On Impolite Rhetorical Questions In Online Polylogal Interaction

The rhetorical question(henceforth RQ),a sub-type of interrogatives,is “posing questions that anticipate no answer”.As a salient linguistic phenomenon,it has been extensively studied from diverse perspectives,ranging from rhetoric,syntax,semantics to pragmatics.Being a pragmatic category,RQs have been identified by existing studies as a strategy that serves a variety of communicative functions in different contexts.Despite pervasiveness of online interaction in our daily life,RQs posted in digital platforms,however,are largely underexplored.Notably,most of them appear to be offensive,which leads to a confrontational situation.The study thus seeks to probe into the manifestation of RQs and the perception of their impoliteness in online polylogal interaction.Within analytical frameworks of speech act theory and(im)politeness theory,the study attempts to address two core questions: 1)what types of pragmatic functions can RQs perform in online polylogal interaction? 2)how are RQs evaluated as impolite acts by netizens and how is the process affected by contextual factors? To elucidate issues above,the corpus for analyses is based on naturally occurring data which are drawn from comment sections of various digital platforms,such as Weibo postings,Tencent News,etc.The study firstly identifies major types of RQs in terms of their illocutionary forces in online polylogues.Following this,the impoliteness of RQs is investigated primarily from a hearer-oriented perspective.Specifically,the analysis explores the criteria by which participants' evaluations of impoliteness are underpinned.Besides,contextual constraints that impact on the evaluation process are examined as well.Two major findings are summarized as follows.1)There are four main functions performed in the form of RQs in online polylogal interaction,namely,refuting arguments,making accusations,imposing demands and expressing distrust.2)All four illocutionary acts unveiled above are evaluated as impolite because they violate the moral order,in particular,epistemic order,deontic order,and affective order respectively.In addition,two constraints of virtual context,viz.,the anonymous participation and asynchronous communication,have also played a part during the evaluation process.In a word,the impoliteness of RQs is constructed and understood in interaction.This study provides a pragmatic account of impolite RQs in digital communication,and thereby affords people illumination of how to grasp and deal with the distinguishing features of RQs.Meanwhile,this study also contributes to the constructionist research on(im)politeness and the study in the field of cyberpragmatics.