A Study On The Use Of Impoliteness In Prime Minister's Questions

Impoliteness has long been ignored compared with the study of politeness.Some studies on impoliteness are descriptively inadequate and conceptually biased since they generally assume that impoliteness phenomenon is marginal and that it can be dealt with within the existing structures of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory.In practice,however,conflictive illocutions have been found to play an important role,and often a central one,in some discourses.Besides,the confrontational interaction in those discourses cannot be fully accounted for by existing politeness theories and thus demands comprehensive study.Therefore,impoliteness models have been developed to comprehensively describe impoliteness phenomena.In order to get a better understanding of the use of impoliteness in adversarial political discourse,this thesis adopts Bousfield's(2008)impoliteness model as theoretical framework and conducts a qualitative analysis of twenty sessions of Prime Minister's Questions.The focus is on the specific realizations of impoliteness,impoliteness response options and the functions of impoliteness in Prime Minister's Questions.In this way,this study endeavors to analyze the communication and function of impoliteness in Prime Minister's Questions and at the same time to test the applicability of Bousfield's model in adversarial political discourse.The major findings of this thesis are as follows:(1)the realizations of impoliteness in Prime Minister's Questions include five on-record strategies of insult,request for action,scorn/ridicule,criticism/accusation and challenge and the off-record strategies of mock politeness and rhetorical questions;(2)when the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are faced with an offending situation,they tend to counter the face attack by either offending each other's face and/or defending their own face with strategies of changing the subject,enhancing positive face,abrogation,explanation and direct contradiction;(3)impoliteness in Prime Minister's Questions has functions in the pursuit of particular political policies and objectives as well as in the negotiation of political status and power positions.The present study serves to redress the imbalance,however slightly,with regards to studies concerned with impoliteness by hopefully generating responses to,discussions on and extensions of impoliteness research.In addition,the application of impoliteness theories offers a new perspective for the studies on Prime Minister's Questions and provides deeper insights into the linguistic and communicative skills of the participants in adversarial political discourse.