Strategies Of Response To Impolite Utterances In Unbalanced Social Distance Setting

The study of impoliteness began in 1970s-1980 s in the western academic circle. Compared with the study of politeness and its abundant research findings, the study of impoliteness has been greatly ignored for a long time, and the research findings are fewer than those of politeness. However, impoliteness not only exists everywhere in real life conversation, but also plays important roles in institutional context such as in television programs. Therefore, more efforts should be made on the study of impoliteness.The objective of this study is to analyze the strategies of response to impolite utterances in Chinese broadcast context. The data are mainly taken from the reality television show Only For You, a Chinese job-hunting program in which power is imbalanced between participants in interaction, and the conversations are characterized as institutional discourse.Within Bousfield’s impoliteness theoretical framework, this thesis explores the strategies of response to face-threatening utterances conducted by those involved in the interaction within the studio, and analyzes the manifestation and strategies of response to impolite utterances between social equals and between social unequals. Meanwhile, the frequency and distribution of each kind of strategy employed by interlocutors of different social status are calculated and analyzed. It reveals that people from different social status tend to adopt different strategies of responding to impoliteness. Defensive counter strategies are mostly adopted by both social inferiors and social superiors; keeping silent and accepting face attack are employed by social inferiors more frequently than social superiors, and offensive counter strategies are favored more by social superiors.In addition, this thesis analyzes and discusses the communicative effects of these impoliteness responses. It finds that first, through responding to impoliteness, interlocutors can reveal discursive power, including giving up their power, maintaining their power, and challenging other interlocutors’ power in discourse; and second, interlocutors illustrate their emotions and feelings by way of responding to impoliteness, including anger, astonishment, appreciation, shamefulness, and depression.This thesis is of both theoretical and practical significance. By studying the strategies of response to impoliteness in broadcast context, as well as the communicative effects of impoliteness responses, this thesis not only introduces a new perspective for impoliteness research, but also sheds some light on the interpretation to impoliteness in interaction.