1.Introduction

This study explores how the Chinese second-person V pronoun nin 您 is used in disagreements. Mandarin Chinese has an informal T pronoun, ni 你, as well as a formal V pronoun, nin. The latter is conventionally regarded as a so-called ‘deferential’ form – it is an essentially ‘new’ pronoun which according to many previous researchers was coined in the 20th century as a local ‘equivalent’ of V pronouns in ‘Western’ languages (see an overview in Pan and Kádár 2011). However, nin is different from V forms in other languages in that its interactional use is pragmatically constrained: it tends to be used mostly in the North and Northeast of China in spoken language. Thus, nin is different from V pronouns in languages such as German, French and Hungarian where the V pronoun is part of standard language use, i.e. it is not regional or dialectal.11.Note that due to the standardisation of Mandarin in China the V pronoun nin is becoming increasingly popular in dialect-speaking areas as well, especially in written form. However, in spoken language it tends to be frequented in the North and Northeast of China. It is probably this constrained feature of nin – and the fact that it tends to be frequented in settings where power is important – which prompted various researchers to argue that nin is essentially part of deferential language use.

In this study, we aim to explore an alternative use of nin by examining its conventionalised uses in scenarios of disagreement. By ‘conventionalised use’ we do not mean that we presume at the outset of our research that a particular usage of nin is conventionalised. Rather, our goal is to identify recurrent – and, as such conventionalised – ways in which nin tends to be used in scenarios featuring disagreement. We depart from the following preliminary observation: in many instances of Chinese online interaction one can witness a noteworthy deviation from deferential usages of nin. More specifically, nin – which is infrequent in colloquial online interaction outside of business and administrative situations – seems to be preferred in disagreements rather than in deferential contexts in such settings. This flies in the face of what has previously been the mainstream interpretation of the use of nin, and it helps us interpret this ‘deferential’ expression on a par with other honorifics in East Asian languages which can express many meanings along with deference (see e.g., Cook 2011Cook, Haruko 2011 “Are Honorifics Polite? Uses of Referent Honorifics in a Japanese Committee Meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3655–3672. Cook, Haruko 2011 “Are Honorifics Polite? Uses of Referent Honorifics in a Japanese Committee Meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3655–3672. ; Okamoto 2011Okamoto, Shigeko 2011 “The Use and Interpretation of Addressee Honorifics and Plain Forms in Japanese: Diversity, Multiplicity, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3673–3688. Okamoto, Shigeko 2011 “The Use and Interpretation of Addressee Honorifics and Plain Forms in Japanese: Diversity, Multiplicity, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (15): 3673–3688. ).

Disagreement in this study mainly involves contexts where the face of one or more of the participants is threatened, which is typical in anonymous online scenarios. Researchers have pointed out that in many languages a switch to a V pronoun indicates disagreement and conflict in settings where the T pronoun would normally be preferred. However, surprisingly little attempt has been made to explore such usages of nin, and in this study we aim to fill this knowledge gap with the aid of a bipartite research procedure. First, we use a Discourse Completion Test (DCT; see Blum-Kulka et al. 1989Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds) 1989 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. New Jersey: Ablex.Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds) 1989 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. New Jersey: Ablex.) to investigate circumstances where nin tends to occur in scenarios involving disagreement. We employ the two variables of age and offline/online segments of interaction (see more below). Second, based on the outcome of this first step we examine naturally occurring uses of nin in online interactions where disagreement occurs. Here we conduct an interactional analysis, trying to see whether there are patterns of recurrence in our data. The existence of patterns in seemingly ad hoc online interactions may in turn show that uses of nin in disagreement can be as conventionalised as deferential usages in certain interaction types.

Through this bipartite approach we aim to:

1. Determine in which mode of interaction (i.e., online and/or offline) and by members of which age group disagreement uses of nin tend to be preferred;

2. Examine recurrent uses of nin in naturally occurring disagreement interactions, by studying (a) speech acts and interactional patterns in which nin is preferred and (b) symmetrical and asymmetrical uses of nin (versus the T form ni).

Our study is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a review of previous research on the use of V pronouns in general and nin in particular. In Section 3 we describe our methodology and data. Section 4 presents the results of the data analysis, while Section 5 provides a conclusion.

