Chapter 3. Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 606-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Noëlle Guillot

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.


1990 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wierzbicka

Abstract The author argues that the differences in the ways of speaking prevailing in different societies and different communities are profound and systematic, and reflect the different cultural values. In the past, the extent of the differences between different language communities in their ways of speaking was often underestimated. In particular, the search for universals in language use inspired by language philosophers such as Paul Grice (1975, 1981) and John Searle (1969, 1979) often led to the identification of the mainstream American English with the “normal human ways of speaking”. The last decade has witnessed a growing reaction against this kind of misguided universalism,resulting in the birth of a new discipline: cross-cultural pragmatics. The progress of this new discipline, however, has been hampered by the lack of a suitable metalanguage. Researchers in this field tend to rely heavily on vague and undefined terms such as “directness”, “indirectness”, “harmony”, “solidarity”, which are used differently by different authors, or by the same authors but on different occasions. This leads to confusion, and to a lack of consensus and clarity even on the most basic points. The author argues that to compare cultures in a truly illuminating way we need a culture-independent perspective, and that one can reach such a perspective by relying on a natural semantic metalanguage, based on universal semantic primitives. These claims are illustrated in the paper with numerous examples.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-69
Author(s):  
Muji Agustiyani

Background: This is a contrastive study that compares the investigation on the patterns of compliments strategies used by the judges in Indonesian Idol and American Idol 2019. This study aims at describing the compliment strategies addressed by the judges in two reality talent shows, that’s a singing competition, and to reveal the differences of cultural values between the two societies. Methodology: The data is collected from the two YouTube accounts for the top three finalists’ performance by utilizing the observation method with the note-taking technique. Ye’s compliment strategies theory (1995) and Holmes’ syntactic patterns of compliments (1995) are employed in analyzing the data. Findings: The result showed a significant difference between Indonesian and American judges in the way they give compliments. Indonesian judges prefer to use more explicit compliments while American judges prefer implicit compliments instead. Conclusion: It then revealed the contrastive cultural reflection of western people that is supposed to be ‘more ‘direct’ in the way of speaking’ (Wierzbicka, 2003). On the other hand, the finding exhibited contrast results from conventional perception upon Indonesian cultural predilection to ‘indirectness’ in the way of speaking. Keywords: American Idol 2019; Compliment Strategies; Cross-cultural Pragmatics; Indonesian Idol 2019; The Judges.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-169
Author(s):  
Muhammad Hussain ◽  
Akhtar Aziz

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


2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Hassall

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.


2020 ◽  
pp. 027243162097767
Author(s):  
Yan Li ◽  
Michelle F. Wright ◽  
Danae Rollet

This study compares 477 Chinese and 342 American adolescents’ responses to open-ended questions regarding attribution and outcome expectancies of relational aggression, and investigates how cultural values were related to these social cognitive processes. Results revealed cross-cultural similarities and differences. In particular, American adolescents attributed romantic relationship competition, which was absent in Chinese adolescents’ responses. Furthermore, American adolescents demonstrated a stronger instrumental orientation in their social cognition (e.g., gain status), whereas Chinese adolescents tended to hold the blaming the victim attribution, and the socially harm the victim outcome expectancy. Finally, this study revealed that in both cultural groups, higher collectivism was linked to the blaming the aggressor attribution, as well as escalated peer conflict and aggression as outcome expectancies, whereas individualism was linked to the blaming the victim attribution. Findings of this study enriched our knowledge about the cultural construal of adolescents’ attribution and outcome expectancy regarding relational aggression.


Author(s):  
Mina Jeon ◽  
Dagmara Dimitriou ◽  
Elizabeth J. Halstead

Recent studies have shown that sleep is influenced and shaped by cultural factors, including cultural values, beliefs and practices. However, a systematic understanding of how cultural factors in countries may influence sleep duration and sleep disturbances is still lacking. Therefore, we focused on a comparison of sleep duration and disturbances in young populations between countries. We report cross-cultural differences between the child, parent and environmental factors, and their association with sleep duration and disturbances. The review is based on literature searches of seven databases published until December 2020. Studies were included if they investigated sleep duration and disturbances of individuals up to 18 years across at least two or more countries. The results of this review have shown that sleep duration and disturbances vary between countries and regions and certain factors (e.g., bedtime routines, sleeping arrangement, physical activity and psychological functioning) have been associated with sleep duration or disturbances. This review also demonstrates that certain factors which were associated with sleep duration or disturbances in one country, were not shown in other countries, suggesting a need for recommendations for age-related sleep duration and sleep interventions to consider cultural differences that influence sleep duration or disturbances in individual countries or regions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Diana Bravo

ResumenEn este trabajo se aborda la problemática de la universalidad de los actos de habla (Searle, ([1969]1980. Actos de habla. Madrid: Cátedra Visor.) y de su relación con las amenazas a la imagen social (cf. Placencia y Bravo, 2002. Actos de habla y cortesía en español. London: LINCOM; ; Bravo y Briz, 2004. Pragmática sociocultural: estudios del discurso de cortesía en español. Barcelona: Ariel). Dentro de los estudios de orientación pragmática de mayor difusión entre los académicos, encontramos dos posiciones, por un lado la de autores como Leech (([1983] 1988). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.) y Brown y Levinson ([1978] 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), que asumen que determinados actos de habla serían inherentemente amenazantes para la mantención de la imagen social (face); por otro, la de Thomas ((1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4 (2), pp. 91–112.), Wierzbicka ((1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics. The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.) y Blum-Kulka, S. y Olshtain, E. ((1984). Request and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, (5), pp. 196–213.), entre otros, para quienes la percepción de los mismos actos en distintas culturas estaría influida por factores socioculturales, de manera que los actos de habla no serían per se amenazantes, sino que esta condición dependería de su interpretación en contexto. Creemos que los actos se describen de modo distinto dependiendo de cuál sea el contexto del usuario ideal, término que refiere al uso habitual de la lengua en su contexto situacional y sociocultural. Por ello sostenemos que no basta con interpretar los actos con la sola ayuda de la bibliografía y de las propias intuiciones, sino que es necesario consultar al usuario de la lengua. En este artículo nos enfocaremos en justificar una metodología de recogida de datos socio-pragmáticos que establece relaciones directas entre los actos y los hábitos sociales de sus usuarios. Nos basaremos en un método de consulta usado por varios autores, el cuestionario de hábitos sociales (cf. Hernández Flores, (2002). La cortesía en la conversación española de familiares y amigos. La búsqueda de equilibrio entre la imagen del hablante y la imagen del destinatario. Tesis doctoral. Aalborg: Aalborg Universitet. Recuperado de http://edice.asice.se/?page_id=305, y Bernal y Hernández Flores, (2016). Variación socio-pragmática en la enseñanza del español: aplicación didáctica de un cuestionario de hábitos sociales. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 3 (2), pp. 114–126.).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document