A cross-cultural study of condolence strategies in a computer-mediated social network

Minoo Alemi,Atefeh Rezanejad,Niayesh Pazoki Moakhar

doi:10.22363/2687-0088-2021-25-2-417-442

Abstract

Among the various speech acts, an under-investigated one is condolence speech act. The present study sought to investigate the verbal strategies of expressing condolence used by (1) Iranian native speakers of Persian, (2) Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, and (3) American native speakers of English. Accordingly, a total of 200, 42, and 50 responses were collected respectively from the informants who responded to an obituary post followed by a picture consisting of a situation related to the news of a celebritys death on Instagram (In the case of Iranians: Morteza Pashaii , a famous singer in the case of Americans: B. B. King , an American singer-songwriter). After creating a pool of responses to the death announcements and through careful content analysis, the utterances by native Persian speakers, EFL learners, and native English speakers were coded into seven, nine, and seven categories, with expression of affection ( n = 109, 46.38%), wishes for the deceased ( n = 34, 59.64%), and wishes for the deceased ( n = 32, 23.70%) being the most prevalent ones, correspondingly. Moreover, tests of Chi-square revealed that there was a statistically significant difference among the three groups. The results showed that there were significant differences among the participants in terms of using condolence strategies in Expression of affection (love and grief), Wishes for the deceased, Expression of shock, use of address terms, expression of gratitude, Offering condolences, expression of happiness for his peaceful death, and Seeking absolution from God categories, with Expression of affection being the most prevalent one among Iranian Persian speakers. The findings have pedagogical implications for EFL teachers as wells as textbook and course designers.

Highlights

In recent decades, cross-cultural pragmatics, the study of similarities and differences in cultural norms for producing utterances, has been in the limelight in the domain of applied linguistics (Blum-Kulka 1991, Kasper & Dahl 1991)
Due to the significance of the issue, the current study aimed to examine the verbal expressions used by Iranian native speakers of Persian, American native speakers of English, and Iranian EFL learners with regard to the speech act of condolence
The first research question dealt with the kind of strategies native speakers of English, native speakers of Persian, and Iranian EFL learners employ to produce the speech act of condolences in a computer-mediated social network

Summary

Introduction

Cross-cultural pragmatics, the study of similarities and differences in cultural norms for producing utterances, has been in the limelight in the domain of applied linguistics (Blum-Kulka 1991, Kasper & Dahl 1991). Cultures vary greatly in their interactional styles and this will lead to inclinations in opting for different styles of speech act behavior and bring to light the importance of appropriateness of speech. This issue further extends to the realm of Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) which is considered to be any type of communication that happens between people through some kinds of electronic devices and is very widespread nowadays. Due to the significance of the issue, the current study aimed to examine the verbal expressions used by Iranian native speakers of Persian, American native speakers of English, and Iranian EFL learners with regard to the speech act of condolence

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion