Pragmatic Transfer Research Articles

The Bidirectionality of Pragmatic Transfer in Chinese English Language Learners' Compliment Responses: The Effects of Second Language Proficiency

AbstractA handful of second language (L2) studies have explored bidirectional pragmatic transfer: forward pragmatic transfer—the influence of learners' first language (L1) on their L2—and reverse pragmatic transfer—the impact of learners' L2 on their L1. This explanatory sequential mixed‐methods study investigated how L2 proficiency influenced the bidirectionality of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses. Thirty‐four intermediate English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language (EFL) learners and 34 advanced EFL learners were recruited from a university in China. The results of computer‐mediated communication via WeChat showed that, similar to L1 Chinese speakers, the intermediate learners tended to deny compliments in English, indicating forward pragmatic transfer. Like L1 English speakers, the advanced learners frequently accepted compliments in Chinese, suggesting reverse pragmatic transfer. Furthermore, when responding to compliments in Chinese or English, some advanced learners preferred to accept compliments first and then deny them. Findings from interviews revealed that identity and language prestige might affect bidirectional pragmatic transfer.

How to close a telephone call in Chinese – A problem for foreigners

AbstractIn this study, we examine why closing a telephone call in Chinese can trigger intercultural irritations for foreigners. We investigate such irritations by comparing ways in which learners and native speakers of Chinese end phone calls. We follow a tripartite research design anchored in speech acts and interaction. First, we administered Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) to a group of advanced European learners of Chinese and a group of native speakers of Chinese, investigating how members of these groups close telephone calls. Second, we studied two corpora of telephone closing conversations, including a Chinese and an English as lingua franca corpus. Third, we considered whether the pragmatic differences observed through our DCTs reflect broader Chinese and Western conventions of telephone closing observed through our interactional corpora, and whether the behaviour of foreign speakers of Chinese may have been influenced by pragmatic transfer. Through the research outcomes we interpret the above-mentioned intercultural irritations.

Politeness Variation: Politeness in Britain, Australia, and Hong Kong

British culture is often characterized by off-record or negative politeness (e.g., Blum-Kulka, 1987; Ogiermann, 2009) and norms giving prominence to social distance (van Dorst et al., 2024). It is worth exploring whether other English varieties exhibit similar characteristics within the field of variational pragmatics. This paper presents a corpus-based study that investigates politeness variation in Britain, Australia, and Hong Kong. This study seeks empirical evidence regarding variations among British English, Australian English, and Hong Kong English in terms of three different politeness types: tentativeness, deference, and solidarity, and three different levels of formality: informal, neutral, and formal. Twenty-one frequently occurred formulaic expressions regularly associated with politeness are chosen and retrieved from the GB, AU, and HK components of the GloBwE Corpus. A close analysis of the results revealed significant differences across politeness types and levels of formality among the three English varieties. Australian English exhibits the highest relative frequency of deference politeness, solidarity politeness, and both informal and formal politeness formulae, followed by British English, with Hong Kong English showing the least. In contrast, Hong Kong English has the highest relative frequency of tentativeness politeness and neutral formality politeness formulae. This study finds that several factors may influence the use of three politeness types and three levels of formalities, including urbanization level, population density, settings, culture, and pragmatic transfer. Overall, this study examines politeness variation in British, Australian, and Hong Kong English using corpus-based methods, contributing to both variational pragmatics and corpus pragmatics.

Negative Pragmatic Transfer in Bilinguals: Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Acquisition of Quantifiers

Building on the cross-linguistic variability in the meaning of vague quantifiers, this study explores the potential for negative transfer in Italian-Slovenian bilinguals concerning the use of quantificational determiners, specifically the translational equivalents of the English “many”, that is the Slovenian "precej" and "veliko". The aim is to identify relevant aspects of pragmatic knowledge for cross-linguistic influence. The study presents the results of a sentence-picture verification task in which Slovenian native speakers and Italian-Slovenian bilinguals evaluated sentences of the form "Quantifier X are Y" in relation to visual contexts. The results suggest that Italian learners of Slovenian, unlike Slovenian native speakers, fail to distinguish between "precej" and "veliko". This finding aligns with the negative transfer hypothesis. The study highlights the potential role of pragmatic knowledge in cross-linguistic transfer, particularly in the context of vague quantifiers.

