| مستخلص: |
Versailles literature, a newly immerged genre on Chinese social media, is aptly defined as "humblebragging": bloggers showing off different aspects of themselves in a humble way. Previous research on the genre have focused on the "humble" part of the genre, arguing that the different strategies bloggers use to appear humble are for the purpose of appearing to be modest, a key value in Chinese politeness. But do the bloggers achieve that end, i.e., does humblebragging improve the self-image of the humblebraggers? In this paper, we report on an empirical study on this question and find that Versailles literature posters do not improve their self-image via humblebragging. In fact, evidence suggests that their image is damaged. Instead of appearing to be humble, these posters are perceived as showing and hypocritic. Our study therefore contributes to several strands of pragmatics: politeness evaluation, Chinese politeness, and internet pragmatics. • Versailles Literature (VL), defined as humblebragging, is a new genre in Chinese social media. • The literature on VL has focused on the humble, arguing that appearing humble helps enhance the image of VL posters. • This study reveals that VL damages the image of its posters, not enhancing it. • This study contributes to politeness evaluation, politeness research, and internet pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |