The metapragmatic negation as a rapport-oriented mitigating device

This study focuses on the metapragmatic negation bushi + (S) + V + (NP) as a rapport-oriented mitigating device in Chinese interpersonal interaction. After a review of the literature about metapragmatics and Searle's (1969, 1976) categories about speech acts, a classification is made about this construction in terms of the verb force. Some features are found and contextual functions are explored at both explicit and implicit levels. Interpersonal constraints or pragmatic motivations are then discussed so as to explain why the construction is considered a rapport-oriented mitigating device, helping reduce or lessen the negative illocutionary forces or unwelcome effects of what follows in interpersonal interaction. Negation is found sentential in a standard way and metapragmatic in a nonstandard way. This study is about the latter which cannot be treated as negation per se although there is a negation marker bushi 'not', it pragmatically implies it is not S that V (NP), but (because) ..." as a conventionalized speaker meaning. On the meta level, the speaker is making an explicit statement of "I'm not performing the speech act of V" or "it's not I/we/he who V (you/him)". However, it cannot be treated as a standard negation in terms of the performative force. The initiated speech act of this construction expresses the speaker's intent of doing V or V-ing, such as "blaming", "criticizing", "abusing" or "threatening", what follows or precedes the construction is quite offensive or face-threatening for the hearer in context, by so doing interpersonal purposes are implied. Thus, I call this a metapragmatic construction, which is a non-denial of speaker intention, and consider it a rapport-oriented mitigating device in terms of its interpersonal purposes since it helps to manage interpersonal relationship in interaction. It is a literal violation of the Gricean Maxim of Quality since it shows on an explicit level that 'saying is doing its opposite' but the flouting or violation does not create implicatures in the Gricean sense (Grice, 1975) that have important communicative functions, and to some degree this challenges the 'saying-is-doing' claim made by Austin (1975). (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.