语料库与人际修辞研究——以“说”的人际修辞用法为例

Corpus and Interpersonal Rhetoric: A Case Study on “Shuo”

传统路径下人际修辞研究往往聚焦人际互动中的特定话语,从礼貌原则、面子理论等角度解读说话人特定语言表达背后的礼貌策略,而话语路径下的人际修辞研究则更多基于当下交际者的人际评价进行分析。前者容易轻率地在特定语言形式或话语内容与人际意义之间画等号,后者容易过于强调交际者的个体经验,忽略了特定语言表达的常规用法。开展基于语料库的人际修辞研究可以弥补上述局限,为进一步理论解读提供充分性描写。作为个案,本文基于北大现代汉语语料库(CCL)语料,系统考察“说”的人际修辞用法及其与常规用法的差别,并从礼貌理论角度阐释其人际修辞理据。

The traditional approach to interpersonal rhetoric tends to focus on specific utterances in interpersonal interactions, interpreting the politeness strategies deployed in speakers’ use of specific linguistic expressions from the perspectives of politeness principle and face theory. In contrast, the discursive approach to interpersonal rhetoric analyses them on the basis of the interpersonal evaluations of the interlocutors in the ongoing interaction. While the former tends to make a hasty match between a particular linguistic form or utterance and its interpersonal meaning, the latter tends to overemphasize the individual experience of the communicator and ignore the conventional interpersonal usage of a particular linguistic expression. Conducting corpus-based interpersonal rhetoric research can remedy these limitations and provide adequate descriptions for further theoretical interpretation. As a case study, this paper examines the interpersonal rhetorical use of “shuo” and its distinction from its conventional usage by drawing on the data from the CCL corpus, and further explains its interpersonal rhetorical rationale from the perspective of politeness theory.