（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）印象管理视角下的自嘲.pdf

iv 摘摘 要要 自嘲是一种常见的交际策略，它对交际的顺利进行起着重要的作用。然而研究 自嘲的学者却不多。目前自嘲的研究主要集中在文学、语言学和社会学这三个角度。 通过分析前人在自嘲方面做出的研究，不难发现，前人没有探索说话人采用自嘲的 内在原因。换句话说，促使说话人在交际中使用自嘲的内在原因的研究还是一个空 白。 鉴于这一点，本文将在 leary 和 kowalski 提出的印象管理双成分模型的基础上 定性地、系统全面地探索说话人在交际中采用自嘲的内在原因。leary 和 kowalski 认为印象管理包括两个不连续的过程：印象动机与印象建构。印象动机是指个人试 图控制他人对自己的印象的愿望或动机；而印象建构则是指个体决定给他人产生什 么样的印象，并如何产生这种印象。本研究主要研究说话人采用自嘲的印象动机与 印象建构。本文的语料主要来源于期刊文章的引例和日常会话等。 在对自嘲进行研究之前，根据本文研究的角度尤其是考虑到跨学科研究的特点， 并通过对语料的分析，本文首先给自嘲做出一个定义。我们认为自嘲应该具有以下 两个特点： （1）采用幽默的话语； （2）是一种交际策略。 研究发现：促使说话人采用自嘲的主要动机是最大限度地赢得期望的奖赏和/或 最小限度地减少预料的惩罚(schlenker, 1980)。具体来说，说话人采用自嘲是为了获 得有利的社会和物质结果（如赞许、合作伙伴、信任、尊敬、喜爱、某物、改善现 状） ，建立和维护自我（包括自尊和身份）和控制情感。说话人试图给他人留下的印 象主要为个性特征，如幽默、乐观、自信和机智等。通常情况下，说话人通过自嘲 其自身外表特征、失误行为或所处的尴尬境地来产生上述印象。 本文较系统地解释了日常交际中促使人们使用自嘲的印象动机和印象建构，从 而更好地帮助人们在某些特定的社会环境中通过自嘲产生预期的印象来增加奖赏和/ 或减少损失。 关键词关键词：自嘲；印象管理；自我呈现；印象动机；印象建构 ii abstract self-mockery, considered as a prevalent communicative strategy, plays a crucial role in smooth interaction. however, only little attention has been paid to it and all the previous studies could be categorized into the following three approaches: the literary approach, the linguistic approach and the sociological approach. after the analysis of the achievements and limitations of the previous research, it is not difficult to find that the previous research on self-mockery has not revealed the complicated psychological elements hidden in this dynamic process. put differently, the reason why people employ self-mockery as their communicative strategy in certain circumstances is still unknown. in view of the limitations in the previous studies, the current research aims to probe into the psychological reason why people employ self-mockery as their communicative strategy and present a more systematical and comprehensive analysis of self-mockery from the social psychological perspective, on the basis of the two-component model of impression management, put forward by leary and kowalski in 1990. the two components are impression motivation and impression construction. impression motivation refers to the motivations that drive people to monitor their impressions through the employment of certain kinds of strategies and impression construction refers to the impressions that people attempt to make on others and the ways in which they construct their desired impressions. the present investigation concentrates on the two discrete processes of self-mockery and it is a qualitative study based on the data mainly extracted from journals and daily communication. before the analysis, it is necessary to give a definition of self-mockery appropriate for the perspective of the current research. after the thorough study of the data collected, it is concluded that self-mockery should include the following two features: (1) adopting ridiculous language and (2) being considered as a communicative strategy to realize certain communicative goals. by applying the two-component model of impression management to the study on self-mockery, it is found that the primary self-presentational motive that drives people to employ self-mockery to tailor their impressions is the desire to maximize the expected rewards and/or minimize the expected punishment (schlenker, 1980). more specifically, people adopt self-mockery as their self-presentational strategy in order to obtain desired iii social and material outcomes (such as approval, partnership, trust, respect, likability, the some desired things, and the improvement of current situation), to construct and maintain self (including self-esteem and identities), and to regulate emotion. the impressions that they attempt to convey to others through the employment of self-mockery are mainly the ones of their personal attributes, such as being humorous, optimistic, self-confident, witty, etc., and the ways in which they construct these impressions are to mock characteristics of their physical appearance, the faults in their behavior and embarrassing situations. the current study provides a systematic explanation to impression motivation and impression construction of self-mockery employed in verbal interaction, which could help us communicate with others more smoothly so as to increase the expected rewards and/or decrease the expected costs in life by leading others to form certain impressions of us in certain social settings. key words: self-mockery; impression management; self-presentation; impression motivation; impression construction 51 承承 诺诺 书书 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是在导师指 导下独立完成的， 学位论文的知识产权属于山西大学。 如果今后以其他单位名义发表与在读期间学位论文相 关的内容，将承担法律责任。除文中已经注明引用的 文献资料外，本学位论文不包括任何其他个人或集体 已经发表或撰写过的成果。 学位论文作者（签章） ： 20 年 月 日 52 学位论文使用授权声明学位论文使用授权声明 本人完全了解山西大学有关保留、使用学位论文的 规定，即：学校有权保留并向国家有关机关或机构送交 论文的复印件和电子文档，允许论文被查阅和借阅，可 以采用影印、缩印或扫描等手段保存、汇编学位论文。 同意山西大学可以用不同方式在不同媒体上发表、传播 论文的全部或部分内容。 保密的学位论文在解密后遵守此协议。 作者签名： 导师签名： 20 年 月 日 chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 the object of the present study different communicative strategies may have various effects if used in certain circumstances. an appropriate strategy may help maintain a friendly relationship between communicators, insure the communication going smoothly and realize certain communicative goals. therefore, in order to satisfy their communicative needs, people may choose certain strategies according to different social settings, which has already aroused great interest among researchers. some communicative strategies have been conducted in detail, such as pragmatic vagueness, deception, humor, compliment, pragmatic failure, and so on. yet self-mockery, as an indispensable communicative tactic, has not been given much attention. sometimes, self-mockery is a better and more appropriate strategy than others to be adopted in certain circumstances, for example, in an embarrassing situation. see the following example. (1) when the american president george bush is helped to his seat after his collapse at the reception dinner party held by the japanese prime minister, his first response is, “i only wanted to attract your attention”. 