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A Study of Verbal Impoliteness in Thunderstorm from the Perspective of Adaptation-relevance Model

Author: GaoCong
Tutor: NiuZuoMei
School: Shandong University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: verbal impoliteness Adaptation-relevance Model cognitive contextual assumption strategy-choosing
CLC: H13
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 102
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Abstract


The politeness research has been flourishing for a long time; however, the impoliteness research has just been embarked on, and no study has ever attempted to explore the whole process of verbal impoliteness from the macroscopic perspective, namely, to provide theoretical explanation as to the triggering, processing and termination of verbal impoliteness in communication. Moreover, the previous studies are mostly carried out under English context. Verbal impoliteness studies based on Chinese corpus are still something of rarity.The present study tries to elaborate the whole using process of verbal impoliteness by analyzing Chinese corpus. Specifically, this thesis aims to find answers to the following three questions:how verbal impoliteness is triggered; once verbal impoliteness is triggered, how the discourse will be processing; and how verbal impoliteness is terminated in the communication.Yang Ping (2001) and Ran Yongping (2004) claim that verbal communication is the inter-adaptation process between utterances and contextual correlates and put forward Relevance-adaptation Model and Adaptation-relevance Model respectively by integrating Adaptation Theory and Relevance Theory. As the present study claims, verbal communication is a process in which the utterances and the participants’ cognitive contextual assumptions are inter-adaptable with each other. Based on this claim, the present study establishes the adapted Adaptation-relevance Model. The main claims of the model are as follows:firstly, the cognitive contextual assumption in this model is dynamic; secondly, verbal communication is a dynamic process of inter-adaptation between utterances and cognitive contextual assumptions; thirdly, communication is guided by the optimal relevance presumption; fourthly, communication process involves strategy-choosing.Deploying the adapted Adaptation-relevance Model as the theoretical support, this thesis explores verbal impoliteness in the classical Chinese play Thunderstorm mainly from three perspectives, namely, the triggering, processing and termination of verbal impoliteness in communication. Among the three perspectives, the processing of verbal impoliteness in communication is mainly explored by analyzing its external manifestation of strategy-choosing. Strategy choosing includes not only impoliteness strategies but also response strategies to verbal impoliteness. The research conclusion of this thesis is presented as the following three claims:Firstly, the triggering of verbal impoliteness is the product of inter-adaptation between utterances and cognitive contextual assumptions. As for speaker-intended hearer-perceived verbal impoliteness, the cognitive contextual assumptions of the speaker and the hearer tend to be consistent with each other; as for speaker-unintended hearer-perceived verbal impoliteness, obvious divergences exist between the speaker’s and the hearer’s cognitive contextual assumptions. But due to the dynamics of cognitive contextual assumptions, both the speaker and the hearer are able to adjust their cognitive contextual assumptions constantly and to achieve their communicative purpose.Secondly, once verbal impoliteness is triggered, the producer of verbal impoliteness will adopt the five superstrategies raised by Culpeper, namely, bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, sarcasm or mock politeness and withholding politeness. The present study claims that more sub-strategies of positive impoliteness and negative impoliteness strategies have been found by examining relevant corpus in Thunderstorm. It has also been proved that the response options of impoliteness are workable under Chinese context.Lastly, the present study summarizes six types of termination of verbal impoliteness based on the corpus in Thunderstorm, namely, submission to opponent, dominant third party intervention, compromise, stand-off, withdrawal, and settlement with further hidden conflict.The present study can not only facilitate people’s thorough understanding of the using process of verbal impoliteness, but also provide the model and reference for research of other types of communication.

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CLC: > Language, writing > Chinese > Semantics,vocabulary, word meaning ( exegesis )
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