Chinese phrasal downgraders: a problem for L2 Learners?

In this study we investigate why phrasal downgraders such as mei-guanxi 没关系 (‘does not matter’) and meishi(-meishi) 没事 (没事) (‘no problem(-no problem)’) turn out to be problematic even for advanced L2 learners of Chinese. Although both mei-guanxi and meishi(-meishi) are standardly mentioned in Chinese L2 textbooks, various of their uses are still surprisingly irritating for L2 learners. We look at the heart of such irritations by following a tripartite bottom-up analytic procedure: We first conducted semi-structured interviews with advanced L2 learners of Chinese who reported having been irritated by the phrasal downgraders under investigation. We then examined uses of these expressions in a Chinese corpus, and finally we interpreted our learners’ L2 irritations through the outcomes of our corpus analysis. We examined our data through a minimalist and finite typology of speech acts and a related interactional system. Our interviewees made altogether five observation types, which we were able to systematically explain with the aid of our approach.