scholarly journals Strategies and mitigation devices in the speech act of disagreement in American English

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Hassen Khammari
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Strategy Selection ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Lower Status ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

The present study aimed at exploring the strategies of disagreement and hedging devices used by native speakers of English. The study elicited the informants’ reactions when disagreeing with higher, equal, and lower status. The responses were analyzed using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness model and Hyland’s (1998) hedging taxonomy. Discourse completion test data was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings revealed that native speakers of American English used positive politeness strategies considerably with higher and equal status interlocutors (father, teacher, and friends). The respondents were concerned with saving their interlocutors’ positive face regardless of their social distance and power. The only significant difference, in terms of strategy selection, was identified in highly face-threatening contexts (accusation), where the informants opted for bald on record politeness strategies because of the seriousness of the interlocutor’s (supervisor) claims (plagiarism). The data showed also that native speakers relied on hedges considerably to mitigate their disagreements.

scholarly journals Speech Act of Greeting for American Native Speakers of English and Saudi Native Speakers of Arabic: A Comparative Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 243
Author(s):  
Rehan Almegren
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Saudi Arabic

This study focuses on comparing the speech acts of native Arabic speakers of Saudi region and English speakers of America, which help depict the impact of the variables involved, namely status, setting, social distance and situation formality. This paper makes a significant contribution for future researchers, as it is of help to researchers in the speech act area specifically in terms of Saudi Arabic and American English. It will be also of help to those learning Arabic or English and those who teach it in these two countries. Thus, the outcome of this research will contribute to depict the differences and the similarities in the use of greeting strategies between two different groups of respondents from diverse linguistic and cultural domains. Data was collected using the discourse completion test (DCT), developed by Cohen, Olshtain & Rosenstien (1985). Fifty female respondents within the age group of 20-25 years were selected from each group to participate in research procedures. Although the inclusion of male respondents would have made the process complex, it would have provided with comparatively more accurate outcomes if managed properly. The findings showed that linguistic and cultural differences, variables of social distance, social status, settings and situation formality greatly influenced the decision-making of Saudi Native Speakers of Arabic and American Native Speakers of English, pertaining to their usage of greeting strategies as part of their speech acts. For example, differences can be observed between these two speakers in terms of their greeting strategies; American English speakers attach less significance to social and physical distance and hierarchy compared to Saudi Arabic speakers. Similarly, both the groups attach almost equal importance to their initiation words when greeting others. These differences and similarities help determine social status and the relationship between speakers. 

A contrastive pragmatic study of politeness strategies in disagreement between native speakers of English and Chinese EFL learners

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chu Yan
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Chinese Undergraduates

AbstractThis paper attempts to make a contrastive cross-cultural study of a special speech act— “disagreement.” Participants are 35 American undergraduates and 42 Chinese undergraduates respectively with the data eliciting technique—DCT (discourse completion test). Findings show that Chinese undergraduates tend to use different politeness strategies according to different social distance and social power while American undergraduates prefer to use positive politeness strategy most followed by negative politeness strategy, regardless of social distance and social power. The results of the study reveal cultural differences between the U.S. and China that lead to the distribution of diverse politeness strategies and also offer insights into what Chinese EFL learners are struggling with during their development of interlanguage pragmatic competence.

CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF REFUSAL EXPRESSIONS IN JAPANESE AND BAHASA AT WORKPLACE

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Maria Gustini
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Age Range

This article examines Contrastive Analysis of Refusal in Indonesian language and Japanese language. Up to now, there have been no contrastive researchs which compare refusal speech acts within Indonesian language and Japanese language, focused on working situations. This article reports on a study to investigate differences and similarities in the politeness strategies of refusals between Japanese language (JS) and Indonesian language (IS). This study employed politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). Therefore the participants of this research were Indonesian and Japanese who currently work in company, school, etc. This research used descriptive method and collecting data using DCT (Discourse Completion Test) in Indonesian and Japanese. Therefore, the research subjects were those who already worked with the age-range from 22 to 50 years. 40 native speakers of Indonesian (IS) and 40 native speakers of Japanese (JS) participated in this study. All participants were asked to fill out a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which written in the form role-play questionaire, consisting of 3 situations. DCT situations were categorized based on power and familiarity/social distance between speaker and hearer. Results are as follows: (1) JS and IS using apology, reason, fuka, and requeirment in refusal act. (2) IS explain reason clearly in refusal act. Other hand JS using aimai reason. (3) JS used expressions of apology appropriately according to their power (hierarchical position), while IS made appropriate use of these expressions according to relative social distance. (4) IS tend to using requeirement in each refusal act.

