This study examines self-praise, a prevalent speech act frequently observed in both routine conversations and social media contexts, where it may be encountered more regularly due to its potential to violate politeness norms and threaten another's face. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research analyzed 200 self-praise posts randomly selected from Hupu, a platform predominantly used by male users, and Xiaohongshu, primarily frequented by female users. The primary focus of this investigation was to explore the gender-based differences in the pragmatic strategies employed for self-praise on online social platforms. To strengthen the findings, semi-structured online interviews with users were conducted, enabling a triangulation of data sources. The results indicate that both male and female users consistently prefer implicit self-praise strategies, with 62.3% of male and 50.6% of female users adopting this approach. However, notable disparities emerge in the motivations underlying these strategies: female users exhibit heightened concern for personal privacy and are influenced by traditional values emphasizing modesty, whereas male users are more significantly influenced by psychological factors, such as vanity and the pursuit of fame and fortune. This study highlights the importance of cultural and psychological factors in shaping gendered self-praise behaviors in the digital realm, underscoring the need to consider these factors in future studies on self-presentation in online spaces. It also points to the influence of broader social phenomena, such as network group psychology, on self-presentation strategies, emphasizing the interaction between individual psychological drivers and the social dynamics of digital communication.
Given the relative scarcity of research on the identities constructed by parents from a discursive perspective, this article explores how parents construct their pragmatic identity in family discourse. To this end, the authors chose the couples Luo Su and Bi Shengnan in Tiger Mom and Cat Dad and Bob Duncan and Amy Duncan in Good Luck Charlie as the subjects. Based on Chen's (2013) analytical framework, discursive practices concerning identity construction were analyzed in the two couples' parent-child conversations. A comparative study was then conducted on the identity construction between the Chinese parents and their American counterparts. Applying thematic discourse analysis to identify, analyze, and report patterns within data, this study finds that speech act, deixis, discourse content, discourse features, grammatical choice, and style are discursive practices employed in identity construction. Using these devices, the two couples construct three types of pragmatic identities: instructive parent identity, authoritative parent identity, and amiable parent identity. In addition to the three common identities, Luo Su and Bi Shengnan construct a utilitarian parent identity while Bob Duncan and Amy Duncan construct a narcissistic parent identity. Besides the descriptive study, this article also attempts to explain why Chinese parents and American parents construct similar and/or different identities.
This paper explores how hospitality is practised in community-based shouten (small grocery shops) in Japan, where staff and regulars are often acquaintances living in the same local community. It focuses particularly on the participation of third parties, who are co-present in the compact “conversation-hearable space” of shouten, in remedial work following transactional mistakes regarded as triggering events. Based on Goffman's participant framework, it analyses how the third parties contribute to shaping hospitality by: 1. evaluating a triggering event, 2. inducing humour from a triggering event, and 3. being drawn into the remedial work as if one were a ratified recipient. In conclusion, it suggests that spatial compactness and familiarity, which allow co-present individuals to overhear and follow a conversation, enable individuals who were initially third parties during triggering events to participate in remedial work, noting a retrospective way to treat an unratified overhearer as a ratified recipient.
Utilising a self-compiled corpus of political interviews broadcast in English on CGTN's The Point with Lin Xin, the present study investigates the frequency and function of the discourse marker (DM) "but" employed by interviewees (IEs) from a socio-pragmatic perspective. Quantitative findings reveal statistically significant disparities in both the frequency and specific functions of the DM "but" utilised by IEs in divergent socio-pragmatic categories (e.g., cultural and linguistic features), and the qualitative analysis illustrates the multifunctionality of the DM "but". Specifically, the study identifies functions such as contrast, topic, addition, concession, specification, monitoring, reformulation, conclusion, and approximation. IEs from the western culture and native English-speaking IEs use this marker, the "contrast" function, and the "ideational" domain statistically more than their counterparts, suggesting that cultural and linguistic backgrounds are potential factors influencing IEs' deployment of the DM "but" in political interviews, advancing our understanding of how sociocultural factors shape the use of DMs. The findings have significant implications for the field of pragmatics and political communication, highlighting the importance of considering cultural and linguistic contexts in the analysis of political discourse.
