A Pragmatic Study On Self-depreciation In Chinese Context

By depreciating the self-evaluation, the speaker carries out an intended pragmatic functiontowards the listener. This speech act is thus defined to be self-depreciation (SD). This thesisreviews the relevant literature of SD and launches a multi-dimensional pragmatic study on itfrom the perspectives of conversation role, turn position and pragmatic function, with126piecesof linguistic material on SD in Chinese context. The regulation of SD is observed and itsmechanism inferred.From the perspective of conversation role, SD mainly appears between a low-power speakerand a high-power listener, which results from the Power Distance Index in China’s society andthe speaker’s discretion. From the perspective of turn position, SD mainly appears in theresponse turn, as both the speaker and the listener keep maintaining their linguistic balance.From the perspective of pragmatic function, SD is an efficient way to state facts, expresspoliteness, create humour, evade responsibilities, hide strengths and seek praises, among whichthe first two items are the main pragmatic functions of SD. From the cross-dimensionalperspective, SD is primarily a response-oriented speech act to express politeness and state factsbetween a low-power speaker and a high-power listener.