Analysis Of Identity Construction Realized By Conventionalized Impoliteness Formulae

As a vital part of impolite discourse,conventionalized impoliteness formulae are pragmatically rooted in interpersonal interaction.Previous researches mostly focus on semantic analysis,leaving pragmatic perspectives underexplored.Drawing upon Brewer and Gardner's identity theory in1996and incorporating identity analysis framework,subject position theory and ritual theory along with frequency calculation,the present study attempts to model the operation of the conventionalized impoliteness formulae in identity construction and negotiation supported by our dataset of 800 Internet responses regarding the "Security Bills" produced by users of Chinese SNS Weibo and Japanese SNS Facebook.This datasetyielded a corpus of 674 Chinese and 441 Japanese conventionalized impoliteness formulaic expressions,divided in this dissertation into four themes depending on different targets:(1)targeting government and people of other nations,(2)targeting one's own government and people,(3)defending one's own government and people and(4)conventionalized impoliteness formulae with veiled targets.It is the first comprehensive and yet a tentative study on the interface of conventionalized impoliteness formulae and layers of identities at both micro and macro levels,which will hopefully contribute to the theorization of(im)politeness.This investigation has revealed that it is identities that correlate with conventionalized impoliteness formulae,which in turn contributes to the co-construction of interlocutors'positive and negative identity attributes with the latter far more significant than the former.It has been found that construction and negotiation is present on different layers of identity,these constructions often take place at the same time,and thatidentity layer is in essence a recursive concept.