Realizations Of Politeness Strategies In Conversations Between Chinese Job Interviewers And Interviewees

As the basic form of language, conversation has been long approached andanalyzed and still hot today. However, most of the previous studies center on theanalyses of the structure of conversation, that is, conversation is analyzed from thestatic point of view, and the dynamic aspects are ignored.This study is intended to make a data-based dynamic analysis of conversation inthe light of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]) bystudying the Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) and politeness strategies occurring in thejob-interview discourse.Job-interview is a common type of conversation but has not been given enoughattention. This paper makes a systematic and specific analysis based on the authenticdata, which were carefully collected from 20 interviews of three Chinese enterprises. This paper introduces the Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) occurring in theinterviewer's and the interviewee's words separately, classifies them into differenttypes and describes their occurring frequency. Based on these, this study makes thecomparative analysis about the distinctions of those FTAs, and offers reasonableexplanations to those differences from two aspects: the special content and form ofinterviews and the major factor that determines the weightiness of an FTA.Besides, this study further introduces various politeness strategies used by theinterviewer and the interviewee to redress each other's face demands. According tothe classification of not use politeness strategy, use positive politeness strategy anduse negative politeness strategy, this study analyzes more than ten strategies that arecommonly used, and studies in details about functions and actual effects of thosestrategies with rich examples, tables and charts.This study is intended to offer some useful suggestions and examples to studentswho are going to find jobs, and to companies where there is need of new employees. This paper consists of six chapters: Chapter One is the introduction which briefly introduces reasons of choosing thistopic and problems to be solved. Chapter Two provides the literature review of conversation analysis andpoliteness theory. Chapter Three is the methodology, presenting the process of data collection. Chapter Four describes different FTAs done by the interviewer and theinterviewee, introducing the distinctions between those FTAs and the influencingfactors with an illustration of charts and pies.Chapter five centers on the various politeness strategies used by the interviewerand the interviewee, containing the analysis of frequency and effects of thosestrategies.Chapter six is a brief summary.