| Conversational principles are pragmatic principles which guide people how to communicate by using language with others. Grice proposes Cooperative Principle,which is regarded as the first conversational principle in pragmatics. Once published,it not only draws wide attention of domestic and foreign linguists, but also establishes a solid foundation for later development of conversational principles. Leech argues that CP mainly explains how people intentionally violate the maxims of quantity,quality, relation and manner to generate conversational implicature. However, CP does not provide the explanation of why people often flout maxims to express implicitly. In order to rescue Grice’s CP from embarrassment, Leech puts forward Politeness Principle, holding that people speak indirectly out of politeness. Later,Brown and Levinson come up with Face Saving Theory based on Leech’s PP,believing that every social member has the want of saving his or her self-image in front of others, which is also the want of face-saving. They divide face into two types:negative face and positive face. They point out that almost all the speech acts are face-threatening. Therefore, people should adopt certain face-saving strategies to save their own faces or others’ during communication. These conversational principles are all put forward under the background of western culture, but there are notable differences between Chinese culture and that of western countries. Therefore, when applied to explain Chinese conversation, these conversational principles are inevitably inappropriate in some aspects. Many Chinese scholars have found this and try to solve this problem. Gu Yueguo comes up with Chinese Politeness Principle by combining Leech’s PP with the unique features of Chinese culture and politeness. Based on Leech’s PP, Suo Zhenyu develops Tact Principle, which explains Chinese conversation more adequately than PP. The above two Chinese conversational principles contribute a lot to a better explanation of Chinese conversation’s characteristics. However, the author of this thesis observes that there is a typical feature in Chinese conversation by collecting and analyzing Chinese data. That is relation-saving. In conversation, Chinese people tend to save relation not only in positive situations but also in negative situations where there are disagreements or contradictions. The guiding rule used in those situations is called Relation Saving Principle in Chinese conversation in this thesis.The research aims of this thesis are to conclude the insufficiencies of the westernconversational principles in explaining Chinese conversation and to develop Relation Saving Principle in Chinese conversation.Through combining reviewing the conversational principles of previous scholars with collecting and analyzing Chinese conversation, this research aims to answer the following three questions:(1) What are the insufficiencies of previous western conversational principles in interpreting Chinese conversation?(2) What is Relation Saving Principle in Chinese conversation and why is it a typical conversational principle in Chinese conversation?(3) What kind of strategies will Chinese people use to save interpersonal relation in Chinese conversation?Firstly, this thesis briefly introduces the background, significance and methodology of the study and the structure of this thesis. Secondly, it reviews the previous studies on interpersonal relation and pragmatic principles. Thirdly, it covers the pragmatic theories used in this thesis: CP, PP and FST. Then it analyzes the collected Chinese conversations in a qualitative method and categorizes them. Based on this, this thesis develops Relation Saving Principle in Chinese conversation and illustrates its strategies with Chinese conversational examples. After that, this thesis compares Relation Saving Theory with Gu Yueguo’s Chinese Politeness Principle and Suo Zhenyu’s Tact principle. At last, this thesis displays the conclusion which summarizes the major findings, implications, limitations of this research.This thesis summarizes the insufficiencies of CP, PP and FST in interpreting Chinese conversation by adopting traditional documentary method and develops Relation Saving Principle in Chinese conversation through qualitatively analyzing Chinese data. Relation-saving strategies are also displayed in this thesis, which are categorized into two types: positive relation-saving strategies and negative relation-saving strategies. Positive relation-saving strategies include using proper appellation, showing caring, giving comfort and being approving. Negative relation-saving strategies cover being vague, being humorous, being modest, giving compliments, exchanging topics, giving explanations, confessing faults and giving apologies, being compromised, using rhetorical questions, and being silent. This thesis can make the readers have a better understanding of conversational principles by reviewing previous scholars’ studies and enrich Chinese conversational principles through developing Relation Saving Principle in Chinese conversation. It provides anew way to understand Chinese conversation. |
