A Study On The Speech Act Of Disapproval Performed By Interlocutors With Unequal Power From The Perspective Of Impoliteness

The speech act of disapproval has been studied broadly and mainly carried out in pedagogical discourse,computer-mediated discourse,meeting talk,Chinese oral discourse,etc.Most of them are explored on the basis of politeness theory.However,few researches study the speech act of disapproval from the perspective of impoliteness.Moreover,the speech act of disapproval is proposed by D'Amico Reisner(1983)in her research,which mainly studies the disapproval between interlocutors with similar social status or strangers but does not involve the disapproval performed by interlocutors with unequal status.Therefore,this thesis explores the speech act of disapproval performed impolitely by interlocutors with unequal power through adopting Culpeper's Impoliteness theory(1996,2005).In the study,all the research data are conversations between interlocutors with unequal power in Designated Survivor?,an American TV drama.Through application of quantitative and qualitative approaches,the present study attempts to answer the following questions?1.How is the speech act of disapproval performed impolitely ?2.What impoliteness strategies are employed in performing the speech act of disapproval ?3.How does power variable affect the way of performing disapproval and the way of using impoliteness strategies?The study presents the following major findings.Firstly,five forms manifest how the speech act of disapproval performed impolitely,namely “Opposing”,“Making Negative Judgments”,“Reprimanding”,“Rhetorical Questions” and “Pointing out Disadvantages”.The “Opposing” is most frequently used by interlocutors to express their opposite opinions,while “Pointing out Disadvantages” is the least used form.Secondly,four strategies are identified,when the speech act of disapproval is performed,including “Bold on Record Impoliteness(BORD)”,“Positive Impoliteness(PI)”,“Negative Impoliteness(NI)” and “Off Record Impoliteness(OFI)”.The strategy of “Withhold Politeness(WP)” is not identified in the present research.“Positive Impoliteness” is the most frequently used strategy.Furthermore,the study finds that when disapproval is performed impolitely, seven output strategies of “Positive Impoliteness” are manifested,including “Exclude the other from an activity”,“Be disinterested,unconcerned,unsympathetic”,“Use obscure or secretive language”,“Use taboo words”,“Call the other names”,“Seek disagreement” and “Challenge”.Besides,four output strategies of “Negative Impoliteness” are identified,including “Frighten”,“Condescend,scorn or ridicule”,“Invade the other's space” and “Hinder/Block”.Thirdly,differences are reflected by five forms of disapproval performed by interlocutors with unequal status.The interlocutors with low status prefer adopting “Making Negative Judgments” and “Pointing out Disadvantages”.Interlocutors with high status are more inclined to employ “Rhetorical Questions'.Besides,differences are also manifested by employment of output strategies of PI and NI.Five identified output strategies of PI show interlocutors with low status tend to use “Be disinterested,unconcerned,unsympathetic”,“Use obscure or secretive language”,“Challenge”,“Call the other names”,while interlocutors with high status use none of them.On the contrary,interlocutors with high status use the output strategy of “Use taboo words”,but their counterparts do not use it.Moreover,differences are reflected by two identified output strategies of NI,including “Invade the other's space” and “Hinder”.“Invade the other's space” is used by interlocutors with low status,but those with high status never adopt it;the output strategy of “Hinder” is also frequently employed by interlocutors with low status.