英汉客套话的语义研究

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CONTENTS

中文摘要

ABSTRACT

Introduction .....................................................................................................................1

1. The significance of studying civilities ....................................................................................... 1

2. Why is ‘semantic study’? ........................................................................................................... 1

3. Objective .....................................................................................................................................2

Chapter I. Literature review on the study of politeness .............................................. 3

1.1 Definitions of politeness ...........................................................................................................3

1.2 Theories of politeness ...............................................................................................................4

1.2.1 The social-norm view ....................................................................................................4

1.2.2 The conversational-contract view ................................................................................. 6

1.2.3 The conversational-maxim view ...................................................................................9

1.2.4 The face-saving view .................................................................................................. 12

1.3 Summary ................................................................................................................................ 16

Chapter II. Pertinent concepts and theories in semantics .........................................17

2.1 Meaning ..................................................................................................................................17

2.1.1 Word meaning, sentence meaning and speaker meaning ........................................... 17

2.1.2 Grice’s research in meaning ........................................................................................18

2.2 Utterance, sentence, and proposition ..................................................................................... 20

2.3 Truth and logic ........................................................................................................................21

2.4 Sentential force .......................................................................................................................21

2.5 Discourse ................................................................................................................................ 22

2.6 Logical Semantics and Discourse Representation Theory .................................................... 23

Chapter III. The pilot classification of civilities ......................................................... 24

3.1 Understanding of Chinese civility ..........................................................................................24

3.2 Functions of civility ............................................................................................................... 25

3.3 Forms of civility ..................................................................................................................... 28

3.3.1 Formulaic civilities ......................................................................................................28

3.3.2 Semi-formulaic civilities .............................................................................................34

3.3.3 An analysis of Chinese semi-formulaic civilities ....................................................... 39

3.4 Summary ................................................................................................................................ 40

Chapter IV. A further study of civilities ...................................................................... 42

4.1 Logical structure .....................................................................................................................42

4.2 Truth-conditional analysis ......................................................................................................44

4.3 The attributions of civilities ................................................................................................... 49

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 52

Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 54

在读期间公开发表的论文 ............................................................................................ 57

Introduction

1. The significance of studying civilities

Civilities (kètàohuà), remarks that are said only in order to be polite (Advanced

Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary 2004 ）, are linguistic phenomena that exist

extensively, for one socialization goal of human beings is to learn to behave politely,

linguistically and otherwise. In conversations, there always exist more or less civilities

such as expressions of greeting, saying goodbye, requesting, offering, refusing,

apologizing, thanking and complimenting. Even, on some social or political occasions,

or between acquaintances, the entire conversation is an exchange of civilities.

Although civilities can be recognized intuitively, and the definition in a dictionary

seems explicit enough, it is difficult to define or offer a feasible standard to recognize

them from the linguistic point of view, since the study of civilities is associated with the

realization of politeness, for which there are neither objective nor subjective criteria to

determine even though we could say what is and what is not polite. It should seem that

politeness is subject to dispute and can never be an axiomatic concept in a universal

theory of human behavior, and linguists have been so interested in politeness since

1970s that a rich literature studying politeness phenomena from multi-dimensional

perspectives has been yielded. The best-known work on politeness is probably that of

Brown and Levinson, but Leech, Goffman, Fraser and Watts have also made great

contribution to the study of politeness. In China, Gu Yueguo’s Politeness Principle of

Chinese Culture (Gu Yueguo 1992) may be taken as a representative. Chapter I will

focus on introducing some important theories of politeness since we cannot understand

civilities without clarifying politeness.

2. Why is ‘semantic study’?

Politeness is a major concern in pragmatics, sociolinguistics and contrastive

linguistics ，therefore studies about civilities also focus on these fields. Work on

linguistic politeness can be grouped into the following categories: empirical work on

particular types of speech activity (the most common of these being requests,

compliments and declination) and cross-cultural work assessing the ways in which two

or more cultures differ in their realizations of politeness. For example, He Zhaoxiong

has analyzed some civilities from the angle of pragmatic failure (He Zhaoxiong 1989)

Semantic Study of English and Chinese Civilities

and cross-cultural pragmatics (He Zhaoxiong 2000); in addition, Xu Yulong

(2002)discussed civilities in the chapter of pragmatic contrast in his Contrastive

Linguistics.

True, these studies help learners coming from different cultures to communicate

better with native speakers and to avoid embarrassment or even misunderstanding, but

they are based on the principle of appropriateness, that means that learners should know

the proper responses to certain civilities, consequently, when learners are exposed to

unfamiliar civilities, they feel perplexed. What we should do now is how to recognize

civilities rather than to describe civilities. In this case, semantics, “the study of meaning

communicated through language” (Saeed 1997:3), has the advantage over the other

linguistic branches. A great part of civilities are exempt from context in nature, i.e. the

meaning of these civilities is “sentence-meaning”, which is “to a high degree

context-independent” (Lyons 1995:37). Although the approaches we use to analyze

civilities later will also allow for context, the meaning of utterances is not decided by

the context. Since civilities can get a better explanation within the framework of

semantics, pertinent concepts and theories of semantics will be discussed in chapter II.

