Politeness Phenomena across Chinese Genres - Xinren Chen
13. Backchanneling in Internet Interactions: Implications for Netiquette
Politeness Phenomena across Chinese Genres - Xinren Chen
Xiyun Zhong [+]
Hohai University
Xiyun Zhong is Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign Studies at Hohai University, Nanjing. Her PhD dissertation traces the pragmaticalisation of politeness markers in English. She has published both book chapters and journal articles on English and Chinese pragmatics in general and politeness in particular.
Description
Xiyun Zhong and Cynthia Allen, by combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, and integrating interviews with observations, examine the backchannel practice on the Chinese Internet forums. They discover that backchannels, represented in an Internet style, occur more frequently on the Internet forums than in daily conversations, and perform a variety of politeness functions, each function corresponding to a certain sub-maxim of Leech’s General Strategy of Politeness.