{"title":"Exploring disclaimers on Chinese social networking sites from a metapragmatic perspective","authors":"Chuanqi Li, Danli Li","doi":"10.1558/eap.24631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.24631","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the employment of disclaimers as metapragmatic devices in online interpersonal interaction on a Chinese social networking site, Weibo. Previous studies discussed meta-negation disclaimers and meta-prohibition disclaimers. This study establishes a new type of disclaimer: meta-condition disclaimers. It examines the forms and functions of the three types of disclaimers. Prior studies explained disclaimers as either prospective moves or retrospective moves. This study further introduces disclaimers as conjunctive moves, which bridge the speaker’s ongoing communicative behaviour. Also, it investigates the communicative purposes of using disclaimers, revealing that disclaimers are mainly employed by Chinese netizens to convey criticism. Furthermore, this research probes into the underlying cultural factors of employing disclaimers. It uncovers certain values ingrained in Chinese culture, such as ren (kindheartedness), yi (righteousness) and li (politeness). The study contributes to a global understanding of disclaimers and could provide some insights into online rapport management.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139144160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'East Asian Pragmatics: Commonalities and Variations' Xinren Chen and Doreen Dongying Wu (Eds.) (2023)","authors":"Wei Wang, Xing-Jing Liu","doi":"10.1558/eap.27447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.27447","url":null,"abstract":"East Asian Pragmatics: Commonalities and Variations Xinren Chen and Doreen Dongying Wu (Eds.) (2023) Routledge","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139007303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Building interpersonal closeness in complaint responses in customer service","authors":"Ping Liu, Huiying Liu","doi":"10.1558/eap.23882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.23882","url":null,"abstract":"Positioned in interpersonal pragmatics, this article examines the role of building interpersonal closeness in complaint responses in telephone interactions. Based on four extracts drawn from the data of about two hours of 15 recordings of telephone interactions between customers and the customer service agents of one Chinese airline, it reveals that the agents mainly employ six types of strategies as ways of building interpersonal closeness: alignment, compliment, affiliation, solidarity, self-disclosure and empathy. The use of these strategies, very often in combination, is intended to create and/or enhance interpersonal closeness in behavioural, affective and cognitive dimensions to facilitate complaint settlement. The findings shed light on the improvement of customer service in a more and more digitalised world. ","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139008165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politeness of Chinese-Javanese cross-ethnic communication in the Javanese Cultural Area, Indonesia","authors":"E. Jauhari","doi":"10.1558/eap.22415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.22415","url":null,"abstract":"The ethnic Chinese and Javanese have lived together in the Javanese Cultural Area for hundreds of years, and use the same languages in daily life, but their tendency to apply different politeness systems can cause problems. This article investigates the politeness of Chinese–Javanese cross-ethnic communication in the Javanese Cultural Area, Indonesia. Data were collected using Discourse Completion Task and analysed using the theory of Scollon & Scollon (2001). The results show that the factors that cause differences in the application of politeness systems in the ethnic Chinese and Javanese are the realisation of strategies and the contexts of strategy use. Cross-ethnic communication that occurs in the contexts (=P–D) and (=P+D) is generally normal because both ethnicities apply the same politeness system. However, in the contexts (–P+D), (+P+D), (–P–D) and (+P–D), the two ethnic groups tend to apply different politeness systems. This is prone to cause politeness friction in cross-ethnic communication.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139006709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Don’t call me obasan ‘aunt’","authors":"Yoko Yonezawa","doi":"10.1558/eap.24964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.24964","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the use of the kinship term obasan “aunt” as an address term in Japanese by analysing three types of data: metalinguistic discourse in online discussion; the most typical collocates for the term in a large corpus of Japanese websites; and the results of a survey of native speakers. The study demonstrates that address practices towards aunts appear to be changing. The most typically collocated adjectives and adjectival nouns with obasan as a term of reference in the corpus reveal an overwhelmingly negative conceptualisation of the term in contemporary contexts. The survey results show an increasing trend towards addressing aunts with their names and nicknames instead of obasan. The analysis shows an almost pejorative connotation of the fictive use of obasan, and this appears to interfere with its literal use as an address term towards actual kin, hence the decrease in its usage.