Chinese Language and Discourse - Current Issue

This study examines the coordination of talk and gesture in storytelling. The focus is on the different ways iconic gestures may contribute to the organization of TCUs and Turns in an on-going story. It is found that brief gestures produced within single TCUs may make visible situated meanings of deictic expressions, or may even stand in the place of a syntactic slot in constructing a multimodal TCU. Either way, what is depicted through the gestural modality is crucial in bringing out the meaning of a story scene or the high point of a telling. It is also found that gestures may continue across multiple TCUs. Such coordination of verbal and gestural modalities serves to make visible the organization of narration and re-enactment in telling sequences. Recurrent gesture patterns may also coordinate with recurrent narrative patterns in organizing sequenced multiple story events.

Using the methodology of Conversation Analysis (or CA), this study examines three types of other-initiated repair initiators (henceforth OIs) that repeats some element in the trouble-source (henceforth repeats) in Chinese conversation: repeats suffixed with question particles ma (吗), repeats suffixed with question particles a (啊), and question-intonated repeats. It attempts to explore the differences between these typical formats, in terms of their forms/functions and the epistemic stance of the speaker who initiates repair. The main research findings indicate that question-intonated repeat implements an understanding check while repeat suffixed with question particles (ma or a) tends to serve different functions, in that, ma-suffixed repeat is inquiry-implicated while a-suffixed repeat contributes to constructing surprise, (dis)agreement or (dis)belief.

This paper investigates conversational actions accomplished by a knowing speaker who takes a non-committal epistemic stance using epistemic adverbs expressing uncertainty in Mandarin conversations. This study finds that adverbs of uncertainty such as keneng, yexu, and dagai, are used predominantly by knowing speakers, rather than unknowing speakers in Mandarin conversations. Moreover, most of these epistemically incongruent cases occur in sequence-initiating actions. Three most common practices are announcements involved in a request project, announcements of self-related positive news, and advice-giving actions. Adverbs of uncertainty are less frequently used by knowing speakers to take a non-committal stance in the sequence-responsive actions. A common practice observed is responses to information-seeking questions that have negative valence. Adverbs of uncertainty are adopted by knowing speakers to minimize disaffiliation caused by these dispreferred actions such as requests, self-praising of accomplishments, advice-giving, and informing with negative valence.

This paper analyzes resistance in the preference organization of criminal trial interaction from a conversation analytic perspective, with examples taken from an 11-hour video corpus of 20 PRC (People’s Republic of China) criminal trials from 2016–2018. Defendants’ dispreferred responses to judges’ questions are then analyzed to determine how resistance is constructed and handled by judges. Defendants are found to construct resistance implicitly and orient to out-of-courtroom stance, objects and topics, while judges respond by reorienting to broader legal matters of guilt and in-court actions. Previous research on PRC criminal trials has focused mainly on questions and turn formulation by judges and procurators (Liao, 2003, 2012; Gao, 2003; Zhang and Jin, 2004; Meng, 2009); this study complements existing research by analyzing defendants’ speech in its interactional context.

本研究采用会话分析和互动语言学的研究方法和视角，对自然口语会话中“不会 VP 吧”这一构式的互动功能进行了微观分析。分析结果显示，“不会 VP 吧”常出现于某种特有的会话序列环境（interactional sequence），即是说话人利用“不会 VP 吧”的求证功能来证实自己的一种推测。然而，由于这种推测违反了社会常规（social norm），所以又是不符合说话人本身期待值（expectation）的。因此，可以说“不会 VP 吧”亦表达了一种针对 VP  的“反期待”（against expectation）的评价立场（evaluative stance）。由于“不会 VP 吧”有驱动受话人对 VP 事态加以证实（或证伪）的功能，因此 “不会 VP 吧”也具有发起修补（initiate repair），推动会话进程（progressivity）的作用。以往疑问句研究（如“不会 VP 吧”）非常重视区分各类问句的疑信程度，然而从互动会话的角度观察，就“不会 VP 吧”而言，说话人的疑信倾向并不对会话过程造成影响，因为受话人的回应语所针对的是 VP 部分，而非说话人的疑信倾向。

本文对汉语自然口语会话中的转换型回应进行探讨，将转换型回应划分为措辞转换型回应和规程转换型回应两类。就汉语自然口语而言，措辞转换型回应在互动中的主要功能在于答者希望提供更为准确和足量的信息，形式上大部分是单小句或短语形式。规程转换型回应则基本上是多小句的形式，而且一般都会带来序列上的扩展。

本文考察普通话口语中不能用五种经典用法解释的“一个”用法，本文称之为非典型的“一个”。这些“一个”在话语中的分布和用法，呈现出一定的规律性。它倾向于用在有准备的、一人主导性的谈话中。说话人使用“一个+后续成分”的形式，可以实现多个话语功能：思索找词、削弱定指性、凸显指称化等。其中，后两项功能在语料中出现频率较高，这也与“一个”所在小句的分布以及汉语不能以屈折变化实现动名转换有关。