An Investigation Of Chinese Disclaimers In Reality Show "Feinimoshu"

Disclaimer is one type of mitigators (Fraser, 1980), researches about mitigating language began in the 1970s, and then researches from different perspectives were carried out, including some systematic studies and studies of its specific types. On the basis of Tayebi and Parvaresh’s (2014) study, the working definition of disclaimers here are expressions which the speaker when faced with a potentially problematic action, employs to avoid the hearer’s potential re-typification of the speaker’s identity with an unwanted one. Three basic recognition criteria were obtained from this definition by which one can distinguish disclaimers from other formally similar expressions:(1) The appearance of a potentially problematic action; (2) The identity re-typification which needs to be dismissed; (3) the expression of specific disclaimer.With the Adaptation Theory as theoretical framework and disclaimers in television program "Feinimoshu" as corpus, this paper tries to analyze the forms, positions and functions of Chinese disclaimers by the combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative approach. The corpus shows that Chinese disclaimers can be divided into four categories and 12 subcategories from the view of the internal semantic relations, and each category with different mitigating strength. It was found that disclaimer would not only appear before or after the potentially problematic action, but also appear both before and after it at the same time. Host, bosses and guest teacher are the main users of disclaimers in the TV show, and most of related speech acts are about stating subjective ideas, evaluating interviewee’s performance, offering advice, inquiring sensitive information, querying and criticizing. In the light of the linguistic adaptation theory, the author thinks that their language choices are the results of adaptation not only to social factors, namely to the power, but also to psychological factor, which means the adaptation to the hearer’s negative emotion. On the basis of systemic functional linguistics, this paper analyzed the functions of disclaimers, it thinks that disclaimers play ideational roles of metapragmatic discourse to help hearers get target information; interpersonal roles of maintaining speaker’s identity and pacifying hearer’s emotion; textual roles of promoting the smooth transfer or carrying on in conversation.Several important enlightments in the following aspects are hoped to be obtained from the paper. From the perspective of disclaimer itself, it was found that in existing literature; there are few studies focusing on Chinese disclaimers. Since Chinese is a language used by a large proportion of people in the world, studies aiming at Chinese disclaimers will surely promote the overall understanding of this linguistic phenomenon. From the perspective of methodology, quantitative analysis in this paper will provide some guidance for following studies. From the perspective of practice, people are increasingly pursuing harmonious communication in current society, so studies on disclaimers will be of great significance since it is a kind of mitigating language. The better understanding and use of disclaimer will facilitate people’s communication, and participants in television programs will also benefit from this paper since the corpus was collected from a reality show.