Chinese Culture, Language, and L1 and L2 Speech Act Production

Abstract

Many research studies on L2 learners’ pragmatic competence have revealed the potential influence of L1 on L2 speech act production in terms of cultural speech norms and corresponding linguistic expressions. The influence of cultural rules and norms on language use has been a focal area in cross-cultural communication, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. The study of Chinese English learners’ pragmatic competence and their L1 cultural norms is no exception. It is essential to review the Chinese cultural norms so as to better understand the use of speech acts in English by Chinese learners. To achieve this, this chapter first presents the influence of L1 culture on language use. It then focusses on the key Chinese cultural concepts of lǐmao (禮貌/礼貌): politeness, and mianzi (面子): facework for interpersonal communication, and reviews how these concepts are implicitly demonstrated or embedded in five speech acts, namely requests, apologies, compliment-responses, complaints and refusals. This is achieved through the use of strategies and corresponding linguistic expressions in both Chinese and English by native-Chinese speakers and Chinese learners of English in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural interlanguage speech act studies.