Refusals in Japanese and Spanish: Pragmatic Transfer in L2

The article presents a heuristic approach to studying the strategies of refusal employed by advanced Japanese learners of Spanish as a foreign language when compared with those of native speakers of Spanish and of Japanese. It examines responses of refusal to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions while observing the linguistic phenomena of pragmatic transfer used by the speakers. We administered a discourse completion to elicit refusal strategies from participants. The data include 1101 strategies employed in 432 responses formulated by 54 participants comprising advanced Japanese learners of Spanish, native speakers of Spanish, and native speakers of Japanese We found that linguistic ability among Japanese learners correlated positively with pragmatic transfer. The findings demonstrate how cultural priming and the degree of freedom with which learners prompt their responses are interrelated within their mental pragmatic interface in given situations.

On the Problematic Use of ‘don’t worry’ by Chinese Learners of English

Abstract In this paper, we examine uses of ‘don’t worry’ by Chinese speakers of English, which may trigger intercultural irritations. We investigate such problematic uses from a contrastive angle, by considering whether they relate to the fact that in Chinese there are two expressions which may be equivalents of English ‘don’t worry’: fangxin 放心 (lit. ‘ease your heart’) and bie-danxin 别担心 (lit. ‘don’t burden your heart’). First, we present uses of ‘don’t worry’ by Chinese learners of English and examine them through the lens of speech acts and interaction. Second, we undertake a corpus-based study of the speech act-indicating interactional uses of ‘don’t worry’, fangxin and bie-danxin, teasing out their conventional uses. Finally, we consider whether uses of ‘don’t worry’ by Chinese learners of English are influenced by pragmatic transfer and, if so, what this transfer looks like.

Pragmatic Transfer in Second Language Acquisition in Intercultural Communication

Pragmatic transfer refers to the phenomenon where individuals apply the pragmatic rules and conventions of their first language to the second language during intercultural communication. Pragmatic transfer can result in communication failures, thereby affecting the effectiveness and rapport in communication. Consequently, investigating pragmatic transfer is of paramount importance for enhancing cross-cultural communicative competence and instructional quality. Previous research has predominantly focused on the definition, types, causes, influencing factors, and evaluation methods of pragmatic transfer. Nevertheless, there are still deficiencies and controversies regarding how to effectively avoid or reduce pragmatic transfer and incorporate it into foreign language teaching. In fact, research on pragmatic transfer from a cross-cultural communication perspective necessitates both theoretical deepening of the understanding and comprehension of pragmatic transfer and practical exploration of preventive and instructional strategies to enhance the cross-cultural communicative competence of foreign language learners. Therefore, this paper delineates the relevant theories and empirical studies in this field, summarizes the impact of pragmatic transfer on second language acquisition, and aspires that the ensuing conclusions will promote the development of foreign language education.

Exploring request strategies in Austrian Italian learners: Pragmatic transfer insights

Instant-message requests produced by intermediate learners (N = 60) of Italian as a second language (L2) with Austrian German as their first language (L1) were quantitatively analyzed and compared with the same speech acts performed by L1 speakers of Italian (N = 60). A cross-cultural comparison of requests in L1 Austrian German and L1 Italian was conducted firstly to verify whether any divergent trends in the two groups could be attributed to negative pragmatic transfer from the learners' L1. Cross-linguistic data were gathered through a multiple-choice questionnaire, L1 and L2 data through a discourse completion task. The analysis revealed minimal differences between L1 speakers of Italian and Austrian German in perceiving the most appropriate way to structure the request in terms of directness level and use of face-saving strategies. A substantial alignment of learners’ realizations with those of L1 speakers was found in the overall structuring of the request, except that L1 speakers exhibited a stronger tendency to apologize. As for the use of modifiers, small differences were found in the total number as well as in the preference for some types over others. The findings suggest that any effects of transfer from L1 Austrian German to L2 Italian are generally positive.

