A Corpus Study of Politeness Principle in Desperate Housewife

Since it was broadcast, the pragmatic studies of the American TV series Desperate Housewife (DH) have become popular. But a majority of those studies focused on Cooperation Principle and the Theory of Conversational Implication; only a few scholars studied Politeness Principle (PP). Besides, most of the pragmatic studies used the qualitative, instead of the quantitative, approach. To solve these problems, this research builds up a corpus based on Leech’s definition of PP, with the first season of DH as the object, the PP as the theoretical basis. Then, the PP conversations in the corpus is researched with the quantitative method. Finally, the conclusion is reached that Tact Maxim is the most frequently used maxim while Modesty Maximis