Chinese Warning Sign Language Pragmatic Research

Public signs have been used as propaganda tool for a long time. Whether in the peaceful village or in the big cities, it could be seen everywhere. Whether on the revolutionary era or in times of peace, public signs always occupies an irreplaceable position and couldn’t be taken palace by other propaganda tool. All in all, public signs play a very important role in all aspects of social life.As time passes by, with the development of our society, Chinese public signs are also quietly changing. Warning public signs which belong to public signs changes fastest. It is like a mirror which reflects the development of our society. Nowadays, the warning public sign has a new look. People couldn’t see its single and rigid face. It becomes more and more humorous. These changes show the improvement of social civilization. Using warning public sign correctly not only helps to establish good social atmosphere but also creates better cultural environment for the social development. The article analyzes Chinese warning public sign’s character with pragmatic rules from macro and micro perspective and gives some advice to create appropriate public signs.Chapter1introduces the origin and significance of this study, defines the scope of this study, shows the domestic research on public signs, and describes the source of this study.Chapter2introduces the classification of Chinese warning public signs. According to Searle’s speech act theory, the public sign is divided into four types in this article: direction public signs; accuse public signs; warning public signs and celebrating public signs. Warning public signs belong to instruction public signs. According to its language features, warning public signs can be divided into two categories:prohibited warning signs and advice-education warning signs. And through data analysis, we can draw such conclusion:the advice-education warning public signs’ratio is much higher than that of the prohibited warning public signs.Chapter3, this part analyzes the language choice of warning signs from the adaptation theory,. Its language has obvious variability and consultative. The choice of language must adapt to different contexts:communicative context and linguistic context. In the discourse structure of factor selection, advice-education warning signs are more complicated than prohibited warning signs. In the study of dynamic generation of the meaning, we should emphases on the time dimension, contextual factors and language structure etc. The more public signs are able to arouse the reader’s attention, the more warning signs have highlight awareness. This kind of public signs highlight awareness is mainly manifested in discourse construction elements and excessive use of information.Chapter4, this part analyzes the Chinese warning signs from the micro perspective, using speech act theory, relevance theory, cooperative principle and politeness principle etc.Chapter5, this part analyzes the reason of the impact of Chinese warning signs: neglect of context factors; misuse of language elements; the options of pragmatic strategies. It put forward some new ideas, when we design warning public signs, we should take into account the following factors:targeted population; the context and the language specification. Finally, summarize the article and the shortcoming of this study.