Politeness Phenomena In A Chinese Radio Phone-in Complaints Hotline

This thesis sets out to investigate the politeness phenomenon behind complaints and responses to complaints. Based on data collected from a Chinese radio phone-in program called ’Xiaofei Weiquan Mianduimian’, which is devoted to receiving and handling callers’complaints, the thesis attempts to (i) make explicit the components of callers’complaint statements;’(ii) ascertain the host’s response patterns of handling the complaints;(iii) find out the strategies adopted by callers and the host for the sake of showing politeness. In addition to politeness theories raised by Leech, Brown and Levinson, and Gu Yueguo, the researches on mitigation are also utilized to carry out the current investigation. Findings indicate that callers structure their complaints through a set of moves, among which they prefer to supplement the obligatory move of SC with optional moves of BUC, BC or CV instead of IC2, RCA or RS. It means, to complainants, stating, buffering, justifying and mitigating their complaints are more important than increasing the seriousness or putting forward a request. In responding to the callers, the host deals with their problems through asking questions, promising to help, negotiating with the complainants or solving the problem. He asks questions in order to paint a clear picture of the complaint so as to figure out a solution. For the justified complaints, the host shows his agreement and promises to offer help (by contacting the complainee), while for those unreasonable ones, he negotiates with callers by expressing his disagreement or solves the problem on his own by giving his advices. Despite the face-threatening characteristics in the speech act of complaining, disagreeing and advising, the data shows that both the callers and the host’s statements involve politeness strategies. They include politeness markers (e.g.谢谢,你好,老师’thank you, hello, Teacher’) which can be identified superficially, linguistic devices(e.g.嗯/哦/是,�'�询一下,我理解你’eh/oh/yes, want to know, I understand’) which manifest themselves in this particular context, and mitigation devices (e.g.可能,我觉得,目前来讲’may/might, I think, insofar as’) which are used to divert or reduce the illocutionary force. This thesis expands the empirical studies of politeness, since little research so far has been conducted in the context of Chinese radio phone-in complaints and complaint-responses.