Impoliteness And Identity Construction On Taobao.com

Impoliteness plays a very important role in our daily communication. However, it has been ignored for a rather long time and been regarded as a poor cousin of politeness. Nowadays, the study on impoliteness has been developing rapidly. Linguists at home and abroad have carried out a number of studies on impoliteness from a variety of perspectives. As a matter of fact, various impoliteness models have been built, such as Lachenicht’s aggravation model (1980), Austin’s impoliteness model (1990), Rudanko’s nastiness model(1993), Culpeper’s impoliteness model (1996), Bousfield’s impoliteness model(2008). Among these models, Bousfield’s impoliteness model seems to be a powerful one with much explanatory power. With the deepening of impoliteness research, more and more scholars begin to pay attention to the relationship between impoliteness and identity, and there have appeared some research output in this area. Up to now, however, few studies of impoliteness and identity have approached computer-mediated discourses. Given this fact, this thesis attempts to be a cyberpragmatic analysis of the Taobao.com negative reviews by applying Bousfield’s impoliteness model. The aims of the study are to examine the felicity of Bousfield’s impoliteness model on Taobao.com as well as analyze the self-identity construction in impoliteness. Based on previous studies, the paper uses the Taobao.com negative reviews as the data and reaches the conclusions as follows.1) Impoliteness not only exits in our daily communication, but also in cyber discourse, like negative online reviews; 2) It turns out that Bousfield’s impoliteness model is applicable for the analysis of the Taobao.com negative reviews. The on-record impoliteness strategies and off-record impoliteness strategies are frequently resorted to on Taobao.com reviews.3) Identity construction in communication is a dynamic choice-making process, and users (customers for the current discussion) tend to construct their identities to their advantages, such as powerful identity, affective identity and salient identity, etc. These identities are not always stable but may change and evolve with the context and communication process. Thus, this study has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically speaking, the present thesis provides an alternative perspective on Taobao.com and enriches the horizon of impoliteness research. Practically speaking, it hopes to help people have a better understanding towards impoliteness phenomena and is beneficial to harmony in human communication.