Reflections 1 (Speech Acts)

According to the lecture note, speech act is “an utterance conceived as an act by which the speaker does something.” (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics). Quite a chim( or power) explanation. By looking at the examples, i think i can interpret it as a series action of delivering + response. During a speech, you have a subject, you do something to other people like complimenting or insulting and other people response.

Lecture notes present difference in American and Chinese in speech act like complimenting. Well, i don't surprise at all they have difference. However i never thought they can be categorized under some categories. In particular, chinese have the behaviors of rejecting, thanks and denigrating and accepting. I think through my life, indeed, there are many situations chinese do respond in this way. So this is amazing, i must admit.

However, since China opened her gates and chinese started to under the impact of various cultures, chinese new age teenagers who are branded as 80s and 90s are behaving differently, i mean some actions may not be able to categorized so easily. Firstly, rejecting and thanking and denigrating are becoming lesser involving in the conversation. Acceptings are become more obvious. It is common to address girls like "美女" - beauty even the girls are not really beautiful, and you must note that they accepted immediately without hesitating and carry on the conversation, i don't think they will say "thank you for calling me 美女". Teenagers nowadays are full of confidence. Here pushed my point to second part. There is a word in chinese called "臭美". what this means is actually, you feel you are better although other people do not think you are better. so sometimes, people complimenting you just because of face-saving or courtesy, but you take it as guarranteed. I give some examples.

A: "Yo, you look good in that suit"
B: "Oh, really? i know that, a beautiful angel fit everything"
A : start vomitting

I think we categorize sunch actions under accepting, but accept in a strange ways right? i am sure some of our singaporean classmates also have such behaviors. Since modesty still the main stream of our society, sometimes this kind of extreme speech acts are not accepted, let us look at this video for ending.