本文旨在探討高雄市議員在議會質詢,規避語「其實」的語用功能,並以Lakoff(1975)性別理論為基礎,探討規避語「其實」的使用是否跟性別相關。口語中規避語的使用,主要是說話者積極面子(positive face)跟消極面子(negative face)的保護以避免面子威脅的行為(face threatening acts)發生。本文收集三十二名男性議員跟二十四名女性議員在質詢中使用「其實」的語料。首先,我們使用AntConc 搜集語料,再用Python進行卡方檢定(Chi-square)。研究結果顯示,在質詢中「其實」有六個語用功能,分別是: (1)批評政府官員的回應,(2)議員給予官員可行的辦法,(3)對於官員的看法表示同意,(4)保護議員自己的積極面子,(5)避免過於彰顯議員自己的努力,(6)質詢內容涉及死亡相關的內容,研究結果顯示,只有一個語用功能跟性別相關。
另外,根據Hsieh and Huang (2005)所提出「其實」的架構(qishi construction),說話者用「其實」表達不同意(disalignment)之後,會用「因為」或是「可是」,更進一步說明不同意的理由;在議會質詢,議員也使用相同的模式,表達不同意官員的回答。不論是在充滿面子威脅的質詢,或是口語言談或訪問,規避語都扮演著重要的角色。而對於議員,在質詢中使用規避語的目的,除了表達他們同意或是不同意的態度,更進一步表達他們的立場跟建議,以達到代表民意監督政府的責任。

This corpus-based study investigates how a single linguistic hedge ‘qishi’ is employed by Kaohsiung council members in interpellations. Gender is examined in this study and is hypothesized as a factor affecting council members’ use of hedge ‘qishi’. There are 32 male council members and 24 female council members under examination in the present study. First, we use the AntConc tool to undergo data extraction and six pragmatic functions of qishi are identified. After running Chi-square in Python, the result shows only one pragmatic function is affected by gender.
In the present study, our analytical framework follows Lakoff’s (1975) theory of women’s language and hedging. Our findings in the present study are as follows. First of all, hedging, regarded as a feature of “women’s language” by Lakoff (1975), is not a way of expressing submissive attitudes but a way of showing disapproving attitudes and stances. In our study, there are six pragmatic functions of qishi. The six pragmatic functions we investigate are: criticizing government officials responses, providing workable plans for government officials, showing agreement with government officials’ responses, protecting the council member’s positive face, mitigating an overemphasis on the council member’s efforts, and involving in social taboo. The result of Chi-square shows that gender only affects the function of criticizing politicians’ responses. Moreover, according to the ‘qishi construction’ proposed by Hsieh and Huang (2005), in daily conversations or radio interviews, when people use qishi to express disagreement, they also use yinwei (因為) or keshi (可是) to elaborate on what they have said .We also find that council members also use this pattern in interpellations. To put it another way, when expressing disalignment in utterances, the ‘qishi construction’ can not only be applied to less face-threatening contexts (e.g., daily conversations or radio interviews) but also intense face-threatening contexts (e.g., interpellations).

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