A Pragmatic Study Of Chinese Ostensible Invitation

Traditionally researches have focused on the ideal, flawless use of language. In Chinese, ostensible invitation is a common phenomenon and also a communicative strategy used in daily conversation. It plays a unique role in social life. Therefore, systematic studies of ostensible invitation can not only enrich the study of this subject, but also give suggestions for better communication.The present study has been carried out on the background of the achievement and deficiencies in the existing studies on both English and Chinese ostensible invitations. This study tries to understand the phenomenon under investigation from a more extensive perspective through analyzing the Chinese ostensible invitations within the Chinese context.A detailed analysis of ostensible invitation in the Chinese culture is presented. Through a collection of examples, the properties for distinguishing ostensible invitations from genuine ones are identified. Seven strategies used by the inviter to indicate his ostensible intentions are analyzed in detail with typical examples. The statistics got from each of the strategies are also analyzed.For a speech act to be appropriately performed, certain conditions must be satisfied. Yet for the ostensible invitation, these conditions are violated. But, though defective, this speech act is successfully performed. So it is analyzed how this speech act is successfully performed by violating the felicity conditions.As a kind of a speech act, the ostensible invitation has two expectable perlocutins. The possible perlocutions are discussed in the study. Then in the next part, the pragmatic functions are categorized into phatic function, caring function, instrumental function and joking function.The present study is investigated from the perspective of addresser. Further studies can take the perspective of the addressee as a complementary part to better comprehend the ostensible invitation. More data should be collected from a broader scope.The findings of this study have profound theoretical and practical meanings on relative topics.