A Cultural Pragmatic Study Of The Speech Acts In The Chinese Folk Mediations

Mediation is recognized as one of the principal means to resolve conflicts and disputes.Due to its complex and dynamic process,the mediation study has grown into an interdisciplinary field of enquiry,incorporating different disciplines inclusive of laws,sociology,psychology,politics and international relations,and linguistics.It is an undeniable fact that language plays an indispensable part in the mediation activity.From the linguistic perspective,the mediation activity is nothing but a conversational interaction between the disputants and the third-party mediator.Currently,two notable features are observed on the studies of the linguistic aspects of mediation activity.First,researchers from Anglo-American countries have played a dominant role in this filed,who are mostly concerned with the Western forms of mediation.By comparison,there is a dearth of studies outside of the western context,the Chinese context in particular.Second,most of those studies have centered on describing the characteristics of the linguistic actions or interactive patterns in relation to the institutional or social attributes of the activity types,whereas little attention has been paid to the impact of the specific cultural context on the participants‘ language use.We argue that the mediation,especially the folk mediation,is not only a linguistic activity but also a cultural practice.In other words,in the process of mediation,the production and interpretation of the participants‘ speech acts are subject to the influences of the specific activity types and cultural contextual factors(e.g.beliefs,values,and norms,etc.).Drawing on data from ten authentic mediation sessions,the current study aims to explore the characteristic way of language use in the Chinese folk mediations within the theoretical framework of cultural pragmatics.In specific,it focuses on three prototypical speech acts,i.e.,the disputants‘ complaints,the mediators‘ evaluations and directives,which are performed by different participants at the different phases of the mediation process.We not only examine the utterances to see how these speech acts are linguistically realized,but analyze their interactive features as well.In addition,we also explain how these acts are culturally significant and endorsed by the Chinese cultural assumptions,with particular reference to an indigenous cultural concept ?/Li.The results demonstrated that: 1)the disputants frequently make complaints of the wrongdoings or misconducts of the other party to the folk mediator at the opening phase.These complaints are met with responses from the co-present complainees mainly in three ways,including straight denials,counter-complaints,and re-characterization of the event.It is noted that the primary intention of the disputants‘ complaints is not merely to express their negative feelings but a kind of moral work by putting the blame on the other.Therefore,the interaction between the complaints and responses is essentially an argument for ?/Li(what is right).2)In response to the disputants‘ complaints,the folk mediator usually makes a series of evaluations on the disputing issues.These evaluations can vary in the degree of explicitness and in the number of addressees.In order to make an impartial evaluation,the folk mediator mainly adopts two strategies.One is to use the communally shared ?/Li(what is right or valued)as the norm of evaluation.The other is to strike a balance by strategically choosing the alternative one-sided or the multi-sided negative evaluation mode.3)At the final phase,the folk mediators usually issues directives to the disputants,which are mainly realized in three syntactic forms:(i)an imperative with a modal auxiliary(bu)yao(ought(not)to do;do/don?t);(ii)an embedded clause prefaced by wo xiwang(I hope/wish);and(iii)the modified version of the first two by adding an interrogative tag,such as hao bu hao or xing bu xing(will you? or is that ok?).It is also found that,in issuing directives,the mediator is not only proposing an immediate resolution to the disputes but explicating the ?/Li(what is right and ought to be done)as well,which is evidenced both in the duality of the content and the deontic obligation in the forms.In conclusion,this study attempts to enhance our understanding of the characteristic ways of language use in the Chinese folk mediations as well as its cultural embeddedness,and to contribute to the field of mediation study in general as well.