A Pragmatic Study Of Covert Offence In Conveying Disagreement In An Online Forum

Conveying disagreement is a face-threatening speech act by its nature.Restricted by the interlocutors' face,social status,seniority in the clan,the nature of the topic,etc.in face-to-face communication,interlocutors usually tend to mitigate the face-threat with certain communicative strategies to maintain a harmonious relationship when conveying disagreement.Conveying disagreement in online forums,however,presents a very different picture.Due to the non-proximity and anonymity of online forum communication,face-saving does not remain the top priority for interlocutors in conveying disagreement.Instead of mitigating,they might damage the other's face by aggravating the degree of offence in their disagreement on purpose.A good few studies have investigated the linguistic characteristics and communicative intentions of disagreement in face-to-face communication.Noteworthy is that despite the denial of face-saving as the top priority in online forum communication,it remains one of the interlocutors' concerns.Thereby,covert offence might arise out of offensive disagreement.This thesis looks into covert offence in conveying disagreement in the online forum and aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What offence strategies are employed to cause covert offence in the online forum?(2)What are the correlative factors for making covert offence in the online context forum?(3)What are the main result of making covert offence in the online forum?This research is conducted with a mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative content analysis.Based on the chosen data extracted from Tianya Forum,the definition of covert offence is established,and its defining properties are identified,namely,intentional covertly offensive speech act on the part of the addresser and perceived covert offence substantiated by covertly offensive response on the part of the addressee.After a careful analysis of the collected data,four superstrategies,namely,positive impoliteness(30.2%),negative impoliteness(25.9%),sarcasm(12.3%),and mock politeness(30%),are achieved by ten different types of output strategies.Among them,criticism,disassociating from the other,being unsympathetic,and using inappropriate identity markers are used to achieve the strategic end of positive impoliteness.Challenge,being contemptuous,and associating the other with a negative aspect are employed to achieve the strategic end of negative impoliteness.Insincerely appreciating and self-depreciating are employed to achieve the strategic end of mock impoliteness.Moreover,sarcasm is usually realized in our data by being intentionally mistaken.These ten output strategies vary in their frequency rate of use,with insincerely appreciating recording the highest frequency rate(17.7%),followed by being unsympathetic(15.1%),and insincerely self-depreciating(14%).Besides,the correlative factors for making covert offence is investigated,and it is found that the shared background knowledge,multi-directional context,communicative roles,context-activated temporary meaning,contextual connivance,and prejudice and discrimination as stereotypes all have roles to play for causing and taking offence.In addition,by looking into the response from the offendee,three types of results of making covert offence in the online forum are caused,namely,stand-off,compromise,and escalation.Understandably,the situation of stand-off is always resulted from the withdrawal of one party without any agreement reached.Due to the equal status of interlocutors in online forums and the inclusiveness of online communication,compromise occurs in rare cases,while the other two are captured frequently.This study,by probing into the offence strategies,the correlative factors for and the results of making covert offence,presents a comprehensive account of covert offence in the online forum,and provides some enlightenment for further studies on CMC.