: 45.12% vs 54.88% In comparison with the rate of positive politeness used among lovers and family members, the rate of positive politeness among acquaintances decreases noticeably with approximately 15% (compared with lovers) and 20% (with family members) This difference can be explained by the role of social distance (D) in the choice of politeness forms when the characters make a request For instance, Mrs Mary Carson used conventional indirectness request strategy toward Father Ralph Eg: “Will you take me to the top of the stairs?” (p.184 ) 2.3.4 Strangers Conversations between characters of this group have more to with negative politeness strategies than with positive politeness strategies However, the difference between the rate of positive and negative politeness is not very big, nearly 20% It seems surprising that such a large portion of politeness between strangers in this novel is positive However, it is not unexplainable The reason is probably that they meet in such situations that they are in need of sympathy and sharing or even try to be friendly with the others For example, Ann try to show her sympathy with Meggie who she meet for the first time with her friendly request- omitting Subject : “Go into the bed room and lie down- not your bedroom, ours” (p 368) 47 We also realize that the choice of politeness forms varies depending on the improvement of their relationships For example, when Justine meet Rainer for the first time, her request manifests a lot of negative politeness because they are still strangers E.g “Do you mind if we walk, Rainer” (p 292) After meeting each other for several times, their conversations become increasingly more informal with more positive politeness strategies E.g “Oh, Rainer, don‟t make it so hard.” (p 243) In conclusion, the choice of politeness in a request is determined not only by culture or by the kinds of social relationship (which correlate with Brown & Levinson‟s notions of D, P, R) , but also by the participants‟ living condition, personal demands and the status of their relationship 48 Part C: Conclusion 3.1 Conclusions Politeness phenomena are generally considered to have the status of universal principles of human interaction Therefore, being polite is a complicated business in any language It is indeed very difficult to learn because it involves understanding not just the language, but also the social and cultural values of the community In fact, several linguists attempt to characterize aspects of politeness and to account for the rules that govern the use of language in context Among these, Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) theoretical framework is the most realizable one for this thesis, which deals with politeness on the grounds of face – management And with attempt to find out how politeness strategies is performed in requests by uttering which the S often try to convey in polite way to obtain their goals, we considered these cases in a well-known novel “The Thorn Birds” written by Colleen McCullough The investigation of the manifestation of 15 positive politeness strategies and 10 negative politeness strategies uncovers that on the whole, characters in this novel are primarily positively polite to one another In their requests, they employ more positive politeness strategies than negative (51.35% vs 48.65%) Of 15 positive politeness strategies, strategy (Use in group identity markers) is the most preferable one when a speaker try to give redress action to a hearer‟s positive face; and strategy (Be pessimistic) is most preferable regarding negative politeness The least common positive politeness strategy is strategy (Exaggerate) and strategy (Assume or assert reciprocity), whereas strategy (Norminalize), strategy (State the FTA as a general rule) is the least preferred negative politeness strategy As far as the S-H relationship is concerned, the study shows that in requests among family members, positive politeness strategies occupy the major proportion: 72.01%, whereas only 27.99% is taken up by negative Likewise, among lovers, this rate is not so uneven between positive (60%) and negative politeness strategies (40%), the reasonable explanation for this unusual expression is their complicated relationship (e.g, the love between a priest and a Christian believer) Surprisingly, the rate between positive politeness and negative politeness is rather small among 49 acquaintances (45.12% vs 54.88%) and strangers (40.26% vs 59.74%) in this novel The main reason for this one is that most of the partners want to reach their goal via their request, as a result they almost try to express them in friendly and closer way 3.2 Suggestions for further works Due to the limited size of a graduation thesis, we cannot go into further depth in exploring politeness in conversations of characters in this novel However, the study can serve as a start for other further studies such as: - Comparing politeness strategies in conversations in English and Vietnamese literary works - Comparing politeness strategies in conversations in classical and modern literary works - Comparing politeness strategies in conversations in British and American literary works - Studying politeness strategies in one particular kind of FTA (for example requests or offers) made by characters of some literary works 50 References English Austin, J.L (1962), How to things with words, OUP, Oxford Brown, P & Levinson, S (1987), Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, CUP, Cambridge Celce-Murcia et al (2000), Critique of a language enrichment programme for grade4 ESL, OUP, Oxford Dang Thi Manh (2005) Politeness strategies in conversation in “The Quiet American” Graduation Thesis, VU-CFL, Vinh House, J (1989), “Politeness in English and German: The functions of Please and Bitte”, Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Request and Appologies, Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, New Jersey J Watts, R (2003) Politeness CUP: Cambridge Leech, G.N (1983 ), Principles of Pragmatics, Longman, London Levinson, S (1983), Pragmatics, CUP, Cambridge 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This chapter investigates how the characters in ? ?The Thorn Birds? ?? manage their requests politely by analyzing the occurrences of politeness. .. of the utterances containing the requests made by characters in ? ?The Thorn Birds? ?? Overview of the work ? ?The Thorn Birds? ??- as the comment of Sweetie Pie in his “A Book Review of The Thorn Birds? ??:... negative politeness strategies in requests in ? ?The Thorn Birds? ?? 2.3 Politeness strategies manifested in conversations in ? ?The Thorn Birds? ??, seen from S-H relationships There are main kinds of