Chinese perceptions and refutations of face-threatening impoliteness regarding diplomatic press conferences

5.1.1 The analysts’ perspective

The FTI questions from outside usually conflict with China’s expected image, posing a threat to the national face in public. It is found that nine types of FTI questions embody distributive features. Specifically, explicit negative association (42.46 %) occupies the largest proportion, followed by seeking disagreement/avoiding agreement (26.94 %) and threatening/frightening (10.78 %), whereas using inappropriate identity marker accounts for the least (0.86 %) (see Table 2). The impoliteness strategies have been frequently combined within one question, underpinning why the number exceeds the total number of FTI questions. Due to the word limit, we will elaborate on these four strategies as follows.

Above all, in Instance (4), the American journalist constructed his question through a third party’s opinion, viz. the Australian Prime Minister who assumed China’s trade sanctions as irrational bilateral trading behavior imposed on Australia. The journalist implicitly threatened China with the WTO’s intervention and authoritative penalty. The indirect and direct quotations of criticism indicated by eliexingjing 恶劣行径 (‘bad behavior’) and chengchu 惩处 (‘penalize’) can be considered as rejecting the journalist’s authorship and covering professional aggression that seems to do being objective (Yu 2020). However, the question reconstructs China as a “rule violator” contradicting its expected image as a contributor and cooperator of the global economy. Moreover, the U.S. is Australia’s key ally, whose relationship with China has worsened since the trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic. The American journalist’s one-sided viewpoint of underscoring Australia’s cost and neglecting China’s loss highlights the tense Australia-China economic relations during the COVID crisis. Situated in this context, the journalist’s mixed impoliteness strategies of threatening and associating the other negatively can be perceived as intentional threats to face, i.e., “aggravating the face of the intended recipient” (Bousfield 2008: 68). As Harris (2001) contends, impoliteness in adversarial political interactions can be rewarded, because the less powerful side is given the chance to challenge the more powerful, with the third party’s sympathy gained and opponents’ credibility and competence undermined. In the press conference, the American journalist, though less powerful than the diplomat, could construct negative propositions to overtly threaten China’s positive and negative face in public and indirectly get aligned with Australia.

Another case is about seeking disagreement by selecting a sensitive topic (Culpeper 1996). As one of the sensitive topics in China, the Taiwan question is frequently raised by external journalists during press conferences. Though MFA strongly and openly objects to any country that has diplomatic relations with China officially interacting with Taiwan, as seen in Instance (2), the American journalist still scorned China’s firm stance on Taiwan unification by listing Taiwan’s recent series of separatist activities for “independence”. The journalist quoted Taiwan authorities to legitimize the activities, presupposing China’s “aggression” in contrast to America’s and Lithuania’s “peaceful support” by the improper identity markers of taiguofangbu (台‘国防部’ ‘Ministry of National Defense in Taipei’) and taiwandaibiaochu 台湾代表处 (‘representative office in Taiwan’). Through the sensitive topic selection, the juxtaposed quotations, and the response-seeking action, the American journalist aggravated China’s face and challenged its bottom line concerning the nation’s territorial integrity. A similar FTI can be found in Instances (3) and (7) in Table 2, which infringe on China’s consistent principle and expected respect from outside regarding China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. The norms set by the Chinese side were breached. As explicated, “if these self-aspect sensitivities are challenged or undermined, people may perceive a threat to their face” (Spencer-Oatey 2005: 104). Thus, FTI is perceived and retorted by the diplomat (see Extract 4 in Section 5.2).

