On Negative Rhetorical Questions And Wh-word Rhetorical Questions In Mandarin Conversations

This dissertation focuses on Negative Rhetorical Questions (NRQs) and Wh-word Rhetorical Questions (WhRQs). The Negative Rhetorical Questions are those rhetorical questions with negative words in the forms of alternative questions, such as "Bu-shi... ...(ma)", "Bu/Mei... ...(ma)", "Mei-kanjian/tingjian... ...(ma)" and so on, which are called NRQs because of their syntactic forms. The Wh-word Rhetorical Questions are those rhetorical questions adopting forms of Wh-word questions. In this paper, the negative questions mean those sentences expressing an assertion against their literal forms as well as adopting forms of questions.This paper makes a thorough investigation on the environment and function of Negative Rhetorical Questions and Wh-word Rhetorical Questions, in terms of the theories, such as Conversation Analysis, Functional Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics (esp. Subjectivity), Semantics, Pragmatics, and so on.The author designs a framework to analyze the working environments of the two kinds of Rhetorical Questions. That is, to investigate RQs'linguistic environments from their position in turns and sequence organizations, to investigate RQs'interpersonal environments from the relationship of participators, to investigate RQs'circumstances from their semantic intension. Based on them, the paper also probes that the discourse function of Rhetorical Questions is to express the speakers' negative evaluative stance by means of their environments. The negative evaluative stance is divided into four subcategories, that is, Reminding, Opposing, Unexpected, Reprimanding.By "negative evaluative stance", we mean that speakers assess the non-rationality of things or behaviors. The investigations on corpus find what NRQs are directed against are given or accessible information. So it is reasonable to believe that rhetorical questions are to express non-proposition information not proposition. The speakers mention the information partners should know, so the partner pays attention to his or her behaviors or acts which ignore these information. Sometimes, the speakers just remind the partner to activate certain information he or she should know. In this way, NRQs make up an speech evaluative acts with blaming qualities. As for WhRQs, the most are directed against those behaviors or acts contrary to facts or common sense. Moreover, more than 70% WhRQs repeat or repeat partly the former utterances. The repeating and like resources is to indicate one's stance on the partner's behaviors or acts. Specially, WhRQs are to tell the partner that his or her behaviors or acts are contrary to facts or common sense. That is representations of evaluative stances.The usages of two kinds of rhetorical questions in different corpus are probed by means of the above framework. There are some features in common, for example, RQs mainly occur among those participators who are familiar and equal; RQs are used to make the partners to activate certain information he or she should know; Most of RQs are triggered by the partners'or the others'behavior or utterances. The differences of two kinds of RQs in different corpus are positions in turns, frequency of low-status participator using RQs, responding forms of RQs, and so forth.The differences of usages between NRQs and WhRQs are inquired on basis of materials analysis. There are two distinctions:the first is the stances of WhRQs are more negative than NRQs. It can be explained in their syntactic forms. The second is WhRQs with direct trigger mostly repeat or repeat partly the utterances before them. It is not true for NRQs. The two differences effect speakers to choose special forms of rhetorical questions.The The speakers'stances of two kinds of rhetorical questions in different materials are studied separately. It is found that the stances of WhRQs are more negative than NRQs. At same time, the stances of rhetotical questions in media dialogues are more negative than those in natural occurring talks. Which are related to the origin of two kinds of rhetorical questions and the entertaining properties of media dialogues.The paper includes eight parts. The first part summarizes the achievements of Chinese Rhetorical Questions in past 110 years. The second part introduces the theory methods, subjects to be researched and corpus. The third part investigates the Negative Rhetorical Questions in natural occurring talks which including conversations by phone and communications face to face. The forth part probes into the Negative Rhetorical Questions in media dialogues which including TV and movie dialogues. The fifth part investigate the Wh-word Rhetorical Questions in natural occurring talks which including conversations by phone and communications face to face. The sixth part probes into the Wh-word Rhetorical Questions in media dialogues which including TV and movie dialogues.The seventh part compares the differences of Negative Rhetorical Questions and Wh-word Rhetorical Questions between natural occurring talks and media dialogues. We put forward that the differences are caused by the discourse functions of Rhetorical Question, i.e. speakers'negative evaluative stance, and the features of entertainment of media dialogues. The eighth part draws conclusions and point out the shortage of this paper.