A Pragmatic Study Of Jian Discourses In Ancient China

Historical pragmatics,which aims to compare the realizations of pragmatic phenomena across different time periods of the same language,has grown from a peripheral discipline to a central discipline after more than 20 years of development.In particular,historical pragmatic studies of speech acts have been conducted in languages like English,Spanish,and Polish by scholars abroad,but there are by far few historical pragmatic studies of speech acts in the Chinese context.The current study examines the diachronic evolution of the speech act of jian characteristically performed in ancient China during the time span of 403 BC to 649 AD,which is divided into four time blocks of pre-Qin(403 BC to 256 BC),Qin&Han(255 BC to 219 AD),WeiJin&Nanbeichao(220 AD to 588 AD),and Sui&Tang(589 AD to 649 AD),The data are collected and identified from Zizhi Tongjian(????),a chronological narrative of the history of China.This study consists of two stages,namely theoretical exploration and data analysis,in what follows the findings of the two stages are reported separately.In theoretical exploration stage,the researcher defines and identifies the jian discourses in Zizhi Tongjian based on related literature.By putting the verbal act jian within the pragmatics paradigm,the research finds that,first,the speech act of jian cannot be fitted into the traditional speech act taxonomy as proposed in speech act theory(SAT);second,the speech act of jian is not a Face Threatening Act(FTA),but rather a Power Threatening Act(PTA),meaning an act that threatens the(hearer's)DISPLAY of power;and third,based on preliminary analysis,the researcher finds that,compared to politeness strategies for FTAs which only includes the modulation type of redress,the pragmatic strategies for PTAs are multi-faceted,which include the modulation types of redress,aggravation and the combined modulation.Thus,in this study,the conceptualization of "Power Threatening Act",and an analytic framework for jian discourses are tentatively proposed,based on Face Threatening Theory,Speech Act Theory,and analytic framework for FTAs,for the analysis of the characteristic speech act of jian.In data analysis stage,this study attempts to adopt the analytic framework for jian discourses to analyze the jian discourses occurring in data,with the purposes of achieving a pragmatic understanding of the act of jian,and examining the applicability of the aforesaid "Power Threatening Act" and the analytic framework for jian discourses.Specifically the jian discourse occurring in data are analyzed from the perspectives of explicitness and modulation,as illustrated in the two research questions:(1)How explicitly is jian made in the discourses of each historical period?Is the choice of explicitness of jian affected by the theme of jian?How does the explicitness of jian evolve over time?(2)To what extent do the remonstrators or jian makers in each historical period modulate the aggressiveness of their jian discourse?What types of modulation are involved?Is the choice of the type of modulation affected by the theme of jian?How do the types of modulation evolve over time?The main results of this stage,after qualitative and quantitative analyses,are as follows:(1)Both explicit and implicit forms of jian appear in all the four historical blocks.The former include Criticism,Criticism plus Suggesting,Suggesting,taking up about 92%of the whole occurrences of jian,while the implicit type of jian takes up a proportion of about 8%.A cross-theme comparison identifies the themes that contain a higher proportion of explicit types of jian and that of implicit type of jian.The results correspond to the difference in semantic content,specifically the"intrusiveness" of the themes.Moreover,diachronically speaking,the proportion of the explicit types of jian slowly increases,while that of the implicit types of jian slowly decreases.(2)Remonstrators would modulate the aggressiveness of their jian discourse most of the time.The modulation,as used in the three explicit types of jian(C,C+S,S),includes three kinds:Aggravation,Redress and Combined modulation(combination of aggravation and redress).The modulation of redress occurs most frequently,and the combined modulation occurs least frequently.The results of cross-theme analysis of modulation show some correlation between the choice of modulation type and some themes.The diachronic analysis of modulation reveals no discernible pattern,which to some extent reveals the complexity of the situation of jian and the idiosyncrasy of jian makers.This study may have some theoretical implications,as it may shed light on the application of certain pragmatic theories like speech act theory and face theory,research into the phenomenon of jian,research into institutional discourse,and the field of critical discourse analysis of the relation between power and discourse.