A Contrastive Study On Face-saving Strategies In Chinese And American Spokespersons' Remarks

Politeness stands out as a vital communicative activity that tends to harmonize social interactions and foster interpersonal relations between the members of a society.For a long time,the focus of face study has been set on politeness in social interactions by scholars from a wide range of academic fields,including linguistics,sociolinguistics,anthropology and so on.Among them,the face-saving theory proposed by Brown and Levinson in 1978 has been enjoying long-term influence and recognition.Brown and Levinson define “face” as “a public image that every member of society intends to earn for himself”.Through the communication with others,this image could be damaged,maintained or enhanced.Brown and Levinson argue that speech acts are essentially face-threatening.So every Model Person(MP)will seek a certain way to avoid these Face-threatening Acts(FTAs),or to take certain strategies to mitigate the threat of speech acts.As the diplomatic discourse,spokesperson's remarks have always been a hot topic in the analysis of speech act.The Korean Peninsula issue has always been an important regional problem that plagued China and the United States.In the exchange over the issue of the peninsula,how to respond to the concerns of the international community appropriately and effectively is a challenge that China and American spokesperson must face.In other words,the “challenge” is how to use politeness strategies to save face for each other,to ensure the appropriateness of language so that the communication in the diplomatic context can proceed smoothly,and at the same time to maintain the national interests and stand firm in the national position.The Face-Saving Theory suggests five face-saving strategies for FTAs,also known as politeness strategies.And this theory has been widely used by scholars both at home and abroad on the interpretation of politeness.Previous studies have been more focused on business letters or daily conversation while this thesis takes Chinese and American spokesperson's remarks on the Korean Peninsular nuclear issues at the press conference from March 2017 to June 2017 as data to compare the application of four kinds of politeness strategy in Diplomatic discourse.Through the qualitative and quantitative comparative analysis of the data,this thesis is supposed to discuss the specific use of politeness strategies in textual level,make a systematic analysis of the distribution,and explain the similarity and difference between Chinese and American spokesperson's remarks from the perspective of Cross-cultural communication.The results of this study reveal the following findings:First,both Chinese and American spokespersons often use the following politeness strategies: bald on record without redressive strategies,positive politeness strategies,negative politeness strategies,and off record strategies.The difference between the politeness strategies employed in the Chinese and American's remarks is mainly show in the level of its sub-strategies.More politeness strategies are used to maintain the relationship with third party involved in conversation and fewer politeness strategies are used to maintain the relationship with journalists present.The purpose of all these politeness strategies used by spokespersons is not only to maintain the good relationship with the hearer,but also help safeguard the national image or interests.Second,the most frequently used politeness strategy in Chinese spokesperson's remarks is positive politeness strategy,while the negative politeness strategy is more often used by the American spokespersons.The relative frequency of off-record strategy used in the Chinese spokesperson's remarks is higher than that in the American spokesperson's remarks.Third,when maintaining good relationship with the media,the frequency of politeness strategies used in American spokesperson's remarks is higher than that used in the Chinese spokesperson;positive politeness strategy plays a remarkable role in both Chinese and American spokesperson's remarks.For the sake of keeping good diplomatic relations with other countries,both Chinese and American spokespersons use many off-record strategies besides positive politeness strategy and negative politeness strategy.Last but not least,inspired by the model of “Wx=D+P+R”,this thesis is designed to make a further research into the reasons from three dimensions: cultural context,press spokesperson system and the characteristics of the North Korean nuclear issue in the diplomatic discourse.From the perspective of cultural context,there are some similarities of politeness cognition and politeness principles in different cultures,but China and America are in different cultural patterns,namely,high-context and low-context culture.From the perspective of the press spokesperson system,both Chinese and American spokesperson safeguard the national image and national interests at the same time in diplomatic occasions,but differ in the construction of government' concrete image and the degree of familiarity with the journalists.From the characteristics of the North Korean nuclear issue in the diplomatic discourse: the diplomatic discourse on the Korean nuclear issue has the commonness of sensitivity and complexity,while China and the United States have different policies and attitudes towards the North Korean nuclear issue.All of these have a great influence on the choice of politeness strategies.This thesis is different from previous studies.It is either too macroscopic or simply discusses the face-saving strategy of Chinese or American spokesperson.However,the comparative analysis is carried out in this thesis and the hot issue in third country—the North Korean issue is taken as study object,which is innovative.By investing into the comparation of politeness strategies used in Chinese and American spokesperson's remarks,this thesis has targeted the diplomatic discourse from the perspective of cross-cultural communication,and the findings could be extended for both academic research over this topic and also used in media and diplomatic service.More importantly,it also could make a new exploration for the study of diplomatic discourse in China.