2.Review of literature

The T/V distinction has been very broadly studied in pragmatics (see e.g. Braun 1988Braun, Friederike 1988 Terms of Address: Problems of Patterns and Usage in Various Languages and Linguacultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Braun, Friederike 1988 Terms of Address: Problems of Patterns and Usage in Various Languages and Linguacultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ; Mühlhäusler and Harré 1990Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Rom Harré 1990 Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Rom Harré 1990 Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.; Clyne et al. 2009Clyne, Michael, Catrin Norrby, and Jane Warren 2009 Language and Human Relations: Styles of Address in Contemporary Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, Michael, Catrin Norrby, and Jane Warren 2009 Language and Human Relations: Styles of Address in Contemporary Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Cook 2014Cook, Manuela 2014 “Beyond T and V–Theoretical Reflections on the Analysis of Forms of Address.” American Journal of Linguistics 3 (1): 17–26.Cook, Manuela 2014 “Beyond T and V–Theoretical Reflections on the Analysis of Forms of Address.” American Journal of Linguistics 3 (1): 17–26.; House and Kádár 2020House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2020 “T/V Pronouns in Global Communication Practices: The Case of IKEA Catalogues across Linguacultures.” Journal of Pragmatics 161: 1–15. House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2020 “T/V Pronouns in Global Communication Practices: The Case of IKEA Catalogues across Linguacultures.” Journal of Pragmatics 1611: 1–15. ).22.An up-to-date overview of research on pronouns as part of the broader topic of terms of address can be found at the website of the International Network of Address Research: https://​inarweb​.wordpress​.com​/home​/annual​-bibliography/ This body of research has largely started with the seminal work of Brown and Gilman (1960)Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman 1960 “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 253–276. New York: John Wiley.Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman 1960 “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 253–276. New York: John Wiley. who described the T/V pronominal distinction in terms of power and solidarity, arguing that the T-form indicates intimacy and familiarity between the interactants, while the V-form indicates power, seniority and authority. One of the early critiques of Brown and Gilman was Kendal (1981)Kendall, Martha B. 1981 “Toward a Semantic Approach to Terms of Address: A Critique of Deterministic Models in Sociolinguistics.” Language & Communication 1 (2–3): 237–254. Kendall, Martha B. 1981 “Toward a Semantic Approach to Terms of Address: A Critique of Deterministic Models in Sociolinguistics.” Language & Communication 1 (2–3): 237–254. who pointed out that the same pronominal form can acquire a diverse and complex set of meanings in a particular context. Also, as Martiny (1996)Martiny, Thierry 1996 “Forms of Address in French and Dutch: A Sociopragmatic Approach.” Language Sciences 18 (3–4): 765–775. Martiny, Thierry 1996 “Forms of Address in French and Dutch: A Sociopragmatic Approach.” Language Sciences 18 (3–4): 765–775. argued, interactants may manipulate any conventional meaning of a pronominal form to create new meanings beyond the alleged correlation with power and solidarity (see also Geyer 2021Geyer, Naomi 2021 “Friendly or Condescending? Negotiating Appropriateness in Online Discourse on Medical Practitioners’ Non-use of Honorifics.” East Asian Pragmatics 6 (1): 87–108. Geyer, Naomi 2021 “Friendly or Condescending? Negotiating Appropriateness in Online Discourse on Medical Practitioners’ Non-use of Honorifics.” East Asian Pragmatics 6 (1): 87–108. ).

