ArticleAuthors: Do, Thu Huong; Nguyen, Viet Ky (2019)
This study aims at investigating male and female strategies of directness and indirectness
manifest in the speech of the characters in the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. In the light of
politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1978), the realizations of direct and indirect strategies of politeness
are associated with two types of strategies of face threatening acts (FTAs), namely bald-on-record and offrecord strategies. The off-record strategy, which is the main focus of the study, is examined in relation to
various sub-strategies of indirectness which are described in terms of the Gricean conversational maxims
(i.e. Quantity, Quality, Relevance and Manner). These sub-str...