Historical poem-quoting interaction: An interaction-speech act-ritual integrative study of fù in ancient China

Abstract

Drawing on the interaction-speech act-ritual integrative approach, this paper investigates the pragmatic properties, functions and socio-cultural mechanism of fù 賦, a special kind of historical poem-quoting 賦詩 interaction in the Spring and Autumn Period of ancient China, from the historical sociopragmatic perspective. The study shows that, firstly, the historical interaction of fù features both rituality and strategicality. The rituality manifests how fù is used to initiate the ritual speech acts of Greet and Leave-take in the opening and closing phases of interaction. The use of fù as a greeting compulsorily calls for another fù as a response, violation of which will incur negative evaluation while the use of fù as a leave-taking potentially evokes positive evaluation; the strategies are shown in the core phase where fù performs the informative speech act of Opine to express political orientation on the one hand and the attitudinal speech acts of Request, Refusal and Resolve to strategically achieve diplomatic negotiation on the other. Secondly, fù mainly performs in interaction as three social actions: institution-maintaining for bureaucratic institutes and hierarchies, virtue-favoring for the five moral virtues of Confucianism, “Gong” 恭, “Ken” 寬, “Xi” 信, “Min” 敏, and “Hui” 惠 and face-upholding for self and others to re-enact the institutionalized and interpersonal aspects of moral order of li in interaction. Third, the moral order of li in turn provides the basis for the evaluation of fù as social action, between which the dynamic socio-cultural mechanism of fù in interaction emerges.