The influence of cross-cultural interference on communicative behaviour of English-speaking students in producing requests

Abstract

Introduction. In recent decades the intensification of interpersonal interaction of bearers of different cultural and historical values and linguistic traditions leads to the intensification of the process of interpenetration of cultures. Teaching the norms of communicative behavior in a foreign language has become one of the priority methodological tasks. Of particular importance is the explication of communicative behavior norms in situations in which speech behavior of speakers may differ significantly in different cultures and, therefore, may be subject to strong intercultural interference. A striking example of such a communicative situation is the production of the speech act of asking. Materials and Methods. This paper presents the results of an experimental study conducted in groups of American students studying Russian at St. Petersburg State University, as well as in groups of Russian students studying at the S.O. Makarov State University of Marine Engineering. A total of 40 people took part in the study. The aim of the experiment was to determine the degree of influence of intercultural interference on the production of the speech act of request in Russian by American students. Using the questionnaire method, expressions verbalizing the speech act of request in different communicative contexts were collected. The data received from Russian and American students were compared and statistically processed, which allows to draw some conclusions about the degree of influence of negative pragmatic transfer on the production of Russian requests by English-speaking students. Results of the study. The study revealed that, although intercultural interference affects the production of requests in Russian communication by English-speaking students in a certain way, the key factor that influenced the non-normative use of language means was the students' lack of knowledge about the pragmatically significant language means used to increase or decrease the politeness of requests in Russian communication, and their functioning in different communicative contexts. It was this factor that entailed the use by American students of speech moves that had little correlation with the norms of both Russian and American communicative behavior. This, the vast majority of the expressions used by American students were formed with the constructions Можешь (можете) +infinitive, Можно +infinitive? (Could you \ Could I) as well as the imperative form of the verb (80%), which contradicts the norms of American communicative behavior that prescribe the use of negative politeness strategies when expressing requests in most communicative contexts. At the same time, Russian respondents used these constructions only in 40 % of the cases, varying the lexical means according to communicative context. Conclusion. The obtained results allow setting the methodological accents while planning the lesson plans, as well as creating the methodological aids in order to consider the communicative needs of foreign students to the fullest extent in order to overcome the possible intercultural interference.