A Comparative Study On Response Options To Impoliteness Between Chinese Married Couples And American Married Couples

Impoliteness,as a frequent communicative phenomenon,manifests in different discourse types.In recent years,the field has seen the publishing of countless articles of impoliteness.However,responses to impoliteness,which may reveal “how impoliteness is to be taken”(Culpeper et al.,2003,p.1562),have not received much attention.Besides,most researches on response options to impoliteness overlooked the situations where there exists equality of power,especially discourses of married couples.This thesis contributes to investigating the similarities and differences in response options to impoliteness adopted by married couples in China and America as well as the similarities and differences in the corresponding communicative effects of response options.The data selected in this thesis are 97 extracts(520 turns)taken from Beautiful Housewives and Desperate Housewives(Season 8).Then the collected data were counted and analyzed by dint of Statistic Package for Social Science(SPSS)software.The results show that: firstly,no significant difference occurs in the frequencies of response options adopted by Chinese married couples and American married couples on the whole.Countering is more frequently realized in the collected data than acceptance,staying silent and compromise.In terms of counter strategies,offensive counter strategies share a large portion in both Chinese and American data,but offensive counter strategies share a larger portion in Chinese data.The possible reasons may be related with cultural values,social intimacy,power and etc.Secondly,as for communicative effects,the negative pragmatic effects(the destruction of the interpersonal relationship)are universal in impolite discourses of married couples taken from Beautiful Housewives and Desperate Housewives(Season 8).However,positive pragmatic effects(the construction of the interpersonal relationship)may be produced by opting for acceptance,compromise or even some defensive counter strategies in certain context.Apart from some similarities,there exists a difference.Compared with response options of Chinese married couples to impoliteness,responses of American married couples to impoliteness are more likely to produce positive pragmatic effect to construct the interpersonal relationship.This thesis verifies the applicability of Bousfield's(2008)response options in the collected data.It will contribute to an understanding of the responses to impoliteness in different cultures,together with the mutual understanding between married couples.