Impoliteness Revisited: Evidence from Qingmian Threats in Chinese Interpersonal Conflicts

There is a growing consensus that (im)politeness is associated with participants’ situated evaluations vis-à-vis the moral order (Haugh 2013a, 2015b; Kádár and Haugh 2013). This paper focuses on impoliteness as evaluative practices underpinned by the moral order of qingmian (lit., affection-based face). Drawing on data from Chinese interpersonal conflicts, the study reveals that unmet renqing (favor) expectations and unmet mianzi/lian (face) expectations are often evaluated as qingmian threats by participants, and thereby cause conflicts and disharmony. Our analysis investigates three key issues: (1) qingmian threat as the cause of interpersonal conflicts, (2) cultural factors influencing expectations associated with ‘taking offence’ in Chinese and (3) the implications of qingmian threat for (im)politeness theory at the etic level.