A Contrastive Study On Pragmatic Principles Applied In American And Chinese Commencement Speeches

Commencement speech, the final lesson before graduates start a new journey inlife，is regarded as an important carrier of campus culture. In recent years, topicsabout these speeches have enjoyed popularity. Both American and Chinesecommencement speeches prevail among people. Up to now, most studies oncommencement speeches are carried out from the perspectives of content, form andsocial influences, etc., and research involving linguistic theories mainly focuses onconceptual metaphor and interpersonal function, etc., while there are few studiesconducted from the aspect of Pragmatics. Pragmatic principles, one of the corecontents in Pragmatics, are important in guiding the studies on verbal communication.Thus they have attracted scholars’ great attention. Leech points out that one of theimportant tasks for scholars is to research into the relative weights of pragmaticprinciples in various cultures and linguistic milieux. Therefore, this thesis aims tostudy pragmatic principles applied in American and Chinese commencementspeeches through contrast in the hope of finding their similarities and differences aswell as the cultural and pragmatic reasons for these similarities and differences.This thesis adopts pragmatic principles which belong to Interpersonal Rhetoricproposed by Geoffrey Leech, including the Cooperative Principle, the maxims ofPoliteness Principle, the Irony Principle, the Banter Principle, the Interest Principleand the Pollyanna Principle. According to Leech’s viewpoint (1983:142) that “ThePhatic Maxim is a special case of the Sympathy Maxim of the Politeness Principle.”and the practical situation in this thesis, these two maxims are combined together andstill termed the Sympathy Maxim in this thesis.The methodology and procedure of this thesis are as follows: altogehter,30commencement speeches (15American ones and15Chinese ones) are collected asthe data. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed in this contrastivestudy. Firstly, pragmatic principles applied in the speeches are identified and thensome tables and figures are listed to show the distributions. Based on the contrastconcerning the distributions, similarities and differences are unfolded for the next section in which realization of the dominant principles is analysed with examples.Finally, reasons for the similarities and differences are taken into study.The major findings in this thesis are as follows:1) Various pragmatic principles are applied in both American and Chinesecommencement speeches, but they occur in different proportions.2) The similarity is that American and Chinese commencement speechescommonly emphasize the Cooperative Principle, the Approbation Maxim of thePoliteness Principle and the Pollyanna Principle. There are few obvious differences inthe realization of the principles and maxims. The similarity could be attributed to thesimilar explicit context and the same aim of commencement speeches.3) The differences exist in the preference for principles and maxims. It is foundthat the distribution of pragmatic principles applied in American commencementspeeches is more balanced than the one in Chinese commencement speeches. That isto say, Chinese speeches focus on several principles, and comparatively pay lessattention to other principles. Besides, Amercian speeches emphasize the IronyPrinciple and the Banter Principle more than Chinese ones, which generates thehumorous effect to achieve efficient communication; Chinese speeches place a highervalue on the Sympathy Maxim and the Agreement Maxim of the Politeness Principle,which contributes to impressing the graduates with resonance of emotion. Thesedifferences are derived from the distinctions of culture and mode of thinking betweenthe two nations. To be specific, the American have focused on freedom and humor forlong, while the Chinese have the tradition of emphasizing sympathy; the American’smode of thinking is divergent and prospective, while the Chinese one is convergentand retrospective.This thesis may enrich the exploration of pragmatic principles and make its owncontribution to Leech’s advocacy of researching on the relative weights of thesepragmatic principles in different cultures. The findings may be taken as a referrencefor teaching and addressing in American and Chinese cultures. The reflected culturaland rhetorical differences can help language learners further their understanding ofAmerican and Chinese cultures, which will be beneficial to their language study.