The Study Of Pragmatic Offence

In the hope of enjoying a harmonious interaction in interpersonal communication, people usually employ politeness as their communicative strategies. Any study of politeness phenomena in linguistic acts is an important theme within the field of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and other relative sciences. A great number of scholars and researchers both at home and abroad have made outstanding contributions to the study of politeness.There is no doubt that polite linguistic acts are welcome. However, this study pays attention to some extraordinary phenomena that under some circumstances (a) politeness may produce offence that the hearer is sensitive to; and (b) politeness is not unlikely to give way to impoliteness in linguistic forms so mat the utterer may try to achieve the effect of the communicative goal or intention, whether it be offensive or helping. If we observe our daily life carefully, we will surely learn that offence, caused by impoliteness or even by politeness, does not occur less frequently than expected. This study intends to draw a conclusion that offence, which usually turns its back on politeness, does not necessarily exclude politeness from its choice of communicative strategies, but includes politeness, if necessary, to lessen the degree of offence. Accordingly, the study of pragmatic offence belongs to the research field of politeness, as Brown and Levinson (1998:512) regard the study of conflict, rudeness and other offences as a complementary part of the study of politeness. Where there is offence, there is likely to be counter-offence. This study hypothesizes that any form of counter-offence is actually a new cycle of pragmatic offence. It is plausible to draw another conclusion that counter-offence also carries weight in the study of pragmatic offence.The framework of this dissertation is made up of five chapters:Chapter 1 presents a necessary literature review for this study of pragmatic offence. This study is not a castle in the air, but appreciates a solid foundation that has been laid by scholars both at home and abroad: studies of politeness and verbal offence. In particular, Brown & Levinson's FST (face-saving theory) and Qian Guanlian's classification of violation of social comity have paved a way for this study. Therefore, this study is encouraged to probe into sorts of intentional or conscious offence, which is referred to as pragmatic offence.Chapter 2 deals with the difference between offence in pragmatic failure and that in pragmatic offence, setting forth types of pragmatic offence. Generally speaking, there are two sorts of offence in linguistic behaviors. The two mainstreams of pragmatic offence are hypothesized to constitute the main body of pragmatic offence. Then a variety of types tell us that the producer of pragmatic offence may be self-seeking or altruistic.Chapter 3 analyses factors concerning pragmatic offence in a dynamic-context perspective, hi the course of such analysis, cultural impact and shared knowledge in pragmatic offence cannot be overlooked. Pragmatic force, utterance force and the intended utterance effect form an interactional multi-dimension in pragmatic offence. This chapter interprets pragmatic offence as a pragmatic, cognitive and cultural phenomenon interacting in a complex social network.Chapter 4 makes great efforts to look into a hypothesized computation mechanism in pragmatic offence. Any pragmatic offence, whether deliberately plotted or hastily committed, results from a certain rational computation of relative factors: benefit and cost to oneself or to the other, face-wants and face-threatening sensitivity, power, distance, impositions, and so on. From the equation of politeness system, this chapter develops a similar equation of pragmatic offence.Chapter 5 furthers this study by means of investigating another peculiar pragmatic offence, which is termed as counter-offence. The interactional feature is characteristic of counter-offence. With an analysis of a number of types of counter-offence, this chapter regar...