Analysis of Premier Wen Jiabao’s Interview Talks from the Perspective of Coopera

Abstract：As a premier, Wen Jiabao’s interview talks are not only personal but to a larger extent, represent the Chinese government. So they are valuable material for the pragmatic study. This paper attempts to explore the pragmatic features of Premier Wen’s interview talks from perspective of Cooperative Principle. Based on this, it also tries to find out the conversational implicatures behind the Premier’s answering strategy and the communicative functions.

Key words： interview talks; cooperative principle; communicative functions

中图分类号：H319 文献标识码： A 文章编号：1672-1578（2012)08-0011-03

1 Introduction

1.1 The Interview Talk

Webster’s dictionary of 1913 defined interview as “a conversation, or questioning, for the purpose of eliciting information for publication”. Interview talk is not only a form to communicate but also a vehicle to convey ideas or concepts to the general public especially. This goes with the beliefs of Glenn and Ronald. They claim that: “One of the miraculous personalities of human being is the ability to talk. We convey most of our feeling, intentions, desires, knowledge and experience by speech.” (Glenn Starlin &Rorald Sherriffs: 1971: 26)

1.2 Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle

One of the critical issues in the study of pragmatics concerns the relationship between what speakers say and what they mean or intend to communicate. H. Paul. Grice has taken the position that natural languages are just as good as formal devices for making clear and precise statements. The “extra” meanings that crop up when certain kinds of natural language utterances are made, according to Grice, are due to the syntactic or semantic rules of languages, but not rules and principles of conversation. In 1967, Grice proposed the Cooperative Principle (CP). The four maxims of the CP are as follows: (a) Maxim of quantity, (b) Maxim of quality, (c) Maxim of relation, (d) Maxim of manner (Grice, 1975: 45-46).

2 Pragmatic Analysis of Premier Wen’s Interview Talks

The author will collect and examine 4 transcripts of press interviews of Premier Wen Jiabao as the materials for the pragmatic analysis in this paper. They are Premier Wen’s interviews by Financial Times in 2009, by CNN in 2008, by Washington Post in 2003, and by Le Figaro in 2005. Because interviews are clearly the “question-answer” pattern, the author will use this structure as a unit to move forward my analysis.

The CP is a set of norms generally expected in conversation. Observance of the CP is the ideal way of conducting communication. However, as a premier of a nation facing the press or the public, Mr. Wen would violate the maxims of the CP to achieve his communicative purpose. Flouting maxims is the typical way to convey the conversational implicature. In this part, the author will cite some instances from the transcripts to illustrate Premier Wen’s violation of CP.

2.1 The Violation of Quantity Maxim

The maxim of quantity means that the speaker should give the right amount of information. He or she should make the contribution as informative as is required and not make the contribution more informative than is required (Grice, 1975). In order to achieve better social or public effects, Premier Wen may use some ambiguous or vague expressions to broaden or narrow the range of information. By using this strategy, Premier Wen expects the hearers can infer the conversational implicature by themselves.

Example 1:

Lionel Barber：Premier, next time if I go to China, I hope to visit the countryside, not only big cities.

Wen Jiabao: Welcome. First of all, I want to make clear here that I will be most sincere in all my answers, but I may not tell you everything.(Interview by the editor of Financial Times)

This conversation takes place at the beginning of the interview by Financial Times. Obviously, saying “welcome” is quite enough to respond to the editor, but Premier Wen gives more information than required. However the extra information is not useless. It demonstrates Premier Wen’s attitude toward this interview and prescribes the basic tone of the whole conversation.

Example 2:

LB: If I understand you, Premier Wen, you are supporting what the Chinese authorities said 10 years ago with the ruling out of a depreciation of RenMinBi?

WJ: I think I have made my point very clear.?That is, we practice a managed floating exchange rate regime and we preserve the basic stability of the exchange rate on a reasonable and balanced level.(Interview by the editor of Financial Times)

In example 2, Premier Wen also violates the quantity maxim. He provides less information than the hearer expected. What’s more, the expressions “managed”,“floating” and “reasonable and balanced” are quite vague and abstract. Actually, in this situation, Premier Wen can’t simply answer yes or no, so he used the strategy to let out only limited and not so concrete information.

2.2 The Violation of Quality Maxim

The maxim of quality is concerned with truth telling, and has two parts: 1) Do not say what you believe to be false. 2) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence (Grice, 1975). Under the category of quality falls a super-maxim – “Try to make your contribution one that is true”. Actually the interview talks of Premier Wen violate this maxim to express unpleasant things or ideas in a pleasant way. By violating the quality maxim of CP, he can beautify the truth and “soften” the harsh reality in the interview. If the interviewee or the public wants to know the real meaning of Premier’s statements, they should infer the intended meaning from the interview context. Here the author will present 2 examples that violate the maxim of quality.