Later research on V pronouns revealed that the V form tends to be used in conflictive encounters where it generally indicates social distance. Such conflictive usages of V pronouns have been found to exist in many languages. For example, the V form Sie in German can be “an instrument of exclusion” (Clyne 1995Clyne, Michael 1995 The German Language in a Changing Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, Michael 1995 The German Language in a Changing Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 140) and it may be associated with isolation, arrogance, distance, coldness, rejection and so on (Winchatz 2001Winchatz, Michaela R. 2001 “Social Meanings in German Interactions: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Second-Person Pronoun Sie .” Research on Language and Social Interaction 34 (3): 337–369. Winchatz, Michaela R. 2001 “Social Meanings in German Interactions: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Second-Person Pronoun Sie.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 34 (3): 337–369. ). Furthermore, a change from T to V is usually considered an insult. An example of such changes was studied by Kretzenbacher and Schüpbach (2015)Kretzenbacher, Heinz L., and Doris Schüpbach 2015 “Communities of Addressing Practice? Address in Internet Forums Based in German-Speaking Countries.” In Address Practice as Social Action: European Perspectives, ed. by Catrin Norrby, and Camilla Wide, 33–53. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kretzenbacher, Heinz L., and Doris Schüpbach 2015 “Communities of Addressing Practice? Address in Internet Forums Based in German-Speaking Countries.” In Address Practice as Social Action: European Perspectives, ed. by Catrin Norrby, and Camilla Wide, 33–53. London: Palgrave Macmillan. in the context of German. To provide another example, the Spanish V form usted (and its plural ustedes) is frequented in conflictive political interaction, in particular in face-threats (see e.g., Arroyo 2000Arroyo, José Luis Blas 2000 “Mire Usted Sr. González… Personal Deixis in Spanish Political-Electoral Debate.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (1): 1–27. Arroyo, José Luis Blas 2000 “Mire Usted Sr. González… Personal Deixis in Spanish Political-Electoral Debate.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (1): 1–27. ). Similarly, a shift from the French T form tu to its V form vous can be experienced as breaking up an established relationship (e.g., Morel 1994Morel, Mary-Annick 1994 “Les pronoms dans l’énoncé oral française [Pronouns in Spoken French].” Faits de Langues 2 (3): 169–173. Morel, Mary-Annick 1994 “Les pronoms dans l’énoncé oral française [Pronouns in Spoken French].” Faits de Langues 2 (3): 169–173. ; Fontaine 2005Fontaine, Lise 2005 “Napoléon dans ses lettres à Joséphine: quand il la traite de Vous [Napoleon in His Letters to Josephine: When He Calls Her a you ].” In Les Marqueurs Linguistiques de la Présence de L’auteur [Linguistic Markers of the Author’s Presence], ed. by David Banks, 157–183. Paris: Éditions L’HarmattanFontaine, Lise 2005 “Napoléon dans ses lettres à Joséphine: quand il la traite de Vous [Napoleon in His Letters to Josephine: When He Calls Her a you].” In Les Marqueurs Linguistiques de la Présence de L’auteur [Linguistic Markers of the Author’s Presence], ed. by David Banks, 157–183. Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan; Bouissac 2019Bouissac, Paul 2019 “Forms and Functions of French Personal Pronouns in Social Interactions and Literary Texts.” In The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems: A Comparative Approach, ed. by Paul Bouissac, 133–150. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bouissac, Paul 2019 “Forms and Functions of French Personal Pronouns in Social Interactions and Literary Texts.” In The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems: A Comparative Approach, ed. by Paul Bouissac, 133–150. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ).

