scholarly journals INVESTIGATING AGE–BASED COMPLIMENTS IN PERSIAN

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Vahid Shahidi Pour ◽  
Gholam Reza Zarei

The present study was an attempt to investigate differences in the use of compliments in Persian across age as a social variable. Data was gathered through a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) with imaginary situations in which 200 native Persian speakers were asked to put themselves in those situations and give compliments. The results indicated that the most frequently used compliment strategies by Persian native speakers were explicit unbound semantic formula and non-compliment strategies. However, the participants used 'other' strategies, future reference, contrast, and request strategies the least. The results also suggested the effect of age on the distribution of compliments. While the younger participants preferred non-compliment strategies the most, the older participants preferred explicit unbound semantic formula strategies the most. However, despite minor differences, all age-groups rarely tended to use future reference, contrast, request, and 'other' strategies. The results cashed light on the cultural and socio-cultural factors affecting the way people offer compliments.Keywords: Pragmatic competence, Speech acts, Compliments, Discourse Completion Task (DCT), Social variables

Author(s):  
Victoriya Trubnikova

The purpose of this article is to investigate complaint strategies used by Italian and Russian speakers as well as interlanguage complaints of Russians in an Italian L2 context. The sample of the study consists of 23 subjects from each group. The data for the research were elicited by means of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) involving five stimuli with a short description of a situation which codifies basic information on social variables. This research attempts to revisit the concept of appropriateness and has important implications for non-native speakers who are learning about speech acts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 24-35
Author(s):  
Panha Song

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.


Author(s):  
Victoriya Yu. Trubnikova

The article discusses the issue of pragmatic meanings of diminutive forms in the Russian language from the point of view of politeness and speech act theories. The impact of diminutives on the illocutionary force and perlocutionary effects of speech acts raises the question of their appropriateness in various communicative situations. Since there is a negative bias towards diminutives among lay native speakers, it was decided to analyse their opinions, beliefs and feelings in order to define 1) the speakers illocutionary intentions; 2) contexts of use and 3) perlocutionary effects. The online articles, forums, posts on social networks and comments of Internet users were collected, with a total amount of 23 sources and 714 user comments. The emic and bottom-up approach referred to speakers intuition reveal 1) negative attitude towards diminutives in hierarchical relationships, 2) perception of diminutives as a positive politeness tool in low distance relationships, 3) perception of diminutives as a manipulative tool in unequal relationships. Thus, the appropriate use of diminutives calls for pragmatic skills to assess a communicative situation in terms of social variables, such as social distance and power, mutual costs and benefits, rights and obligations of interlocutors.


2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misty Cook ◽  
Anthony J. Liddicoat

Abstract In the past, research in interlanguage pragmatics has primarily explained the differences between native speakers’ (NS) and non-native speakers’ (NNS) pragmatic performance based on cross-cultural and linguistic differences. Very few researchers have considered learners’ pragmatic performance based on second language comprehension. In this study, we will examine learners’ pragmatic performance using request strategies. The results of this study reveal that there is a proficiency effect for interpreting request speech acts at different levels of directness. We propose that learners’ processing strategies and capacities are important factors to consider when examining learners’ pragmatic performance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Rawshan Ibrahim Tahir ◽  
Ambigapathy Pandian

The present study is a comparative analysis of apology speech acts in both native speakers of Kurdish and native speakers of American English. It aims at finding out the similarities and differences in the strategies used to apologize in both languages. Therefore, a Discourse completion Task (DCT) questionnaire consisted of 15 situations was used to collect the data from 50 native speakers of English and 50 native speakers of Kurdish language. The findings revealed that both languages used similar five main strategies to apologize which confirm the universality of speech acts. However, the differences came out in the use of sub-strategies of an explicit expression of apology; native speakers of English used more an expression of regret strategy to perform an apology while native speakers of Kurdish used offer of an apology strategy more to apologize. Furthermore, the differences occurred in the frequency of strategies used to apologize in both languages. The study also revealed the occurrence of other new strategies in Kurdish Language that did not exist in English languag


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Yaseen Alzeebaree

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.


Author(s):  
Khalid Abdel Gadir Tag Eldin

<p>This study tried to identify the Sudanese university students’ preferences of request strategies. It explored the claim of the universality of the speech act’s three levels of directness i.e. direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect. It contrasted and compared the subjects’ choice of strategies in Arabic and English languages. It also investigated the impact of some social factors on the subjects’ strategy choice. The data collected from the subjects showed that they used direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect requests when they responded to English and Arabic Discourse Completion Tests. This finding consolidated the universality claim of the three levels of directness. The data also showed that the subjects preferred to use direct requests more than the conventionally indirect ones and hints. The collectivist culture of the students’ society influenced their choice of direct strategies as it is based on solidarity, intimacy, etc. The results also showed that the different social variables i.e. the social distance between the interactants, the power one interlocutor has over the other, and the degree of request imposition had impact on the subjects’ choice of strategies. </p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><strong>:</strong> Pragmatics, Request Strategies, Speech acts, Sudanese university students, Sudanese Colloquial Arabic.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Jalal Almathkuri

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of social power and distance on the strategies involved in performing the speech act of request by native speakers of Saudi Arabic. The participants of this study are 26 males and 8 females; all are undergraduate students enrolled in different disciplines at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. Data for this study was collected through the use of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). The results revealed that the direct strategy is the most preferred strategy employed in making requests by Saudi Arabic native speakers and the nonconventional indirect strategy is the least strategy. It is hoped that this study will facilitate the acquisition of Saudi Arabic pragmatics by non-native speakers in a way to eliminate the miscommunications they may encounter in relation to the sociocultural norms. 


Author(s):  
Nasim Ariana ◽  
Masoumeh Ahmadi Shirazi ◽  
Seyed Mohammad Mousavi Nadoushani

This study attempted to investigate the extent to which two types of pragmatic instruction -explicit versus implicit- affect learners’ knowledge in terms of their awareness and production of request strategies. Thirty students with the same level of proficiency were divided into two groups (explicit and implicit). They were exposed to listening excerpts taken from the book Tactics for Listening, with the focus on request making strategies. While the explicit group was equipped with direct awareness-raising tasks and written metapragmatic explanations on the use of appropriate requests, the implicit group was provided with a set of implicit awareness-raising tasks. Outcomes of the study demonstrate that pragmatic instruction of requesting improved learners’ awareness of both groups. Also an improvement of learners’ production of requests did take place in both groups after the interventional period. However, the explicit group outperformed the implicit one as far as production of request making was concerned.Keywords: Pragmatic competence, Speech acts, Requests, Explicit/Implicit pragmatic instruction


Author(s):  
Martina Maria McCarthy

This study focuses on contrastive pragmatics in the realization of the speech act of requests in Irish English and Russian in conversational and institutional settings. A quali-quantitative analysis was conducted to investigate how each language differs in realizing requests in each setting and to identify commonalities and differences between them. An original ten-question written discourse completion task (WDCT) was completed by 30 Irish English and 30 Russian native speakers, which generated data of 600 responses. Five units of analysis were coded, and descriptive statistics were used for comparison. Additionally, paradigms concerning politeness theories were used to explain marked differences between the request strategies of the test groups. Overall, the results indicated that Russian speakers make a clear distinction between conversational and institutional settings whereas Irish English speakers generally do not. In addition, high levels of social informality were evidenced by the Irish English speakers across settings while Russian speakers tended to enact identity in line with the context.


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