- Home
- e-Journals
- Chinese Language and Discourse
- Previous Issues
- Volume 1, Issue, 2010
Chinese Language and Discourse - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010
-
Insertion as a self-repair device and its interactional motivations in Chinese conversation
pp.: 153–182 (30)More LessConversational repair has been studied for its organizational features, relationship with syntax, and interactional functions. This paper focuses on one particular type of same-turn self-repair, namely, insertions. Examining in detail a collection of insertions culled from a corpus of naturally occurring conversational data in Mandarin Chinese, an investigation has been carried out on the forms and functions of insertions in their sequential contexts. In terms of form and organization, two kinds of insertion are identified: local and global. ‘Local’ insertions operate on trouble-sources located within NPs, VPs, and sentences, achieving in most cases the modification of a reference or a predication. ‘Global’ insertions tend to be used to supplement a narrative with background information designed to make the point of the narrative more readily understood or better appreciated by the recipient. An in-depth analysis of insertions in their situational and sequential contexts reveals a variety of interactional motivations, including facilitating the recognizability of references, doing alignment and identity work, contributing to the construction of accounts, and providing backgrounding information in the delivery of narratives.
-
Systematic repetition of the first person singular pronoun wo in Mandarin conversation: Negotiation of conflicting stance in interaction
Author(s): Jee Won Leepp.: 183–219 (37)More LessWhile repetition was once thought to be “just a marker of a ‘disfluent’ or ‘sloppy’ speaker,” it has been increasingly recognized as a “human social activity, clearly part of our everyday conduct or behavior” (Schegloff 1987). The present study, using video recorded natural conversation data, aims to describe ways in which native speakers of Mandarin Chinese employ repetition of the first person pronoun wo for interactional moves. Repetition of wo is analyzed in conjunction with other interactive strategies, such as syntactic features, phonological features, pragmatic features, gesture, self-grooming, and gaze, as a way to organize and negotiate stances toward the proposition expressed and the co-participants and at the same time to enable intersubjectivity. By showing that within the speech of a single speaker pronominal repetition acts as a stance marker, this paper provides a new perspective on Chinese pronominal use and enriches our understanding of the functions of “disfluent” language in general.
-
Is the core-peripheral distinction for unaccusative verbs cross-linguistically consistent?: Empirical evidence from Mandarin
Author(s): Jacqueline Laws and Boping Yuanpp.: 220–263 (44)More LessThis paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into the characteristics of unaccusativity in Mandarin by building on the gradient approach to split intransitivity (Sorace, 2000) and previous analyses of Mandarin within that framework (Liu, 2007). The study explores the acceptability of unaccusative verbs in the verb-subject construction with respect to their core-peripheral features. The results clearly demonstrate support for the gradient approach; however, some important departures from the patterns observed in Western European languages are noted. The analysis of variability between and within semantic categories reveals that verbs in certain peripheral categories exhibit behaviour more characteristic of core unaccusative verbs; conversely, some members of the core category Change of Location display characteristics more typical of peripheral verbs. A refined definition of peripheral verbs (true and pseudo) is proposed which has relevance for the cross-linguistic study of split intransitivity, and the unaccusative gradient for Mandarin is reformulated on the basis of stativity.
-
Apology strategies between social unequals in The Dream of the Red Chamber
pp.: 264–292 (29)More LessThis is a study of apology strategies deployed by social unequals in The Dream of the Red Chamber. It is found that, among the eleven instances of apologies collected from the novel, four variables together determine one’s choices of apology strategies, i.e. the social distance between the apologizer and the apologizee, their power relationship, the seriousness of the offence which leads to the apology, and the degree of the right the apologizer is assumed to have in apologizing. The lower-status apologizers typically adopted the self-degeneration and other-elevation strategies and spoke up to the higher-status victims, while the higher-status apologizers typically gave priority to protecting their own faces and spoke down to the lower-status victims in combining different strategies. The apologies from the lower-status servant apologizers were rarely accepted while those from the higher-status apologizers were often accepted on the spot. On the whole, the higher-status participants enjoyed more freedom in choosing which apology strategy to adopt than the lower-status participants.
-
Language and society in Macao: A review of sociolinguistic studies on Macao in the past three decades
Author(s): Xi Yan and Andrew Moodypp.: 293–324 (32)More LessThe present study attempts to comprehensively review the sociolinguistic literature on Macao from the past three decades by focusing on four key research themes found in previous studies: (1) languages, dialects and specialized languages, (2) language contact, (3) language attitudes and identity construction and (4) language planning and language policy. By presenting a fuller picture of previous studies of language and society in Macao it is argued that the sociolinguistic situation of Macao should not be overlooked in the study of Chinese sociolinguistics.
Most Read This Month
Article
content/journals/18778798
Journal
10
5
false

-
-
Understanding memes on Chinese social media
Author(s): Lu Ying and Jan Blommaert
-
- More Less