About '好说歹说haoshuodaishuo'

摘要

This paper mainly discusses the structural, semantic and pragmatic features of "好说歹说[haoshuodaishuo]". Firstly it can be viewed as a parallel structure of "好说[haoshuo]" and "歹说[daishuo]", whose main syntactic function is to be part of the predicate. Then its meaning "repeatedly requesting or persuading by various arguments or means" is formed through the mechanism of metaphor. In addition, "haoshuodaishuo" is usually used in a pragmatic situation of asking for a favor or persuading another. Especially, for the universal principle of optimism, "haoshuodaishuo" usually implicates an anticipated positive result.