A Pragmatic Study Of Disagreement In Chinese Oral Communication

Disagreement expression is a common language phenomenon in Chinese oral communication. By using some methods of discourse analysis, this thesis intends to make an all-round analysis from the point of view of Pragmatics. At first, we describe discourse structure, conversation process and results, pragmatic strategies of disagreement expression. And then, we analyze the influence of some pragmatic factors such as relative power, social distance of interlocutors on discourse strategies of disagreement expression.The result reveals that conversation process is of negotiation. According to whether the head act is used or not , macroscopically, disagreement expression strategies can be divided into two types: direct strategies and indirect strategies. The speaker usually shows his/her different opinion directly, and meanwhile, regulates the disagreement conversation through some auxiliary tactics in order to mitigate the degree of the face-threatening to hearers, while indirect strategies just explain reasons, or use the auxiliary tactics at the same time.Relative power of interlocutors is relevant with disagreement expression strategies tightly. The higher relative power the speaker has, the more direct strategies and the less auxiliary strategies the speaker uses; otherwise, indirect strategies and all kinds of auxiliary strategies will be actively used. The closer social distance of interlocutors is, the more direct strategies and auxiliary strategies are used; otherwise, the proportion of using indirect strategies and auxiliary strategies will be increased.