The self-aspect sensitivities are also reflected in other significant themes. Based on the word frequency, the FTI questions center upon ethnic minorities’ living (e.g., “Xinjiang” = 87, “Uyghur” = 25, “race” = 17, and “genocide” = 17), state sovereignty (e.g., “Taiwan” = 78), humanity and democracy (e.g., “human rights” = 47, “violate” = 22, and “force” = 23), the Winter Olympic Games (e.g., “boycott”/“prohibit”/“not attend” = 28), the covid crisis (e.g., “vaccine” = 17 and “pandemic” = 15), etc. For instance, in Extract (1), the American journalist quoted Pompeo’s official declaration to presuppose China’s “persecution” of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and associated China with immorality. Though the attribute shield youren 有人 (‘some people’), the plausible shield keneng 可能 (‘may’), and the rounder yixie 一些 (‘some’) were then used, the American journalist aligned the U.S. with other nations to boycott Beijing’s host of the Winter Olympics, damaging China’s negative face wants^[11] by applying FTI strategies of negative association, seeking disagreement, and threatening signaled by words in bold in the extract. Since China makes every effort to actively promote and protect human rights and “opposes interference in its internal affairs with the excuse of human rights” (Zhang 2011: 51), during the press conferences, FTI as such (see also Instance 9 in Table 2) nevertheless discredits China’s endeavor and progress in holding international events, ruining its reputation as a peace builder.

Pompeo just released a statement declaring on behalf of the State Department a determination that China has committed crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang. What’s your comment on this? Some say this may trigger international responses. For example, some countries may boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

More importantly, these harsh FTI questions presumably uncover the latent conflicts among the nations that the journalists and the diplomats represent. These situations may prompt recipients, including the nationals being interviewed, to criticize journalists for posing FTI questions, and spokespersons to strategically retort. Considering the intergroup interactional context, either spokespersons’ direct interactions or interviewees’ vicarious interactions with the journalists can be both interpersonal and impersonal.

5.1.2 The nationals’ perspective

As seen from Figure 2, at least 67 % of interviewees judged each of the 13 questions out of the 16 questions as FTI. The questions are mainly concerned with sensitive issues and the out-group groundless accusations of China’s roles in international affairs and its competence in domestic governance. It can be tentatively assumed that Chinese audiences’ affiliation with the nation and firm stances on national governance may affect their shared perceptions of FTI, which was supported by the extracted interview data as follows.

Figure 2:

The interviewees’ judgments of FTI.

For example, Question 5 was raised by a French journalist about America’s reprimand of China’s human rights. The interviewee Jessie (N17) thought it inappropriate for the journalist to propose a question not based on truths. She first negatively commented on the question as pianjian 偏见 (‘biased’), pipingzhize 批评指责 (‘criticize’), and zhiyi 质疑 (‘doubt’). Then she identified herself as an in-group member via zhongguoren 中国人 (‘Chinese’) and used the rhetorical question zenmehaigan 怎么还敢 (‘how dare’) to reinforce her evaluation huyanluanyu 胡言乱语 (‘nonsense’) with contempt. The affiliations can also be seen in 18 interviewees’ frequent usage of first-person plural pronouns “we” (Fre = 158), indicating that the recipients emphasized their Chinese identity and might pay attention to the collective face.

The journalist’s biased question indirectly criticizes China. As a Chinese, when I heard the question, I doubted the journalist’s professionalism…not knowing the matters concerning Xinjiang, how dare the journalist talk nonsense on such a formal diplomatic occasion as a press conference?

By comparison, the interviewees’ assessments of FTI markedly diverged on Questions 10, 11, and 15. Questions 10 and 15 respectively pertain to China’s territory issues and America’s fear of China’s threat to its data security. Both were raised by the Russian journalists. Having noticed the journalists’ nationality, five interviewees considered the questions not FTI. As exemplified in Extract (3), Ben (N27) assumed the question neutral because of Russia’s intimate relationship with China.

I thought it was OK because he was a Russian journalist. We have pretty good relations with Russia and the journalist summed it up thoroughly.

In this aspect, recipients’ background knowledge plays a part, which is not restricted to knowledge of norms but extended to that of China’s international relations and historical knowledge. The finding to some extent can specify Bousfield’s (2008) background knowledge. Another case in point is that 11 interviewees realized the false presupposition and the deliberate analogy between Australian assimilation policy and China’s ethnic policies, who judged the question as intensely aggressive (see Instance 9 in Table 2, i.e., Question 2 in Appendix B). These interviewees also negatively evaluated the questions as weimingti 伪命题 (‘pseudo-proposition’), cuowu 错误 (‘erroneous’), butong 不同 (‘different’), bucunzai 不存在 (‘not exist’), etc. Contrarily, the others unacquainted with the history downgraded the question as “fine” or acknowledged their failure to judge the impoliteness.

