A Pragmatic Study On Impoliteness Of Sina Weibo Reviews

The rapid development of the Internet has exerted a significant impact on the way of information dissemination.Micro-blog enables netizens to freely express and exchange their views and reviews on social phenomena.However,these reviews are mixed with verbal and non-verbal impoliteness,causing some misunderstandings and problems.Therefore,it is of great necessity to study the phenomenon of Micro-blog impoliteness.This thesis attempts to combine the impoliteness theory and the inter-semiotic complementarity theory to conduct a comprehensive discussion about the impoliteness on hot topic reviews of Sina Weibo.In order to ensure the authenticity and objectivity of the data,this study adopts the impoliteness reviews on the top ten hot topics on Sina Weibo from January 1^st,2018 to December 31^st,2018 as the research corpora.It focuses on the following issues:1)What are the verbal impoliteness strategies used in Sina Weibo reviews?2)What are the non-verbal impoliteness strategies used in Sina Weibo reviews?3)Howdoverbaltextsandnon-verbalsignsrealizeinter-semiotic complementarity relations in non-verbal impoliteness strategies?4)What pragmatic functions are evidenced in Sina Weibo impoliteness reviews?After analysis,the findings are as follows:Firstly,there are 10 kinds of verbal impoliteness strategies in Sina Weibo hot topic reviews:use taboo words;use inappropriate identity markers;explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect;disassociate from the other;threaten;challenge;sarcasm;condescend,scorn or ridicule;criticize;enforce role substitution.Apart from these ten strategies,there are also other two strategies found in the collected corpus:reiterate and exaggerate.Secondly,nonverbal impoliteness is a strategy of combining verbal text with emoticons and punctuation,mainly including three strategies:seek disagreement,mock and emphasize.Thirdly,the ideational and interpersonal functions of complementarity are realized in Sina Weibo’s impolite reviews.Of ideational functions,the sense relations of synonymy and collocation occur more frequently,which indicates that non-verbal symbols and verbal texts support the same comment by complementing each other.Interpersonal functions are all reflected in impolite reviews.The mood of statement and question appeared in the corpus at a higher frequency,and the frequency of commands and proposals appears less frequently.The data suggests that reviews tend to achieve the interpersonal functions by using statements and questions.But of four moods,the commands and offers express more stronger attitudes than other three moods.Beyond that,in the impolite reviews,attitudes between the symbols and the text are always consistent.Most of the commentators use symbols to supplement and strengthen speaker’attitude.Finally,the author summarizes three pragmatic functions based on the classification of impoliteness strategies:emotional catharsis,entertainment functions,and community construction.This study provides a new perspective for the study of impoliteness in the context of online communication.Understanding the complementary relationship between nonverbal symbols and verbal text is conducive to understanding reviewer’s implicit communicative intentions and helping readers to correctly understand and employ Micro-blog reviews.