Abstract
This article attempts to compare aspects of discourse and sociolinguistic competence among speakers of American English (AE) and Tunisian learners of English with regard to the communicative act of compliment response (CR). The two participant groups’ CR strategies were found to be cross-culturally different and were found to be dependent on the participants’ respective cultural backgrounds. In addition, the data collected emphasize the fact that cross-cultural communication is a transactional mutual process and that both native and nonnative speakers of English are equally required to adjust their communicative behaviors to develop intercultural communication. The 30 American students and 30 Tunisian students filled a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) with 8 contextualized situations and sat after that for a semistructured interview. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis.
Highlights
IntroductionWhile I was waiting for a friend at a clothing store, a British woman stopped me and said, “You look very beautiful in pink!” This utterance might sound simple but, for me it was confusing and problematic
The fascination that I hold for cross-cultural communication emanates from a moment of distress that I experienced when on a linguistic stay in Britain
The results showed that the words used among the American participants to respond to compliments about the tennis game situation revolved around effort, hard work, improvement, and practice, while the Tunisian participants used lexis related to both effort and natural talent
Summary
While I was waiting for a friend at a clothing store, a British woman stopped me and said, “You look very beautiful in pink!” This utterance might sound simple but, for me it was confusing and problematic. The answer in my mind was, “What does she want?” But I did not reply. She went on and added, “I like the way you dress.”. What I thought about at that moment was that her utterance was an indirect question about the place from which I bought my clothes as it was very common in a Tunisian context to say, “I like your outfit; where did you get it from?” for fear that this would not be the appropriate response, I remained silent and perplexed. The puzzling question, was, “Why, in spite of my ability to utter grammatically correct sentences, was I unable to communicate effectively with a NS?”
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