Delving into suggestion speech acts in Chinese authoritative academic discourse

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to examine the realisation of suggestions in authoritative academic discourse through the lens of cognitive pragmatics. To date, the majority of academic suggestion research has focused on face-to-face interactions in an institutional context. However, other forms of suggesting, namely the written forms of academic suggestions have not yet been sufficiently explored. Thus, there is a knowledge gap when it comes to authoritative academic suggestions directed to policy makers. Such policy maker-directed suggestions are always bound and embedded in particular cultural contexts. As a case study, we explore the suggestions in authoritative academic discourse with the focus on illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs) and relevant construal strategies. Our data were drawn from the Blue Book of Ecological Governance (China Ecological Governance development report 2019–2020), an important manifestation of authoritative academic discourse in China. The findings indicate that three types of IFIDs are deployed to delimit Chinese authoritative academic suggestions, among which conventionalised and indirect IFIDs are preferred. Notably IFID tools pertain to speakers’ choices of construal strategies for building up the infrastructure of suggestions. The operation of these strategies reveals how authoritative academic suggestions are internally coded, as well as how they are built to externally act on. Furthermore, we argue that the speakers’ choices of construal strategies imply a degree of politeness. The study may shed light upon speech act and politeness research in Chinese linguaculture.