A Study Of Meta-pragmatic Comments On Mock Politeness In Weibo

In line with the third wave of im/politeness studies,meta-pragmatic comments(MPCs)have aroused increasing attention in this field due to its evaluativity and reflexivity.The current literature indicates that related studies in(im)politeness receive great attention.However,such attempts are few carried out in mock politeness studies,especially in Chinese contexts.Moreover,its im/politeness mismatch results in confusion and even conflicts in the communication,especially in computer-mediated communication(CMC).Among the social media,Weibo is one of the most popular one in China.It is then essential to probe into people’s perception and evaluation of mock politeness in Weibo from the metapragmatic perspective.To address the above issue,this study explores MPCs on mock politeness by drawing on the data collected from 170 posts in Weibo,based on Brewer and Gardner’s identity theory as well as Spencer-Oatey’s Rapport Management theory.Three research questions are proposed accordingly:(1)What are the linguistic features of metapragmatic comments on mock politeness in Weibo?(2)What are the strategies of metapragmatic comments on mock politeness in Weibo?(3)What are the communicative effects of meta-pragmatic comments on mock politeness in Weibo?Based on the data analysis,major findings are as follows:First,the corpus reports frequent uses of meta-pragmatic labels and boosters.The prominent meta-pragmatic labels include suān(jealous),yīn yáng guài qì(mystifying manner),dàoqiàn(apology),and cháofěng(taunt),while the boosters include hěn(very),zhēnde(really)and zhèmo(so).Second,the study notices four prominent strategies in single-turn and two strategies in multi-turn comments.As to the former,the posters identify the pragmatic acts,challenge the appropriateness of pragmatic acts,criticize the personality of posters,or challenge the wording of the posts.As to the latter,the posters clarify the implied meaning or challenge the poster’s communicative ability.Third,MPCs maintain or enhance their relation mostly within the fan community by supporting each other’s sociality face,while they also threaten the relation between the initial poster and the fan community by threatening their face needs and sociality rights.Furthermore,MPCs reinforce both the general norm of apology and the mediumspecific norm of verification of the information source before reposting.Additionally,MPCs construct three levels of identities of the teased,teaser and the fan community.Generally,the teaser is constructed as the bully and the norm-breaker,while the teased is shaped as the bullied.The fan community of the teased takes the role of normmaintainers.They altogether indicate the unpleasant nature of mock politeness.The present thesis is of both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it enriches the understanding of mock politeness based on first-order perceptions in spontaneous interactions.Practically,it offers responding strategies of mock polite utterances to Chinese as a Second Language(CSL)learners.