Witty Withdrawal: Researching The Adaptable Role Of Evasion In The Campaign Debate

This thesis is a tentative study on the adaptable role of evasion in the Chinese campaign debate. Leadership election debate notable for its informative and distinguishable nature presents a dramatically conflicting linguistic environment, and therefore facilitates the identification, investigation and interpretation of evasion. In the beginning, the thesis is dedicated to the delimitation of evasion through exploring its relationship with its sister concepts, its parent concepts ~ hypernyms and its child concepts - hyponyms. Then this thesis establishes its own theoretical framework with respect to Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, viz. variability, adaptability and functionality of evasion in the Chinese campaign debate.During this interadaptable process of making linguistic choices, 'Variability of evasion' refers to the range of possibilities from which the responder can make evasive linguistic choices. This property exerts its efforts on the linguistic modification strategies that render possible the witty withdrawal from hurtful confrontation, incorporating counterclaim on the question, manipulation of the requested information in the question, and reference to circumstantial factors. Through the organization and description of diversified linguistic modification strategies utilized by the responder, this thesis obtains a general understanding of variability of evasive fabrication in the campaign debate.'Adaptability of evasion' indicates how, upon his communicative needs of avoiding verbal attack and maintaining self-image, the responder makes negotiable linguistic choices from a variable range of possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for these communicative needs. The thesis first explores three layers of contextual correlates which the responder has to cater for during the dynamic process, i.e. linguistic, social and mental contexts, and further illustrates their own intra-relationship and inter-relationship with evasive linguistic modification strategies. Linguistic context launches the investigation into standard question and non-standard question. Social context scrutinizes the social roles of questioner, responder and interpreter, and responder's interadaptable relations with the other two. Mental context conducts a thorough discrimination of possible venomous intentions behind the evasion-eliciting questions.'Functionality of evasion' proceeds to evaluate the utilization of evasion in the campaign debate on its communicative effects. It enhances the interpretative strength of this edifice in the campaign debate through evidence of evasion functioning as Relevance to the genuine answer on the textual level, Appropriateness on the social level and Interests on the mental level. Hence, it illuminates the significance of evasion in the campaign debate.Upon the construction of theoretical framework, this thesis conducts a qualitative analysis of evasion based on the data of 2008 Taiwan leadership debate, therefore reinforcing the substantiality of evidence and the justifiability of analysis in the theoretical framework.