Abstract
This study investigates the interwoven relationship between the metadiscourse of (im)politeness, language ideologies, and identity. It examines YouTube comments on a video recording of a controversial incident in Taiwan in which a Taiwanese American, J, insulted a bus driver in English, a marked language choice in the local context. It was found that J’s abusive language and his language choice being English were the top sources of offense as expressed in the comments, and four main strands of language ideologies are identified accordingly. We see the taking of offense in the critical comments as social actions in two senses: each comment is an individual pragmatic act sanctioning a perceived moral transgression, while, collectively, the comments serve as a discursive space where language ideologies are shaped, contested, and reinforced. We further explore how various identities, such as “foreigner”, “ABC”, and “Taiwanese” are discursively constructed in the process of impoliteness assessment and how the perceived attack on the driver’s social identity face is motivated by J’s perceived identities and presumed language proficiency. We argue that the shift in focus to the evaluativity of (im)politeness makes it possible to bring (im)politeness research and sociolinguistics closer to each other.
Funding source: Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Republic of China (Taiwan)
Award Identifier / Grant number: RG029-P-15
About the authors
Hsi-Yao Su is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University. Her research focuses on the connection between language, identity, and language ideologies in the context of Taiwan and transnational Chinese communities. She has published internationally in Journal of Sociolinguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Discourse, Context & Media, Gender and Language, Language and Linguistics, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, etc., as well as in edited volumes by Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Wiley-Blackwell.
Wan-Hsin Lee is a lecturer in the Foreign Language Education Division of Common Core Education Committee, National Taiwan Normal University. She has recently received her PhD degree in Linguistics in the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University. Her research interests lie in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, and she is particularly interested in the sociolinguistic profile of English in Taiwan.
Acknowledgement
The research presented here was supported by Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Republic of China (Taiwan), project number RG029-P-15. We would like to thank Elaine Chun, Michael Haugh, Shumin Lin, Jennifer Wei, former Editor-in-chief Karen Grainger, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback to the earlier versions of this paper. Any errors remain our own.
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