A Research On Chinese And Vietnamese Speech Act Of "Refuting"

In linguistic activities, with the view to achieving the highest communication efficiency, speakers are supposed to choose the appropriate methods and strategies for the imperative. Playing an essential part among the most popular speech acts, "refuting" is widely used across aspects of life within communities and in a variety of languages. Based on the speech act theories by Austin and Searle as well as the authentic records of the actual utterances of Chinese and Vietnamese,the dissertationis aims to describe and discuss in details the speech acts of refuting exploited in both languages. In addition, a contrastive analysis of the linguistic means of the speech act of refuting in Chinese and Vietnamese equivalents is introduced. Also, the politeness strategies adopted in the performance of the refuting speech acts are revealed as part of the study.The main parts of the dissertationis are presented as follows.Chapter 1 provides with the theoretical background of the study, giving the prominent focus on the speech act theories, the concept of the speech act of refuting as well as its correlation with conversation theories, implicatures and politeness principles. Moreover, the overview of relevant theories, including modality and presupposition, is introduced. Furthermore, the differentiation of the speech act of refuting from other speech acts of rejecting and objecting suggests the typical features of different speech acts among groups of similar ones.Chapter 2 aims to discuss the direct means of the speech act of refuting in Chinese and Vietnamese while attempting to reveal the similarities as well as the differences between the aforementioned languages. The direct means in the languages are tacit and explicit methods,quasidominance and other coexistences. It can be seen, from the records of the collected actual language, that the two languages boast differences like the distribution of expression structures or the stronger compatibility of inner signs in Chinese. Also, it should be noted that it is impossible to find the equivalent of a number of the means of the refuting speech act in the other language. A case in point is that there exist interjections of negation in Chinese while their equivalents can be nowhere to be found in Vietnamese. Likewise, the modal lexical word of objection "ma" in Vietnamese has no equivalent in Chinese.Chapter 3 focuses on the indirect means of the speech acts of refuting in Chinese and Vietnamese.The indirect expressions might be realized through the refuting implicatures, such as the interrogative,the exclamations and the causative. Besides, the refuting is indirectly expressed by the objection to the presupposition of the previous utterances or by the implication of the proverbs, idioms or the combination of the aforementioned methods. Similarities in the indirect means of the speech acts of refuting between the two languages can be discovered while the subtle differences lie in the specific elements in the methods.The further analysis of the politeness strategies in the speech acts of refuting in the languages of Chinese and Vietnamese is demonstrated in the last chapter. The methods of applying positive,negative and hidden politeness strategies in the two languages are explored. Additionally, the study investigates the correlation between politeness strategies and social factors like face threatening level,the close relationship between the speakers or their relationship. By this, an easier way to choose the appropriate refuting strategies is recommended in the hope that the hearer would find it easier to accept and the communication efficiency would be pushed to the highest. It is also noteworthy that the exploitation of the speech acts of refuting might result in the face threating of the listener while it features an attempt to maintain a harmonious relationship and find a consensus among parties.