Reception Psychology And Modulating Strategies Of Banter Communication

Banter is teasing in a playful way, aiming at rapport versus aggression. It features aggressivity, insincerity and incongruity (mismatch) in communication. Banter has functions of recreation, reinforcement in-group solidarity, facilitating human relationships and"lubricating"communication. Hitherto, studies on banter have been in their infancy. They mainly focus on the pragmatic and cognitive levels, and seldom can we find the researches that discussed the deeper interpretation and control mechanism from the perspective of social psychology and cognitive psychology. Apart from the rhetorical and pragmatic level, checking the communicative effects of banter can also be from the psychological acceptance level because communicative qualities are often determined by reception psychology. My paper discusses the reception psychology of banter and its modulating strategies by integrating the pragmatic, cognitive and psychological research achievements.Reception psychology (RP) is the psychological accepting states or tendency of the recipient when banter is uttered, which belongs to a multilayer psychological information system, and universally exists in the mind of recipient. It is composed of two subsystems: (â…°) personality structure of reception(PSR) It mainly includes reception ability (RA), reception motivation (RM), and reception interest(RI); (â…±) psychological process of reception(PPR) It mainly includes reception emotion (RE), reception cognition (RC) and reception will (RW)/identity(RI1). RP simultaneously features complexity and instability, affecting depth and width of banter communication. The RA is the foundation of RM and RI, while RI determines the RM; RC is the foundation of RE and RI1, While RE affects the RW)/ RI1. The subjects of RP can be altered with the change of turn-taking. RP can be divided into total acceptance, partial acceptance and non-acceptance according to the acceptability of banter. The study shows that: 1) The RP of recipient varies with different banter expressing devices (e.g., irony, metaphor or pun); 2) Different attack methods and strength of banter will lead to different RP; 3) Recipient has different RP in different occasions or environments; 4) Different banter subjects will produce different RP of recipient. Generally speaking, recognition of the RP represents banterer's fathoming psychological states in the macroscopic view, whose results can be seen as the reference of the behaviors next stage. The major recognition ways of RP are 1) discerning according to paralanguage and gesture language; 2) cognition of discourse feedbacks; 3) putting yourself in others'position.Banter is a face threatening act, and its politeness dimension shows the duplicity. In order to properly control banter's"limit"and make communication smoothly, the banterer is required to attach importance to modulating strategies (MSs). RP features complexity and instability, however, its deeper structures are relatively stable and observable. Different MSs can be formulated in line with the features of RP, and produced regulation efficiency, which effectively regulates the RP of recipient. Based on the theory of self-monitoring (Snyder et al) and self-regulation (Zimmerman et al), the author puts forward five MSs: 1) Regulation of drive (regulating RA); 2) Activation of interests (regulating RM and RI); 3) Adjustment of metacognition (regulating RC); 4) Monitoring and regulation of emotion (regulating RE); 5) Activation and integration of Identity (regulating RI1). The five modulating strategies are not isolated. The banterer can choose one or more modulating strategies according to the lacking condition of recipient's RP.Moreover, the author holds that RP, MSs and expression of banter are highly associated: 1) there is game property between banter expression and RP. The equilibrium state is win-win; 2) the MSs of banter are designed to regulate the RP; 3) MSs direct expression of banter. Harmoniously adjusting relationships among the three can effectively control the communication process, maximize the expected discourse effects and minimize negative effects.