The Complexity of Pragmatic Competence: A Comparative Analysis of Native English Speakers’ and Turkish ESL Students’ Advice-giving Strategies

Abstract

Studies revealed that English as a second language (ESL) speakers and native English speakers (NES) often used different strategies to offer advice in English. Since these differences can cause cross-cultural misunderstandings and misattribution of intent between ESL speakers and NES, it is important to identify them. For this purpose, this study analyzed the structural and pragmatic differences between the advice-giving strategies of NES and Turkish ESL speakers. 18 NES and 20 Turkish ESL students were recruited and asked to offer written advice to the given cases in a WCDT questionnaire. The analysis revealed that while the NES students tended to use the modal ‘would’, the pronoun ‘I’, and some other politeness features in their advice, Turkish ESL speakers tended to use the modal ‘should’ and the pronoun ‘you’ more. These results indicated that Turkish ESL speakers employed their pragmatic competence in Turkish to construct their discourses in English.