A Comparative Study Of Institutional Impoliteness Responses In Teacher-student Interactions In Chinese And American Movies And TV Dramas

Impoliteness has both negative and positive functions and is crucial to the development of interpersonal relationships.Previous research has paid relatively little attention to institutional impoliteness,and even fewer scholars have explored impoliteness responses in teacher-student interactions.In view of the above reasons,this study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of institutional impoliteness responses in teacher-student interactions in Chinese and American movies and TV dramas.Based on Bousfield’s(2008)impoliteness theory and Spencer-Oatey’s(2008)rapport management theory,this study makes a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data collected from school movies and TV dramas in China and America.SPSS 25.0 is used to conduct Chi-square tests on the collected data.This thesis mainly answers the following three research questions:(1)What are the distributions of impoliteness response strategies employed in teacher-student interactions in Chinese and American movies and TV dramas?(2)What are the pragmatic functions realized by these strategies in teacher-student interactions in Chinese and American movies and TV dramas?(3)How do participants manage their rapport in the realization of different pragmatic functions in teacher-student interactions in Chinese and American movies and TV dramas?The major findings are as follows: Firstly,there are a total of 19 types of impoliteness response strategies employed by Chinese and American teachers and 21 types adopted by Chinese and American students in this study.Both teachers and students in Chinese and American movies and TV dramas tend to use offensive strategies,whereas Chinese teachers use such strategies more frequently than American teachers,and no significant differences are found between the employment by Chinese and American students.Secondly,there are four pragmatic functions of impoliteness response strategies observed in teacher-student interactions.They are further classified into rapport maintenance orientation and rapport challenge orientation.The former includes the functions of facilitating critical thinking and seeking consensus,and the latter involves the functions of venting negative feelings and getting power.The results demonstrate that impoliteness response strategies adopted by Chinese teachers are more likely to realize the function of venting negative feelings in the rapport challenge orientation while those adopted by American teachers are more likely to realize the function of seeking consensus in the rapport maintenance orientation.Impoliteness response strategies employed by Chinese and American students show the same tendency to function as an instrument for venting negative feelings.Thirdly,both teachers and students manage rapport to realize these pragmatic functions in terms of face,sociality rights and interactional goals.They share a similar tendency to adopt the management of face.However,Chinese teachers employ significantly more face management than American teachers,while Chinese students adopt it significantly less than American students.Through the comparative analysis of institutional impoliteness responses in teacherstudent interactions in Chinese and American movies and TV dramas,this thesis sheds some light on future research on institutional impoliteness.In addition,it provides a reference for the construction of harmonious teacher-student relationships.