Example 1:

Q: One of the current issues for joint Chinese and American action is the current situation in Taiwan. What would you like the President of the United States to do to help China deal with the current situation in Taiwan?

Wen Jiabao: You put the question of Taiwan to me. Actually, I have also been asking questions: … I believe that these questions are of concern to the Chinese people and of concern to our Taiwan compatriots, and they are also of concern to the United States and the international community at large… (interview by Washington Post)

In the above “question and answer” pattern, Premier Wen uses many “concern”s to convey the concept that the peace of TaiWan Strait not only matters China, but also about the whole international society. Actually China is the strongest advocator for the peace of TaiWai Strait, and other nations’ attitudes are unpredictable. But here Premier Wen employs a more pleasant way to state the issue as all the countries’ “common interest”, which can solidify the possible support and describe a brilliant prospect.

Example 2:

Mével: Mr. Premier, you mentioned French companies need to increase their competitiveness. Does that mean France's quotation is too high?

Wen Jiabao: Competitiveness should be looked at from a comprehensive perspective. The bidding has entered into a critical period of time now. The evaluation of the bidders will be objective, fair and transparent. If France can submit more competitive schemes, including preferential conditions in quotation and technology transfer, it will help France win the bid.(interview by Le Figaro)

In this example, facing the harsh question raised by the French journalist, Premier Wen uses a mild way to handle it. Instead of answering “yes”, which will make the Frenchman feel uncomfortable, he employs such words and expressions as “comprehensible perspective”, “objective, fair and transparent” and “preferential conditions” etc., which lacks the concrete criteria and evidence, to soften the tense and sensitive situation. This answer not only expresses Premier Wen’s opinion on this issue, but also save the journalist’s face. However, if the hearer thinks over Wen’s answer, he can guess the implicature that it is true France’s quotation is too high.

2.3 The Violation of Relevance Maxim and Manner Maxim

The maxim of relation is very simple: be relevant. This maxim can be interpreted as to make sure what you say is relevant to the conversation at hand. The point of this maxim is that it is not sufficient for a statement to be true for it to constitute an acceptable conversational contribution. During the interview, there may be some questions, which Premier Wen can’t answer or can’t answer publicly. In this situation, as a Premier he can’t refuse to answer the question or remain silent, so he will choose to say something literally irrelevant. But from this talking strategy, the audience can infer the Premier’s attitude on this particular issue. An example will be cited to testify this point.

Example 1:

Zakaria: And then you might meet with Dalai Lama?

Wen Jiabao: By then, everything depends on the development of the situation. Of course, talks may continue, and in light of the progress in the talks, we may also consider raising the level of the talks. (interview by CNN)

In this situation, the CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria raised up a quite sensitive political question about the “meeting” with Dalai Lama. However, Premier Wen can’t answer it directly, especially to the western press. Though reluctant to answer, Premier Wen has to say something. So he avoids the key word “meet”, and substitutse it with “talk”. In Premier Wen’s answer, he never mentions “when to meet”, and the final expression is “raising the level of talks”. All these seem irrelevant to the topic literally. But from Premier Wen’s this action, the interviewee knows that the interviewer doesn’t want to say something on this topic.

The last maxim is the manner maxim, which Grice concluded as “be perspicuous”. And its four components are: 1) avoid obscurity of expression, 2) avoid ambiguity, 3) be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity), 4) be orderly. The maxim of manner is flouted when the speaker says something vaguely. By choosing to go off record by being vague or ambiguous, the communicated intention of the speaker may remain ill-defined. It is up to the hearer to infer the real meaning. To some extent, the manner maxim overlaps with the other three maxims and there is no clear boundary between them. For example, using the vague words means providing the insufficient information, which is also one of the features of the violation of quantity maxim. Inevitably, in order to achieve the effect of an interview, Premier Wen will violate this maxim.

Example 2:

Zakaria: People say you’re studying the Japanese system because there’s democracy but there’s only one party that seems to win the elections. Is that the kind of model you see for China?

Wen Jiabao: I think there are multiple forms of democracy in the world. What is important is the substance of democracy. (interview by CNN)

Here facing the question about the political system, Premier Wen doesn’t give an exact answer. Instead, he uses some ambiguous words. He mentioned “multiple forms” without further explanation and also didn’t make an explicit statement about his understanding about the “democratic substance”. So Wen violates the manner maxim in this way.

3 Conclusion

The interview talk of Premier Wen, which is limited by the situation, contents and various concerns, is a very special resource for the researchers to undertake the pragmatic study. This paper conducts a pragmatic analysis of Premier Wen Jiabao’s interview talks from perspective of CP. By studying the types of violating CP, the author tries to find the explanation and concludes some communicative functions of

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