A Study Of Pragmatic Strategies In Corporate Microblog For Crisis Public Relations

As early as 1990s,linguistics on public relations stepped into a new field for academic research which is a subject concerning language use in public relations(short for PR)practice.It serves as the precedent in the study of PR language from linguistics which mainly talks about PR language strategies from rhetoric.Since 2004,social media such as blog,QQ,microblog and WeChat have gained great growth.They not only act as platforms for sharing information,but also play a crucial role in corporates'marketing and dealing with crisis situations.It is noted that microblog and WeChat also have features of "we media",thus their users can break news and spread information.Once a crisis occurs in a corporate,it will result in considerable propagation effect through "we media".Therefore,researches on modern corporates'PR in crisis situations and leading online public opinions have sprung up.However,in the domain of pragmatics,scarce works concerning the theory of the cooperative principle(short for CP)can be found to provide corporates with suggestions in response to a PR crisis through new media.Most researches have contributed to the issue from the combination of the theory of CP and the politeness principle.This thesis holds that the essence of PR in crisis situations from language use is the audience's understanding of what is said by the PR subject.In line with this,it is necessary to choose corresponding language strategies based on figuring out the audience's implication.This thesis calls the choice of certain ways in language use pragmatic strategy.Theories of conversational implicature and CP proposed by Grice make contribution to understanding the audience's implication by specific maxims.Therefore,this thesis chooses the theories to explore some pragmatic strategies in corporate microblog for crisis PR.The research questions are whether corporates use any pragmatic strategy to deal with a PR crisis?What pragmatic strategies can be concluded concerning CP?In terms of a case study,what pragmatic strategies can be suggested for the chosen corporate to cope with the PR crisis?To answer these questions,this thesis adopts methods of literature review,case analysis and combination of quantity analysis and quality analysis.Through literature review,we find that it is a must to use pragmatic strategies for crisis PR.The construction of positive ethos and good institution image,spreading formulas,image repair strategies and principles for crisis PR put forward in fields of rhetoric and crisis communication are more or less concerned with pragmatic strategies,because they all focus on what to say and how to say it.The maxims of CP,that is,the maxim of Quality,the maxim of Quantity,the maxim of Relation and the maxim of Manner,all can help solve the problems.In PR practice,the PR subjects may follow the guidance of CP unconsciously,hence the thesis tries to arouse such consciousness to gain better communication effects.By reviewing the theory of CP,we find that it is a matter of choice to use pragmatic strategies implied by the theory of CP.Whether to follow CP or not can base on certain maxims.During the process of quantity analysis,this thesis selects the "red yellow blue nursery child abuse incident" as a case study by virtue of Sina Weibo hot searching.Then the corporate's response to the crisis is studied concerning the theory of CP from quality analysis.The result is the corporate used the maxim of Relation properly,but fails to apply other three maxims properly.As a consequence,the negative voices in the microblog are in flood.By lessons and enlightenments from this PR practice,the thesis suggests that the corporate should firstly have a good knowledge of CP thus apply it properly.In this case,we suggest the corporate tell the truth,provide the audience with enough information,make its expressions clearly and orderly and reply followers in time.Whether these pragmatic strategies can instruct crisis PR practice in corporate microblog remains to be tested by practice,which is the utmost limitation of the current research.Therefore,we are looking forward to more empirical researches to verify the suggestions in the future.