Offering gifts in ChineseKádár, Dániel Z. (Avtor) House, Juliane (Avtor) Liu, Fengguang (Avtor) Han, Dan (Avtor) pragmalinguisticsoffering giftsspeech actsChineseinteractional ritualconvencional featuresstrategiesIn this study, we investigate ritual features and strategies of offering gifts in Chinese with the aid of a corpus of naturally-occurring WeChat exchanges. As numerous studies have shown, offering gifts is a fundamental part of daily interaction in Chinese. We investigate offering gifts from a new angle, by adopting an interaction ritual approach which combines ritual, interaction and speech acts. Our analysis has revealed three recurrent features of gift offering behaviour in Chinese: interactionally varying multi-sequentiality, frequency of formulaic expressions, and prevalence of ritual ostensible aggression. We also identified conventional strategies of offering gifts: presenting the gift as a fait accompli, ignoring the refusal, and persuading the recipient. Our study contributes to inquiries into offering gifts behaviour and insistent ritual language use in Chinese.Elsevier20252025-08-27 03:50:07Znanstveno delo94774sl