scholarly journals “Can we take a picture with you?” The realization of the refusal speech act with tourists by Emirati speakers

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Tanju Deveci ◽  
Jessica Midraj
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Comfort Level ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Instructional Activity ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Communication Breakdowns ◽  
Different Cultures

Effective communication between people from different cultures requires not only the ability to speak a common language but also an awareness of sociocultural rules and sociolinguistics features, an important one being speech acts the realization of which realization by Emirati non-native speakers of English has not been studied sufficiently. This paper investigates a particularly face-threatening speech act - refusals. It explores Emiratis comfort level and the use of the refusal speech act in communicative exchanges with unknown tourists. The data set consisted of 94 participant responses to a pre-instructional activity in an introductory linguistics class. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data sets. The key findings suggest that both male and female participants were rather comfortable conversing with a tourist couple that they had never met, but male participants reported being more at ease accepting the couples request to take a photo with the tourists at a statistically significant level. While more than half of the participants reported willingness to take the photo with the tourists, approximately 41.5% would decline such a request, with significantly more females declining the request. The most frequent components of the refusal speech act included a statement of regret, a thank-you note, and an excuse, reason, or explanation. Results also showed that linguistic devices for positive politeness purposes were used rather sparingly, and it was mainly the females who used them. Based on the results, it is helpful for visitors to the UAE to be mindful of Emiratis' sociocultural and sociolinguistic behaviors so that the nuances of communication can be understood and responses are appropriate, which can reduce the likelihood of communication breakdowns and increase the well-being of all involved in the interaction.

scholarly journals An Investigation of the Use of politeness strategies in refusal among Characters with different power relations in English and Farsi Novels

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Farahman Farrokhi ◽  
Mina Arghami
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mixed Method Design ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Made In

One of the important concerns of communicative way of learning is to be able to convey meaning and not just physical words in a language. The study of speech acts could possibly help achieve this. When using speech acts, one should take into consideration the conversational rules of the language and in order to establish a safe and harmonious conversation, it is better to use certain strategies to eliminate their possible threatening effects. Attempt is made in the present study using a mixed-method design, to investigate the employment of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), among the interlocutors with different power relations in English and Farsi novels, when using the speech act of refusal. The speech act of refusal addressed in this study is a face threatening act (FTA) (Brown & Levinson, 1987), which may be used differently by speakers of different languages, with different power relations, in different situations. The materials used are five English and five Farsi novels written by native speakers of English and Farsi. The taxonomy of Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990) were employed in order to categories different types of refusal. The frequency of their use and their percentages were calculated manually. The results indicated that even though reflecting two different cultures, the similarities among the English and Farsi novels regarding the use of both speech acts, were more than the differences. The differences were more obvious in the employment of politeness strategies. The findings of this study will probably give insights into the pragmatic and conversational rules of both languages.

scholarly journals Contrastive Pragmatics: Apologies & Thanks in English and Italian

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Cuneyt Demir ◽  
Mehmet Takkac
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
American English ◽  
The Status ◽  
Language Competency ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Remedial Strategies

<p>Awareness of language or language competency has greatly changed from the focus of language itself as form and structure to language use as pragmatics. Accordingly, it is widely accepted that different cultures structure discourse in different ways. Moreover, studies have shown that this holds for discourse genres traditionally considered as highly standardized in their rituals and formulas. Taking inspiration from such studies, this paper employs a corpus-based approach to examine variations of the apology and thanking strategies used in English and Italian. First the apology itself as a form of social action is closely analyzed and then thanking. This study also pays special attention on analyzing and contrasting apology and thanking strategies in American English and in Italian in terms of Marion Owen’s remedial strategies (Owen, 1983), and Olshtain &amp; Cohen’s semantic formulas in the apology speech act set (Olshtain &amp; Cohen, 1983). The purpose of the study is not only to compare apology and thanking speech acts but to also learn their contextual use. The findings suggest that the status and role of the situation affect the speakers’ choice of apology and thanking strategies, and semantic formulas are of great importance.</p>

European household’s income, consumption and wealth

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 1175-1188
Author(s):  
Pierre Lamarche ◽  
Friderike Oehler ◽  
Irene Rioboo
Keyword(s):  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Micro Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Statistical Matching ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
Poverty Indicators

Poverty indicators purely based on income statistics do not reflect the full picture of household’s economic well-being. Consumption and wealth are two additional key dimensions that determine the economic opportunities of people or material inequalities. We use non-parametric statistical matching methods to join consumption data from the Household Budget Survey to micro data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. In a second step, micro data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey are joint to produce a common distribution of income, consumption and wealth variables. A variety of different indicators is then produced based on this joint data set, in particular household saving rates. Care has to be taken when interpreting the indicators, since the statistical matching is based on strong assumptions and a limited number of variables common to all of the three original data sets. We are able to show, however, that the assumptions made are justified by the use of strong proxies as matching variables. Thus, the resulting indicators have the potential to contribute to the analysis of inequality patterns and enhance the possibilities of social, and possibly fiscal, policy impact analysis.