scholarly journals Disagreeing in Tunisian Arabic: a Politeness and Pragmatic Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-64
Author(s):  
Hassen Khammari
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Tunisian Arabic ◽  
New Strategies ◽  
Identification And Quantification ◽  
Pragmatic Study

This research is a pragmatic and politeness study that deals with the speech act of disagreement in Tunisian Arabic, a variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It accounts for disagreement in relation to the contextual factors of Social Distance, Social Power, and Rank of Imposition. Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is used to study the production of disagreement. Data was collected from a group of native speakers of Tunisian Arabic at “Institut Supérieur des Langues de Tunis, Tunisia”. Native speakers of TA used a variety of strategies, which were identified in other languages (e.g., Direct Refusal, Suggestion, Giving Account, and Request…) along with new strategies (e.g., Teasing, Unsympathetic advice, Challenge, and Criticism).The identification and quantification of the strategies of disagreement also helped develop insights into the Tunisian culture.  

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 Politeness Strategies in English Business Letters: a Comparative Study of Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elahe Goudarzi ◽  
Behzad Ghonsooly ◽  
Zahra Taghipour
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

Abstract This study investigated the use of politeness strategies in a corpus of English business letters written by Iranian non-native speakers in comparison with business letters written by English native speakers. The positive and negative politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson’s (1978) theory were employed. A corpus of 46 business letters written by non-native employees of four companies and 46 letters written by native speakers who were in correspondence with these companies were analyzed to examine their use of politeness strategies. Th e results collected from the analysis of letters written by nonnative parties as senders were compared to those written by native speakers as receivers in response. Th e findings showed that although both parties used both types of politeness strategies in their letters, non-native participants employed both types (negative and positive politeness strategies) more than native speakers, especially positive politeness strategies, which were found to be used more frequently than negative ones. Additionally, the results demonstrated that social distance plays an important role in the employment of different strategies, particularly in choosing the type of salutation, which is an act requiring the positive politeness strategy to reduce face threatening act. Th us, more frequent use of positive politeness strategies by non-native speakers could be an effect of this factor.

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.

scholarly journals Impoliteness in the Realization of Complaint Speech Acts: A Comparative Study of Iranian EFL Learners and Native English Speakers

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atefeh Nikoobin ◽  
Mohsen Shahrokhi
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Placement Test ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

This study was conducted to investigate the impolite complaint strategies that are used by Iranian EFL learners and native speakers in relation to social distance. This study also aimed at determining if there were significant differences among the strategies used by each group and if there was a significant difference between Iranian native speakers of English. To this end, 40 Iranian EFL learners and 20 Americans who were native speakers of English participated in this study. To make sure about the homogeneity of Iranian participants the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was conducted. A questionnaire containing 12 different situations was designed by the researchers and was given to the participants to express their complaints for each situation. The results revealed that there were significant differences among the strategies used by each group; the most common strategy that was used by both groups of participants was positive impoliteness and the least common one was bald-on-record. Although the most and least common strategies used by both groups were the same, Iranians had a stronger tendency for using sarcasm in low social distance situations while natives had a stronger tendency for using bald-on-record in high social distance contexts. This study has implications for EFL curriculum designing in Iran and can make Iranian EFL instructors familiar with the importance of impoliteness as an indispensable part of language.

Effects of task complexity on L2 suggestions

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-265
Author(s):  
Daniel Márquez ◽  
Júlia Barón
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
American English ◽  
L2 Pragmatics ◽  
And Task

Abstract This exploratory study aims at determining whether increased task complexity affects performance of second language (L2) pragmatics. 34 Spanish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) undertook simple and complex interactive tasks targeting the speech act of suggesting. Although previous analyses of learner-learner interaction have demonstrated that increasing the cognitive load of a task may affect the number of speech acts in conversation, not enough evidence to support this premise was found. In addition, the assessment of suggestions as provided by native speakers of American English shows that increased task complexity along number of elements, social distance, and degree of imposition is likely to promote accuracy and complexity of pragmatic moves without making L2 learners trade off either accuracy or complexity. Pedagogical implications in the fields of L2 pragmatics and task-based language teaching (TBLT) are further discussed.

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.

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