Chinese Pragmatics

Pragmatics is a relatively new core branch of linguistics, alongside syntax, semantics, phonetics and phonology, and morphology. Committed to the study of meaning in dynamic contexts, it addresses language in use, thus complementing the other core branches on different borders. As at phonetic, morphological, and syntactic levels, universalities and variations exist across languages at the level of pragmatic research. While earlier pragmatic researchers tended to explore the more theoretical and thus universalist aspects of pragmatic issues such as speech acts, implicature, deixis, presupposition, face, (im)politeness, and metapragmatics, later researchers tend to examine more variational aspects across languages. In the latter case, compared to the English language, the Chinese language remains underexplored in terms of its pragmatic characteristics. Thus, the ‘Chinese’ aspects of pragmatic issues are less well studied. Topics of particular interest include the following: (a) Chinese speech acts (e.g., invitation, compliment and response, thanking), (b) Chinese deixis, (c) Chinese address forms, (e) Chinese presupposition triggers, (f) Chinese face, (g) maxims of Chinese politeness, (h) Chinese mitigators, (i) Chinese boosters, (j) Chinese particles, and (k) Chinese discourse markers. It is hoped that a survey could better facilitate the understanding of Chinese communication and enable contrastive pragmatic studies involving the Chinese language.