A Study Of Disagreement Strategies By Chinese Officials In Conference Settings

The thesis investigates disagreement strategies of Chinese officials in conference settings,using a combination of statistical analyses and discursive analyses.The data are from a trending TV series-In the Name of People.Over 300 turns expressing disagreements are found in the data.The study explores and answers two general questions:The first question is what strategies Chinese officials adopt to present verbal disagreements in conference settings.The study shows that Chinese officials as a group prefer to imply their disagreement rather than make it plain and apparent.It is also noticed that they like to mitigate their disagreements with various prefacing strategies,such as address terms and justification.The second question is how power relations affect Chinese officials’ disagreement strategies.The results of the research show that lower rank officials’ disagreements are more implicit than higher rank officials.Besides,lower rank officials opt for prefacing strategies more often than higher rank officials.However,higher rank officials favor explicit disagreements and additional explanation after showing disagreements.The study confirms previous findings that Chinese prefer indirectness when they disagree.However,the study also finds out several popular strategies in the construction of a disagreement,e.g.,address terms,justification,and rhetorical questions.Power relations are mainly investigated in the context of academic settings in previous studies,especially between teachers and students.However,this study finds that power relations also affect Chinese officials’ choice of disagreement strategies in conferences.