A Pragmatic Study On Chinese Flattery

Flattery is a common linguistic phenomenon in daily life. It is also a kind of speech act. Since the advent of the speech act theory in the 1950s, it has attracted the attention of researchers from various fields. Linguists have already conducted detailed studies on kinds of speech acts, such as request, apology, compliment, refusal and so on. In past decades, some foreign researchers have conducted a few studies on flattery from the perspectives of rhetoric, sociolinguistics and psychology (Goffman 1959; Jones 1964; Stengel 2002). However, there is no systematic study on flattery from the pragmatic point of view so far. Thus, this study aims at filling the gap and enriching the studies on speech acts.Methodologically speaking, the present study belongs to a qualitative study based on the data collected from TV series, Eloquent Ji Xiaolan (Tie Chi Tong Ya Ji Xiaolan)Brown and Levinson's Politeness Principle theory is the theoretical foundation of the thesis. In their book Politeness, Some Universals in Language Usage, Brown and Levinson developed their face theory. Brown and Levinson's face theory contains three basic notions:face, face threatening acts (FTAs) and politeness strategies. Positive politeness strategy is oriented toward the positive face of the hearer. And then they list 15 concrete positive politeness strategies.The writer first analyses the linguistic devices of Chinese flatteries. According to the data collected, at the lexical level, flatteries are mostly realized by using commendatory words in which adjectives and verbs are most frequently used to load the positive evaluation and judgement of the addressee. Because of the specific time and social background, four-character words are used in a high frequency. Changing forms of address is a good way to show respect and admiration to the addressee, which is helpful for successfully performing flatteries. Using of exclamatory sentences and figures of speech are two main features of Chinese flatteries at the level of syntactic. Besides, set phrases, ritual sentences, allusions, proverbs and poems with a strong sense of Chinese culture are often used. The writer finds that different from many other speech acts such as compliments and refusals, the flattery speech act varies a lot no matter at the level of lewis or syntax. It is not as highly formulaic as compliments. And the writer briefly explains the reasons. Then based on Brown and Levinson's theory, the writer analyses how and why the positive politeness strategies are involved in Chinese flatteries. According to the data, not all positive politeness strategies are applied. Each positive politeness strategies adopted are elaborated with various examples and detailed explanations.To sum up, the writer holds that the flatterer's choices of linguistic devices and pragmatic strategies have a great relationship with his intention, and Chinese culture also has a great effect on the flatterer's choices in Chinese context. Flattery is a strategic speech act.