Production of Advice Speech Act by Non-Native Speakers of English: The Case of Kurdish EFL Learners

Speech act studies are commonly used in Second Language Acquisition research to assess second language learners’ pragmatic skills. Contrary to other speech acts, the speech act of offering advice has not been sufficiently studied and has not been a topic of cross-cultural or cross-linguistic research either, particularly among Kurdish EFL learners. The study aimed to conduct a comparative analysis of the advice speech act as expressed by Kurdish EFL learners and native English speakers. Thus, the study looked at the proficiency of Kurdish EFL users in selecting appropriate pragmatic expressions during the act of providing advice and discernible differences between male and female learners regarding the degree of (in)directness while advice is offered. Hence, the study included 82 undergraduate students from various universities in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, particularly in Erbil. This group consisted of 42 females and 40 males, all majoring in English Language Teaching. Additionally, 30 native English speakers also took part in the research. Data collection was conducted through a 12-item discourse completion test, and the collected data were subsequently subjected to analysis using SPSS. The results unveiled a significant difference between Kurdish EFL learners and native speakers. It figured out that Kurdish EFL learners are not quite aware of the social power and social distance of interlocutors while giving advice. Additionally, it was indicated that female learners are more indirect in offering advice than their male counterparts. Moreover, the findings also unearthed a visible indication of first language pragmatic transfer, though it was not a variable of the study.

CHINESE EUPHEMISM ACQUISITION BY L2 LEARNERS IN INDONESIA

As one of the most widely used communication strategies, euphemism is an important language behaviour in human society. Chinese euphemism has its unique characteristics reflecting the Chinese nation’s moderate and harmonious cultural psychology. This feature is particularly prominent in the daily communication applications of Chinese, so that it is often difficult for L2 learners to understand it. This article focuses on the acquisition of Chinese euphemism as the research object, and takes the inter-language pragmatics as the theoretical background, using the questionnaire as the main research method combining with the interview method to investigate the Chinese euphemism acquisition by the intermediate and advanced level students from the Chinese Department in a Jakarta private university. The results show that, in general, students have the awareness of using Chinese euphemism. The language level has positive correlation with euphemism acquisition. The error frequency in conventional euphemism is supreme to that in non-conventional euphemism. The euphemism used by the students has obvious inter-language characteristics in structure and speech strategies. Negative pragmatic transfer constraints students in euphemism acquisition. Insufficient language ability and cultural differences are the crucial obstacles. Some relevant suggestions from the perspectives of teacher-student interaction and textbook design are proposed to improve the euphemism acquisition for L2 learners.

The Translation of Puns in Shakespeare’s Plays into Arabic

The term "pun" refers to a literary device that is described as a play on words. This term means using words in an amusing and tricky manner, to produce a pun. However, it is difficult to translate puns between English and Aabic because of their distinctively different linguistic systems, especially the phonology and morphology which are the basic skills in the use of puns. This study aims to study the influence of context in discovering the intended meaning of the pun and also to investigate the problems that translators may face when they translate puns from English into Arabic in some selected Shakespeares’ plays. Two main problems and interrelated issues are discussed: How puns are translated? And how they should or can be translated? It is obvious that, in some cases, the translator fails to convey the intended meaning of SL puns due to the fact that they involve more than one meaning (many shades of meaning). Thus, they lead to ambiguity and serious loss or a distortion of meaning. For analysis the data, three models are eclectically adopted, namely: Delabastita's model of translation puns (1996), Kasper's model of pragmatic transfer (PT) (1992), and Hatim and Mundy's model of pun decomposition process (PDP) (2004) to determine the appropraite translation of puns.

Pragmatic Transfer in Intermediate Japanese Learners' Apology Speech Act

This study aims to investigate the apology speech act strategy employed by Japanese language learners at the intermediate level and the pragmatic transfer from L1 to L2 that occurs. The data for this study were gathered using the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which examined four apology situations focusing on the relationships with the interlocutors. The subjects of this study were 53 intermediate Japanese learners. The collected data were then classified into eight strategies or semantic formulas. The pragmatic transfer in the learner's expression was divided into pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer. This study found that several factors were related to the pragmatic transfer. First, learners translate L1 phrases literally to the L2, which leads to pragmalinguistic transfer. Second, many variations and combinations in Japanese words and sentences are difficult compared with expressions in Indonesian, especially in the "kasu-kariru" and "motte iku-motte kuru" context. Third, applying a pragmatic function from L1 to the L2, which leads to sociopragmatic transfer. This study is expected to give reference in speech act study, and help understanding interlanguage pragmatic of second language learners.