Additionally, the forms and the wording of the questions were found to affect recipients’ FTI judgments. In detail, five interviewees concentrated on whether the questions were backed by various, unbiased, and specific sources, as well as whether appropriate terms were used concerning sensitive topics. For example, Henry (N6) considered the journalist’s question (Question 4 in Appendix B) “nothing wrong” because it was in Pompeo’s claim that China was slandered. Mike (N5) pointed out that the journalist malignantly intended to use the inappropriate term taiwanguofangbu 台湾国防部 (‘Taiwan Defense Ministry’) in Question 6 (see Appendix B). Another example is 15 interviewees’ unanimous judgment of Question 11, who deemed it not impolite. The question was raised by a British journalist, who underlined the bilateral competitions where the U.S. prohibited China’s technology. The interviewees believed that the Act passed by the American Senate was objective and quoted in detail, irrelevant to the country the journalist represents, and not concerned with sensitive issues. In summary, the interview data may suggest that recipients’ stances, collective identity, background knowledge, and sensitivity to querying manners and contents can affect their judgments and further rejoinder.

5.2.1 The spokespersons’ rebukes

In total, 11 categories of deliberate metaphors were identified (see Table 3), which were employed by both diplomats and interviewees as counter-strategies against external journalists’ FTI. In the subsequent analysis, we will not confine metaphor’s role in impoliteness to a limited set of source domains, as previous works have done (Kuo 2003; Liu and Wang 2020; Musolff 2017). Rather, we attempt to elucidate that metaphor’s evaluative function is realized by “creating entailments, exploiting scenarios, choosing significant source domains, and mapping connotational meaning” (Deignan 2010: 363). Next, we will analyze how deliberate metaphor works in the four aspects to retort impoliteness.

First, as Table 3 shows, particular source domains with distinct negative entailments are preferred by the Chinese spokespersons to counter FTI. For example, in the JOURNEY metaphor, the subordinate deliberate metaphor NATIONAL UNIFICATION IS A JOURNEY is signaled by metaphorical words such as silu 死路 (‘dead end’) and buguilu 不归路 (‘no returning road’) that usually correspond with “Taiwan Independence”. The metaphor can express diplomats’ firm stances against separatist movements, which frequently clusters with other metaphors. For instance, in Extract (4) responding to Instance (2) in Table 2, the spokesperson used the underlined deliberate metaphors including DETERMINATION IS ROCK indicated by jianrupanshi 坚如磐石 (‘rock-solid’), REUNIFICATION IS A JOURNEY by bukezudang 不可阻挡 (‘unstoppable’) and siluyitiao 死路一条 (‘a dead end’), and DIVIDING CHINA IS PLAYING WITH FIRE/PLAYING CARD GAMES/PLANTING by baoxinwanhuo 抱薪玩火 (‘play with fire’), yinhuoshaoshen 引火烧身 (‘set oneself on fire’), dataiwanpai 打台湾牌 (‘play the Taiwan card’), and zishiqiguo 自食其果 (‘reap what is sown’). The first three metaphors, collocating with direct denials buke 不可 (‘cannot’) and buyao 不要 (‘should not’) suggest China’s determination to realize unification. It is universally acknowledged that fire is dangerous, destructive, and uncontrollable, which can evoke fear. Herein, the FIRE metaphor can implicitly criticize and frighten the American politicians and the Taiwan authorities, who are contemptuous of China’s integrity of sovereignty. At the same time, the spokesperson instilled the belief that such vicious attempts would certainly endanger themselves in turn. In this regard, deliberate metaphors can counter the journalist’s FTI of seeking disagreement and inappropriate identity markers.

China’s determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity is rock-solid, and the historical trend of China’s reunification is unstoppable. We advise some people on the U.S. side not to play the “Taiwan card” and not to play with fire; otherwise, they will only set themselves on fire and reap what they have sown. We also warn the Taiwan authorities that attempting to hold foreign countries to ransom, relying on the United States for “independence”, and rejecting unification by force are doomed to a dead end.

