A corpus-based analysis of (im)politeness metalanguage and speech acts: The case of insults in Shakespeare's plays

IF 1.8 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-01-01 DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.011

Samuel J. Oliver

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In response to calls for first-order approaches to (im)politeness from scholars such as Watts et al. (2005 [1992]) and Eelen (2001), Oliver (2022) developed a corpus-based method for inductively locating (im)politeness metalinguistic items, wherein a total of 234 (im)politeness metalinguistic forms such as civil, kind, and villainous were located across 4023 instances in a corpus of Shakespeare's plays. Some scholars (e.g. Haugh, 2007:302; Haugh and Culpeper, 2018:216–217) have observed that the discursive perspective to (im)politeness precludes generalisation across encounters, and therefore quantitative corpus-based analysis. This study deviates from the discursive perspective by testing a corpus-based analysis of the relationship between (im)politeness metalanguage and speech acts, via insults, in the Enhanced Shakespearean Corpus. While the results reveal methodological challenges with a corpus-based approach to identifying and comparing both phenomena, the approach nonetheless locates 11 conventionalised formulae for insulting encompassing 1447 instances. A sample of these insults are explored to examine their relationship with (im)politeness metalanguage, enriching an understanding of the use of (im)politeness metalanguage and insults in Shakespeare's plays generally. For example, it reveals that instances where (im)politeness metalanguage follows an impolite event tend to be when that event has a high impact on the events of the play.

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基于语料库的（非）礼貌元语言与言语行为分析——以莎士比亚戏剧中的侮辱为例

为了响应Watts等人（2005[1992]）和Eelen（2001）等学者对（im）礼貌的一阶方法的呼吁，Oliver（2022）开发了一种基于语料库的方法来归纳定位（im）礼貌元语言项目，其中共有234种（im）礼貌元语言形式，如civil， kind和villainous，分布在莎士比亚戏剧语料库的4023个实例中。一些学者(如Haugh， 2007:302；Haugh和Culpeper（2018:216-217）观察到，对（im）礼貌的话语视角排除了对遭遇的概括，因此无法进行基于语料库的定量分析。本研究从语篇的角度出发，在莎翁强化语料库中测试了基于语料库的礼貌元语言与侮辱性言语行为之间关系的分析。虽然结果揭示了基于语料库的方法识别和比较这两种现象的方法上的挑战，但该方法仍然找到了11个包含1447个实例的侮辱常规公式。本文以这些侮辱为例，探讨了它们与（非）礼貌元语言的关系，丰富了对（非）礼貌元语言和侮辱在莎士比亚戏剧中的使用的理解。例如，它揭示了在不礼貌事件之后出现（不）礼貌元语言的情况往往是当该事件对戏剧的事件有很大影响时。

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来源期刊

Journal of Pragmatics Multiple-

CiteScore

3.90

自引率

18.80%

发文量

219

期刊介绍： Since 1977, the Journal of Pragmatics has provided a forum for bringing together a wide range of research in pragmatics, including cognitive pragmatics, corpus pragmatics, experimental pragmatics, historical pragmatics, interpersonal pragmatics, multimodal pragmatics, sociopragmatics, theoretical pragmatics and related fields. Our aim is to publish innovative pragmatic scholarship from all perspectives, which contributes to theories of how speakers produce and interpret language in different contexts drawing on attested data from a wide range of languages/cultures in different parts of the world. The Journal of Pragmatics also encourages work that uses attested language data to explore the relationship between pragmatics and neighbouring research areas such as semantics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, media studies, psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of language. Alongside full-length articles, discussion notes and book reviews, the journal welcomes proposals for high quality special issues in all areas of pragmatics which make a significant contribution to a topical or developing area at the cutting-edge of research.