论英语言语交际中“自嘲”策略的动机 nearly everyone feels embarrassed when tripping and falling in front of others especially in a very important meeting. when george bush is attending a very special reception dinner held by japanese prime minister, accidentally he tripps and falls down, which makes him feel embarrassed. yet he is so cute that he adopts self-mockery by remarking “i only wanted to attract your attention”. through the employment of self-mockery as his communicative strategy, bush eases the embarrassing atmosphere. to some extent, the communicative strategy employed is a manifestation of the speakers social psychology (wu, 2002) in a certain circumstance. in other words, it is feasible and necessary to explore the social psychology of the speaker, which has aroused little attention. take (1) for instance, what is the social psychology of bush while his employing self-mockery. put it more specifically, what impels bush to employ self-mockery in such a situation. therefore, this thesis aims to explore self-mockery from a study of self-mockery from impression management approach 2 the social psychological approach. 1.2 the rationale of the research the selection of self-mockery as the subject of the present research is based on the following three considerations: the first reason is that self-mockery is such a widely used communicative strategy and plays a crucial role in smooth interaction. however, people just take it for granted and little attention has been paid to the speakers psychology in the dynamic process. why does the speaker employ self-mockery or what drives the speaker to adopt self-mockery in certain circumstances? and how do they employ it? all of these questions arouse our curiosity and interest in probing into this phenomenon from the social psychological perspective in detail. the second reason is the consideration of its academic value and significance. the literature on self-mockery is relatively few and these studies can be generally categorized into three approachesthe literary approach, the linguistic approach and the sociological approach. however, till now, no study of self-mockery has ever been conducted to explore the speakers psychology in the dynamic process from the social psychology perspective. it is thought that the new approach to the study of self-mockery will definitely broaden the research coverage of it, deepen the understanding of this communicative strategy so that it could be more appropriately adopted in the verbal communication. furthermore, the present study of self-mockery has some implications and applications in verbal communication. as mey (1994: 239) said, pragmatics is such a subject that it not only describes the way in which people use language, but also concerns with the application how people use them more appropriately. the current study attempts to find out a model of linguistic choice of self-mockery in verbal communication and then it could be adopted properly so as to improve speakers communicative abilities and successfully realize their special communicative goals. with the above three considerations in mind, we attempt to offer a more systematical and comprehensive analysis of self-mockery and probe into the psychological reason of it from the social psychological approach. it is sure to shed light on the usage and understanding of self-mockery in certain communicative circumstances. chapter one introduction 3 1.3 problems in the previous studies till now, studies on self-mockery are relatively few. in the previous research self-mockery is taken as a communicative strategy in verbal communication and as a writing technique in literary works.1 however, all those studies have not revealed the complicated psychological elements hidden in this dynamic process. therefore, a more dynamic and systematic analysis on this special and worth-studying linguistic phenomenon should be done. self-mockery is a pervasive strategy in verbal communication, which seems easy to understand yet actually difficult to define. although several definitions of self-mockery have been given by some researchers in the previous studies, there is still no clear definition applicable for the current research. therefore, such a kind of definition of self-mockery is of great importance for the present study, which is to be given at the very beginning of chapter two. in addition, the study on self-mockery could help people understand and adopt self-mockery more efficiently and properly, and realize their various communicative goals. thus, much more attention should be given to self-mockery and a theoretical guidance to the understanding and application of it from the social psychological approach needs to offer to solve those problems in the previous studies on it. 1.4 the objective of the present study this thesis aims to carry out a more systematical and comprehensive analysis on self-mockery and probes into the psychological reason of it from the social psychological perspective. with this aim, we hope to find out a relatively scientific explanation of self-mockery as a result of linguistic choice and to come to a better understanding of it on the basis of the two-component model of impression management proposed by leary and kowalski in 1990. several research questions are to be explored in the present study. they are: what is the motivation that drives the speaker to employ self-mockery as his/her communicative strategy in a certain circumstance? as mentioned before, the objective of the present research is the deliberate employment of self-mockery in verbal communication. therefore, it is necessary to find out the reason why the