Discourse Analysis Based on Face-Threatening Theory—A Case Study of Tucaodahui Ⅲ

Face and politeness are very important parts in people’s daily communication. But people will violate the principle of politeness for protecting their own face. Therefore, they usually choose to use more humorous words or jocular words to communicate in order to avoid direct contradictions. Starting from the face-threatening acts in the face theory and politeness principle, this paper briefly analyzes the face-threatening acts and its humorous usage in the Tucaodahui III.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gao, H. (1997). Face-saving, politeness, and pragmatics. Journal of the PLA Foreign Language Institute, 86(2), 24-28.

Gong, L. L. (2018). An interpersonal pragmatic study of potential face threatening acts based on face constituting theory. Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, 40(2), 46-57.

Haugh, M. (2010). Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2106-2119.

Hu, H. L., & Dai, Y. C. (2009). An explorative analysis of face threatening acts and politeness strategy in teacher talk. Journal of Zhejiang University of Technology (Social Sciences), 8(2), 172-177.

Ran, Y. P. (1996). Face threatening acts and their regulating strategies in speech communication. Journal of Chongqing University (Social Science Edition), 2(2), 72-77.

Yang, N., & Ren, W. (2020). Jocular mockery in the context of a localised playful frame: Unpacking humour in a Chinese reality TV show. Journal of Pragmatics, 162, 32-44.

Zajdman, A. (1995). Humorous face-threatening acts: Humor as strategy. Journal of Pragmatics, 23, 325-339.