The Ethnopragmatics of English Understatement and Italian Exaggeration: Clashing Cultural Scripts for the Expression of Personal Opinions

Abstract

This chapter presents a cultural semantic analysis of the differences in the expression of personal opinions between English and Italian. In English, personal opinions are generally understated, whereas speakers of Italian tend to purposely exaggerate when making a statement. As one might expect, opposite communicative styles can lead to cases of miscommunication in cross-cultural interactions. Such cases can be avoided if language learners are provided with efficient tools, which can help them improve their cross-cultural awareness and competence. Adopting the approach of ethnopragmatics (Goddard (Ed.) in Ethnopragmatics. Understanding discourse in cultural context. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2006; Goddard and Ye in The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, London, pp. 66–83, 2015), this chapter proposes the theory of cultural scripts as the optimal pedagogical tool to pinpoint the differences in the expression of personal opinions between English and Italian and show how scripts can be used effectively for cross-cultural training.