| Acknowledgements | 第1-4页 |
| Abstract (in English and Chinese) | 第4-10页 |
| Chapter 1 Introduction | 第10-22页 |
| ·Speech act theory and indirect speech act theory | 第10-11页 |
| ·Grice's theory of conversational implicature | 第11-13页 |
| ·Politeness Studies | 第13-22页 |
| ·Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness | 第13-18页 |
| ·Leech's politeness principle (PP) | 第18-22页 |
| Chapter 2 Understanding indirectness | 第22-36页 |
| ·The concept of indirectness | 第22页 |
| ·Motivations of Indirectness | 第22-25页 |
| ·Expression of Indirectness | 第25-30页 |
| ·Giving hints | 第25页 |
| ·Being vague | 第25-26页 |
| ·Over-generalization | 第26-27页 |
| ·Displacing the addressee | 第27页 |
| ·Understatement and overstatement | 第27-28页 |
| ·Using Ellipsis and being ironic | 第28-29页 |
| ·Using tautologies and rhetorical questions | 第29-30页 |
| ·The factors affecting indirectness application in politeness | 第30-36页 |
| ·Cultural difference in indirectness | 第30-32页 |
| ·Power | 第32-33页 |
| ·Imposition and obligation | 第33-36页 |
| Chapter 3 Politeness and pragmatic distance | 第36-45页 |
| ·Pragmatic distance and politeness | 第36-41页 |
| ·Linguistic politeness and utterance politeness | 第41-45页 |
| Chapter 4 The relationship between Indirectness and politeness | 第45-53页 |
| ·Indirectness and Linguistic politeness | 第45-49页 |
| ·Indirectness and utterance politeness | 第49-53页 |
| Chapter 5 Conclusion | 第53-55页 |
| Bibliography | 第55-59页 |
