| Lying in the multidisciplinary thoroughfare intersection,impoliteness,as the negative part of politeness issues,draws attention of scholars from various fields and leads to a new research trend.Impoliteness has been the research focus in the field of pragmatics,sociology,communication,psychology and rhetoric(Sun & Hou,2017).Foreign research on impoliteness lay more emphasis on the systematic research concerning impoliteness theories,for instance,to analyze its discourse or context from definition perspective,classification perspective or from a macro perspective,while domestic research gradually attach importance to impoliteness and start from more specific aspects,such as conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law,in doctor-patient discourse,TV variety shows and so on.When it comes to the impoliteness in talk show,few types of research have been conducted to connect its features of semi-institutional discourse with impoliteness.As these features can be of great influence concerning the implement of impoliteness strategies,which merits necessary noting.What’s more,domestic research on impolite phenomena mainly focus on the use of impolite utterances in the interactional situation and its negative effect.Rarely have scholars paid attention to its positive pragmatic functions.The study takes Culpeper’s(2011)impoliteness strategies as well as functions of impoliteness event as the theoretical framework,combining with Brown & Levinson’s(1987)Face Theory.The study collects 164 cases of semi-institutional impoliteness discourses from the talk show Jin Xing Show in 2016,52 episodes in total,taking its semi-institutional features into consideration while analyzing the use of impoliteness strategies and its pragmatic functions.The study focuses on the following three questions:(1)What are the features of semi-institutional discourse and how are they exemplified in impolite utterances in Jin Xing Show?(2)What are the impoliteness strategies deployed in semi-institutional discourse Jin Xing Show?(3)What pragmatic functions do impolite utterances achieve in semi-institutional discourse Jin Xing Show?The research findings are as follows:(1)The features of semi-institutional discourse can be summarized as follows: spontaneous role-switching,flexible turn-taking,topics related to individual participants,message & audience-oriented as well as information & entertainmentoriented.These features are well exemplified in the impolite utterances in semiinstitutional discourse Jin Xing Show,all of which are of certain importance for the realization of impoliteness strategies.(2)In semi-institutional discourse Jin Xing Show,the host Jin Xing tends to use bald on record impoliteness to ask questions while the guests have no choices but to resort to withhold politeness to avoid face attack.Due to the highly authoritative role of the show host and the asymmetrical distribution of power between the host and the guests,the host takes charge of every topic and utilizes her own talking style,violating the maxims of Politeness Principle and attacking the guest’s face.And cases of withhold politeness are all initiated by the guests to save their face by means of keeping silent or refusing to further answer the questions.What needs noticing is that mock impoliteness,excluded in the framework of Culpeper et al.(2003),is added to supplement the data analysis,since it is interpreted as non-serious in light of program effect.(3)Pragmatic functions of impoliteness in semi-institutional discourse include affective function,coercive function,entertaining function,institutional function and educational function.The study has both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically speaking,research on semi-institutional discourse has provided valuable reference for a deeper study of both semi-institutional discourse and impoliteness theory.Not only does the study enrich the studies on semi-institutional discourse,but also strengthen the explanatory power of impoliteness theory,further verifying the operability of the combination of features of semi-institutional discourse with impolite utterances in talk show.Practically speaking,the research conclusions are helpful in virtue of that the tactful use of impoliteness strategies in different situations,which,to a certain extent,will be on the one hand beneficial to the interpersonal relationship by the way of bringing out an entertaining atmosphere;and on the other hand,the success of Jin Xing Show exerts a great effect on other talk shows.The flexible use of impoliteness strategies,unique hosting style,special program settings as well as varied forms of expression provides an effective reference for other talk shows. |
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