A Study Of Pragmatic Identity In Implicit Conflict Talk From Chinese Anti-corruption Novels

Pragmatic identity(PI for short)is the identity constructed for the speaker,hearer or third party in interaction.Previous research on PI mainly focuses on its application to some contexts.Implicit conflict talk(ICT for short)is a kind of conversation where at least one of the interlocutors performs FTA implicitly.Relevant research mainly revolves around its developmental model,motivation,language features,etc.with little attention to PI strategies.On the other hand,research on PI has never touched upon ICT.Therefore,the present thesis probes into PI strategies in ICT,and tries to give explanations about their motivation.Among the 85 examples of implicit conflict talk collected from eight Chinese anti-corruption novels authored by Zhou Meisen,129 utterances pose threats to the hearer's face implicitly,and pragmatic identity are constructed 171 times in total.The above data serves as the corpus for this thesis.First,pragmatic identity strategies are divided into PI constructed for one party,for two parties and for three parties according to how many parties' identity is constructed.Next,according to Chen's(2018:25)trichotomy of PI,PI strategies are further classified into sub-strategies.PI construction for one party is classified into PI construction for the speaker,hearer,and third party.PI construction for two parties consists of PI construction for the hearer and speaker,for the hearer and the third party,for the speaker and the third party.Only a few utterances construct PI for three parties and thus they not mentioned here.Besides,according to our data and feature of ICT,those sub-strategies can be grouped into advantageous identity,disadvantageous identity,positive identity,negative identity,etc.On the basis of data statistics,this thesis makes the following findings:1)PI is constructed most for one party,less for two parties,and the least for three parties.2)In PI construction for one party,PI is constructed most for the hearer,less for the speaker,andthe least for the third party.3)In PI construction for two parties,PI is constructed most for the hearer and speaker,less for the hearer and the third party,the least for the speaker and the third party.In addition,our data also show something in common: PI construction for one party is often employed by interlocutors as illocutionary resource while PI construction for two parties or three parties often serves as interpersonal resource.This is related to what Chen(2018)proposes: speaker often adopts PI strategies to meet his/her communicative needs.Besides,when speaker aims at attacking the hearer implicitly,PI construction for the hearer is the most direct while PI construction for the speaker is less direct.Besides,the relationship between the third party and the speaker/hearer is also utilized as resource to attack the hearer implicitly.This study discusses different types of PI strategy in ICT by using first-hand data.It expands research on ICT and broadens the application of PI.It is of practical significance in the wave of vigorous anti-corruption campaign in our country.