Thesis-2011-He.pdf (1.51 MB)
Politeness in contemporary Chinese: a postmodernist analysis of generational variation in the use of compliments and compliment responses
thesis
posted on 2012-03-13, 11:25 authored by Yun HeThere is some evidence from scholarship that politeness norms in China are
diversified. I maintain that a study aiming to provide systematic evidence of this
would require an approach to politeness phenomena that is able to address such
diversity. Drawing upon the insights of recent scholarship on the distinction between
the modernist and postmodernist approaches to politeness, I survey relevant
literature. I show that many current works on politeness argue that the modernist
approach (Lakoff 1973/1975, Brown and Levinson 1987[1978], Leech 1983)
generally tends to assume that society is relatively homogeneous with regard to
politeness norms. By contrast, I demonstrate that the postmodernist approach to
politeness (e.g. Eelen 2001, Mills 2003, Watts 2003) foregrounds the heterogeneity
of society and the rich variability of politeness norms within a given culture. I argue
that, by using a postmodernist approach to politeness, it is possible to show evidence
of differences between groups of the Chinese in their politeness behaviour and the
informing norms of politeness.
I then explore this issue in depth by focusing on compliments and compliment
responses (CRs). I show that studies on these speech acts in Chinese have to date
tended to adopt a modernist approach to politeness and often assume a compliment
and a CR to be easily identifiable. Moreover, I show that they do not address the
heterogeneity of Chinese society and generally assume interactants to be
homogeneous in terms of politeness norms that inform compliment and CR
behaviours. On this basis, I raise the questions as to whether, by adopting a
postmodernist rather than modernist approach, there is empirical evidence that
politeness norms informing compliments and CRs vary among the Chinese, and
whether these norms correlate with generation.
v
To this end, by audio-recording both spontaneous naturally occurring conversations
and follow-up interviews, I construct a corpus of compliments and CRs generated by
two generations of the Chinese brought up before and after the launch of China’s
reform. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of these data show that there is
variation in compliment and CR behaviours in Chinese and the informing politeness
norms. Furthermore, the result shows that this variation is correlated with generation.
I then show how, by using a research methodology which emphasizes the
interactants’ perceptions obtained through follow-up interviews, my study brings to
light problems with previous studies on compliments and CRs which hitherto are not
addressed. By showing evidence that compliments and CRs are not as easy to
identify as many previous researchers have indicated. I argue that my emic approach
to data analysis provides a useful perspective on the complexity of intention in
studies on speech acts and perhaps beyond. My study, therefore, makes an
interesting contribution to the debate over this notion central to politeness research.
Moreover, I argue my methodology which is able to categorize and analyze data
according to participants’ self-reported perceptions allows me to draw out
differences in the two generations’ compliment and CR behaviours and the
informing politeness norms.
History
School
- The Arts, English and Drama
Department
- English and Drama
Publisher
© Yun HEPublication date
2012Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.EThOS Persistent ID
uk.bl.ethos.634770Language
- en