A Study On Wang Xifeng's Politeness Strategies In Speech Communication

The study on characters of Hong Lou Meng has a rather long history since the book was published. Different researchers in different ages present various analyses on distinguished characters from different theoretical perspectives. However, the study is still far from adequate especially for the analysis on communicative strategies. Only few researches adopted pragmatic theories to provide persuasive analysis on characters'politeness strategies that are heavily dependent on categories of interpersonal relationship in the novel.Referring to Wood and Kroger's categorization of interpersonal relationship with two dimensions of power and solidarity, this paper investigated the interrelationship between choice of politeness strategies and category of interpersonal relationship from the perspective of sociopragmatics within the framework of Brown and Levinson's face-saving theory and model of politeness strategies. The speech data were collected from speech of Wang Xifeng, one of the most typical and sociable characters in Hong Lou Meng.According to the hierarchy of interpersonal relationship in Chinese traditional culture, this paper first made adjustments of Wood and Kroger's categorization of interpersonal relationship through removing and supplement. We took out the relationships that Wang Xifeng does not own from the former model and added the relationships that she uniquely owns to the present categorization. The paper divided characters, who have speech communication with Wang Xifeng in the first eighty chapters of Hong Lou Meng, into six categories, including self-subordinate, nonsolidary; self-subordinate, solidary; equal, nonsolidary; equal, solidary; self-superordinate, nonsolidary; self-superordinate, solidary (here"self"means the speaker himself). Then, on the basis of distribution of V-form and T-form in Brown & Gilman's study on the pronoun of power and solidarity, the paper proposed a hypothesis about Wang Xifeng's usage of politeness strategies in speech communication. The hypothesis goes as follows:To self-subordinate and nonsolidary people, Wang Xifeng is likely to adopt strategy"off record"; to self-superordinate and solidary people, she is likely to adopt strategy"bald on record"; if there is no power difference, then she will decide if she and the hearer are solidary, if so, then she tends to adopt strategy"bald on record", otherwise, she tends to adopt strategy"off record". In the process of data collection, the present study picked up six pieces of speech data for each category from different characters as far as possible to guarantee the objectivity of data selection. Next, the paper made politeness strategies analysis of thirty six pieces of speech data and statistical analysis of the proportion of politeness strategies within each category. Finally, we got the following results:1) To self-subordinate and solidary people, Wang Xifeng is likely to adopt strategy"off record"; to self-superordinate and nonsolidary people, she is likely to adopt strategy"bald on record".2) To equal people, Wang Xifeng tends to use more strategy"bald on record"to solidary people and more strategy"off record"to nonsolidary people.3) To self-subordinate people, especially solidary ones, Wang Xifeng seldom adopts strategy"bald on record"; to equal and self-superordinate people, especially self-superordinate people, Wang Xifeng is likely to adopt strategy"bald on record".4) To people within the same category, Wang Xifeng does not use only one strategy. One interesting thing needs to be pointed out: she uses a carrot and stick approach to self-superordinate and nonsolidary people. Besides adopting strategy"bald on record", she also uses many positive strategies.5) Generally speaking, the most commonly used politeness strategy is positive strategy, the next one is strategy"bald on record", the following one is strategy"off record", and the least one is negative strategy.6) Power weighs more than solidarity in the choice of politeness strategies.Through comparison of the results and the former hypothesis, the present study viewed that the reason of deviation lies in the difference between overt power and covert power. Communicating with people who have almost the same overt power, communicator tends to be politer to the one who has more covert power. This paper contributed to a better understanding of Wang Xifeng—a person who is good at dealing with relationship of power and solidarity between herself and the other anticipant to reach her communicative aim. The findings also provided people nowadays with some hints to make better use of politeness strategies in speech communication.