Do learners thank too much in Indonesian?

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Hassall
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Pragmatic Transfer ◽  
Formal Instruction ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

Abstract This study investigates how frequently Australian learners of Indonesian thank in everyday situations compared with Indonesian native speakers. The data were collected by means of interactive roleplay. Learner subjects were found to thank very consistently in the situations, probably due to pragmatic transfer from their first language combined with influence from formal instruction. Indonesian native subjects also thanked frequently. This finding contradicts popular wisdom, and appears to reflect a rise in verbal thanking in Indonesian due to a weakening of traditional cultural values. This trend has major implications for cross-cultural pragmatics. It suggests that in developing countries where cultural values are changing, speech act behaviour may steadily converge with western pragmatic norms.

scholarly journals Persian favor asking in formal and informal academic contexts

Pragmatics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hooman Saeli
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Main Thrust ◽  
Favor Asking ◽  
Sociocultural Interactions ◽  
Status Differences ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

The investigation of speech acts has been of interest, especially in cross-cultural pragmatics, to many L1/L2 researchers for many years (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989). Favor-asking, as an important speech act, is centered upon having the other party of conversation do a specific act (Goldschmidt 1999). Although some research has been done on favor-asking in different contexts, studies on this speech act are still scarce, if any, in Persian settings. The main thrust of the current study was to investigate favor-asking among a sample of 20 native speakers of Persian (10 women and 10 men). The participants were selected from graduate students, since the employed oral DCT scenarios were designed to elicit favors asked from three different academic statuses: Higher, equal, and lower (professors, peers, and students, respectively). A total of 240 responses were then analyzed to identify the recurring patterns under the three open-coded categories of pre-favor, favor, and post-favor. The examination of the responses illustrated some variation triggered by gender and academic status differences, namely, the length of favors, frequency of some (sub)themes, and formality degree. Additionally, some relevant syntactic issues were explored (e.g. plural/singular pronouns/verbs), which contributed to the formality/informality of the favors, depending upon the contexts in which they were incorporated. Finally, some insights into Persian sociocultural interactions, favor-asking in particular, were provided.

scholarly journals CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATIC STUDY OF APOLOGY STRATEGIES IN BALOCHI WITH REFERENCE TO CHINESE LANGUAGE

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-169
Author(s):  
Muhammad Hussain ◽  
Akhtar Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics ◽  
Pragmatic Study

Background and Purpose: Cross-cultural studies help to reduce linguistic misunderstandings. Owing to the mastery of the grammar and vocabulary of any language, speakers who may be fluent in a second language, may still be unable to produce language that is socially and culturally acceptable, thus indicates the importance of pragmatics in general and cross-cultural pragmatics in particular. The development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) creates urgency for the Baloch and the Chinese people to know each other's language and culture, as the project is located in 'Gwadar', a Baloch region, where Balochi is widely spoken. The purpose of this paper is to explore apology strategies used in the Balochi language spoken in Balochistan, Pakistan with reference to Chinese, including Baloch cultural values which influence language.   Methodology: The data were collected through Discourse Completion Test from 30 native speakers of Balochi language enrolled in various departments at International Islamic University Islamabad Pakistan. On the other hand, the Chinese language data were adopted as a reference from a research study conducted by Chang (2016). The Balochi data were analyzed by employing the framework presented by Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989).   Findings: The findings show that the Baloch native speakers use indirect strategies of apology, explanation strategy, and taking and denying responsibility which are similar to the Chinese language.   Contribution: The paper may help to expand the scope of cross-cultural pragmatics to non-western languages. The paper may also be significant in the teaching curricula to design comparative courses in Chinese and Balochi.   Keywords: Apology, Balochi, Chinese, cross-cultural pragmatics, strategies.   Cite as: Hussain, M., & Aziz, A. (2020). Cross-cultural pragmatic study of apology strategies in Balochi with reference to Chinese language. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 5(2), 152-169. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol5iss2pp152-169

The role of religion in shaping politeness in Moroccan Arabic: The case of the speech act of greeting and its place in intercultural understanding and misunderstanding

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdelaziz Bouchara
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Intercultural Understanding ◽  
Natural Interaction ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Moroccan Arabic ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

AbstractThis paper investigates, from a cross-cultural pragmatics framework, the motivations and reasons which induce Moroccans in particular, and Arabs in general, to invoke Qur’anic verses and religious lexicons in their daily politeness discourse. By focusing on the speech act of greeting, this study attempts to show that greetings are ordinary day-to-day events, which often encapsulate a lot of different cultural values that may cause misunderstandings. Based on data collected from natural interaction between Arabs and Germans, Arabs seem inclined to show politeness when greeting one another by using religious vocabulary and giving religious praises. In addition, the use of religion as a politeness strategy appears to function as a way of protecting the self-image of both the speaker and the hearer. Furthermore, the findings of this study also reveal that by resorting to the use of this politeness strategy, Moroccans seem to reflect their firm belief and the importance they attach to the Qur’an and, more especially, to the question of fate and destiny in Islam. As a result, it is not the linguistic expression itself but rather the pragmatic function of the utterance that seems to determine the use and interpretation of politeness strategies in (Moroccan) Arabic.

scholarly journals Communicative Rituals and Audiovisual Translation – Representation of Otherness in Film Subtitles

