Discursive Constraints of Teasing: Constructing Professionality via Teasing in Chinese Entertainment Interviews
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Lili Gong
Lili Gong is a lecturer in the School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Her research domains are interpersonal pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatics. Most of her work has been published in some leading journals of linguistics in China.
and
Yongping Ran
Yongping Ran is a professor in Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. His research interests include pragmatics and discourse analysis. His work has appeared in
Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics & Society ,Intercultural Pragmatics , and some leading journals of linguistics in China.
Abstract
Teasing can be approached as a linguistic resource for examining the interpersonal issues of im/ politeness and face, or as a discursive strategy for displaying relationships or constructing social identities. However, studies have underestimated the discursive constraints of teasing in specific contexts. Meanwhile, a majority of teasing studies were based on Western cultures and did not pay sufficient attention to the variety of teasing across cultures. By collecting data from two Chinese entertainment interviews, where the interviewer employs teasing frequently for performing institutional roles, this study examined how teasing functions to assist the interviewer to complete communicative goals, and explored the discursive constraints of teasing in media context. Data analysis exemplified how teasing helped the interviewer to manage an interview event, obtain the guest’s disclosure and seek audience involvement, helping to construct the interviewer’s professionality. Implications for understanding the discursive features of teasing in the Chinese media context were addressed.
About the authors
Lili Gong is a lecturer in the School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Her research domains are interpersonal pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatics. Most of her work has been published in some leading journals of linguistics in China.
Yongping Ran is a professor in Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. His research interests include pragmatics and discourse analysis. His work has appeared in Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics & Society, Intercultural Pragmatics, and some leading journals of linguistics in China.
Acknowledgments
This article is supported by the Department of Education of Guangdong Province entitled innovation project “An Interpersonal Pragmatic Study of Humor in Chinese Broadcasting Context” (No.: 2017WQNCX042), Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guandong Univerisity of Foreign Studies, China for the project of the frontier research and its theoretical innovation in interpersonal pragmatics (2018WZDXM006), and China Scholarship Council (2018). The present article has been completed as the author (Lili Gong) has participated in the Hungarian Academy funded MTA Lendulet (LP2017/5) project of Professor Dániel Z. Kádár. The authors wish to thank Professor Chen Jianping and Professor Xiong Tao for hosting this special column and the support from the Chinese MOE Research Project of Humanities and Social Science (Project No.: 16JJD740006) conducted by Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. They would also like to acknowledge the contributions of anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on the drafts of this article and the editors of Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics for their diligent work.
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Transcription conventions
| Speaker: | Current speaker |
| = | Latching between utterances |
| What | Emphatic stress |
| [ ] | Overlapping speech |
| - | Sudden stop or un-continuous speech |
| ( ) | Unclear speech/Description of non-verbal acts, gaze, movement and gestures |
| (1.5) | A time gap in tenths of a second |
| ⟶ | Margin part of an extract discussed |
| ， | Punctuation |
| ./。 | Full stop in a falling tone |
| ? | Rising tone |
| @@ | Laughs |
| <@ @> | Laughing while speaking |
| <Low Low> | The quality of voice |
© 2020 FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Studies of Public Discourse in the Chinese Sociocultural Context: An Introduction
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Judges’ Footing Shifts in Criminal Courtroom
- Translocalization and Social Rescaling: Case Studies of Linguistic Landscapes in Guangzhou
- Mock Impoliteness and Co-Construction of Hudui Rituals in Chinese Online Interaction
- Discursive Constraints of Teasing: Constructing Professionality via Teasing in Chinese Entertainment Interviews
- Second Language Acquisition
- Learner Autonomy in the National English Language Curricula for Chinese Universities 1978—2007: A Historical Analysis
- Cross-Cultural Communications
- An Investigation of Chinese Undergraduates’ Ability to Translate Chinese Cultural Items into English and Predictors of Such Ability
- Abstracts
- Chinese Abstracts
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Studies of Public Discourse in the Chinese Sociocultural Context: An Introduction
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Judges’ Footing Shifts in Criminal Courtroom
- Translocalization and Social Rescaling: Case Studies of Linguistic Landscapes in Guangzhou
- Mock Impoliteness and Co-Construction of Hudui Rituals in Chinese Online Interaction
- Discursive Constraints of Teasing: Constructing Professionality via Teasing in Chinese Entertainment Interviews
- Second Language Acquisition
- Learner Autonomy in the National English Language Curricula for Chinese Universities 1978—2007: A Historical Analysis
- Cross-Cultural Communications
- An Investigation of Chinese Undergraduates’ Ability to Translate Chinese Cultural Items into English and Predictors of Such Ability
- Abstracts
- Chinese Abstracts
