The Pragmatic Functions Of Yixia

The Chinese word yixia (一下; literarily:one time; a short while; a bit) following a verb is widely employed in the daily verbal interaction among Chinese people. It is used in different types of utterances and various speech acts. Although many Chinese scholars focused their studies on the grammatical structure, semantic meaning and verb collocation of yixia and carried out their studies through investigation, few of them conducted their studies at the pragmatic level and through investigation. The present researcher attempts an empirical study of the pragmatic functions that yixia performs.The present study is expected to answer the following four questions:(1) In what speech acts is yixia used?(2) What are the pragmatic functions yixia performs in various types of speech acts?(3) Is there any use frequency difference among different types of speech acts?(4) What influence do different variables (Gender, Area, Occupation and Social distance) bring to the use frequency of yixia in various types of speech acts?The participants selected for the present study were500Chinese native speakers who were divided into three different groups respectively in terms of gender, area and occupation. They were asked to take part in the investigation in a method of the multiple-choice questionnaire.The present study adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative method based on interviews and questionnaires. The first Research question and the second research question belong to the scope of qualitative study while the third research question and the fourth research question belong to the scope of quantitative study. The results showed that:(1) Yixia could be used in speech acts of requestive, requirement, promise, offer, assertive and suggestive.(2) the pragmatic functions of yixia are thoroughly and qualitatively discussed with the theoretical assistance of Bach and Harnish’s Speech acts theory (SAT) and Gu’s Politeness principle. Generally speaking, the pragmatic functions of yixia are to mitigate the tone, to lower the pressure and the sense of indebtedness, and to maintain the mutual face of both the speaker and the hearer. To be exact, in speech acts like requestives, yixia is adopted as mitigation. It is used to minimize the cost of the hearer, which means, to downgrade the imposition of a request and lower the pressure brought about by illocutionary force of a request to achieve perlocutionary act. Thus to maintain the speaker’s face and respects the hearer’s face at the same time with the purpose of showing the politeness of the speaker. While in requirements, sometimes the speaker would not care about the hearer’s face because of his authority over the hearer. In speech acts such as commissives, yixia is employed to minimize cost to other and maximize benefit to other at the motivational level and to maximize benefit received and minimize cost to self at the conversational level. It is in line with Gu’s Maxim of Virtue, Speech and Action. In speech acts like constatives, yixia is applied with the aim of showing the speaker’s politeness, reducing the imposition of an action, and lowering the sense of indebtedness and the pressure imposed on the hearer.(3) the order of the use frequency ofyixia in different types of speech acts is that:requestive> offer> requirement> suggestive> assertive> promise;(4) gender, area and occupation of the participants does not influence the use frequency of yixia; social distance does have effect on the use frequency of yixia:more yixia are used in situations where the speaker and the hearer are distant, while less yixia are used in situations where the speaker and the hearer are close. At last, probable reasons were discussed with the assistance of Politeness principle (PP) and from the influence of Chinese culture at the end of the study.The present study is just an attempt to study yixia from the perspective of pragmatics. Therefore, some shortages and omissions may exist. Further discussions are needed and encouraged to enrich the study scope of yixia and other Chinese expressions.