A Pragmatic Analysis Of Silence In Chinese Talk Shows From The Perspective Of Politeness

Silence, as one of the important nonverbal features of nonverbal communication, cannot be avoided in people's daily life and interaction. Although silence is the absence of sound, it is not the absence of meaning. Instead, many different meanings and communicative functions can be interpreted based on the silence. Silence, as a subject matter, draws insufficient attention both at home and abroad. It is indicated that some linguistic researchers have studied silence in different settings, for example, student's silence in classroom, silence in English plays, films or literary works. There are also some researchers who are interested in the types and functions of silence based on pragmatic theories concerning Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and relevance based interpretation of silence. However, few people have analyzed silence based on Chinese data.This thesis aims to analyze silence which occurs in Chinese talk shows from the perspective of politeness. The analysis is focused on silence in terms of its types, communicative functions and influencing factors.Based on the analysis of silence in 18 Chinese talk shows from three programs, the present study shows that in Chinese talk shows there are mainly three types of silence, namely within-turn silence or pause, inter-turn silence which can be further divided into gap and lapse, and turn silence with additional names of significant silence and attributive silence, that silence mainly performs five kinds of functions including expressing emotions, making judgments, giving prominence, regulating talk exchange and saving face, and that there are also many factors which affect the use and interpretation of silence, for example, personal factors, contextual factors and social factors.Despite the fact that the findings of this study are limited, it contributes to some extent to the understanding and using of silence on different occasions of communication.