3.Objective

Civilities consist of formulaic and semi-formulaic utterances (here, we borrow the

terms from Watts 2003: 168-169). According to Watts, formulaic utterances are “highly

conventionalized utterances, containing linguistic expressions that are used in ritualized

forms of verbal interaction and have been reduced from fully grammatical structures to

the status of extra-sentential markers of politic behavior.They have little or no internal

syntactico-semantics structure”; and semi-formulaic utterances are “conventionalized

utterances containing linguistic expressions that carry out indirect speech acts

appropriate to the politic behavior of a social situation. They may also be used, in

certain circumstances, as propositional structures in their own right”.

Although civilities are conventionalized utterances, all conventionalized utterances

are not civilities. Their fundamental distinction lies in their different truth conditions;

therefore, in chapters III and IV we will distinguish different functions, forms, meanings

and truth conditions of different utterances to realize our objective, recognize civilities,

from a logical perspective, after discussing the Chinese people’s understanding of

civilities. A conclusion will be made after chapter IV, where we will discuss about the

margin of our research.

Chapter I. Literature review on the study of politeness

1.1 Definitions of politeness

Politeness is one of the most disputable linguistic terms. According to Longman

Dictionary of Contemporary English, politeness is “having or showing good manners,

sensitivity to other people’s feelings, and/or correct social behavior”. This definition

conforms to the very global way of approaching politeness from the angle of social

appropriateness. Some of the sociolinguistic literature espouses this view: for Lakoff

(1975: 64) politeness “is developed by societies in order to reduce friction in personal

interaction”.

Here we will take a brief excerpt of the definitions given in the literature. These are

presented by Sifianon (1992: 82-83) and extracted from Watts (2003:50-53):

a. Leech (1980:19) defines it as “strategic conflict avoidance”, which “can be

measured in terms of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of a

conflict situation” and “the establishment and maintenance of comity”

b. Brown & Levinson (1978) view politeness as “a complex system for

softening face-threatening acts”.

c. Kasper (1990:194) bases her work on Brown & Levinson’s approach to

politeness and maintains that “communication is seen as a fundamentally

dangerous and antagonistic endeavour”. Politeness is therefore a term to

refer to “the strategies available to interactants to defuse the danger and

minimalise the antagonism”.

d. Arndt & Janney (1985:282) see politeness as “interpersonal

supportiveness”.

e. Hill et al. (1986:349) define politeness as “one of the constraints on human

interaction, whose purpose is to consider other’s feelings, establish levels

of mutual comfort, and promote rapport”.

f. Ide (1989:225) sees politeness as “language usage associated with smooth

communication”.

g. Fraser and Nolen (1981:96) see politeness as “a property associated with a

voluntary action”.

h. Sifianon (1992:86) views politeness as “the set of social values which

instructs interactants to consider each other by satisfying shared

Semantic Study of English and Chinese Civilities

expectations.

Watts gives his own definition of politeness, but he proposes “a more

comprehensive notion from which politeness may be derived” (1992: 50), the concept

“politic behavior: that behavior, linguistic and non-linguistic, which the participants

construct as being appropriate to the ongoing social interaction” (2003: 21).

Watts also attempts to elaborate and define the notion of politeness beyond the idea

of appropriateness, and so he distinguishes this more traditional notion of politeness

and a more theoretical linguistic notion. Developing this line of thought, he

differentiates between first-order and second-order politeness respectively. First-order

politeness is “how participants in verbal interaction make explicit use of terms polite

and politeness to refer to their own and others’ social behavior” and second-order

politeness “makes use of the terms polite and politeness as theoretical concepts in a

top-down model to refer to forms of social behavior” (Locher & Watts 2005:15).

The term comes closest to politeness in Chinese is lǐmào, in which, Lee-Wong

(1999:24-25) suggests, is “a compound of lǐ (‘ceremony’, ‘courtesy’, ‘etiquette’) and

mào (‘appearance’). And she defines it as “a code of contact which stipulates how one

should conduct oneself not only in public but at all times”.

1.2 Theories of politeness

An enormous amount of empirical research into the phenomenon of linguistic

politeness in a wide range of cultures has been amassed over the years. The following

sections will review the major linguistic politeness theories. Fraser’s four-fold

classification of approaches to politeness, i.e. the social norm view, the

conversational-maxim view, the conversational-contract view and the face-saving view

(Fraser1990: 220), is the most comprehensive approach to different conceptualization

of politeness, so the following theories will be subsumed under the four perspectives.

This classification of politeness can also be attributed to two categories based on the

above-mentioned concepts of first-order and second-order politeness. The first

category comprises the social-norm view and the conversational-contract view, which

can be termed first-order politeness approaches; the second category consists of the

conversational-maxim view and the face-saving view which represent second-order

politeness. Since the purpose of the paper is not a comparative evaluation of models to

politeness, only the key points of each theory will be given.

1.2.1 The social-norm view

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CONTENTS中文摘要ABSTRACTIntroduction.....................................................................................................................11.Thesignificanceofstudyingcivilities.......................................................................................12.Whyis‘semanticstudy’?.....

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