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Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 26:3 (2025) ► pp.380–405

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Genuine or ostensible politeness?

A diachronic study of qingwen in Chinese directives

ORCiD logo with link | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
ORCiD logo with link | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Published online: 28 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.25001.hua
Abstract
This study examines the use of qingwen (an honorific request marker) across three different historical periods in China and unravels the evolved relationship between qingwen-initiated directives of information-seeking and Chinese politeness. Drawing on the CCL Corpus, this study reveals that: first, qingwen is employed by the socially more powerful to solicit thoughts, ideas or simply answers with gong (treating others with respect) in positive standard situations of ancient and vernacular Chinese, thereby achieving traditional Chinese politeness; second, given the collapse of the feudal dynasties and the modernisation of society, a remarkable decline in qingwen usage from vernacular Chinese to modern Chinese can be discerned in official settings of negative standard situations; finally, qingwen is frequently used to echo apparent directives with a dissociative attitude in vernacular and modern Chinese, signalling ostensible politeness. This study contributes to historical pragmatics in Chinese by focussing on the evolution of qingwen-initiated directives of information-seeking.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Previous studies on historical Chinese
    • 2.2Previous Chinese historical studies on directives
    • 2.3Qingwen as ritual frame indicating expression
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Data collection
    • 3.3Analytical methods
  • 4.Data analysis
    • 4.1The use of qingwen in ancient Chinese
      • 4.1.1Positive standard situations
      • 4.1.2Negative standard situations
      • 4.1.3Unspecified standard situations
    • 4.2The use of qingwen in vernacular Chinese
      • 4.2.1Positive standard situations
      • 4.2.2Negative standard situations
      • 4.2.3Equal standard situations
        • Deviant cases
    • 4.3The use of qingwen in modern Chinese
      • 4.3.1Negative standard situations
      • 4.3.2Equal standard situations
        • Deviant cases
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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