Contribution to Towards a “Culture-relevant Interpretation of Utterances or Conversations”
A Comparative Study of English and Chinese Evaluative Markers in Evaluative Discourse----Based on Data from TV show
Geling Han
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology
Evaluation is important for interaction as it carries both ideational and interpersonal function, and it usually relates to the speaker or writer's view of something as desirable or undesirable. The present research studies the evaluative discourse in the singing competition where judges expressed their opinions and judgments to indicate their attitude and stance towards the singers.
The study focuses on the positive or negative force of evaluative markers— phrases and adverbials functioning as a negative or positive intensifier. With the calculation of concordance by Antconc, the positive and negative force of evaluative markers are compared. The hypothesis is that some makers are positive-oriented while others are negative. Connections o evaluative markers and polarity of evaluation will be helpful to predict the intention of the speaker in conversation.
After studying the recorded evaluative discourses, the author deems a pragmatic view on the whole utterance is necessary and guarantees the result. It is evidenced that most evaluative markers carry both positive and negative forces, and that some markers are positive-oriented while only a few are negative-oriented. It discovers that both American and Chinese judges appear to be critical to each other though positive face is usually assumed more important in Chinese culture. Furthermore, all American and Chinese judges express their compliments as well as criticism abruptly in presence of singers and audiences. Neither the Chinese nor American judges tend to utter negative evaluation directly even though American culture is labeled as openness and directness. However, American judges appear to be as natural as an artist while Chinese judges turn out to be restricted, responsibility-burdened or educational just as most Chinese TV broadcast programs undertake a mission of education and guidance on socio-cultural values.
The study justifies the hypothesis that evaluative markers can intensify the evaluative force, provide evidentiality for evaluation act and indicate opinion parenthetically. Evaluative markers have positive and negative polarity: some evaluative markers in English and Chinese are positive-oriented, only a few have negative force whereas most markers can initiate positive or negative evaluation. Amazingly, English markers have equivalent counterparts in Chinese, they are similar in semantic meaning, pragmatic force and syntactic collocation as well. Similarities and differences the polarity, frequency and collocation patterns of evaluative markers are socio-culturally meaningful.