Conclusion 16

Acknowledegements 18

Bibliography 19

1 Introduction

Speaking of impoliteness, Leech (1983: 105) considers that “conflictive illocutions tend, thankfully, to be rather marginal to human linguistic behavior in normal circumstances”. Culpeper (2011: xii) also points out that prejudice exists while talking about impoliteness that is regarded as unfortunate and nasty. In fact, nowadays, a lot of phenomena of verbal impoliteness have been found in our daily life, and it’s of great significance in social communication, for instance, in everyday communications, the talk between the child and parent, the boss and subordinate, the seller and customer, the instructor and soldier etc. when there are conflicts. And it appears in the TV chat or talent shows. In recent years, with the rapid social development, people have got more open attitudes towards impoliteness. Scholars, like Culpeper et al. (2003: 1546) and Bousfield (2008: 1), have been aware of the essential role of impoliteness and have given contributions to the researches of impoliteness, as it is important and worthwhile to compensate for the imbalance of focuses on politeness and impoliteness. Generally speaking, verbal impoliteness causes emotional pain that even leads to more hurt than physical violence, as Greenwell and Dengerink (1973: 70) found that “the physical discomfort experienced by a person may be subordinate to the verbal violence that are incorporated in that attack”. Besides, appropriate or creative use of verbal impoliteness is able to be entertaining, especially in some TV programmes, and the language in them inevitably has an impact on us.文献综述

1.1 The Foreign Study of Verbal Impoliteness

Grice (Dai Weidong, He Zhaoxiong, 2010: 87-88) proposed the Cooperative Principle, that is, “the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner”. Moreover, the Principle explains what conversational implicature is and how it is generated. However, it doesn’t point out why people choose to flout the maxims to express implicitly and indirectly (He Zhaoxiong, 1999: 211). So, in order to demonstrate that flouting the Cooperative Principle has something to do with politeness, the Politeness Principle was put forward. Namely, the words that are impolite to the hearers or a third party are omitted or expressed in a mild or indirect way. That helps maintain the participants’ equal status and friendly relation, possessing the higher efficiency in adjusting the conversation (He Zhaoxiong, 1999: 212-213).

The Politeness Principle focuses on harmonious communications, regarding verbal impoliteness as a kind of failures in language use, not worth too much account. It is also considered as the social uncivilized performance to strongly avoid. To some degree, such notion causes the neglect of the study of impoliteness. On the other hand, “Lakoff (1989), Kasper (1990), Beebe (1995) and Kienpointner (1997) argue and demonstrate that impoliteness can be strategic, systematic and sophisticated” (Culpeper，2011: 6). Culpeper (2011: 6) considers that impoliteness is common, and in 1996, he is inspired impoliteness model on the basis of Brown and Levinson’s politeness model. And in 2005, Culpeper studies impoliteness conversations within context. Indeed, almost all of the studies on verbal impoliteness have paid attention to the importance of context. In 2008, the first monograph on impoliteness written was published, which mainly illustrates the impoliteness approaches with detailed materials and practical examples (Culpeper, 2011: 6-8).

1.2 The Domestic Study of Verbal Impoliteness

The number of the domestic study of verbal impoliteness is relatively small. In 1986, Liu Runqing (Chen Yali, 2012: 13）began to study impoliteness. However, till 21st  century, a majority of domestic scholars, like Wang Chuanben (2006: ii) and Yang Zi (2010: 13-17) , analyze and explain the phenomena of verbal impoliteness with the Adaption Theory, considering that using language must “consist of the continuous making of linguistic choice, consciously or unconsciously, for language-internal and/or language-external reasons” (Verschueren, 1999: 55-58). Li Yuansheng (2006: 49-50) and Yang Zi（2010: 13-17）also demonstrates that the phenomenon of verbal impoliteness is the result of a comprehensive adaption to the speaker and hearer’s psychological, social and physical world. Li Yuansheng (2006: 48) defines impoliteness as the words that may attack others’ face in the communication and make people feel uncomfortable. Zhang Damao (2009: 204-205) also gives the definition and classification of verbal impoliteness. Xie Shijian (2009: 78) regards that a perfect theory is necessary to involve in impoliteness strategies. And Huang Weiying and Luo Changtian (Chen Yali, 2012: 13) have talked about cultural differences in verbal impoliteness.