Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Schri$+fesesrscschn$: <strong>Essays</strong> in Horwr of John DeFrancis
PATRONIZING USES OF THE PARTICLE "maw:
BUREAUCRATIC CHINESE BIDS FOR DOMINANCE IN
PERSONAL INTERACTIONS
Beverly Hong Fincher
Connecticut College
Sentence final particles are called mood words in Chinese grammar
books. Li and Thompson claim their function is to relate an utterance to
which they are attached to the conversational context in various ways; and
to indicate how this utterance is to be taken by the listener. Of course,
many other languages also have sentence final particles whose function is
similar to that of Chinese. One notable example is Japanese. In contrast to
Li and Thompson's emphasis on the listener, S. Kuno says that their
function is to express the speaker's attitude toward the meaning of the
sentence.
These two views are thus from different perspectives on the
communication ch4el. One is from the hearer's point of view and the
other is from the speaker's point of view. This paper concentrates on one
particle, ma, and is based on a recorded spoken text taken from Beijing
Ren. It examines the mood of the speaker and the reactions of the hearers.
It attempts to probe into why the particle ma occurs with such high
frequency when bureaucrats speak even though their listeners are repulsed
by it. Thus, the particle is approached from both ends of the communication
process.
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