Don't Agree With Comparative Studies Of Speech Act Between Japan And China

With the continuous development of globalization, the exchange between the countries is gradually increasing; foreign language learning has been paid more attention. Learning language is not just to master the knowledge of pronunciation, grammar, etc., also need to cultivate the ability to use language. Therefore, in order to improve the ability to pragmatics, there are many pragmatic contrastive studies of speech acts in the field of Linguistics. Compared with studies on speech acts expressing gratitude, request, refusal, researches on disgreement, especially the contrastive study has been found insuffcient.As a face-threatening act, disagreement is a common-occurred speech act in everyday human interactions in China and Japan. Because there are differences in culture, values and social norms of China and Japan, Chinese and Japanese maybe choose different way of expressing disagreement.In order to narrow the gap between cross-cultural communications, it is necessary to analyze the similarities and differences of expressing disagreement in China and Japan. The study used the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) statistical software to analyze the data collected via TV series in China and Japan.The paper is divided into four chapters.In the first chapter, introduced and discussed the Chinese and Japanese previous studies on disagreement. In the second chapter, outlined the theoretical basis of speech act theory, Brown and Levison’s politess theory.Refering to the methods of analysis of speech acts used in Blum_Kulka et al.(1984,1989) and Wood&Kroger (1994), divided disagreement into "Central speech act","Auxiliary speech acf" and "Micro-unit".In the third chapter,"Central speech acf" are further divided into "direct disagreement""idiom""rhetorical question""question""explanation","expression of their own views""proposition""Auxiliary speech acf" are classified into"token agreement""expression of gratitude""explanation""expression of their own views""regret""empathy""criticism""insult". Micro-unit are further divided into "hedge""hesitation marker""appealer""omission""adress""intensifier".In the chapter,summarizied a combination of four major categories,namely,"Central speech act","Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act","Central speech act+Micro-unit","Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act+Micro-unit" of data.In ChapterⅣ,a number of distributions are analyzed for the investigation of the four combinations both in overall tendency and in relation to different levels of social factors(social status and social distance).By analyzing,the study results are as follows:(1Using the combination of two types "Central speech acf" and "Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act+Micro-unit", there are no significant difference between Chinese and Japanese, while there are significant differences with the other two types. Namely, the Chinese love to use"Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act"; the Japanese love to use "Central speech act+Micro-unit".(2)Using"Central speech act", the Japanese love to use strategie"direct disagreement", while the Chinese love to use strategie "rhetorical question". The Japanese love to use "direct disagreement and "rhetorical question"to acquaintance. To people of lower position, The Japanese love to use strategie "direct disagreement". The Chinese love to use strategie "rhetorical question" to their equals.(3) Using a combination of "Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act",the Chinese significantly use more Central speech act of "rhetorical question" and Auxiliary speech act of "explanation","expression of their own views"when compared to the Japanese.This significant difference is mainly reflected in a close relationship and equal status.(4) Using a combination of "Central speech act+Micro-unit", the Japanese significantly use more Central speech act of "direct disagreemen","expression of their own views" when compared to the Chinese. The Chinese do not use Central speech act of "direct disagreemen"while using "expression of their own views".The Micro-unit which is most used by Chinese and Japanese is "hedge".The Micro-unit of "omission"that is more likely to be used by Japanese did not occur in the Chinese.Except for the stranger in Chinese, the combination of "Central speech act+Micro-unit"is used widely in terms of three levels of social status and social distance by Chinese and Japanese. (5)Using a combination of "Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act+Micro-unit", Japanese love to use Central speech act of "direct disagreement", while Chinese love to "expression their own views" as the Central speech act. Although the Auxiliary speech act of "explanation" is extensively used by Chinese and Japanese, there is a higher proportion in Chinese.The Micro-unit which is most used by Chinese and Japanese is "hedge".the Micro-unit of "adress"that is more likely to be used by Chinese did not occur in the Japanese. The combination of "Central speech act+Auxiliary speech act+Micro-unit"is widely used in various occasions, regardless of social status and social distance by Chinese and Japanese.For the limitation of data, the study has deficiency.But it is hopeful that the study can help for those who are doing contrastive studies of disagreement between Chinese and Japanese.