中文口語言談中規避詞的使用

Abstract

本篇論文旨在討論規避詞在中文口語語料中的呈現，並且從語用的角度來闡述規避詞的使用以及其表現形態的背後動機。 自從喬治．雷可夫(George Lakoff) 於1973年將規避詞一詞定義為：用來增加或減少模糊性的語言，規避詞一詞就成為語言模糊性的研究中一個重要的課題。也有越來越多的學者開始對規避詞產生極大的興趣。在語用學的研究中，規避詞的概念也被擴大，規避詞開始被用來表達說話者對於所表達的命題不同程度上的責任，規避詞是說話者用來減輕說話責任的一個重要機制。但是在過去的研究之中，大多的研究仍多屬理論性的探討，少有研究著墨於規避詞在真實語言使用中的表現，更沒有以中文為基礎的相關討論。有鑑於此，本篇論文將以口語與料作為分析基礎，探究規避詞在口語語料中的真實呈現，並將其表現形態和語用的原則做連結。 我們首先明確討論規避詞在中文中不同詞類的呈現，在所有的詞類中，副詞是最常被使用的詞類，但是單就單一詞彙來說，疑問詞「什麼」則是說話者最常用來作為規避詞的詞彙。在探究中文口語中的規避詞，我們發現說話者通常會在其言談中使用多於一個以上的規避詞，當規避詞同時出現時，彼此是以和諧的方式在句子中互相加強彼此規避詞的功能。此外說話者還可以藉由特定的句法形式或是將所說的話歸因於個人或他人見解等，來減輕自己說話的責任。 我們認為無論是怎樣形式的規避詞運作，都有其語用的動機，可以被視為是一種主觀性(subjectivity)和互動主觀性(intersubjectivity)的體現。首先，說話者藉由規避詞清楚表達個人的立場，這很明顯屬於主觀性的呈現。另一方面，規避詞是禮貌策略(politeness strategy)的一種呈現：首先說話者可以藉由規避詞尋求他人的贊同以及避免他人的反對，如此一來，規避詞保護了說話者的正面面子(positive face)，另一方面，說話者藉由規避詞避免自己可能收到他們批評的傷害，這樣一來規避詞就成為保護說話者負面面子(negative face)的負面面子禮貌策略(negaticve politeness strategy)。除了說話者之外，規避詞使得說話者說出來的話緩和而不直接，減少或避免對聽話者造成的傷害或打擾，因此說話者也藉由規避詞作為一種禮貌策略來保護聽話者的負面面子。 總而言之，透過真實語料我們看見規避詞的真實使用情形，說話者也可以藉由規避詞表達不同的禮貌行為，透過這樣的研究，我們了解規避詞怎樣同時作為正面和負面的禮貌原則。

This corpus-based study explores how hedges are empirically manifested in Mandarin talk-in-interaction and how their patterns reflect the existing pragmatic grounds. Hedges have become one of the subject matters within the study of vagueness since George Lakoff (1973: 471) relate the term “hedge” to expressions “whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy.” More and more scholars interest in its manifestations and functions. The concept of hedges are widened in the field of pragmatics, in which hedges are used to encode speaker’s degrees of less than full commitment to the truth of a proposition in a broad sense. However, most discussions about hedges are theoretical and few efforts have been made to probe into how it manifests itself in real use of language. Or most studies on hedges are conducted based on English. Owing to the lack of empirical evidences in Mandarin, this study sees the need of looking into the authentic data and empirically investigates how hedges manifest themselves in naturally occurring spoken discourse. Specifically, we examine hedging representations in different linguistic categories. Among all lexical hedges, adverbs is the most frequent used categories of hedges, while speakers most often employ the linguistic item shenme as a lexical hedging device. Furthermore, speakers tend to combine more than one lexical hedges in their utterances, in which lexical hedges reinforce their hedging function harmonically. Speakers would also employ syntactic patterns and personal or impersonal attribution as hedging devices to make utterances with low level of commitment. Moreover, it is argued that the exploitation of hedges is pragmatically motivated by (inter)subjectivity. On the one hand, speakers employ hedges to clearly express their attitudes or stance and then show subjectivity in utterances. On the other hand, the exploitation of hedges is grounded on the social concern of politeness. Speakers use hedges not only to seek to be approved of and to avoid disagreement, saving their positive face, but also simultaneously protect themselves from possible imposition of oppositions or criticisms, saving their negative face. A hearer’s negative face is also saved by exploitation of hedges since they soften the force of the utterance, minimize the imposition on hearers, and increase the chance of ratification. Overall, this empirical study shows the manifestation of hedges and the patterning of them in spoken Mandarin discourse, demonstrating that their exploitations are pragmatically motivated. With this empirical study, we know how hedges function as both positive and negative politeness strategy at the same time.