A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And American Political Speech Act Of Advising From The Perspective Of Politeness

As a directive speech act which benefits the hearer,advice plays a leading role in maintaining and developing social relations.Previous studies of the speech act of advising have overwhelmingly focused on the categorizations,strategies and linguistic features of advice in daily language use,while the linguistic practices of speech act of advising in the realm of institutional discourses and the underlying causes embedded in them are relatively yet understudied.The present research deploys a quantitative contrast of the illocutionary force indicating devices(IFIDs)and strategies of Chinese and American political speech acts of advising based on the self-compiled corpora by collecting the authentic data of political discourses produced by the Foreign Ministry spokespersons of the two countries in formal political occasions.Moreover,the research expounds the pragmatic causes behind the similarities and differences of Chinese and American political speech acts of advising from both the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic facets of politeness(Leech,2014)by applying a qualitative analysis.The research reveals the following findings: 1)In term of IFIDs,Chinese political speech act of advising is realized mainly through the “indirect advice” such as “hints”,“impersonal expressions” and “indirect performative verbs”.Whilst American political speech act of advising mainly employs “conventionalized advice”,including “specific formulea”,“possibility/probability” and “conditional expressions”.2)In the respect of advice strategies,both Chinese and American political speech acts of advising are inclined to emphasize the “hearer dominance” with “redressive action”.Whereas,in the employment of “implicit dominance”,“conventionalized indirect”,and “without redress action”,there are significant differences between Chinese and American political speech acts of advising.3)The research further probes into the underlying causes embedded in the similarities and differences of Chinese and American political speech acts of advising from the pragmalinguistic facet,namely honorific forms,modal verbs,“varied” self,and sociopragmatic facet,including factors such as vertical distance,horizontal distance and weightiness of the transaction.It is shown that in the facet of pragmalinguistic politeness,both Chinese and American political speech acts of advising are delivered in the features of recurrent structural moves,moderation of modality and collective self-references to make the advice impoliteness-mitigatory and acceptable to both the advisee and the public.In the facet of sociopragmatic politeness,the different perceptions of vertical and horizontal distances and the different national images and status between the two countries are the underlying causes of the discrepancies in the mutualization of advice agents,diversification of advice beneficiaries,and differentiation of advice contents.The present research has not only enriched the application value on politeness studies in political genre and opened a new vision for studies on political advice,but also has important practical significance in promoting the dissemination and understanding of political discourse.