The Study Of Chinese Speech Act Of Criticism

As a speech act theory pioneer, John L. Austin, author of How toDo Things with Words, noted,"Saying is doing". This assertion hascorrected the understanding of the nature of language. Further, thestudy of language has been developed from static to dynamic. John R.Searle inherited and developed the theory of Austin, putting forth thefamous theory–the indirect speech acts. That is, when people aresaying A, they intend to do B. As members in society, individuals mustfollow the cooperative principle and the politeness principle in theircommunicationLanguage plays an important part in human communication and thespeech act is the smallest element of communication. Research oncriticism will achieve some important practical values. This paper, onthe basis of previous studies, will focus on the following points:（1）The speech act of criticism has the direction on its implement,i.e. from the speaker to the listener. Criticism speech act is a negativeexpression or dissatisfied emotion of the speaker to the listener.（2）The author here has integrated the classification of pragmaticstrategies on criticism and proposed new ones. The writer has studiedhow to carry out a complete speech act of Chinese speech act ofcriticism based on words used in phrases levels as well as in sentenceslevels.（3）The author has verified the former conclusion on the Chinesespeech act of criticism. That is, the frequency of use of indirectstrategies is higher than that of direct strategies. Also, inquiry remainsthe highest frequency of use among the indirect strategies. （4） The author has taken into account the gender, age,social distance, and the rank of imposition of criticism on the listeners,adopting methods of data statistics and analysis and reached thefollowing conclusion. All factors here have significant effects on how toimplement a speech act of criticism. The maximum effect factor is therank of imposition of criticism on the listeners, while the minimumfactor is social distance. The author has studied the factors respectivelyand explained the reason as well.