A Research On Mock Politeness

With the deepening of research on pragmatics,studies of politeness and impoliteness have aroused more and more attention in the linguistic circle.However,in daily communication,there is a special yet commonly seen(im)politeness language phenomenon which is ostensibly polite in form but actually impolite in meaning.This is referred to as mock politeness by some scholars.However,studies of mock politeness have been severely ignored.Most scholars regarded it as a type of impoliteness,while few of them have listed mock politeness separately for in-depth discussion,and the definition of mock politeness has not yet been unified.The present study firstly reviews previous studies on mock politeness abroad and at home and redefines mock politeness as a superficially polite speech act which challenges or attacks the communication participant,s face or sociality rights in a particular context.This definition holds that mock politeness incorporates both“polite,and“impolite”elements,namely,superficial politeness and impolite evaluation.Then on the basis of Geoffrey Leech's(1983)Politeness Principle and Helen Spencer-Oatey,s(2000)Rapport Management Theory,a model of mock politeness is put forward.Based on the definition,13 typical conversations possessing most representative characters of mock politeness are selected as research samples from the 76-episode costume drama The Legend of Zhen Huan.With the guideline of mock politeness model,the special application of mock polite strategy by the characters is qualitatively analyzed.Through the discussion,it proves that this model has effective explanatory power concerning the characters' option and the use of mock politeness and thus can also be adopted to the pragmatic analysis of other texts.At the same time,this study of mock politeness will help people understand the communicative value of mock politeness in avoiding direct conflicts and maintaining superficially harmonious interpersonal relationships,which will contribute to the improvement of people's communicative skills and competence.Therefore,this study further enriches the research on mock politeness and has certain contributions for both theoretical construction and practical application of mock politeness.