Another example is nation personification, which highlights organs like bozi 脖子 (‘neck’), relationships like diren 敌人 (‘enemy’), actions such as ganzanghuo 干脏活 (‘do dirty work’) and tangqiang 躺枪 (‘be shot when lying down’), and social identity like zei 贼 (‘thief’) in the source domains. The metaphors can convey dislike and criticism of “Others”. In this manner, the spokespersons reacted to FTI by showing authoritative evaluations of China’s diplomatic relations and the negation of some countries (see Extract 5).

Second, some source domains explicitly convey negativity such as PERFORMANCE, DISEASE/HEALTH, and WAR/FIGHT, whose combinations can counter impoliteness as well. Take the PERFORMANCE and DISEASE metaphors as an example. In Extract (5), the spokesperson argued that some American politicians’ ungrounded claims of “human rights violation” were fake, and compared the lies and disinformation to FARCE/TRICK to disparage such claims. The source domain of PERFORMANCE is usually mapped to the target domain of IMMORAL/RIDICULOUS CONDUCT IN POLITICS, via whose entailments one can tell that the Chinese diplomats are scornful of antagonists and skeptical about their acts, motivations, and the authenticity of certain events. The metaphor is akin to Chan and Yap’s (2015) ACTOR metaphor that questions the opponents’ honesty and undermines their political image. The metaphorical usage is also identical to Liu and Wang’s (2020) PERFORMANCE metaphor which satirizes the U.S. and its allies for their threat to the newly founded People’s Republic of China. Additionally, to reprimand America’s politicalizing sports and diplomatic coercion, the spokesperson illustrated America’s rooted deteriorating racism, referring to it as BLEEDING SCAR. Based on humans’ shared embodied experience, health, and illness with strong evaluations can arouse moral judgment and evoke emotional alignment, which has been explicated by Charteris-Black (2014) in his analysis of Thatcher’s LABOUR POLICIES ARE A DISEASE. Here, the spokesperson scorned America by targeting its domestic problems of human rights. Other target domains of the DISEASE/HEALTH metaphor identified in the corpus with high frequency encompass governance, democracy, racism, colonialism, fake news, politics, politicians, etc., with most referring to America’s social problems, ideological bias, and anti-Chinese sentiment.

…These people’s remarks are filled with shameless lies and disinformation and are typical US-style staged farce…For four centuries, racism has been a scar on American society that is still bleeding to this day…which shows that the US is by no means “the beacon of democracy”, and is in no position to be the lecturer…We urge the relevant US legislator to stop the tricks of taking advantage of the Olympic games to seek political manipulation.

Some of the spokespersons’ metaphors constitute the ILLNESS scenario, where the sick are reluctant to admit their deteriorating condition such as lingering scars, serious tumors, and infectious viruses. Instead of taking medicine, the sick find fault with others, assume the healthy to be diseased, and pretend to be a doctor prescribing randomly, whose behavior is considered immoral, abnormal, and illegitimate. In this manner, Chinese diplomats could implicitly criticize America, influencing public emotions and opinions based on their shared experiential knowledge. Furthermore, together with the other two clustered deliberate metaphors DIPLOMACY IS BEACON and THE U.S. IS A LECTURER,^[12] the spokesperson further negated “American democracy” by refusing its values and competence to safeguard human rights. The negative metaphorical presentations of American democracy can also be identified during press conferences held in March, July, October, November, and particularly December, when MFA released The State of Democracy in the United States to present global criticism against America’s hegemonic “democracy”.

