Moral stance taking as a device of covert aggression in Chinese political language use

Abstract

This paper approaches covert aggression from a moral point of view: it examines how a spokesperson takes a moral stance when he or she rebukes, in a covertly aggressive manner, what are allegedly ‘inappropriate’ questions raised by journalists. This research is based on the corpus of Press Conference. The study identifies the linguistic features and pragmatic strategies that are employed by spokespersons and journalists during the Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions of press conferences. The findings reveal that spokespersons choose to use direct and strong denial markers, syntactic formulations and pragmatic strategies to achieve their aims, such as criticising others, restating information, etc. The findings also demonstrate that a journalist often deploys moral stance taking as a device of covert aggression.