Final_conventionalisation of mock politeness in Chinese and British forums.pdf (262.46 kB)
The conventionalisation of mock politeness in Chinese and British online forums
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 15:42 authored by Jiayi Wang, Charlotte TaylorCharlotte TaylorWhile much cross-cultural and cross-linguistic analysis centres on difference because it is so often what is salient in miscommunication, we argue that we need to be more aware of similarity. Drawing on corpus-assisted discourse studies, we aim to uncover similarities in the pragmatic processes across two languages/cultures, more specifically, the shared developments in the conventionalisation of apparently polite forms for impolite functions used in British and Chinese forum communities within the last decade or so. The case studies which have been selected for analysis are 'hehe' in Chinese and 'HTH' [hope that helps] in British English. In both cases, these items had previously been identified as potentially mock polite through their presence in meta-discussions of im/politeness within the forums themselves. Our analysis shows how the items become pragmaticalised within specific contexts, while remaining unaffected in others, displaying both diachronic and synchronic variation in the degree of conventionalisaton of mock politeness which they express. The differentiation between the expected behaviours in different areas of the forms (collaborative or combative) and correlation with the mock polite usage also helps explain how it is that users orient towards the conventionalised meaning even when it is still relatively low frequency compared to polite usage, i.e. low frequency but high saliency.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Journal of PragmaticsISSN
0378-2166Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Volume
142Page range
270-280Department affiliated with
- English Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2018-11-01First Open Access (FOA) Date
2019-11-16First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2018-10-31Usage metrics
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