Third, some source domains have covert evaluative slants with specific socio-cultural connotations such as jiaoshiye 教师爷 (‘lecturer’), shangfangbaojian 尚方宝剑 (‘sword for the emperor’), tangbidangche 螳臂当车 (‘a mantis trying to stop a chariot’), zhubajielunjiahuo 猪八戒抡家伙 (‘Pigsy uses his rake’), huangshulanggeijibainian 黄鼠狼给鸡拜年 (‘when he makes a courtesy call to a hen, the weasel harbors no good intentions’), etc. Especially the ANIMAL metaphors entrenched in Chinese cultural knowledge can be automatically activated by the Chinese audiences, helping them easily connect negative and positive traits of animals with the targets/references, evoke emotions, and reinforce views concerning facework (Kuo 2003). The target domains in the analyzed data include separatist forces, Pompeo, the U.S., and BBC, which are belittled by spokespersons via the negative mappings of the animals’ traits such as insects’ weakness and the weasel’s evilness. Conversely, the rooster’s victimization and the goat’s innocence are mapped to China to arouse audiences’ sympathy and solidarity.

Apart from the deliberate metaphors, the spokespersons frequently utilized denials and rhetorical questions to reinforce their strong opposition and condemnation as countermeasures. As is seen in Table 3, regarding denials, fandui 反对 (‘object to’) occurs most, whose collocations in the corpus mainly include meifang 美方 (‘the U.S.’; Fre = 28), gansheneizheng 干涉内政 (‘intervene in domestic affairs’; Fre = 20), and jingji/tiyu…zhengzhihua 经济/体育…政治化 (‘politicize economy/sports’; Fre = 14). Moreover, the three forms of rhetorical questions can be taken as a challenge, “critically question h’s position, stance, beliefs, assumed power, rights, obligations, ethics, previous actions, etc.” (Bousfield 2008: 240), which the spokesperson frequently used to question other countries’ dual standards concerning human rights and democracy aside from journalists’ false reports. For example, on January 18, 2021, a British journalist questioned China’s intention to officially increase news reports on the multisite COVID outbreaks, declared that the action was not based on adequate scientific evidence and the WHO’s investigation results, and sought reasons. In response, Hua explicitly judged the question prejudiced, using five rhetorical questions, i.e., weishenmezhongguobukeyi 为什么中国不可以 (‘why China can’t’), weishenmemeiyou 为什么没有 (‘why there is no’), nandaobushima 难道不是吗 (‘isn’t it’), and nandaomeiyouma 难道没有吗 (‘didn’t they’) to intensively challenge British news media’s previous actions and differential treatment of China, as well as some countries’ inaction to closely cooperate with the WHO. In parallel to metaphor, the rhetorical question is another off-record strategy to do FTA (Brown and Levinson 1987). This means can essentially fulfill roles of denying, negating, and irony, which is used by spokespersons in press conferences to convey moral stances and covert aggression (L. Zhou 2020: 6–7). In this manner, the spokesperson refuted the face threat, rationalized China’s actions, and rebuilt its cooperative image in the pandemic origin-tracing work.

As regards other direct negative evaluations, sunhai/pohuai/weihai/shanghai 损害/破坏/危害/伤害 (‘damage’; Fre = 198), suowei 所谓 (‘so-called’; Fre = 196), and huangyan 谎言 (‘lie’; Fre = 131) are used most frequently to criticize and scorn others’ wrong done to China, reduce journalists’ credibility, and delegitimize their accusations of China’s weixie 威胁 (‘threat’; Fre = 9) and renquanwenti 人权问题 (‘human rights problems’; Fre = 60). A specific example is Extract (6) to refute Instance (4) (see Table 2). The spokesperson employed rhetorical questions shishui 是谁 (‘who’) and negative evaluations such as caonong 操弄 (‘manipulate’), zunao 阻挠 (‘circumvent’), and lanyong 滥用 (‘abuse’). He denied responsibility for triggering the trade conflict, blamed Australia as the initiator, and retorted to save China’s face by threatening Australia’s face.

We can all see who is deliberately manipulating and maliciously circumventing the rules of the WTO and unilaterally obstructing the selection of judges for the Appellate Body, which has paralyzed the dispute settlement mechanism; and who is politicizing economic and trade issues, generalizing the concept of national security and abusing its power to encircle and suppress other countries’ enterprises. The Australian side should know this very well in its heart.

