Mitigative specific of verb replication in chinese language (on the example of the tv-series “we are together”)

Abstract

This study examines one of the important functions of the Chinese verb reduplication – mitigation or communicative mitigation. It should be noted that Russian sinologists underestimate this phenomenon and only give a general description of reduplication as a speech mitigation strategy. In this regard, in addition to the lexical, grammatical and syntactic properties of verb doubling in Chinese, we separately considered speech situations with verb reduplication and determined what specific communication tasks this category of language solves. Among other things, in this work, we make an attempt, through translation analysis, to determine which lexical and grammatical means of expression of mitigation through verb doubling are equivalent to Chinese in Russian and why. We took examples from media discourse as linguistic material. In the course of our work, we used the historical, comparative-comparative method and translation analysis of the Chinese text.

In the course of the study, we came to the following conclusions: in comparison with the infinitive form, the doubled form of the verb has a pronounced, distinct softening function, which is most clearly manifested in such communicative situations as persuasion, face protection, consolation and demonstration of politeness. The reduplicated form of the verb is a strategy that communication participants use for language adaptation in a particular communication situation. Its key goal is to reduce the psychological, social and emotional "distance" between individuals, to reduce or minimize the psychological burden on the interlocutor, while increasing the degree of trust, which, in general, is aimed at improving the quality of interpersonal relationships.