Contrastive Analysis Of Impoliteness Strategies In English And Chinese

Politeness and impoliteness are universal in human communication. It has been along time since linguists have been concerned with politeness, especially after thecoming out of Leech’s (1983) Politeness Principle (PP) and Brown&Levinson’s (1987)Face-Saving Theory (FST), which has aroused a large number of studies on thisphenomenon. With the development of the study, researchers have noticed that the otherside of politeness in language communication, namely, impoliteness, may generateconflict and threat in parties’ conversation. Since then, research of impoliteness hasbeen started. Previous studies are mainly concerned with the definition andclassification of impoliteness, impoliteness phenomenon in different contexts, as well asimpoliteness and other social factors. However, the study on impoliteness strategies andtheir application is relatively fewer, and comparative studies of the application of thestrategies are even rare.In this study, the author puts forwards a revised version of the classification ofimpoliteness strategies based on Culpeper (1996) and Bousfield (2008), and employsthis classification to make a contrastive analysis in English and Chinese. The dataanalyzed are collected from episodes in two welcomed sitcoms, The Big Bang Theorymade in America and Ipartment screened in China.The major findings of the dissertation are listed below:(1) Apart from thestrategies discussed in Culpeper’s (1996) and Bousfield’s (2008) research, fournew-found strategies, i.e., shouting to the other loudly, changing the topic ofconversation, imitating other’s voice, and racial discrimination, are explored in thisstudy.(2) Except “use obscure or secretive language”, most strategies are found inEnglish and Chinese corpus.(3) Sarcasm is the most frequently used impolitenessstrategy in both English and Chinese context. Criticizing is the second most-usedstrategy in English, and frightening is the second most popular impoliteness strategy inChinese.(4) The frequency of utilization of excluding the other from activity, snubbing, being disinterested and so on are almost the same in both languages. Shouting to theother loudly and changing the topic of conversation are more often used in Chinese,while in English-speaking countries using inappropriate identity markers often appearsin their conversation. Racial discrimination just appears in the English context.