Insincere Invitation In Chinese

Speech act theory is one of the core issues of modern pragmatics and ever since its initiation by J. L. Austin, it has gone through great development in the study of language and meaning. This paper aims to discuss John R. Searle's felicity conditions in the case of insincere invitation.Searle's felicity conditions are based on the ideal or flawless use of language. They are conditions for a speech act to be appropriately performed. In other words, for a speech act to be properly performed, certain conditions are to be satisfied. They are effective in interpreting the language phenomena in such cases, yet for the non-serious use of language, such as insincere invitation, these conditions are violated to some extent, and thus the speech act is defective. Yet an insincere invitation is an invitation anyway. A speech act can be defective, but not necessarily unsuccessful. And this paper is built on this basic idea and aimed to discuss in what ways Searle's felicity conditions are violated and how they contribute to the fact that an invitation is insincere.The paper consists of five parts. In the first part, the author provides a general review of the term "felicity conditions" in Austin's and Searle's theories respectively. Then the question is raised that although much research has been done on the part of speech act, there has been very few discussions on the non-serious use of language, such as insincere invitation, from the perspective of Searle's felicity conditions. The author claims that just like genuine invitations, insincere invitations are also cases of speech acts and there are principles that speakers should follow in order that they are properly performed. Then the author goes on to introduce the methods in data collecting. A detailed description is provided on the ways the data are collected.In the second part, based on the corpus, the author finds that there are in general seven ways or techniques the inviter may adopt in making an insincere invitation, or they can be regarded as features reflected in insincere invitations. These features are illustrated in detail with a breakdown of each of them.Following this part, in part three, the author discusses in what way the felicity conditions are violated in the case of insincere invitation. It is found that it is usually the collaboration of the defectiveness of the sincerity and at least one other felicity condition that make an insincere invitation to be appropriately and safely extended.In part four the author illustrates the reason and functions of insincere invitations. According to the study, an insincere invitation is not meant to mean what it literally seems to mean ?it is extended to perform certain underlying purpose. In general, in the Chinese culture, the main reason for the issuing of insincere invitations is politeness or to avoid hurting feelings. Also in this part, the author demonstrates the functions of insincere invitations. It is found that they perform such functions as phatic, caring and joking.