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139007495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A pragmatic taxonomy of violent language in online interaction","authors":"Wenwen Geng","doi":"10.1558/eap.23659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.23659","url":null,"abstract":"The features of mediated communication, along with those of internet language, enable cyber space to be a home for violent language, the adoption of which generally stems from the sender user’s intense emotions or malicious intentions. In accounting for the diffusion of violent language in online interaction from the perspective of cyberpragmatics and speech act theory, I deduce four major variables of violent language as target, intention, message and effect. Accordingly, the article suggests a pragmatic taxonomy of violent language in online interaction, which consists of six categories ranging from conventional violent language targeted at an individual to unconventional language which is not explicitly targeted. Analysis of the categories testifies that the use of violent language in online interaction is not confined to enemies or adversaries, but extends to people who are close to each other. In such a case, rather than ruin or undermine their relationship, violent language could maintain or even strengthen it. In addition to clarifying how to deal with internet language, the article offers some suggestions for further research.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139008992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Terms of address in Chinese","authors":"Dániel Z. Kádár, Fengguang Liu","doi":"10.1558/eap.26871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.26871","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we first present the rationale behind editing the present Special Issue dedicated to Chinese terms of address. We argue that conventionally speakers of Chinese prefer using terms of address in many interactional contexts, while personal pronouns – in particular the standard second person ni used without an accompanying term of address – are often perceived as face-threatening. We also argue that, while historical Chinese terms of address are very important to study because they influenced the development of honorifics in other East Asian linguacultures, present-day terms of address are of as much academic interest as their historical counterparts. At the end of this paper, we overview the contents of the Special Issue.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Toward a Motivation Model of Pragmatics' Rong Chen","authors":"Xiaomei Zheng, Dengshan Xia","doi":"10.1558/eap.26552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.26552","url":null,"abstract":"Toward a Motivation Model of PragmaticsRong Chen (2022)De Gruyter","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Displaying emotion via dynamic use of address terms in Chinese family conflict talk","authors":"Jun Gao, Lirong Ma","doi":"10.1558/eap.25803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.25803","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the dynamic use of address terms in accordance with the emotional state of the speaker. Analyses of data from three Chinese TV dramas about family life revealed that Chinese family conflict talk was characterised by a predominant use of full name and kinship term address. Moreover, two distinct patterns emerged regarding the use of address terms across the three conflict phases: A. (familiarised) given name/kinship term/no address – full name – full name/no address, and B. (familiarised) given name/kinship term/no address – (familiarised) given name/kinship term – (familiarised) given name/kinship term/no address. Further analysis demonstrated that this dynamic use of address terms was associated with the emotional state of the speaker. This study contributes to research on family life by shedding light on the ways in which participants use address terms dynamically in conflictual settings and at the same time on the ways in which address terms are embedded in such potentially aggravating and emotionally charged social actions.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135131449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A new trend in Chinese address and its theoretical implications","authors":"Tingting Xiao, Masato Takiura","doi":"10.1558/eap.25847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.25847","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the factors that affect people’s impressions of chat commerce in contemporary Chinese e-commerce, where various types of address terms and related expressions are used by online shop assistants. Our survey revealed that interpersonal distance was the strongest factor influencing the favourability of chat styles. Specifically, the distant type was rated the highest, whereas the close and mixed types were rated low, although they are used in practice increasingly frequently. We argue that this overt contradiction can be accounted for in terms of two perspectives: One is the district of residence, which was the second-strongest factor in our survey, and the other is the traditional Chinese “family culture”, in which people are treated both on a generational basis and on a closeness basis simultaneously. Moreover, we also discuss that the rusty pick-up lines, which express sympathetic proximity in content, combined with reverential distance in address form, perform a “bifocal” function.","PeriodicalId":37018,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}