Offers in Saudi EFL talks: A focus on the learners’ pragmatic competence in interactions

The current study was driven by the most recent research trend of interlanguage pragmatics, which regards communication as a complex phenomenon and considers a learner's ability to produce social actions in extended discourse. It investigated the interactional structure of offers in natural conversations by nine Saudi learners of English (SEFL) when interacting with a British English native speaker. Conversations were recorded during a dinner attended by three to four friends. Comparable sets of data were collected from native speakers of Saudi Arabic (SA) and British English (BE). Both quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that the three cultural groups in this study did not get involved in intricate negotiations of offers during the conversation among friends; however, this was not necessarily to the same degree. The SEFL learners' interactional tools were not native-like. They showed more limited interactional resources and a pattern of direct offers by using elliptic forms or conveying the offer nonverbally. A possible pragmatic transfer was observed in their preference for employing nonverbal offers and invoking God. However, they were like the BE speakers in their insistence, which was often made with strategies that consider imposition on the addressee and usually closed in two adjacency pairs.

Factors behind L2 English learners’ performance of oppositional speech acts: a look at pragmatic-related episodes (PREs) during thinking aloud

Abstract The current study looked at the influence of different L1s, different proficiency levels, and other factors on the think-alouds in connection with oppositional speech acts by eighty tertiary-level Korean and Chinese learners of L2 English at two proficiency levels. The research instruments consisted of think-aloud protocols elicited during the learners’ production of written oppositional speech acts in the form of responses to the other learners’ essays, questionnaires, and focus group interviews. In particular, in the think-aloud protocols the number and content of pragmatic-related episodes (PREs) were identified. The results indicated that proficiency level, but not L1, significantly impacted the learners’ think-alouds. Other factors were revealed to include intensification of claims, focus on face issues, pragmatic transfer, and insufficient syntactic/semantic knowledge. These factors related to the sub-categories of the PREs involving ‘lexical upgrading’ and ‘external downgrading’.

Pragmatic Competence in Learner English: The Case of Jordanian EFL Learners

The study investigates the Jordanian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence through their production of the speech acts of responding to requests, making suggestions, making threats and expressing farewells. The sample of the study consists of 130 Jordanian EFL learners and native speakers. 2600 responses were collected through a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The findings of the study revealed that the tested students showed similarities and differences in performing the strategies of four speech acts. Differences in the students’ performances led to pragmatic failure instances. The pragmatic failure committed by students refers to lack of linguistic competence (i.e., pragmalinguistic failure), sociocultural differences and pragmatic transfer (i.e., sociopragmatic failure). EFL learners employed many mechanisms to maintain their communicative competence; the analysis of the test on speech acts showed learners’ tendency towards using particular strategies, resorting to one strategy related to their grammatical competence, prefabrication, performing long forms, buffing and transfer. The results were also suggestive of the learners’ lack of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge. The implications of this study are for language teachers to teach interlanguage pragmatics explicitly in EFL contexts to draw learners’ attention to both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features, pay more attention to these areas and allocate more time and practice to solve learners’ problems in these areas. The implication of this study is also for pedagogical material designers to provide sufficient and well-organized pragmatic input.

