Turn-prefacing Búshì(??) In Mandarin Chinese:A Conversation Analytic Perspective

In daily communication,the speakers normally adhere to progressivity,that is to say,they move from one element to a hearably next one if nothing intervens.If something violates the contiguity between the current and the hearably next action,the progressivity of a talk will be halted and its import will be examined by the participants.Among various ways of progressivity interference,the Mandarin turn-prefacing búshì,a word often used for negation akin to the English no,can serve as a powerful device.Scholars have done a large number of research about búshì from various subject areas like syntax,semantics and pragmatics.But among them,little work on búshì has been done from the perspective of Conversation Analysis(hereafter CA).In the present research,an investigation of the turn-prefacing búshì in Mandarin Chinese will be carried out from a conversational-analytic perspective.The data collected for this research consist of 300-munite mundane conversations,including both face-to-face talk and telephone call.With an intensive analysis of data,first,it is found that the turn-prefacing búshì is used to compromise the progressivity of talk and human action for the sake of achieving intersubjectivity.This can be accomplished in the context of initiating a repair,halting an ongoing action and shifting between non-seriousness and seriousness.Second,another function of the turn-prefacing búshì is that of managing epistemic incongruence in the sequence of responding to advice giving and informing(or telling)in order to establish epistemic authority.It indicates the speaker of búshì is epistemically superior to the búshìrecipient,showing that the speaker of búshì is more knowledgeable on the current topic.Whether the turn-prefacing búshì is used to launch a repair,halt an action,mark a shift between non-seriousness and seriousness,or manage epistemic incongruence,the progressivity of the ongoing talk will be interfered with.Therefore,the turn-prefacing búshì can be regarded as a powerful social device of progressivity interference.The results drawn from this study may help the communicators to establish and maintain mutual understandings of each other.Even more importantly,the present research may provide a guidance for both Chinese-language learning and teaching.What's more,this thesis makes a contribution to an innovative way to study the turn-preface búshì,that is,from the perspective of Conversation Analysis.