A Study On Pragmatic Empathy In Voice From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

The phenomenon of empathy is abundant in natural language and human daily interaction,and it is an effective method for people to interact with the outside world.Empathy first originates from German aesthetics,which means emotional penetration.Empathy research is now beyond the aesthetic field and has become a research topic in the field of psychology,sociology,linguistics and so on.For the first time,He Ziran(1991)introduced and advanced the empathy study to the field of pragmatics and rebuilt the concept of pragmatic empathy.As a strategy of language choice,pragmatic empathy is broadly employed in verbal communication.However,the previous studies of empathy mainly focus on three fields: psychology,aesthetics and language learning.There is few study on pragmatic empathy based on linguistic adaptation theory.Therefore,this thesis,based on previous researches,using a qualitative and quantitative research method,aims to employ Verschueren's(1999)linguistic adaptation theory to make a detailed study on the pragmatic empathy phenomenon in124 public speeches randomly selected from Voice in the past three years.The present research aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the realization forms of pragmatic empathy in Voice?(2)What are the pragmatic functions of these realization forms in Voice?(3)How will pragmatic empathy be realized in Voice through the adaptation to context?The research results show that pragmatic empathy is actually the result of linguistic choice and the process of contextual adaptation.As an effective communicative strategy,pragmatic empathy has been widely used in public speeches in Voice through conscious language choices and continuous contextual adaptation.Through the statistic analysis of124 public speeches randomly selected from Voice in the past three years,the thesis points out that there are mainly three kinds of realization forms of pragmatic empathy in Voice.They include first person deixis,quotation,and hedges.The pragmatic functionof these three realization forms of pragmatic empathy are mainly embodied in two aspects.On the one hand,it can narrow the distance between the two sides of the communication and build a harmonious communicative atmosphere.On the other hand,it can maintain the speaker's face and conform to the politeness principles.In this way,by choosing appropriate realization forms,the speaker can adapt to the listeners' psychological world,social world and physical world so as to realize pragmatic empathy and achieve successful communication.Therefore,the use of pragmatic empathy in Voice is actually the result of linguistic choice interadaptable with communicative context(in this thesis,including language users' physical world,social world and mental world).In summary,the present thesis is of great significance that uses Verschueren's linguistic adaptation theory to study the pragmatic empathy in Voice.Theoretically,both linguistic adaptation theory and pragmatic empathy are popular and novel research theories and research perspectives in recent years.The present research might shed light on the significance of pragmatic empathy,and enrich the understanding of pragmatic empathy and the study of public speeches.Practically,the use of pragmatic empathy not only can shorten the distance between the two sides of the communication,but also can build a harmonious communicative atmosphere.Meanwhile,it has the application function of assisting communicative parties to achieve successful communication and build a harmonious society.So it is of great practical and guiding significance.