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.
This paper examines the ways in which mediators deploy the rite of public shaming in the activity type of public
mediation, as a pragmatic device by means of which they exert social control. Our data consists of episodes of public mediation
events in rural China, aired in the Chinese Television. Our analytic framework is anchored to the model of interactional
relational rituals: we interpret shaming as a morally loaded communal interactional practice, which the mediator can deploy due to
their ratified role, but only within frame of the ritual activity type, and with the communal goal of resolving the conflict.
Thus, while ritual forms of shaming may be interactionally intensive – e.g. the person who inflicts shame may inflict shame with
little mitigation to put pressure on the shamed person – strict rights and obligations regulate the behaviour of the mediator who
needs to act as a ‘moral educator’.
This paper examines an under-researched phenomenon of mock impoliteness in Chinese online interaction, namely, the practice of hudui (lit. reciprocal jocular abuse) as a solidarity enhancing device among acquaintances. Drawing on data from Qzone interaction among Chinese university students, this study focuses on ritual features, sequential patterns and interpersonal functions of hudui through the lens of Kádár’s (2013, 2017) interpersonal ritual theory. The results show that hudui is co-constructed by the online participants with the symmetric pattern of mutual abuse, which distinguishes it from previous studies of jocular abuse (i.e., the asymmetric pattern of abuser– recipient). They also reveal that hudui accomplishes various kinds of relational work, including fostering intimacy, enhancing mutual affection-based face and creating amusement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.