INDIRECTNESS AS AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY OF POLITE BEHAVIOUR IN W. S. MAUGHAM'S "THEATRE"

Nowadays, one of the key aspects of interpersonal communication is polite behaviour towards the interlocutor achieved in various ways, namely through indirect speech acts. The present paper highlights the importance of indirectness or vagueness as a manifestation of polite behaviour while telling someone to do something from a perspective of negative politeness. A considerable amount of attention is paid to indirect requests which primarily aim at saving the hearer’s negative face through mitigating face threatening acts (FTAs). The appropriate degree of politeness in indirect speech acts largely depends on some social scales, more specifically, Distance, Power and Rank of imposition. The higher the weightiness of imposition is, the politer the indirect request is supposed to be.