Unlike research on ‘Western’ languages, in studies on Chinese language use, disagreement uses of the second-person V pronoun nin have largely been ignored. A general line of argument33.See e.g., Lü (1985)Lü, Shuxiang 1985 近代汉语指代词 [The Pronouns of the Baihua Language]. Shanghai: Xuelin Press.Lü, Shuxiang 1985 近代汉语指代词 [The Pronouns of the Baihua Language]. Shanghai: Xuelin Press.; Zhu (1992)Zhu, Wanjin (ed) 1992 社会语言学概论 [Sociolinguistics: An Introduction]. Changsha: Hunan Education Publishing.Zhu, Wanjin (ed) 1992 社会语言学概论 [Sociolinguistics: An Introduction]. Changsha: Hunan Education Publishing.; Chen (2013)Chen, Cuizhu 2013 A Study on the Chinese Personal Pronoun. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press.Chen, Cuizhu 2013 A Study on the Chinese Personal Pronoun. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press.. has here been the following: ni by default indicates equality, familiarity and solidarity between the interactants, and nin by default is associated with deference, power and social distance (see e.g., Chen 1986Chen, Songcen 1986 “北京话“你”“您”使用规律初探 [A Study of Use Patterns of ni and nin in Beijing Dialect].” Linguistic Researches 20 (8): 24–31.Chen, Songcen 1986 “北京话“你”“您”使用规律初探 [A Study of Use Patterns of ni and nin in Beijing Dialect].” Linguistic Researches 20 (8): 24–31., 1989Chen, Songcen 1989 礼貌语言初探 [An Introduction to Linguistic Politeness]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Chen, Songcen 1989 礼貌语言初探 [An Introduction to Linguistic Politeness]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.; Zhu 1999Zhu, Dexing 1999 朱德熙文集 [Works of Zhu Dexi]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Zhu, Dexing 1999 朱德熙文集 [Works of Zhu Dexi]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.; Guo 2008Guo, Fenglan 2008 “当代北京口语第二人称代词的用法与功能 [Usages and Functions of Second Personal Pronouns in Modern Beijing Vernacular].” Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies 3: 50–56.Guo, Fenglan 2008 “当代北京口语第二人称代词的用法与功能 [Usages and Functions of Second Personal Pronouns in Modern Beijing Vernacular].” Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies 31: 50–56.; Lee 2016Lee, Cher Leng 2016 “Switching Number in Pronouns as Social Indices in Dream of the Red Chamber .” East Asian Pragmatics 1 (2): 209–230. Lee, Cher Leng 2016 “Switching Number in Pronouns as Social Indices in Dream of the Red Chamber.” East Asian Pragmatics 1 (2): 209–230. ; Jing et al., 2023Jing, Xiaoping, Wenxiu Yang, Guodong Yu, Xueyu Wang, Zhanghong Xu, Ling Zhou, and Yansheng Mao 2023 “Indigenous Pragmatic Research on Chinese.” In East Asian Pragmatics: Commonalities and Variations, ed. by Xinren Chen, and Doreen D. Wu, 7–39. London and New York: Benjamin.Jing, Xiaoping, Wenxiu Yang, Guodong Yu, Xueyu Wang, Zhanghong Xu, Ling Zhou, and Yansheng Mao 2023 “Indigenous Pragmatic Research on Chinese.” In East Asian Pragmatics: Commonalities and Variations, ed. by Xinren Chen, and Doreen D. Wu, 7–39. London and New York: Benjamin.). The renowned linguist Y. R. Chao (1956)Chao, Yuenren 1956 “Chinese Terms of Address.” Language 32 (1): 217–241. Chao, Yuenren 1956 “Chinese Terms of Address.” Language 32 (1): 217–241. already pointed out early that the honorific pronoun nin is commonly used between strangers and towards superiors. Due to this deferential use, nin was ousted during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (Fang and Heng 1983Fang, Hanquan, and J. H. Heng 1983 “Social Changes and Changing Address Norms in China.” Language in Society 12 (4): 495–507. Fang, Hanquan, and J. H. Heng 1983 “Social Changes and Changing Address Norms in China.” Language in Society 12 (4): 495–507. ), and it was revived in colloquial Chinese only in the 1980s (Blum 1997Blum, Susan D. 1997 “Naming Practices and the Power of Words in China.” Language in Society 26 (3): 357–379. Blum, Susan D. 1997 “Naming Practices and the Power of Words in China.” Language in Society 26 (3): 357–379. ; Pan and Kádár 2012Pan, Yuling, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2012 “Historical vs. Contemporary Chinese Linguistic Politeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (6): 1525–1539. Pan, Yuling, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2012 “Historical vs. Contemporary Chinese Linguistic Politeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (6): 1525–1539. ; Kádár and Ran 2019Kádár, Dániel Z., and Yongping Ran 2019 “Globalisation and Politeness: A Chinese Perspective”. In From Speech Acts to Lay Understanding of Politeness, ed. by Eva Ogiermann, and Pilar G. Blitvich, 280–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kádár, Dániel Z., and Yongping Ran 2019 “Globalisation and Politeness: A Chinese Perspective”. In From Speech Acts to Lay Understanding of Politeness, ed. by Eva Ogiermann, and Pilar G. Blitvich, 280–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; House and Kádár 2020House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2020 “T/V Pronouns in Global Communication Practices: The Case of IKEA Catalogues across Linguacultures.” Journal of Pragmatics 161: 1–15. House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2020 “T/V Pronouns in Global Communication Practices: The Case of IKEA Catalogues across Linguacultures.” Journal of Pragmatics 1611: 1–15. ). Various studies have shown that nin currently tends to be used in both colloquial and written Chinese (e.g., Pan 2000Pan, Yuling 2000 Politeness in Chinese Face-to-Face Interaction. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group.Pan, Yuling 2000 Politeness in Chinese Face-to-Face Interaction. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group.; Liu 2007Liu, Yonghou 2007 “A Study on Stall-Holders’ Addressing Terms with Reference to Power and Solidarity.” Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies (5): 90–96.Liu, Yonghou 2007 “A Study on Stall-Holders’ Addressing Terms with Reference to Power and Solidarity.” Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies (5): 90–96., 2009Liu, Yonghou 2009 “Determinants of Stall-Holders’ Address Forms to Customers in Beijing’s Low-Status Clothing Markets.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (3): 638–648. Liu, Yonghou 2009 “Determinants of Stall-Holders’ Address Forms to Customers in Beijing’s Low-Status Clothing Markets.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (3): 638–648. ; Xiang 2019Xiang, Xuehua 2019 “Personal Pronouns in Chinese Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis, ed. by Chris Shei, 147–159. London: Routledge. Xiang, Xuehua 2019 “Personal Pronouns in Chinese Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis, ed. by Chris Shei, 147–159. London: Routledge. ). Interestingly, various scholars have argued that even in conflictive scenarios nin is generally associated with deference rather than conflict. For instance, Kuo (2002)Kuo, Saihua 2002 “The Uses of the Second-Person Singular Pronoun in Chinese Political Discourse.” Text 22 (1): 29–55.Kuo, Saihua 2002 “The Uses of the Second-Person Singular Pronoun in Chinese Political Discourse.” Text 22 (1): 29–55. argued that a switch from ni to nin expresses sincerity in political debates. In a similar vein, Zhu (2008)Zhu, Hua 2008 “Duelling Languages, Duelling Values: Codeswitching in Bilingual Intergenerational Conflict Talk in Diasporic Families.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (10): 1799–1816. Zhu, Hua 2008 “Duelling Languages, Duelling Values: Codeswitching in Bilingual Intergenerational Conflict Talk in Diasporic Families.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (10): 1799–1816. argued that nin expresses politeness in conflicts between parents and children.

