Abstract：Abstract: Negation is defined to be an evaluative speech act denoting a speaker’s opposition or disagreement, which can also be deployed as a pragmatic resource to manage the interpersonal relationship. However, it has mostly been conceptualized within the notion of negative, unexpected, and uncooperative social practice. This article is based on a data analysis of responses to online questioning from the web-based Pengpai News platform. From an interpersonal pragmatic perspective, the article investigated into the dynamic relationship between negation and web-based rapport-management. The results indicate that negative mitigation was found to be a typical pragmatic phenomenon in response to accusing, interrogation, and disagreement in web-based journalistic interaction; and it also shows a speaker’s cyber pragmatic competence to resolve online conflicts. This article uncovers the new pragmatic phenomenon in computer-mediated interaction; and broadens the scope of negation as an evaluative stance from an interpersonal pragmatic perspective.
Key words: negation; web-based journalistic interaction; pragmatic mitigation; interpersonal pragmatics