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 606-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Noëlle Guillot
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Front Door ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Textual Representations ◽  
Conversational Style ◽  
Audiovisual Translation ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics ◽  
Translation Representation

In a contrastive study of front door rituals between friends in Australia and France (Béal and Traverso 2010), the interactional practices observed in the corpus collected are shown to exhibit distinctive verbal and non-verbal features, despite similarities. The recurrence of these features is interpreted as evidence of a link between conversational style and underlying cultural values. Like contrastive work in cross-cultural pragmatics more generally, this conclusion raises questions of representation from an audiovisual and audiovisual translation perspective: how are standard conversational routines depicted in film dialogues and in their translation in subtitling or dubbing? What are the implications of these textual representations for audiences? These questions serve as platform for the case study in this article, of greetings and other communicative rituals in a dataset of two French and one Spanish contemporary films and their subtitles in English. They are addressed from an interactional cross-cultural pragmatics perspective and draw on Fowler’s Theory of Mode (1991, 2000) to assess subtitles’ potential to mean cross-culturally as text.

scholarly journals Study of Request Strategies Employed By Libyan and Malay POSTGRADUATE Students at USM

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Awad Mohamed S Youssef
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
First Language ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Cultural Strategies ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
Malaysian Students ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

There has been considerable attention from the cross-cultural pragmatics literature towards the various strategies speakers use when performing the requesting speech act. Speech acts are often used when communicating verbally in either the first language or a second language. This paper presents a study into the similarities and differences in the request strategies by Malaysian and Libyan postgraduate students at USM. The study majorly uses information from existing literature on what other people have written on this topic. The study findings will give new insights to the directness and requesting behaviors within Libyan and Malaysian students and the challenges of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. This study has cultural implications such as awareness of the request strategies used in one culture compared to another culture. This study tackles the ability of Libyan and Malay learners to apply requests in English.  Furthermore, this study attempts to provide explanations for pragmatic errors that Libyan and Malay learners may perform.   Keywords: Cross-Cultural, Strategies, Modifications, Linguistic.

Lexical-Grammatical Pragmatic Indicators

1987 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoshana Blum-Kulka ◽  
Edward A. Levenston
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Interlanguage Pragmatics ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Pragmatic Failure ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Difference

Our main aim in this paper is to explore the interlanguage pragmatics of learners of Hebrew and English. We focus on the use of pragmatic indicators, both lexical (please/bevaqaŝa; perhaps/ulay) and grammatical (e.g., the difference between could I borrow and could you lend), with particular reference to deviations from native-speaker norms in the speech of non-native speakers. The analysis follows the analytical framework developed for the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). Data from two sets are analyzed: (a) native and non-native Hebrew, and (b) native and non-native English (with occasional reference to other CCSARP data sets). The results suggest that non-native speakers' misuse of pragmatic indicators can have serious interactional consequences, ranging from inappropriateness to pragmatic failure.

scholarly journals Request strategies in email communication: The case of Indonesian graduate students in Japan

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-392
Author(s):  
Rezky Pratiwi Balman ◽  
Lee Sangmok ◽  
Narahiko Inoue
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
University Professors ◽  
Email Communication ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Request Strategies

While research in speech act has received a lot of academic attention, how requesting strategies are performed in email communication among non-native speakers in a broader cultural context remains scarcely sufficient. This study investigates requesting strategies employed by non-native English-speaking students (i.e. Indonesians) to non-native English university professors (i.e. Japanese) through the medium of email. It further sought whether the strategies performed are different between low and high imposition requests. This study applied both qualitative and quantitative approaches using a corpus of 56 authentic emails. The data were analyzed using a modified version of the request strategies framework of Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) contrived by Economidou-Kogetsidis (2011). The results show a pattern of different requesting strategies emerged in accordance with the imposition of the requests the students make. While Conventionally Indirect Strategy in the form of query preparatory is found to be favored when writing low imposition email requests, this strategy is not appeared to be preferred when students write high imposition requests. Instead, Indonesian students tend to employ a great deal of Hint Strategies and let the professors interpret their intention in the emails.

scholarly journals A Cross-cultural Study of The Speech Act of Compliments in American English and Yemeni Arabic

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Najeeb Taher Almansoob ◽  
Yasser Alrefaee ◽  
K.S Patil
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Frequency Counts

Based on a cross-cultural perspective, the current study aims to compare the realization of the speech act of compliments among Yemeni Arabic native speakers (YANSs) and American English native speakers (AENSs). Samples of 30 participants of Americans and 30 other participants of Yemenis were involved in the study. The data were collected through a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) consisting of six hypothetical compliment scenarios. The corpus collected for analysis was 380 Arabic compliment semantic formulas and 338 English compliment semantic formulas. Data were analyzed in terms of frequency counts of 20 strategies and order of semantic formulas in the speakers' response utterances. The findings showed that there are some pragmatic similarities and differences between the two native groups. Some strategies seemed to be universal across the two cultures like Admiration whereas strategies of Exaggeration, Gratitude to God and Metaphor are culturally specific to Arabic. The findings also revealed that most of the speakers' utterances were in the two-fold order of semantic formulas. Moreover, the findings showed that American compliments were steady and formulaic in nature while Arabic Compliments were various in formulas and long.

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