Beyond the deferential view of the Chinese V pronoun nin您
Dániel Z.Kádár,JulianeHouse and HaoLiu
Dalian University of Foreign Languages | University of Hamburg | HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics | Hefei University of Technology | Nanjing University
Abstract
In this paper, we revisit the long-held assumption that the Chinese second-person V pronoun
nin您 is an essentially
‘deferential’ pronoun. We examine uses of nin in settings where disagreement occurs and where conventionally the
T pronoun ni would be preferred. Our research follows a bipartite design. First, we used a Discourse Completion
Test to discover under what circumstances Chinese speakers use nin if disagreement emerges. The results revealed
that uses of nin in disagreements are preferred in informal computer-mediated communication and by members of the
younger generation. Second, based on this outcome we examined naturally occurring uses of nin in online data
featuring disagreement. Here we relied on an interactional approach, which helped us to identify patterns of uses of
nin. The existence of patterns in seemingly ad hoc occurrences of online disagreement shows that expressing
deference is not the only pragmatic function of nin.
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. 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.
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