Yet, some studies have pointed out that the meaning of the V-form nin as a form of deference may be manipulated in particular contexts. For example, Chen (1986)Chen, Songcen 1986 “北京话“你”“您”使用规律初探 [A Study of Use Patterns of ni and nin in Beijing Dialect].” Linguistic Researches 20 (8): 24–31.Chen, Songcen 1986 “北京话“你”“您”使用规律初探 [A Study of Use Patterns of ni and nin in Beijing Dialect].” Linguistic Researches 20 (8): 24–31. noted that characters in Beijing dialectal playscripts may address their subordinates with nin when in disagreements. Zhou (2003)Zhou, Xiaojuan 2003 “Conventional Uses of Non-honorific nin .” Contemporary Rhetoric 120 (6): 15–18.Zhou, Xiaojuan 2003 “Conventional Uses of Non-honorific nin.” Contemporary Rhetoric 120 (6): 15–18. analysed fictional data where juniors address their elders with nin in a non-deferential way when making complaints, questioning their authority and arguing with them. Notwithstanding its academic importance, it must be conceded that this body of studies is mostly based on fictional data. A noteworthy exception is Wang and Taylor (2019)Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 142: 270–280. Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 1421: 270–280. who studied usages of nin in bald-on-record face attacks in online forums. However, Wang and Taylor only mentioned such usages of nin in passim. We aim to take this previous line of investigation further by conducting a study dedicated to usages of nin in disagreements in both elicited and naturally occurring data. Our research is also relevant to a previous body of studies, including Mao and Hao (2015)Mao, Yansheng, and Guiguan Hao 2015 “网络语境下异议话语的语用机制研究 [A Study of the Pragmatic Mechanism of Disagreement Discourse on the Internet].” Jiangsu Studies in Foreign Language Teaching (02): 56–62.Mao, Yansheng, and Guiguan Hao 2015 “网络语境下异议话语的语用机制研究 [A Study of the Pragmatic Mechanism of Disagreement Discourse on the Internet].” Jiangsu Studies in Foreign Language Teaching (02): 56–62., Mao and Zhao (2020)Mao, Yansheng, and Xin Zhao 2020 “A Discursive Approach to Disagreements Expressed by Chinese Spokespersons during Press Conferences.” Discourse, Context & Media 37. 100428. Mao, Yansheng, and Xin Zhao 2020 “A Discursive Approach to Disagreements Expressed by Chinese Spokespersons during Press Conferences.” Discourse, Context & Media 371. 100428. , and Bian (2020)Bian, Jing 2020 “汉语谈话节目‘圆桌派’中异议言语行为的语用研究 [A Pragmatic Study on Disagreements in Chinese TV Talk Show ‘Round Table’].” PhD dissertation. Nanjing University of Science and Technology.Bian, Jing 2020 “汉语谈话节目‘圆桌派’中异议言语行为的语用研究 [A Pragmatic Study on Disagreements in Chinese TV Talk Show ‘Round Table’].” PhD dissertation. Nanjing University of Science and Technology., dedicated to disagreement in Chinese.

3.Methodology and data

In our research, we were inspired by the above-mentioned study of Wang and Taylor (2019)Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 142: 270–280. Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 1421: 270–280. who briefly referred to conflictive usages of nin in online settings. Our research question is a very general one: we ask when and how nin tends to be used in scenes of disagreement. The research reported in this paper followed a bipartite design. In the first part of our research we conducted a DCT (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds) 1989 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. New Jersey: Ablex.Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds) 1989 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. New Jersey: Ablex.) to investigate in which interactional segments and by members of which age group nin is preferred whenever a disagreement occurs in situations which are not dominated by power (see also Appendix 1).44.We are aware of all the criticisms relating to the DCT methodology, such as the reservation Eelen (2001)Eelen, Gino 2001 A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome.Eelen, Gino 2001 A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome. voiced. In House and Kádár (2023)House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 “An Interactional Approach to Speech Acts for Applied Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review. House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 “An Interactional Approach to Speech Acts for Applied Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review. we discussed in detail how DCTs can be adjusted to the study of interactional data. We believe that while the DCT approach has issues, it remains a very useful approach provided that one uses it in a mixed method way, as we also do in the present paper. Here we were particularly interested in whether what Wang and Taylor (2019)Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 142: 270–280. Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 1421: 270–280. mentioned can be replicated with a larger dataset. However, we did not intend simply to replicate Wang and Taylor’s (2019)Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 142: 270–280. Wang, Jiayi, and Charlotte Taylor 2019 “The Conventionalisation of Mock Politeness in Chinese and British Online Forums.” Journal of Pragmatics 1421: 270–280. , but rather venture beyond what they have explored because their study represents analyst observations rather than language users’ productions and interpretations of disagreement uses of nin. Thus, we still know very little about when and how nin is preferred in settings of disagreement, and whether such settings are necessarily online ones. This first part of our bipartite research helped us to set up the parameters of the second part of our research.

Based on the outcomes of the first part of our research, in the second part we examined the ways in which the V pronoun nin is used in scenes of disagreement in naturally occurring online data. Considering that we were interested in recurrent and as such conventional uses of nin where it coincides with disagreement rather than deference, our data here was drawn from informal and anonymous online settings, rather than, e.g., the realm of business and service (see more below).

In the first step of our research, we provided a DCT to native speakers of Mandarin Chinese by using WeChat and email. We designed the DCT so as to determine whether nin uses are distributed equally in offline and online settings of disagreement. Accordingly, we formulated eight offline and eight online disagreement scenarios. Further, since nin is conventionally expected to be used in settings dominated by power,55.See Chen (1986)Chen, Songcen 1986 “北京话“你”“您”使用规律初探 [A Study of Use Patterns of ni and nin in Beijing Dialect].” Linguistic Researches 20 (8): 24–31.Chen, Songcen 1986 “北京话“你”“您”使用规律初探 [A Study of Use Patterns of ni and nin in Beijing Dialect].” Linguistic Researches 20 (8): 24–31.. in order to elicit its uses in disagreement setting we only included [–P] situations in all the 16 scenarios featured in the DCT. We also considered the variable of Social Distance (SD). Accordingly, our sixteen scenarios in the DCTs varied as follows:

• 4 DCTs [–P, +SD] [online]

• 4 DCTs [–P, +SD] [offline]

• 4 DCTs [–P, –SD] [online]

• 4 DCTs [–P, –SD] [offline]

We distributed the DCT to 374 participants. We gave no explicit instructions or hints concerning pronominal choices, in case our respondents realised the purpose of our experiment. All participants enrolled were non-linguists and university educated. They were divided into two age categories:

1. Age group 1: 18–35 years old

2. Age group 2: 35–55 years old

The following Table 1 summarises the demographic background of our participants.

