A Study On The Speech Act Of Bargaining In Chinese

This paper attempts to conduct a descriptive study on the realization of the speech act of bargaining in Chinese context from a pragmatic perspective. Statistics based on a systematic investigation are applied to analyze the realization process and the effect of social variables in its realization. Data are collected through observation, interviews and researcher participation. Altogether 200 cases of bargaining in Chinese have been collected during the past three months. From a pragmatic perspective, the researcher explored the realization of bargaining in Chinese context first, and then analyzed the social variables that influence the choices of bargaining strategies. The final results of the thesis are then ensued: Bargaining in Chinese owes a sequential pattern; usually the Chinese adopt two types of strategies in the process of bargaining, namely, direct and indirect; the social variables (gender, age, social distance and relative power are included) influence the bargaining strategies greatly.Under the Speech Act Theory's guidance, the paper first explored the theoretical background—Grice's Cooperative Principle, Brown &Levinson's politeness theory and face, Leech's Politeness Principle and Gu Yueguo's Politeness Principle, and then analyzed the Chinese speech act—bargaining systematically. The results are as follows: though the speech act bargaining in Chinese sometimes violates one or some maxims of the CP, it still observes the CP; though the interlocutors in the bargaining are trying to save or redress the face of the partner's, face-damage takes place often; and sometimes violating the maxims of the CP is just to give"face"to the partner, which can make the bargaining go on smoothly.The thesis hopes to evoke attention to exploring speech acts in Chinese context, and especially to exploring and promoting pragmatic principles in Chinese context.