scholarly journals Disagreement: a speech act analysis and classroom implications

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 24-35
Author(s):  
Panha Song
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Nonnative Speakers Of English ◽  
Authentic Data ◽  
Speech Act Analysis

Disagreement has been widely regarded as one of the most interesting speech acts in EFL context since the way the speaker expresses her or his opposing view can affect the addressee’s self-image and view of the addressor. This article attempted to identify various strategies native speakers of English realized this speech act through a qualitative method by analyzing two sets of authentic data from two half-hour interviews. Next, it investigated the lack of emphasis on disagreement in EFL materials before offering possible suggestions to equip non-native learners of English with pragmatic competence to disagree effectively. The findings and recommendations had implications for EFL teachers, course designers, and materials developers in how and why speech acts and pragmatic competence should be emphasized in order to ensure that nonnative speakers of English could communicate effectively without being perceived as pragmatically inferior.

scholarly journals A new approach to the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm by automatic weights and local clustering

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Yadgar Sirwan Abdulrahman
Keyword(s):  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Similarity Criterion ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Classical Solutions ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Data Set ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Fuzzy C Means Clustering ◽  
Global And Local

Clustering is one of the essential strategies in data analysis. In classical solutions, all features are assumed to contribute equally to the data clustering. Of course, some features are more important than others in real data sets. As a result, essential features will have a more significant impact on identifying optimal clusters than other features. In this article, a fuzzy clustering algorithm with local automatic weighting is presented. The proposed algorithm has many advantages such as: 1) the weights perform features locally, meaning that each cluster's weight is different from the rest. 2) calculating the distance between the samples using a non-euclidian similarity criterion to reduce the noise effect. 3) the weight of the features is obtained comparatively during the learning process. In this study, mathematical analyzes were done to obtain the clustering centers well-being and the features' weights. Experiments were done on the data set range to represent the progressive algorithm's efficiency compared to other proposed algorithms with global and local features

scholarly journals The Directness Levels of Criticism: A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of Korean and American Youtuber

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-119
Author(s):  
Aan Anisah Agustini Safari
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Cross Culture ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Way

Background: Different countries may have different cultures that are influenced by their religion, traditions, or norms. These differences affect the way they speak, such as when they are commenting or giving opinions. Due to the way people express speech acts can be varied and lead to misinterpretation because of their differences, the researcher was intrigued to conduct this study. Methodology: This cross-cultural study was carried out to observe and compare the speech act of criticism between Korean and American YouTubers and to investigate the role of their cultural background in influencing the directness level they conveyed. First, the researcher selected three Korean Youtubers and Americans as well with food review content. Second, the researcher watched one video from each channel and took notes on every expression of criticism they used. Findings: The result of this study demonstrates that in American YouTubers speech, direct strategy emerges more frequently than the indirect one. Conversely, Korean YouTubers tend to use the indirect one. The finding also indicates that their speech behavior is related to their cultural norms, in which American culture encourages clear personal opinions, while Korean culture is a restraint to express their opinion or feeling clearly. Conclusion: Due to the considerable difference between Korean and American YouTuber speech, it can be concluded that culture takes a significant part in shaping one’s speech behavior. That is why people with different cultural backgrounds may have different ways of speaking.  Keywords: Criticism; cross-culture pragmatic; directness-indirectness.

scholarly journals SPEECH ACTS PREFERENCE IN COMPUTER – MEDIATED INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION VIA FACEBOOK MESSENGER: A NETNOGRAPHIC STUDY

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yehezkiel Adhi Nugraha
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

<p>People will not only use language for sharing message but also due to do an action. Through language, people will ask, promise, refuse, greet, invite, thank, and so on. The purpose of this research is to identify the speech acts preference used by Indonesian and Filipino non – native speakers of English via Facebook Messenger. Besides, to identify the similar or different of speech acts preference they used.</p><p>             The source of data are utterances of conversation in Facebook Messenger. The researcher applies documentation and an observation (reading the book and internet as the references) in collecting the data. After collecting the data, the researcher analyzes the data by focusing the speech acts theory. In order to support the evidence of the result, the researcher needs to describe and compare the high context-cultures and low context-cultures by Hall (1976) and also cultural dimension of Indonesia and Philippines by Hofstede.</p>The result of the analysis shows that the most speech acts preference used by Indonesian and Filipino non - native speakers of English is direct speech act. Similar and different types of speech acts are found. The similar speech act preferences are found in declarations and representatives. The different speech acts preferences are found in expressives, directives, commissives, direct, and indirect speech acts. The result of this research also shows that the communication of Indonesian and Filipino are included into low contex-cultures. It is contrary with the theory of Hall and Hofstede which shows that Indonesia and Philippines factually should be high context-cultures.

