I am criticizing you when I say “I am not criticizing you”: a prosodic-pragmatic exploration of the Chinese metapragmatic negation bùshì wǒ shuō nǐ

Abstract

The current study aims to explore both the prosodic pattern and the sociocultural motivations behind the linguistic form and prosodic features of the Chinese metapragmatic negation bùshì wǒ shuō nǐ “I am not criticizing you,” in order to understand how verbal language and nonverbal prosody interact in constructing the speakers’ pragmatic intent. The results show that the character shuō “to criticize” exhibits the highest F0, as well as the greatest intensity and duration ratio within the prosodic unit bùshì wǒ shuō nǐ, indicating that shuō serves as the focus of this prosodic unit. This finding suggests that speakers highlight the act of criticizing, even while using the negation marker bùshì “not” to deny any intent to criticize. These results shed light on how language users employ prosody to construct specific pragmatic meanings.