Impoliteness And Construction Of Discourse Power In Argument

Impoliteness is a common linguistic phenomenon in social interaction and especially in argument which contains many different forms of impoliteness. The strategical use of impoliteness always reveals the construction of discourse power in argument, therefore, this study combines the two and tries to analyze impoliteness and also the construction of discourse power with impoliteness in argument.Argument, regarded as a common interactive linguistic form in daily and social life, always contains verbal conflicts and communicative clashes that trigger impoliteness, and the use of impoliteness can change the discourse power of the participants in interaction. Imploliteness is defined as face-aggravating behaviours or verbal utterances intentionally conveyed to attack the other’s face in a particular context while power is defined as the ability of controlling or manipulating others by constraining the other’s action-environment. This study, in the context of argument, qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes the data selected from seven episodes of a famous TV program called "Oriental Live Studio" discussing issues of morality, charity, domestic violance, dotor-patient and children safty. The study aims to answer the following research questions:1)What are the realizations of impoliteness in argument under the on-record and off-record impoliteness model?2) How does impoliteness construct discourse power with different realizations in argument?3) How does the use of on-record and off-record impoliteness distribute in the construction of discourse power?Based on Bousfield’s(2008) impoliteness model and summaries of realizations of impoliteness by other researchers, it builds a framework of on-record and off-record realizations of impoliteness in argument. Based on the understanding of power and the analysis of the data, this study constructs a working framework of discourse power construction with different realizations of impoliteness and with quantitative method, it compares the frequency of using on-record and off-record impoliteness in constructing discourse power in argument.It summarizes nine realizations of impoliteness in argument, among which "challenge with response seeking question","interrupt","criticize" and "threaten" are on-record impoliteness, while "use sarcasm","challenge with rhetorical question","make inappropriate comparison","enforce topic shift" and "scorn or belittle the other" are off-record impoliteness.Based on the analysis of the data, the use of impoliteness in interaction can change the floor, change topics and change the interaction atmosphere. Speeking floor, interaction topic and interaction atmosphere are important factors in constructing power in interaction."Interrupt" can hold the floor;"challenge with response seeking question","challenge with rhetorical question" and "enforce topic shift" can control interaction topics; and "criticize","threaten","use sarcasm","make inappropriate comparison" and "scorn or belittle the other" can control the interaction atmosphere.With quantitative method, the frequency of each realization of impolitenss is worked out. It shows that in argument, both on-record and off-record impolitenss are highly occurred, with262use of on-record impoliteness and180of off-record impoliteness, but the gap between them reveals that on-record impoliteness is more frequently used in argument and thus it shows participants in argument are inclined to directly attack the other’s face to gain favourable discourse power in argument.