A Pragmatic Study Of Strategic Impoliteness In TV Mediation

TV mediation is a new means of mediation which plays a significant role in resolving family disputes,promoting social morality and maintaining social harmony.As a complicated social-pragmatic phenomenon,some studies on TV mediation have been conducted from different perspectives such as mass media and social laws.However,few scholars have explored TV mediation from the pragmatic perspective.There is no doubt that the success of TV mediation mainly depends on the mediators' comprehensive use of different kinds of mediation strategies which are influenced by various pragmatic factors.Therefore,it is necessary to study the pragmatic strategies employed by mediators in TV mediation and their positive functions.Focusing on the mediation of marital infidelity and parents' supporting,30 episodes of the TV program baixing tiaojie have been transcribed for this thesis.Based on the data,I have found that mediators often employ the impoliteness strategy of attacking the disputant parties' face to mediate these two kinds of family disputes which are caused by the violation of morality.Besides,different from the impoliteness in our daily life,the impolite utterances used by the mediators in TV mediation show the pragmatic features of being strategic,weak-antagonistic and positive.As a result,according to the collected data,the impoliteness strategy adopted by mediators in TV mediation is redefined as strategic impoliteness.The distinctive properties of mediators' strategic impoliteness are as follows: the speaker(mediator)intentionally attacks the hearer's(disputant's)face to achieve certain positive communicative goals,instead of causing disharmony;while the hearer(disputant)perceives the face attack but rarely responds offensively.Based on the collected data,this research will adopt both qualitative and quantitative approach to carry out a pragmatic study of mediators' strategic impoliteness in TV mediation.This research is attempted to answer the following three questions.(1)What types of strategic impoliteness have been used by mediators in TV mediation?(2)What are the contextual factors for mediators' employment of strategic impoliteness in TV mediation?(3)What are the positive functions of mediators' strategic impoliteness in TV mediation?The major findings of this research are as follows:To begin with,four kinds of positive strategic impoliteness(85.5%)and two kinds of negative strategic impoliteness(14.5%)used by mediators in TV mediation have been identified in the collected data according to Culpeper's impoliteness framework.To be specific,four kinds of positive strategic impoliteness are “be unsympathetic”,“avoid agreement”,“criticize” and “challenges”.Two kinds of negative strategic impoliteness are “frighten” and “hind/block”.Among all these output strategies of mediators' strategic impoliteness,“challenges” and “criticize” occur most frequently.In addition,three contextual factors which lead to the mediators' use of strategic impoliteness in TV mediation have been identified.They are the asymmetry of power between mediators and disputants,the need of urgency and efficiency and the disputants' violation of social marital morality and filial piety.The first factor provides the possibility for mediators to employ strategic impoliteness;the second factor offers the necessity of attacking the disputants' face for successful mediations;the third factor produces moral motivation which usually leads to the mediators' use of challenges and criticism.Since there are substantial violations of marital morality and filial morality in the collected data,it will be easy to understand why mediators employ the strategic impoliteness of challenges and criticism most frequently in this research.Furthermore,based on the study of disputants' responses to mediators' strategic impoliteness,three positive functions of mediators' strategic impoliteness in TV mediation have been concluded,namely,strengthening the mediators' authority identity,educating the disputants and ensuring the smooth operation of mediation.It has also been found that the reason why mediators' strategic impoliteness can have positive functions is that disputants' responses to this kind of impoliteness in TV mediation are of weak antagonism.To be specific,the disputants' responses to mediators' strategic impoliteness fall into three categories.They are “defend the face-attack”(30%),“accept the face-attack”(27.1%)and “stay silent”(42.9%).To defend the mediators' strategic face-attack,the disputants always offered an explanation or account,which usually aroused the mediators' further challenges and criticism.Therefore,at last the defensive disputants had to either accept the face attack or stay silent.Besides,based on careful observation,I have found that when disputants chose to stay silent,they often lowered their heads without the expression of discontent or resentment.Based on all the above,it's safe to conclude that although mediators' strategic impoliteness did damage the disputants' faces,it didn't cause conflicts.Instead,it helped the mediators to achieve their positive intention of helping the disputants to solve their disputes.This study has made both theoretical and practical contributions.On the one hand,this study can promote the pragmatic studies of impoliteness.Firstly,focusing on the mediators' strategic impoliteness linguistic behavior in TV mediation which hasn't been explored before,this study can inject vitality into the discourse types of impoliteness study and widen its scope.Secondly,this study has found three new strategies for responders to accept an impoliteness act,which can shed light on the study of impoliteness response.They are sincere agreement,admitting mistakes and making a promise.Above all,having identified the positive functions of mediators' strategic impoliteness in TV mediation,this study can inspire other scholars to explore the positive pragmatic effects of impoliteness in future research.On the other hand,the current study can shed some light on the mediators' appropriate employment of strategic impoliteness in TV mediation and thus promote the success of mediation.