Our sixteen DCT scenarios triggered altogether 5,912 responses.66.Twenty participants did not respond to some of the conflictual scenarios, because, in accordance with their subsequent explanation, they would not do so in real life. We categorised the elicited data according to the above-outlined variables.

In the second part of our analysis, we explored recurrent uses of nin in naturally occurring online data. Here we used a model that allowed us to interpret expressions and speech acts in interactional slots (see Edmondson and House 1981Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.; House and Kádár 2021House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2021 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2021 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Edmondson et al. 2023Edmondson, Willis J., Juliane House, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edmondson, Willis J., Juliane House, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). In this system, we rely on the following two analytic levels:

1. Expressions embedded in speech acts occurring in scenes of disagreement: We investigated which speech act types nin co-occurs with. This is clearly an important issue if one intends to study whether uses of nin in disagreement follow any conventions in seemingly ad hoc and anonymous online settings.

2. Speech act sequences in disagreement exchanges: We examined how the above speech act types realising disagreement – and nin embedded in such speech acts – are used in the larger unit of exchanges. This is a further area to consider if one intends to identify recurrent patterns – i.e., conventions – in the use of nin in naturally occurring data like ours.

Throughout the analysis, we also considered symmetrical and asymmetrical uses of nin, i.e., both instances when nin is reciprocated and others when it is not reciprocated.

We sampled naturally occurring online data featuring disagreement uses of nin from commentaries on microblogs posted on the Chinese Sina Weibo (henceforth Weibo) platform. Weibo provides a Twitter-like e-platform for users to exchange opinions on social issues in the form of microblogs and follow-up commentaries. On Weibo, unless the privacy function is activated, one does not need to wait for the owner’s approval to become a ratified follower and/or contributor. We chose Weibo as our data source not only due to the recurrence of interactions featuring disagreement in this platform, but also because Weibo provides open access to both microblogs and their follow-up commentaries.

To collect data, we adopted a commercial web crawler to retrieve commentaries attached to the top five heatedly discussed microblogs on Weibo. References to the built-in list of real-time top searches were made because microblogs listed there are supposed to have attracted disagreement between users, thereby ensuring a relatively high incidence of disagreement interaction. The process of retrieval started in October 2021 and ended in December 2021 with a two-day-per-week interval.

Disagreement interaction emerged in our data when a user’s contribution is opposed by another user, whereupon the first user then contradicts this opinion. Following Auer (1998Auer, Peter (ed) 1998 Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. London: Routledge.Auer, Peter (ed) 1998 Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. London: Routledge., 2000Auer, Peter 2000 “Why Should We and How Can We Determine the ‘Base Language’ of a Bilingual Conversation?” Estudios de Sociolinguıstica (1): 129–144. Auer, Peter 2000 “Why Should We and How Can We Determine the ‘Base Language’ of a Bilingual Conversation?” Estudios de Sociolinguıstica (1): 129–144. ) and Androutsopoulos (2006)Androutsopoulos, Jannis 2006 “Introduction: Sociolinguistics and Computer-Mediated Communication.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (4): 419–438. Androutsopoulos, Jannis 2006 “Introduction: Sociolinguistics and Computer-Mediated Communication.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (4): 419–438. we treated each commentary thread as the equivalent of an interactional episode, i.e., as a basic unit of analysis in the study of disagreement interaction. We performed a keyword search for nin in the collected episodes. Through this keyword search we obtained a corpus of eighty-two episodes involving nin. These episodes involve altogether 652 contributions made by 162 individual users.

