Toward Multimodal Pragmatics: A Study of Illocutionary Force in Chinese Situated Discourse

Classic pragmatic theories emphasize the linguistic aspect of illocutionary acts and forces. However, as multimodality has gained importance and popularity, multimodal pragmatics has quickly become a frontier of pragmatic studies. This book adds to this new research trend by offering a perspective of situated discourse in the Chinese context.

Using the multimodal corpus approach, this study examines how speakers use multiple devices to perform illocutionary acts and express illocutionary forces. Not only does the author use qualitative analysis to study the types, characteristics, and emergence patterns of illocutionary forces, he also performs a quantitative, corpus-based analysis of the interaction of illocutionary forces, emotions, prosody, and gestures. The results show that illocutionary forces are multimodal in nature while meaning in discourse is created through an interplay of an array of modalities.

Students and scholars of pragmatics, corpus linguistics, and Chinese linguistics will benefit from this title.

Lihe Huang is Associate Professor at Tongji University and Humboldt Fellow of Germany-based Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is one of the leading young scholars in multimodal study and gerontolinguistics in China. His current research interest is utilizing the multimodal method to explore the linguistic behaviour of Chinese elders (visit him at: ageing.tongji.edu.cn).