Politeness Phenomena across Chinese Genres - Xinren Chen
12. Backchanneling and Politeness in the Interaction of Medical Consultations
Politeness Phenomena across Chinese Genres - Xinren Chen
Yansheng Mao [+]
Harbin Engineering University
Yansheng Mao is Associate Professor in the Foreign Languages Department at Harbin Engineering University, China, as well as a postdoc research fellow in English Department of East China Normal University. He has published papers in sociopragmatics in journals such as Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies, and Applied Linguistics. He has also co-authored Linguistic Variation in the Framework of Linguistic Adaptation Theory, published by Xiamen University Press.
Kun Yang [+]
Civil Aviation University of China
Kun Yang is Lecturer in the Foreign Languages Department at Civil Aviation University of China. He has published papers on pragmatics in journals such as Modern Foreign Languages, Foreign Language Education in China, Journal of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and Journal of Tianjin Foreign Studies University.
Description
Yansheng Mao and Kun Yang explore the use of back-channels in Chinese consultant-caller communication as a form of politeness. They find that the consultants use backchannels for the primary purpose of following, followed by those performing the functions of agreeing, responding, rephrasing, adding, interrupting, repeating and commenting. These functions, discussed within Leech’s GSP (2014), are found to have the implications of politeness.