Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Perspectives on the Emotional and Pragmatic Expression of Sympathy in Spanish and English

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In the language that surrounds the event of death, the speech act of expressing sympathy can be a genuine emotional reaction, but also a pragmatic utterance that follows politeness norms and is used to achieve social or conversational goals. Sympathy is a unique emotion since it can arise only through social interaction (Clark, C, Misery and company: Sympathy in everyday life. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago/London, 1997), and it is crucial for establishing social bonds and intersubjectivity. Parting from the idea that both pragmatic and emotional behavior are conditioned by the cultural norms of the speaker’s language (Wierzbicka, A, Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999), as well as the idea that the ability to express and perceive emotion in a second language (L2) is an important part of a L2 learner’s communicative competence (Pavlenko 2005), this chapter examines how sympathy is expressed at the mention of a death in the family by native speakers (NSs) of Spanish and English, as well as intermediate L2 learners of Spanish. The data for this study were collected through recorded conversations with 60 participants, in which spontaneous reactions of sympathy were elicited. The data show that the way speakers react to an interlocutor’s hardship, such as a death in the family, is influenced by social and politeness factors, personality differences and conversational structure. Results indicate that some differences exist in how sympathy is expressed by NSs of English and Spanish, although speakers of both languages tended to rely heavily on the use of formulaic expressions. Regarding the learners, it was found that some had acquired sufficient L2 pragmatic information to react appropriately, while others exhibited pragmatic transfer from their L1 to their L2 or were unable to react due to linguistic limitations, which could negatively impact the communication or relationship between interlocutors. Therefore, this chapter supports the idea that learning to express emotions such as sympathy in a culturally and pragmatically appropriate manner is necessary for achieving successful L2 communicative competence.