A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

way of interacting. Similarly, in Leech’s (1983) pragmatic principle of politeness, the
indirect way of requesting was recommended as a better pattern than a direct request.
As you can see in Figure 5.1., the second major theme was “keeping silence”
did not convey the signal the topic was boring or uninteresting. Jain Guo suggested
the interlocutors should inform speakers aggressively and verbally the topic needed
to be changed. The third theme was topic avoidance provided a function of protecting
the student’s privacy. Tien Long and Ling Mei mentioned they would use it to get rid
of topics offended their privacy. Generally speaking, themes analyzed and concluded
from the first research question were associated with issues of “politeness,” “verbally
and directly informing the need,” and “privacy.”
FIGURE 5.1.
Themes Associated with the Topic Avoidance Strategy
____________________________________________________________________
Topic Avoidance
Politeness &
Appropriateness
Verbally & Directly
Privacy
Sung Ru Cheng
Chih
Jiun Shen
Tien Long
Ling Mei
Jain Guo
Pei Pei
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