Making claims and counterclaims through factuality: The uses of Mandarin Chinese qishi (‘actually’) and shishishang (‘in fact’) in institutional settings

Abstract

The study reported here, building on the research methods of Conversation Analysis (Sacks et al., 1974), Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987), and Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995), attempts to examine the distribution of Mandarin qishi (‘actually’) and shishishang (‘in fact’) across two different discourse modes in formal speech settings: formal lectures and TV panel news discussions. The results indicate that qishi is prevalent in TV panel news discussion data, which fall into the interactional mode, whereas shishishang is more prevalent in formal speech data, which fall into the transactional mode. The study shows that in interaction, qishi is addressee-oriented and signals alignment (agreement) or divergence (disagreement), whereas shishishang is message-oriented and asserts a proposition with a tone of certainty. In addition, the study suggests that although the literal meanings of qishi (‘it’s fact’) and shishishang (‘in the aspect of fact’), which are concerned with factuality, are seemingly unrelated to emotive expressivity, they offer a rhetorical strategy for expressing the speaker’s attitudinal position, and can both serve to indicate the speaker’s epistemic inference.