A Multimodal Pragmatic Study Of Mock Impoliteness Under The Rapport Management Framework

Mock impoliteness,as a common phenomenon in verbal interaction,arouses some attention in pragmatic studies.The study of mock impoliteness traces back to Leech(1983),who first proposed the concept of mock impoliteness.So far,the related theoretical research and empirical research have made some progress.Haugh and Bousfield(2012)redefined mock impoliteness as a non-impolite evaluation of potentially impolite or offensive speech or act.The notion of “non-impolite” settled the long controversy over the definition and liberated mock impoliteness from the theoretic dilemma of confining mock impoliteness as polite or impolite.Moreover it guides the scholars to explore mock impoliteness from a broader view in Pragmatics.Many related empirical researches focus on the verbal realizing methods and the realizing process of mock impoliteness failing to give the nonverbal signals,or named as multimodal markers,deserved attention.A few scholars(e.g.,Mc Kinnon & Prieto 2014)found that,covered by an offensive shell,the mixed message(Chen 2019)carried by mock impoliteness,can be construed successfully by the addressee requiring the participation of the non-verbal signal system.But related studies fail to provide a detailed analysis on the types of multimodal markers and how they cooperate to with language to construct mock impoliteness.Spencer-Oatey(2005)pointed out that people’s interactional goal contains two parts: the relational goal and the transactional goal,which are closely interconnected.The cooperation between nonverbal signals and verbal language aims not just at fully expressing the speaker’s intention but also the realizing process of interpersonal goal.Thus,this study carries on Haugh and Bousfield’s(2012)view on mock impoliteness,setting ground on the rapport management framework of Spencer-Oatey(2000,2008)and the multimodal pragmatic analysis framework of Chen and Qian(2011),with reference to relative theories concerning nonverbal signal in Ekman(2004)etc.,to discuss the multimodal markers in the construction of mock impoliteness and the relationships between the nonverbal signals and verbal information to construct mock impoliteness in the meantime to disclose the interpersonal pragmatic motivation.This study selects three TV shows(Mad Men,Two Broke Girls and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon)as the data source,respectively representing three context categories: the interaction in workplace,the interaction between intimate friends and the interaction in entertainment environment.Three modalities and discourses are extracted from the data: facial expression,body movement and prosody,so to answer the following question:(1)What multimodal markers do the speakers use for the construction of mock impoliteness?(2)What is the relationship between the multimodal marker and the utterance?(3)What interpersonal pragmatic motivation do the speakers hold in establishing the multimodal pragmatic relationship?This study uses ELAN software for the extraction of two modalities(facial expression and body movement).Furthermore,this study utilizes the sound analysis software—Praat,for the sound recording along with the text extraction of the discourse and the analysis of prosodic modality.Then the statistical analysis is carried by Microsoft Excel.The main findings are illustrated below:First of all,the multimodal markers utilized in three context categories hold the feature of diversity.Various types of multimodal markers are used in each context category.The study provides a classification over all the multimodal markers utilized in the construction of mock impoliteness.When it concerns facial expressions,18 types of facial expressions are discerned in this study,including smile,frown,raising eyebrow,wide open eyes and so on.They are divided into three subtypes(ranked by the utilization frequency from the highest to the lowest): mono expression(69 cases),combined expression(43 cases)and developing expression(28 cases).When it comes to body movements,they are divided to head movements,hand movements and posture.5 types of head movements are discerned,including tilting head,shaking head and so on.Hand movements and postures,based on Ekman(2004),are divided into 3 types:illustrator,emotional expression and emblem,amongst which the utilization frequency of illustrators is the highest.In prosody,this study discusses the typical intonation pattern of flat intonation and further identified a pattern of “flat intonation with high pitch stress”.Moreover,this study discusses three intonation variations that could be used to realize lexical or pharsal stress,as high pitch,downstep and parallelism.Secondly,this study discusses the relationship between each multimodal marker and utterance in the construction of mock impoliteness.The multimodal discursive analysis discloses three types of relationships: the complementary relationship,the non-complimentary relationship and the complicated relationship.In the constriction of mock impoliteness,the complementary relationship is formed when the information carried by the multimodal marker is in line with the verbal information;the non-complimentary relationship is formed when the information of the multimodal marker is not in line with the verbal information,the complicated relationship is formed when the whole information carried by multimodal marker contains two parts: one part is in line with the verbal information,the other is not in line with it.Lastly,three context categories present similarities and discrepancies.Three context categories hold same typical multimodal markers.For example,the most frequently used facial expression in each context category is smile.Discrepancy emerges in the utilization tendency of non-verbal signals which could convey negative information themselves or complement potentially offensive utterance.The ratio of the utilization of total “deadpan expressions” in workplace,intimate friends and entertaining environment is respectively 15.4%,46.2% and 26.5%.The ratio of intimate friends context is remarkably higher than the other two.But the ratio of blank face(one type of deadpan expression)falls in the rank of entertainment environment,intimate friends and workplace.In the meantime,through discursive analysis,this study finds that the speakers could conduct potentially offensive speech or act to the face or sociality rights to construct mock impoliteness and discrepancies show in the rapport orientations hold by the speakers of three context categories.In the construction of mock impoliteness,speakers in workplace could hold rapport-enhancement or rapport-maintenance orientation;speakers in intimate friends context could hold rapport-enhancement or rapport neglect orientation;speakers in entertainment environment could hold rapport-enhancement,rapport-maintenance or rapport neglect orientation.Combining all that,the rapport management in the construction of mock impoliteness is embodied from two perspectives: the built interpersonal relationship and the management of rapport development orientation.The built interpersonal relationship is the base of communication and the rapport orientation is the prime mover for the change of interpersonal relationship,both of which work together as the interpersonal pragmatic motivation providing guidance in establishing the multimodal pragmatic relationship.Therefore,the interpersonal goal and transactional goal of the utterance could be realized.