A Study Of Interdiction In Modern Chinese

The concept on interjection,a type of common speech acts,is highly relevant with turn-taking.By putting forward the turn-taking mode,Sacks,et al.,holds that an ideal dialog should observe certain rules.In such case,a listener ought to speak after a speaker finishes his or her sentences and speech turns thereby can alternately appear in those transition relevance positions(TRP).However,this is not always true in an authentic dialog where this principle is often violated.The listener may start speaking before the speaker finishing his or her speech turns by interjecting into those speech turns,thus significantly affecting the on-going dialog sometimes.Quite a few scholars have researched the interjection as speech act already.Those researches mainly concentrate on the institutional discourse as well as the pragmatic and socio-linguistic analyses on interjection.However,their findings are not thorough enough.Moreover,there has been no systematic paper on interjection by now.Some primary issues concerning interjection even have not developed into clearcut concepts,such as the definition on interjection as well as the relationship between interjection and interruption.In this paper,interjection as speech act was redefined and its nature and law were systematically examined by virtue of the realistic and natural interjection discourse as corpus and with the guidance by the Speech Act Theory and the cognitive pragmatic function.Based on the thematic progression pattern,interjection was categorized into either effective or ineffective speech acts according to the fact whether it has shifted the original topic or not,and its pragmatic functions and principles were also summarized.In this way,a multi-modal interaction model concerning interjection was constructed.Factors to effective speech acts of interjection and its manifestations in various speech acts of interjection were explored based on the real function of interjection in speech turns,namely,whether it has substantially affected the information structure of those original turns.This paper was divided into eight chapters,with the research contents and results of each chapter as follows.Chapter I is the introduction that mainly introduces the reasons for topic selection,the questions under research,the research methods,the research significance and the theoretical basis of this paper.Chapter II is the literature review that sorts out and evaluates the research findings on interjection as speech act in Chinese,defines such acts,and distinguishes interjection from interruption.In particular,the domestic and foreign researches on interruption in Chinese were analyzed in statistical and visual manners by Cite Space,a literature measurement software.Based on the definition on interjection as speech act in the previous chapter,Chapter III first divides speech acts of interjection into four basic sub-types:Theme-identical interjection as speech act,rheme-theme interjection as speech act,continuous interjection as speech act and cross-typed interjection as speech act.Then,this chapter further summarizes the five basic features of interjection as a complete closed loop of speech act,and focuses on analyzing their statuses and functions in interjection as speech act.Finally,based on the difference in interactive modes during those speech acts of interjection,it divides those modes into purpose-oriented interactive mode of interjection and subjective-oriented interactive mode of interjection.Chapter IV summarizes the pragmatic functions and principles of interjection as speech act through corpus analysis.Pragmatic functions are further divided into the expression,dialog management,dialog alliance and dialog correction functions;among them,expression is the core pragmatic function of interjection as speech act.Pragmatic principles account for how interjector can advance speech acts of interjection in a better way without posing conflicts in the discourse.To this end,the speaker and the listener should abide by two principles,namely cooperation and courtesy.Based on the influence from interjection as speech act upon the information structure of original speech turns,Chapter V divides speech acts of interjection into the effective and the ineffective speech acts,with its focus on effective speech acts.Based on the influence from interjection as speech act upon the original information structure,this chapter divides the effective speech acts into the strong and the weak speech acts of interjection.Strong speech acts of interjection indicate that interjection has a strong influence upon the original topic and thereby completely changes that topic,while weak speech acts of interjection indicate that interjection has no substantial influence on the original topic but mostly pragmatic feedback to the original information structure,such as repetition and question.Chapter VI focuses on sorting out the ineffective speech acts of interjection.The so-called ineffective speech acts refers to the interjection initiated by interjector that is either incomplete or has no influence on the original information structure,or that forms a speech conflict,out of various factors.This chapter further summarizes the causes for ineffective speech acts of interjection,including the weak subjective intention from interjector,the unreasonable interjection manner by interjector and the strong intention from the original speaker to the speech turn.Chapter VII mainly explores the interactive mode between linguistic and non-linguistic modalities in speech acts of interjection.The research on interjection as speech act is a multi-modal discourse construction study based on linguistic,social and psychological factors.Linguistic modality and non-linguistic modality are inseparable,and a systematic interactive mechanism has further been formed in between.Linguistic modality serves as the core and decides non-linguistic modality while non-linguistic modality also exerts a great influence upon linguistic modality.All modalities work together to express the meaning mutually between speaker and listener in a dialog,thus constituting the holistic framework of multi-modal interjection as speech act.Chapter VIII is the conclusion that clarifies the key research conclusions of this paper,and proposes both innovative and inadequate points in this research.