We transcribed our data in a simple and accessible way proposed in Edmondson and House (1981)Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg., House and Kádár (2021)House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2021 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2021 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. and Edmondson et al. (2023)Edmondson, Willis J., Juliane House, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edmondson, Willis J., Juliane House, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Following such previous research, the most basic unit in the interactional structure is an exchange through which users co-construct an outcome through individual moves. In the simplest two-move unit of exchange, the first move is called an Initiate, the second that complements or ‘fulfils’ the first is called a Satisfy. If the second move does not ‘satisfy’ the Initiating one (e.g., the second move turns down a speech act of Request that Initiates an exchange), it turns out to be a Contra move. Another move that is essentially similar to a Contra is a Counter. However, instead of representing essentially something final as the former does, a Counter is similar to an objection that leads to further negotiation. Counter is particularly relevant for studying interactional conflicts. A further possible move is a Grounder, a typical form of ‘Supportive Move’ which provides a reason for one’s actions (see Edmondson and House 1981Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.). In studying speech acts in the interactional structure described above, we deployed the speech act typology proposed in Edmondson and House (1981)Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.Edmondson, Willis J., and Juliane House 1981 Let’s Talk, and Talk About it: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg., Edmondson et al. (2023)Edmondson, Willis J., Juliane House, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edmondson, Willis J., Juliane House, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. and House and Kádár (2023)House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 “An Interactional Approach to Speech Acts for Applied Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review. House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2023 “An Interactional Approach to Speech Acts for Applied Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review. . We will introduce the individual speech act categories that are relevant to the data analysis whenever they first occur in the analysis (see Section 4).

We used annotation boxes on the right-hand side of the transcripts. In these boxes, we indicated both occurrences of nin and the speech acts and the broader interactional structural slots in which uses of nin occur. Note that both speech act categories and terms referring to the structure of an exchange, including our units of analysis (e.g., ‘Initiate’) were capitalised in our transcript.

4.Analysis and results

5.Conclusion

In this paper, we have shown that the Chinese second-person V pronoun nin can be used to express disagreement. We argued that such uses can even be described as conventionalised because quantitative evidence shows that in certain contexts such uses of nin frequently occur. This finding allows us to re-examine the oft-held view that the V pronoun nin is a ‘deferential one’. While indeed indicating deference is the default function of nin, this pronoun is not ‘exotic’: just like any other V pronoun, it affords different pragmatic uses. This flies to the face of what has been argued in most previous studies dedicated to nin.

In the research presented in this paper, we distributed a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) to Chinese participants and took into account the two variables of age and mode of interaction. The elicited responses pointed to the existence of cross-cultural differences between nin and V pronouns in other languages. The use of nin seems to be pragmatically constrained in that its usages in scenarios involving disagreement seem to be preferred mainly in online settings and by members of the younger generations in the Chinese linguaculture. These pragmatic characteristics of nin may be related to the broader diachronic development of T/V pronouns in Chinese (see Pan and Kádár 2011Pan, Yuling, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2011 Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese. London: Continuum.Pan, Yuling, and Dániel Z. Kádár 2011 Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese. London: Continuum.). That is, it is likely that speakers of Chinese, especially those from the older generations, are ‘reluctant’ to use the V form nin in face-to-face disagreement, owing to the relatively rigid conventions of using this form in spoken colloquial Chinese. In the language use of members of younger generations, deferential forms like nin can take on ‘new’ pragmatic meanings, in particular in online settings where such usages occur in anonymous exchanges.

To explore recurrent patterns of use where nin is embedded in disagreement, we examined online data drawn from Weibo. Our analysis has shown that nin frequently co-occurs with the speech acts of Opine, Request and Congratulate embedded in the interactional moves of Counter and Contra. What distinguishes such usages from the default deferential use of nin is that in all such cases nin is used in a pointedly ironic way. The fact that most uses of nin are asymmetric in our data, i.e., usually one side uses a mocking nin while the other responds with the T form ni to such challenges also shows that nin in this situated online convention is not interpreted as a form of deference.

The use of the Chinese V form nin needs to be further explored in future research. For instance, our study included only CMC data drawn from Chinese social media. Future inquiries may include a wider range of data from both online and offline settings, in order to further investigate the complex sociopragmatic scope of uses of nin and ni in scenarios involving disagreement. Also, in future research it would be useful to systematically compare such usages of nin with comparable uses of V pronouns in other languages.