The Prosodic-Pragmatic Interface Study On Impoliteness Between Roommates

The study on impolite utterances is a significant topic in pragmatic study.So far,researches on impoliteness have been made not only on the exploration of impoliteness strategy and its pragmatic functions under different contexts but also on the investigation from interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical perspectives.This thesis selects TV series Twenty Your Life On to discuss the impoliteness strategies employed by roommates and further to analyze how prosodic features embedded in the impolite utterances to increase the illocutionary force working on the face threats by sorting out impolite utterances of face threats with high frequency.The major findings are as follows: Firstly,it is found that five kinds of impoliteness strategies,namely,“criticizing”,“blocking”,“challenging”,“satirizing”,and “scorning” are mostly employed by roommates.Among the strategies applied,“challenging” and “criticizing”are the most frequently used.Secondly,from the perspective of face-threats,the strategies of“criticizing”,“challenging” and “satirizing” are mainly used to attack the hearer’s positive face while the strategies of “blocking” and “scorning” are mostly used to attack the hearer’s negative face.Besides,the prosodic features of high pitch,slow speech rate,and pause are predominately present in the impolite utterances.To be exact,the negative evaluations in impolite utterances threatening positive face are characterized by the highest pitch and a slower speech rate,which increase the illocutionary force working on the positive face threats.In addition,the impolite utterances threatening negative face are characterized by sudden rising pitch of the initial part in the sentence,which reinforce the illocutionary force and increase the degree of threatening negative face.The study is conducted from the prosodic-pragmatic interface attempting to probe into the relevance between impoliteness strategies and their prosodic features.It is hoped to enrich the study of impoliteness.In addition,it also provides some insights to the better understanding of harmonious communications.