Children’s Perceptions of Polite Directives：A Case Study of Fathers’Usage of Different Syntactic Directive Structures on Children of Different Ages （Proposal）

王賽

1.Introduction.The present study is aimed to investigate two aspects of childrens perceptions of polite directives.Firstly，whether an age-related increase will facilitate childrens ability to perceive directives？ Secondly，whether different syntactic directive structures will influence childrens ability to perceive directives？

2.Literature review.Geoffrey Leech （1983）proposed Politeness Principle （PP）and argued that people violate the maxims of CP for the sake of politeness.In China，Kong Junwen （2011）made an investigation of different functions of directives in Chinese child-adult conversations under the contexts of book-reading and play.

3.Method

3.1 Subjects.Subjects are 32 children，16 male and 16 female，living in the authors hometown Hebei province.Subjects are divided into two age groups：（a）16 children of age between 5-6 （b）16 children of age between 7-8.All childrens fathers have at least undergraduate diploma.All the families have similar economic，social，educational background.

3.2 Instruments.Recording pen （Sony ICD-TX650 16GB）and puppet

4.Design

4.1 The first experiment.The author decides to request fathers to carry recording pens in their pockets to let children not see it.This recording pen will make record of fathers-children conversations in book-reading situation in a week.These fathers are told that during the fathers-children conversations they are encouraged to use different types of syntactic structures （declarative，interrogative，imperative sentences）to direct their children.

4.2 The second experiment.The second experiment is a role play.Firstly，the author chooses four representative children respectively from the two ages groups：（a）& （b）.Two children are from group （a）：a girl and a boy of the age of 5.The other two children are from group （b）：a girl and a boy of the age of 7.Secondly，the author prepares a puppet which utters three utterances.Those utterances are expressed in declarative/interrogative/imperative sentence of the same meaning.

5.Methodology.This study will combine descriptive research with quantitative research.

6.Procedures

6.1 The procedure of the first experiment

6.1.1 Recording.During recording week，all the 32 families are required to have a book-reading time at least once everyday.And every recording should last at least 10 minutes.After everydays recording，every father is required to preserve the recording in MP3 file format.Then after the whole week，every father has to email all the MP3 files into the authors mailbox.

6.1.2 Transcription.After collecting all the files，the author starts to transcribe the conversational data carefully.Punctuations are used to record speakers pause，intonation or something else to make the transcription more authentic.After transcribing，some subject are required to check their own transcription to work out the recording to minimize inaccuracy.At last，thirty-two conversations will be selected through the method of random sampling.Then those conversational samples will be analyzed carefully and will be divided into two large categories--age group and syntactic structure group.

6.2 The procedure of the second experiment.The author makes the puppet utter the three sentences in proper sequence.Then the author asks those children which one is more polite.The author，as both the participant and the observer，makes detailed notes.The result of this analysis will be combined with the result of the first design.

7.Hypothesis.With the increase of age，childrens soci-cognitive ability develops，which can facilitate childrens pragmatic ability，so group （b）is more sensitive to politeness than group （a）.Further，different syntactic structures vary in the degree of politeness scale.

8.Analysis.With the development of pragmatic awareness， children tend to take social context and background knowledge into consideration.Fathers tend to use more imperative sentences than mothers do.

References：

[1]Axia，G.，& Baroni，M.R.（1985）.Linguistic politeness at age levels.Child develop-ment，56，918-927.

[2]Axia，G.，McGurk，H.& Glachan，M.（1988）.A cross-national study of the case of ligui-stic politeness.Resources in Education ERIC，67-72.

[3]Leech，G.（1983）.Principles of Pragmatics.London：Longman.

[4]孔俊文.（2011）.漢語兒童和家長對話中的指示言語行為.海外英語，11，385-363.

[5]周兢.（1997）.漢語兒童語言發展階段新說.南京師大學報（社會科學版），1，58-64.