scholarly journals Overview of retrospective data harmonisation in the MINDMAP project: process and results

2020 ◽  
pp. jech-2020-214259
Author(s):  
Tina W Wey ◽  
Dany Doiron ◽  
Rita Wissa ◽  
Guillaume Fabre ◽  
Irina Motoc ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Retrospective Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Individual Determinants ◽  
Mental Well Being ◽  
Data Harmonisation

BackgroundThe MINDMAP project implemented a multinational data infrastructure to investigate the direct and interactive effects of urban environments and individual determinants of mental well-being and cognitive function in ageing populations. Using a rigorous process involving multiple teams of experts, longitudinal data from six cohort studies were harmonised to serve MINDMAP objectives. This article documents the retrospective data harmonisation process achieved based on the Maelstrom Research approach and provides a descriptive analysis of the harmonised data generated.MethodsA list of core variables (the DataSchema) to be generated across cohorts was first defined, and the potential for cohort-specific data sets to generate the DataSchema variables was assessed. Where relevant, algorithms were developed to process cohort-specific data into DataSchema format, and information to be provided to data users was documented. Procedures and harmonisation decisions were thoroughly documented.ResultsThe MINDMAP DataSchema (v2.0, April 2020) comprised a total of 2841 variables (993 on individual determinants and outcomes, 1848 on environmental exposures) distributed across up to seven data collection events. The harmonised data set included 220 621 participants from six cohorts (10 subpopulations). Harmonisation potential, participant distributions and missing values varied across data sets and variable domains.ConclusionThe MINDMAP project implemented a collaborative and transparent process to generate a rich integrated data set for research in ageing, mental well-being and the urban environment. The harmonised data set supports a range of research activities and will continue to be updated to serve ongoing and future MINDMAP research needs.

Realization of Speech Act of Permission by Kurdish EFL University Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Yaseen Alzeebaree
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Private University ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
State Universities ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Convenience Sampling

This study aims to examine Kurdish EFL university students’ development of L2 pragmatic competence by investigating their performance of the speech acts of permission. The methodology of this study was a combined research method, which comprises a quantitative and a qualitative method (mixed method). Total of 97 participants were involved in this research study. 83 (33 males and 50 females) were from four state universities and one private university in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and 14 were native speakers of English. A discourse completion test (DCT) was used to elicit the required data from participants. The study used convenience sampling for the participants because both native and non-native participants were selected on the basis of their availability. The data were coded and analysed quantitatively in terms of overall strategy use and strategy patterns. The findings revealed that there were differences in the frequency and percentages of strategies and semantic formulae in performing the speech act. KEFLUS tended to use more direct and explicit. There were more politeness and implicitness in NSE' behaviours in performing the speech act, which might have resulted from the lack of pragmatic competence of KEFLUS.

scholarly journals “Xaste Nabâši(D)” As A Culture Specific Speech Act In Persian

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-289
Author(s):  
Masoume Khodaei Moghaddam ◽  
Mahmoud Elyasi ◽  
Shahla Sharifi
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Phatic Communication ◽  
To Come ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Natural Settings ◽  
Different Cultures

As different cultures have different speech acts and some cases of unsuccessful communication are due to the differences among the cultural patterns of speech acts, knowledge of these speech acts can help people to communicate more successfully. In this regard, the present paper ,based on Brown and Levinson Politeness Theory (1987), examines and analyzes œxaste nabi(d)  speech act in Persian language to come up with the functions it serves in the Iranian Persian-speaking community for those non-Persian speakers who want to speak or learn Persian. For this purpose, some native speakers of Persian language from different ages and different groups were ­observed in such natural settings as markets, shops, the streets, and parties and their speech was recorded; then transcribed and translated into English, finally, the data was analyzed qualitatively. The results show that, there are seven major functions of xaste nabi(d) in Persian which are as follows: In literal meaning of "not being exhausted or tired", phatic communication, greeting and sometimes to bid farewell, mitigating request, to state indirectly end of a work or an activity, thanking and blaming. Finally, it is worth noting that we can define politeness in Persian language as using such politeness expressions (”xaste nabi(d) not only for mitigating face threatening act (FTA), but also for face enhancing act (FEA) and successful interaction and communication. So incompatible with politeness definition of Brown and Levinson (1987) who consider politeness simply as a means of mitigating FTA, politeness in Persian is defined as FEA too.

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