speaker uses 1 because self-mockery adopted in verbal communication is the objective of the present research, self-mockery used as a writing technique in literary works is excluded in this thesis. a study of self-mockery from impression management approach 4 self-mockery as his/her communicative strategy in a particular social setting. what kind of impression does the speaker attempt to make on others through the employment of self-mockery? researchers on impression management hold that people adopt different communicative strategies to convey desired impressions in various contexts to realize their communicative goals. what are those impressions? how does the speaker construct his/her desired impressions or how does the speaker regulate their impressions that others form of them through the employment of self-mockery? as leary and kowalski (1990) proposed, impression management involves two discrete processesimpression motivation and impression construction, each of which operates according to different principles and is affected by different situational and dispositional antecedents. in this thesis, we probe into the two processes involved in the employment of self-mockery as a self-presentational strategy and try to answer those questions. we hope the present research can offer a more dynamic and systematic analysis of self-mockery, thus a theoretical guidance to the understanding and application of self-mockery in verbal interaction. 1.5 research methodology and data collection it is of great importance to choose an appropriate research method to develop every branch of sciences; of course, linguistics is no exception. normally, there are two main types of research methodsqualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. generally speaking, research methods adopted in studies differ according to the various subjects, and different focuses and purposes to investigate. the present research mainly adopts the qualitative analysis of the data. meanwhile it is both data-driven and theory-driven. as dey (1993: 7) mentions, qualitative analysis requires dialectics between data and theory. the data cannot be analyzed without theory; at the same time, the theory must be shaped and tested by the data (dey, 1993: 7). therefore, data collection plays an essential role in the qualitative research. “source, range, size and representativeness are the major criteria judging the reliability of the data and guiding the act of collecting data (wu yaxin, 2002: 10)”. the data used in this thesis are mainly extracted from journals and daily communication. chapter one introduction 5 1.6 outline of the thesis the thesis is composed of the following five chapters. chapter one serves as a general introduction to the present research, including the object and the rationale of the study, problems in the previous studies on self-mockery, the objective of the present research. it also provides the research methodology, the way of data collection and the organization of this thesis. chapter two first discusses the definitions of self-mockery given by several researchers and tries to derive a definition appropriate for the present study. and then it reviews the previous relevant literature on self-mockery from different approaches and analyzes the achievements and limitations of the previous research. in the end the perspective of the present study is also illustrated. chapter three mainly elaborates a theoretical framework for the analysis of self-mockery on the basis of impression management, especially the two-component model of impression management proposed by leary and kowalski (1990). it involves two discrete processesimpression motivation and impression construction, which are used to demonstrate the complexity of the linguistic choices in verbal communication. chapter four probes into the reason why the speaker chooses self-mockery as his/her communicative strategy in certain circumstances, to be more exact, the complicated psychological elements hidden in this dynamic process based on the intensive analysis of the data with the two-component model of impression management. chapter five summarizes the major findings and then points out the implications and limitations of the present study. finally, some suggestions are provided for further research on self-mockery. a study of self-mockery from impression management approach 6 chapter two a review of the relevant literature 2.1 introduction self-mockery, as a communicative strategy, plays an important role in verbal communication. however, there has never been an agreement on the definition of self-mockery till now. therefore, an appropriate definition for the present study seems very essential and significant, which is first given in this chapter. at the same time, the distinctions between self-mockery, and sarcasm/irony and self-derogation are also conducted. second, this chapter focuses on the previous research approaches to self-mockery. third, the achievements and the limitations in the previous studies are expounded and finally the perspective adopted in the current research is briefly introduced. 2.2 terminological issue 2.2.1 the definition of self-mockery it is of great significance to first provide a clear delimitation of the objective of the present study before an academic research is conducted. as for self-mockery, there exists a variety of definitions that have been proposed by different researchers based on their own interest, research purposes and focuses, and the data used in their analysis. despite of the fact that self-mockery has been analyzed in several studies, there is still no agreement as to the precise definition of it and that unavoidably hinders our understanding and analysis of self-mockery. in cihai (2002), self-mockery is defined as mocking or laughing at oneself and it has the same meaning as self-ridicule. in th