A Pragmatic Study Of Bystander Intervention In Impolite Communication

Interpersonal harmony is the goal of human communication.However,it’s inevitable that impoliteness will occur in the process of communication.Sometimes,bystanders will decide to step out or intervene in the impolite communication based on their moral judgement.It’s an interesting and noteworthy phenomenon,since bystander intervention itself is an impolite behavior but with good intent.This thesis attempts to make a tentative analysis of bystander intervention in impolite communication.It mainly addresses the following three questions:First,what are the intervention strategies utilized by bystanders in impolite communication? Second,why do the bystanders decide to intervene? Third,how are the intervention strategies employed to achieve the pragmatic effects in impolite communication?The data are from 200 extracts of conversations in a Chinese TV Reality Show“What Would You Do”.What’s more,this thesis will adopt the qualitative method to analyze the data.With recourse to Bousfield(2008)’s impoliteness strategies and Spencer-Oatey(2005)’s thoughts of impoliteness judgement,the preceding three questions have been answered respectively.Based on the data analysis,the conclusions are drawn as follows:First,bystanders tend to employ two kinds of intervention strategies,that is,offensive intervention strategies and mitigated intervention strategies.The offensive intervention strategies that they tend to employ are criticizing,threatening,challenging,seeking disagreements and interrupting.The mitigated intervention strategies include: persuading,judging,explaining,advising and inviting.Second,bystanders decide to intervene mainly due to the inadmissible immoral behavior of the wrongdoer,at least in the bystander’s views.Specifically,the triggering factors are the need to maintain face of others,to treat others equally,to show empathy and respect to others when communicating with people.Third,some pragmatic effects are achieved in the process of intervention.They are evoking emotion,ceasing the conflict and lessening the conflict.In addition,intervention may not succeed easily,because sometimes interveners need to argue with the wrongdoer for a few turns to cease the conflict.The study has both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,this research can contribute to,though slightly,the impoliteness studies at home.As a matter of fact,few studies have involved the bystander’s perspective analysis when studying impoliteness.Practically,the intervention strategies identified in the paper would be conducive to solve conflicts.