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Volume 26, Issue 1
  • ISSN 1018-2101
  • E-ISSN: 2406-4238
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Abstract

This research studied how English and Chinese speakers encode their criticisms in the media discourse, aiming to explore the correlation between the speakers’ applications of pragmalinguistic strategies and their sociocultural orientations. Criticisms analyzed in the present study were collected from evaluative communications elicited from the US-based talent competition and the Taiwan-based talent competition . The current analysis of the face attack act referred to Brown and Levinson’s politeness framework and face notion. The results showed different frequencies of criticizing strategies and redressive devices in the English and Chinese sub-corpora. In addition, the findings also manifested some cross-language variations in pragmalinguistic representation of the same criticizing strategy. The discrepancies were discussed from the perspective of context orientation of the American and Taiwanese societies, evidencing the strong linkage between the speakers’ communication patterns and the cultural norms of their social networks.

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2016-03-01
2024-12-10

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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Criticism; Cultural context; English-Chinese comparison; Media discourse

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