A Pragmatic Study Of Sentence-final Particles In Zuozhuan

This research is a pragmatic study of the sentence final particles (henceforth SFPs) inZuozhuan‘s activity interactions within the analytical framework of LinguisticRegulation Theory (LRT in short) proposed by Huo (2004). It aims to explore howand why characters in Zuozhuan‘s interactions mobilize such SFPs as “yě”(也),“hū”(乎),“zāi”(哉) and “yǐ”(矣) to regulate their interactions and maintain harmonyof different kinds involved therein. It attempts to answer four questions: What SFPsare used in Zuozhuan? What types of speech acts are these particles attached to? Whatpragmatic functions do SFPs perform in Zuozhuan? Why have characters in Zuozhuanmobilized these SFPs to achieve their goals?To address the research questions, we developed a tentative theoreticalframework based on LRT which studies how people use language to regulate theirsocial behavior and maintain or improve harmony of different kinds involved therein.According to this theory, human social behavior is characterized by two generaltendencies—harmony and conflict, which constitute a scale. Language use as a formof this behavior serves to maintain a tension between the two ends. Deriving directlyfrom the performance of speech acts, these conflicts are interactional—speech actsare regarded in this theory as moves that constitute activity interactions. Since anactivity interaction occurs along three dimensions—physical, psychological andsocial, conflicts are assumed to operate on these dimensions. Being metapragmaticallyaware of the possible threat of these conflicts to the progression of their activityinteractions and the normal state of harmony, participants utilize some linguisticdevices to defuse or soften them along these dimensions. As far as the presentresearch is concerned, we just deal with the regulating function of SFPs in Zuozhuan‘sactivity interactions along the social dimension, or rather, how characters inZuozhuan‘s activity interactions employ SFPs to weaken or defuse the social conflictslikely to arise from the performance of some speech acts. Using this theoreticalframework, we analyzed a corpus of about15SFPs collected from the627dialoguesrecorded in Zuozhuan. And according to the categories of speech acts put forward by Searle (1979), a statistical analysis of the types of speech acts in which SFPs occur arealso made to provide a clear quantitative description of the categorization.Within the framework of LRT, we make the claim that SFPs in Zuozhuan‘activity interaction can be regarded as a means of linguistic regulation and apragmatic strategy. It serves to regulate an activity interaction by modulating theillocutionary force of speech acts so as to weaken or defuse the conflicts therein.Besides, from an LRT perspective, we could find that social conflicts which havemotivated the regulation function of SFPs always relate to speakers‘intentions andhearers‘face needs. For the participants with relatively low social status and power(specifically the subordinates or diplomatists in Zuozhuan‘s activity interactions),conflicts of this kind generally occur between their obligations and tasks (realized asdirective speech acts of various types) as the advisers and the face need of theirmonarch as the body they must obey, although sometimes conflicts of this kind alsooccur between their own wishes and opinions (mainly realized as assertive speech acts)and their monarch‘s positive face, as is realized in the analysis of Section5.3.2.1. Inthis case, being metapragmatically aware that speech acts of this kind will cause somethreat to the face of their monarch, the subordinates or diplomatists choose to employthe SFP―hū” to mitigate the illocutionary force of their speech acts in the hope ofavoiding the possible social conflicts. For the monarchs with a higher social positionand power, social conflicts along this dimension mostly occur between their rights andrequests (mainly realized as directive speech acts) and the negative face of hissubordinates. However, instead of choosing SFPs to soften the impositive force of hisdirective speech acts, the monarch often utilizes SFPs―zāi”,“yě”,“yǐ” to strengthenthe force of his directive speech acts as a way of enhancing his position. Apart fromthe SFPs in directive speech acts and assertive speech acts, SFPs in our corpus canalso be used as a means of reinforcement in expressive and commissive speech acts toshow the degree of the speakers‘approval of the hearers‘previous utterances. In thisway, the speakers can maintain the positive face of the hearers and help themselves torealize their own interactional intentions. In addition, this study has also led tofindings supporting the conceptual framework of LRT.