{"title":"“Language art is to console those who are broken by life”: A discursive analysis of legitimation in Chinese comforting","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101674","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>By defining comforting with reference to van Leeuwen's legitimation, this study aims to show how comforters achieve effective comforting through strategies oriented towards alliance, evaluation, and solution, respectively in the Chinese context. Results demonstrate that comforters discursively legitimate the comfortees’ actions and feelings through moral evaluation, rationalization, mythopoesis, authority, and various sub-strategies with Chinese characteristics, such as establishing an alliance with expressions of unavailability and moral tales, delivering positive evaluation through denial of negative self-evaluation, and offering solutions by rationalization and naturalization. We also argue that Chinese comforting strategies can be further explained in the cultural veins of Five Constant Virtues, so as to facilitate the understanding of comforting in the Chinese context.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51592,"journal":{"name":"Language Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000124000639/pdfft?md5=848abd8ae380f06db6a7f961643e1934&pid=1-s2.0-S0388000124000639-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0388000124000639","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
By defining comforting with reference to van Leeuwen's legitimation, this study aims to show how comforters achieve effective comforting through strategies oriented towards alliance, evaluation, and solution, respectively in the Chinese context. Results demonstrate that comforters discursively legitimate the comfortees’ actions and feelings through moral evaluation, rationalization, mythopoesis, authority, and various sub-strategies with Chinese characteristics, such as establishing an alliance with expressions of unavailability and moral tales, delivering positive evaluation through denial of negative self-evaluation, and offering solutions by rationalization and naturalization. We also argue that Chinese comforting strategies can be further explained in the cultural veins of Five Constant Virtues, so as to facilitate the understanding of comforting in the Chinese context.
期刊介绍:
Language Sciences is a forum for debate, conducted so as to be of interest to the widest possible audience, on conceptual and theoretical issues in the various branches of general linguistics. The journal is also concerned with bringing to linguists attention current thinking about language within disciplines other than linguistics itself; relevant contributions from anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists, among others, will be warmly received. In addition, the Editor is particularly keen to encourage the submission of essays on topics in the history and philosophy of language studies, and review articles discussing the import of significant recent works on language and linguistics.