A Refined Taxonomy Of Disagreement Speech Act Based On Rapport Management Theory

Disagree speech act is a common and verified speech act in our life.Scholars have acquired fruitful results in disagreement study from the perspectives of politeness,context,gender,culture,and second language learning,but none of the research grasps the overall characteristics of the speech act.The existed taxonomies are mostly based on severity of disagreement,dividing disagreement into three classes as “strengthened,neither strengthened nor softened and softened”.This kind of taxonomy generalizes expression forms of disagreements,but it hardly reflects the interrelation of interactional goals and context behind the expressions.Based on rapport management theory's theoretical framework and the existed taxonomies of Rees-Miller(2000)and Nezt(2014),this thesis analyzes disagreement's head acts and additional acts.Then it provides a refined taxonomy by the standards of three rapport orientations.The conclusions of the thesis are as follows,(1)Rapport orientation could indicate the interactive relationship of face management,sociality rights and obligations and interactional goals.Disagreement could be divided into rapport maintaining/ enhancing,rapport neglecting and rapport challenging;(2)in rapport maintaining/ enhancing orientation,one of the interactional goals is maintaining relationship with interlocutors.The utterance is the result of balancing the parameters in disagreement.Speakers tend to use additional acts to mitigate the disagreeing head acts;rapport neglecting orientation indicates the place where speakers' expression of disagreement would not lose face,or the benefit belittles the cost.Speakers tend to express disagreement directly with head acts;the rapport challenging orientation probably indicates the negative emotional appealing of speakers.They tend to use additional acts to strengthen the severity of disagreement.On the basis of rapport management theory,the thesis provides the refined taxonomy of disagreement,analyzing three rapport orientations and their features.More general characteristics are revealed in the research and they could be used in future study of cross-culture,second language acquisition and other aspects.