When they sense FTI in press conferences, diplomats may criticize journalists’ personal traits, their questions, and references to the information (Jiang 2006). As explicated, their retorting strategies rely on metaphor’s manifold entailments and creative mappings with negative evaluations influenced by Chinese culture. The countering effects can even be strengthened by generating metaphorical clusters and scenarios, together with direct lexico-grammatical means. These strategies can be explained by the Principle of Impoliteness Reciprocity where participants are under pressure “to match the perceived or anticipated (im)politeness of other participants, thereby maintaining a balance of payments” (Culpeper and Tantucci 2021: 150).

5.2.2 The nationals’ rebukes

When they perceived face threat in the questions, the Chinese interviewees would retort with a combination of on-record and off-record strategies too. As Table 4 indicates, the interviewees frequently applied nation personification and WAR/FIGHT/RACE/GAME metaphors, whose mappings are more diverse than other metaphors. For example, human attributes like manheng 蛮横 (‘rude’), relations like dage 大哥 (‘elder brother’), actions like baishouwan 掰手腕 (‘arm wrestling’), and identities like qiangdao 强盗 (‘robber’) are mapped to dispraise and mock “Others”, which mainly refer to the U.K., the U.S., Japan, and Australia. The negative evaluations realized by the metaphors can reflect the interviewees’ shared antagonism against those countries’ actions and roles in the international community.

Moreover, the Chinese interviewees employed richer entailments of LIQUID and FIRE metaphors to deny the journalists’ fueling controversial, tricky, or provoking issues. For instance, powushui 泼污水 (‘pour dirty water’) was used by Rose (N21) to negate the journalist’s question of “racial maltreatment” as a slander and a lie. Additionally, concerning the ANIMAL metaphor, species, properties, living habits, and relationships with humans can contribute to their demeaning effects such as “obedient dogs and destroyable paper tigers” (Liu and Wang 2020: 4). According to our data, the species encompass tigers, wolves, horses, toads, and foxes. These source domains are slightly different from spokespersons’ usage, which scorn “Others” by highlighting their weakness, stupidity, and craftiness. Specifically, the wolf’s wiliness and ferocity, the tiger’s brutality and power, the horse’s guidance, and the toad’s ugliness are used to dispraise and scorn “Others” like the U.S. and Japan, or imply China’s strength matching with the U.S, as seen in William’s (N19) response to the journalist’s question about the nuclear issue between North Korea and the U.S. He used the idiom hujiahuwei 狐假虎威 (‘a fox scares the beasts with the tiger’s power’) to scorn Japan as the incapable fox and the U.S. as the powerful tiger.

In contrast to spokespersons’ rebukes, the Chinese interviewees seldom relied on rhetorical questions, but openly supposed journalists’ deliberate questions to aggravate China’s national face indicated by qitu/keyi/guyi/xuyi 企图/刻意/故意/蓄意 (‘intend’). Their utterances were also found imbued with metapragmatic comments including tiaoxin 挑衅 (‘provoke’; Fre = 32), gongjixing/duoduobiren 攻击性/咄咄逼人 (‘aggressive’; Fre = 8), buyouhao 不友好 (‘unfriendly’; Fre = 22), diaonan 刁难 (‘picky’; Fre = 8), etc., and outpourings of emotions including ganga 尴尬 (‘embarrass’; Fre = 2), buhaoshou 不好受 (‘uncomfortable’; Fre = 2), jinu/fennu 激怒/愤怒 (‘irritate’; Fre = 8), exin 恶心 (‘disgust’; Fre=6), and kexiao/huangmiu 可笑/荒谬 (‘absurd’; Fre=7) to evaluate the journalists’ FTI (see bold fonts in Table 4). The last three kinds of emotions, i.e., anger, disgust, and contempt can be called condemning-others emotions driven by intentions to guard self-esteem and attack, to condemn social transgression, and to disassociate a person with prestige (Haidt 2003). As Culpeper (2011) explains, perceptions of unfair face-attack can trigger these other-condemning emotions. That is to say, the emotions can be attributed to interviewees’ perceptions of FTI and counterattacks to denounce others.