{"title":"Keqi (客气) in historical Chinese: evidence from metapragmatic comments","authors":"Hui Li","doi":"10.1515/pr-2019-0045","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Keqi is a politeness1-related metalexeme in both historical and contemporary Chinese. It is often understood as synonymous to the etic metalexeme “polite”. This article explores the meaning of keqi in historical Chinese by delineating the shared characteristics of the verbal and non-verbal behaviors that are interpreted as keqi in participants’ metapragmatic comments (99 cases of bubi keqi, 66 cases of buyong keqi, and 16 cases of bie keqi) in historical Chinese and by analyzing how the practice of keqi impacts the ongoing interaction. We find that the practice of keqi should be understood as a type of relational ritual and that it can be understood as a ritual frame indicating practice which indicates an emergent standard situation. As a metalexeme, keqi is different from politeness in that it is associated with the operation of ritual frame indication in a behavioral act, while politeness is associated with the operation of other-attentiveness. In cases where both the operations are possible, the interpretation of a behavior as keqi or polite depends on which operation is more salient to the recipient.","PeriodicalId":45897,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politeness Research-Language Behaviour Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Politeness Research-Language Behaviour Culture","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2019-0045","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Abstract Keqi is a politeness1-related metalexeme in both historical and contemporary Chinese. It is often understood as synonymous to the etic metalexeme “polite”. This article explores the meaning of keqi in historical Chinese by delineating the shared characteristics of the verbal and non-verbal behaviors that are interpreted as keqi in participants’ metapragmatic comments (99 cases of bubi keqi, 66 cases of buyong keqi, and 16 cases of bie keqi) in historical Chinese and by analyzing how the practice of keqi impacts the ongoing interaction. We find that the practice of keqi should be understood as a type of relational ritual and that it can be understood as a ritual frame indicating practice which indicates an emergent standard situation. As a metalexeme, keqi is different from politeness in that it is associated with the operation of ritual frame indication in a behavioral act, while politeness is associated with the operation of other-attentiveness. In cases where both the operations are possible, the interpretation of a behavior as keqi or polite depends on which operation is more salient to the recipient.
期刊介绍：
The Journal of Politeness Research responds to the urgent need to provide an international forum for the discussion of all aspects of politeness as a complex linguistic and non-linguistic phenomenon. Politeness has interested researchers in fields of academic activity as diverse as business studies, foreign language teaching, developmental psychology, social psychology, sociolinguistics, linguistic pragmatics, social anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, communication studies, and gender studies. The journal provides an outlet through which researchers on politeness phenomena from these diverse fields of interest may publish their findings and where it will be possible to keep up to date with the wide range of research published in this expanding field.
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