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Volume 30, Issue 1
  • ISSN 1018-2101
  • E-ISSN: 2406-4238
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Abstract

Abstract

Our study provides a corpus-based contrastive pragmatic investigation of the expressions in English and 请 in Chinese. We define such expressions as ‘ritual frame indicating expressions’ (henceforth RFIEs) and argue that RFIEs are deployed in settings where it is important to show awareness of the rights and obligations. ‘Ritual frame’ encompasses a cluster of standard situations. On the one hand the corpus-based investigation of ritual provides an innovative complement to sociopragmatic approaches to ritual behaviour because they reveal how RFIEs that indicate ritual spread across a cluster of standard situations. On the other hand, it allows the researcher to contrast the scope of ritual across lingua-cultures by comparatively looking into the standard situations in which a particular RFIE is deployed. Findings of our data analysis point to intriguing differences between English and Chinese RFIEs, as well as relevant lingua-cultural reasons behind such differences.

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2019-12-03
2025-04-23

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/content/journals/10.1075/prag.19018.kad
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Ritual frames
Pragmatics 30, 142 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.19018.kad
/content/journals/10.1075/prag.19018.kad
/content/journals/10.1075/prag.19018.kad
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Chinese; contrastive pragmatic analysis; corpora; English; ritual-frame indicating-expression (RFIE); standard situation

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