Impolite Discourse In Chinese

For a long time, as the values pursued by people, politeness and harmony have enjoyed great popularity. Researchers and scholars working in the academic field of politeness phenomena and politeness theories have achieved fruitful outputs. However, impoliteness and disharmony, which are regarded as negative aspects in daily life destroying the interpersonal relationships, have long been neglected. This imbalance between politeness and impoliteness research was not redressed until the academic circle noticed the universality and importance of the latter. Pragmatists represented by Culpeper and Bousfield take impoliteness as their object of study and have obtained valuable achievements.Bousfield's impoliteness model and conversational analysis methodology are combined in this thesis to analyze verbal impoliteness in the Chinese reality TV dating show If You Are the One. By transcribing the video programs, the realization of impoliteness output strategies, response options and termination options proposed and utilized by Bousfield are analyzed. In the meantime, efforts are also made to make some new findings so as to enrich the impoliteness theories.On the basis of analyzing the language materials transcribed from the videos, the realization of most output strategies, all the response options and termination options listed by Bousfield are testified. In addition to this, three newly found strategies are proposed. They are pointing out the other's errors in public, purposely making difficulties for the other, and expressing disgust at the other directly. In terms of the termination options, this thesis points out that the third party who intervenes in the verbal impoliteness of others is not necessarily dominant in power or social position. People of equal social position or power to the conflictive parties can also successfully terminate the impolite exchanges. Finally, this thesis points out that verbal impoliteness may not be fully terminated by applying the termination options to it, and that it may be rekindled in later interactions.