Intralingual Varieties in Interlingual Contact (The Case of Migrant Russian in Germany)

The paper examines the evolution of the system of intralingual varieties of Russian in the context of migration-affected unbalanced multilingualism (Russian as a heritage language vs German as a language of official communication). In this specific case of multilingualism, two languages with similar sociolinguistic characteristics (status, polyfunctionality, codification) enter in contact, whereby Russian, as a language without administrative status and used only in the personal sphere, is de facto reduced to one (informal) communicative code. This situation in turn contributes to the lexical, morphosyntactic and pragmatic transfer from German into Russian. However, as the analysis of sociolinguistic and linguistic data shows, interlingual contact also affects the system of Russian language varieties. The reduction of the original repertoire of intralingual varieties and the transfer of German interlingual varieties, i.e. the emergence of a new (mixed) system, is explained by the change in the sociolinguistic characteristics of the Russian language due to migration. An indicator of the emerging polylingual variation, including stratification, is the switching of the interlingual code instead of the intralingual code, a typical feature of the second generation in the diaspora.

ВОКАТИВЫ КАК ФАКТОР КУЛЬТУРНО-ЯЗЫКОВОГО ПЕРЕНОСА

The article considers urgent linguacultural issues of inevitable pragmatic transfer in translingual literature, and namely, forms of speech etiquette typical of Russian addressing and referring. In the article, linguacultural transfer is analyzed on the material of books written by the emigrant writer E. Litman (collection of short stories ‘The Last Chicken in America’ and the novel ‘Mannequin Girl’). The article discloses such key concepts of the language of social interaction as social deixis, vocative, reference sign, and singles out forms of vocatives and reference, which are most common for the texts under study from the viewpoint of their sociocultural connotations (embodied culture) as well as their role in transferring the purport of works of translingual literature.

Pragmatic transfer in congratulation strategies of Punjabi EFL learners: Social power in focus

Pragmatic transfer in congratulation strategies of Punjabi EFL learners: Social power in focus

Rhetorical Structure and Politeness Strategies in Complaint Letters Used by International Students in a Thai ELF Context

Making a complaint in any language is not an easy task. The complainer might run the risk of impairing the relationship between him/her and the hearer. In Thailand, international students use English as a medium of communication among one another and with local people. This English as a lingua franca (ELF) context was considered appropriate to investigate the rhetorical structure and politeness strategies used in complaint letters written by the international students in order to see their use of polite strategies and the factors influencing their choices. Forty graduate international students were asked to write two complaint letters to local addressees in the university contexts, one to a person of a higher status and the other to a person of equal status. Some of them were also interviewed. Based on Hartford & Mahboob’s framework ( 2004 ), seventeen moves were found in the r hetorical structure of the complaint letter s . As to politeness strategies, more negative strategies were used in the moves of Complaint and Request while more positive strategies were found to set a common ground in Introduction, Attention getter, and Background . The factors influencing the choice of politeness strategies included social status, social distance, pragmatic transfer, and L2 input . The interviews reveal different views between the complainers and the complainees on the effectiveness of politeness strategies adopted. Keywords: Complaint; English as a lingua franca; rhetorical structure; politeness strategies, communication

A Study of Pragmatic Transfer in Criticism Strategies by Chinese EFL Learners

Speech acts as minimal unit of discourse analysis have been the focus of second language acquisition research as they not only represent language form but also reflect cultural values of the people who perform them. Like most other speech acts, the realisation of the speech act of criticising in the target language is influenced by the native language culture. Based on Nguyen’s taxonomy of criticisms, this paper uses the peer-feedback tasks to conduct research on what kind of pragmatic transfer in criticism strategies by Chinese EFL learners occurs and how it occurs in academic setting. The oral data collected through a naturalised role-play are coded and analysed quantitatively among the Chinese EFL learner group, the native English group, and the native Chinese group. The post hoc interview is also conducted among these three groups to investigate the reasons why they choose a certain criticism strategy. This research has indicated that the Chinese EFL learner group displays indirect criticism strategies, request and suggestion more frequently than the native English group and shows indirect criticism strategies, request and suggestion with somewhat similar frequencies to the native Chinese group. These three criticism strategies show Chinese characteristics of valuing politeness, caring about the hearer’s face and spiral thinking patterns. The research has shown that there is, to some extent, pragmatic transfer in indirect criticism strategies, request and suggestion by Chinese EFL learners and how pragmatic transfer in these three criticism strategies occurs in academic setting. Keywords: interlanguage pragmatics, pragmatic transfer, criticism strategy, Chinese EFL learner