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The effect of social status of interlocutors on the interpretation of the addressee-dominant we in different contexts

Poster E17 in Poster Session E, Thursday, October 26, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port

Mengting Gao¹, Xiaoming Jiang², Wenshuo Chang³, Xiaolin Zhou⁴; ¹Shanghai International Studies University

Depending on communicative contexts, the speaker’s intended referent of the first person pronoun (we) can shift towards the addressee, henceforth the addressee-dominant we, as a doctor says to his patient ‘‘Now, have we taken our medicine?’’. Results of previous corpus analysis suggest that the addressee-dominant we is possibly associated with the speaker’s consideration of being polite and not threatening addressee’s face. However, it is unclear how the addressee-dominant we is interpreted in conversational scenarios. The current study asked participants to read scripts with face-threatening or face-boosting contexts in which interlocutors of different social status employed we to indicate either both the interlocutors (i.e., prototypical use of we) or only the addressee (i.e., the addressee-dominant we). In Experiment 1, participants indicated the referent(s) of we and to rate the extent of addressee-dominance of the speaker using we, the appropriateness and politeness of the speaker using we. In Experiment 2, participants rated the politeness and social distance between interlocutors when the speaker using we, and wrote down the addressee’s possible emotions induced by the use. Results revealed that we was more likely interpreted as addressee-dominated in the face-threatening context than in the face-boosting context. Moreover, compared with the speaker of lower status, the use of addressee-dominant we by the speaker of higher status was interpreted as more polite and drawing closer the social distance between interlocuters regardless of the context of face orientation, but was regarded as more appropriate and inducing more positive emotions in the addressee only in the face-boosting context. On the other hand, compared with the speaker of lower status, the use of addressee-dominant we by the speaker of equal status was interpreted as more polite, drawing closer the social distance between interlocuters, and inducing more positive emotions in the addressee only in the face-threatening context. Taken together, the current results suggest that the addressee-dominant we is interpreted as a communicative behavior to save the addressee’s face in the face-threatening context, but to enhance the positive face for the speaker himself in the face-boosting context. Moreover, the relative social status between the interlocuters modulates the appropriateness and socioemotional functions of the use of addressee--dominant we. Key words: the addressee-dominant we, social status, face, socio-pragmatic functions

Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics,