Status Of Interlocutors Research Articles

Suggestions in Kuwaiti Arabic and British English

The present study sought to investigate the similarities and differences in the use of suggestion strategies between Kuwaiti speakers of Arabic and British speakers of English, in terms of the use of strategy types, the use of linguistic formulas and the effect of the interlocutor's status. Thirty-six participants took part in this study, eighteen Kuwaiti and eighteen British speakers, resulting in 216 suggestions. To collect data, participants were asked to complete a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) consisting of six hypothetical situations where their responses were analysed. Martinez-Flor's (2005) taxonomy was used to code the data in which suggestion strategies were divided into three types: direct, conventionalised forms and indirect. The findings revealed that there were more similarities than there were differences between the two groups when making suggestion. the two groups preferred to employ more direct strategies than indirect strategies and conventionalised strategies. Moreover, the two groups resembled each other in the use of linguistic formulas, as hints and imperatives were utilised more frequently than other linguistic formulas. However, evidence of differences was found between the two groups regarding the effect of the interlocutor's status, where the Kuwaiti group employed more direct strategies with people of high status, whereas the British group performed more indirect strategies with people of high status.

Linguistic and non-linguistic cues in motion event endpoint description: The selection between English to and towards

The current study aims to explore the factors that could affect people’s description of a motion event endpoint. The study conducted by Liao, Dijkstra, and Zwaan (2021, Language and Cognition, 13[2], 161–190) found that two non-linguistic factors (i.e., the actor’s goal and the interlocutor’s social status) affect people’s choice between two Dutch directional prepositions (i.e., naar and richting) during event description tasks. The current study aims to extend these findings by examining the choice between a similar pair of directional prepositions in English (i.e., to and towards). Moreover, we aim to study whether grammatical aspect (i.e., the English simple present and the English progressive aspect) affects the sensitivity to the two non-linguistic factors and consequently also affects how people describe a motion event endpoint. In Experiment 1, we used the English simple present for all sentence stimuli (e.g., he walks (?) the trash bin). We found a significant effect of Interlocutor (the interlocutor’s social status) on preposition choice, but no significant effect of Intention (the actor’s goal). In Experiment 2, we replaced the English simple present with the English progressive aspect (e.g., he is walking (?) the trash bin). We found significant main effects of both Interlocutor and Intention on preposition choice. These findings extend those reported in Liao et al. (2021) Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35(4), 498–520 in that protagonist intention and interlocutor status were found to indeed affect motion event endpoint description. The current findings furthermore show that grammatical aspect affects people’s sensitivity to these factors, thus also affecting how a motion event endpoint is described.

Issuing a Refusal: How Female Saudi Speakers of Arabic Say No

The study examines the refusal strategies used by Saudi female speakers of Arabic. More specifically, the study aims at exploring the most frequently used refusal strategies by those speakers and how directness might have an effect on that use. A modified version in Arabic of a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that was originally developed and used by Beebe et al. (1990) is used to elicit the data. The written questionnaire consists of nine situations. The initiating acts are three requests, three invitations and three offers which were designed to elicit refusals. The situations specify the context and the social status of interlocutors. The data is analyzed using a modified version of a classification scheme of refusal strategies developed be Beebe et al. (1990). The analysis focuses on the semantic formulas used for each situation and the frequency of each refusal strategy. The results reveal that the order of the semantic formulas in the responses of the participants differed across the initiating acts and the status differences. ‘Excuse/Reason’, an indirect refusal strategy, is used the most by the participants in their refusals. The excuses/reasons that the participants give tend to be lacking detail and of an uncontrollable nature. ‘Negative Ability’ is another frequently used strategy. Although a direct strategy, the participants still show their awareness of the need to lessen the threat that their refusal poses on the interlocutor by using other indirect strategies and adjuncts to accompany the direct one. The participants used more indirect refusal strategies than direct which might indicate that the participants are trying to mitigate their refusals by being less direct.

TRANSFER PRAGMATIK DALAM KELUHAN PADA MAHASISWA ASING PEMBELAJAR BAHASA INDONESIA DI UGM

In the language competence that is inseparable from the speech act strategies, the socio-pragmatic transfer ability of second language learners can be explored in the use of speech acts which were currently examined through the use of complaints. This study aimed to describe what are the differences of speech act strategies in complaints used in English and Indonesian by International students and how pragmatic transfers in complaints are used by foreign students in producing languages. The data collection used Discourse Completion Test (DCT) with 4 International students in Fakultas Ilmu Budaya Universitas Gadjah Mada who stayed less than 6 months in Indonesia. The threat strategies were generally used to the hearer who have lower social status even with intimacy. However, when social status is aligned, the choice of complaint strategies switched to explicit strategies, on the other side, when the status of interlocutors is higher than the speaker, the use of the speech act strategy was replaced by implicit strategies.

МАКСИМИ ВВІЧЛИВОСТІ В КОНТЕКСТІ КОМУНІКАТИВНОЇ ПОВЕДІНКИ НОСІЇВ ПЕРСЬКОЇ МОВИ

This article explores issues connected with the maxims of politeness and their realizing in the communicative behavior of Persian native speakers. It provides brief analyses of the history of studying maxims of conversation by western linguists Paul Grice, Robin Lakoff and Geoffrey Leech who prepared the basis for effective communication, which is still valid. G. Leech proposed the principle of politeness consisting of six maxims of conversation, which inspired many researches to conduct comparative study of the communicative behavior of different nations. Among those researchers was Sofia Koutlaki, a Greek-born linguist who examined the politeness system in Persian and proposed her own set of Persian maxims of conversation, marked withbright ethnic specific features. S. Koutlaki determined one main supermaxim – the Manner, which roughly corresponds to the Persian notion of ادب adab ('politeness', 'good manners') and comprises three maxims: Respect, Humility, and Cordiality. These three make basis for the Persian communicative codes. Comparative analysis of the maxims of polite conversation done by G. Leech and S. Koutlaki proved that Persian maxims are more emotional,express attention and empathy to an interlocutor rather intensively, and use specific communicative strategies and tactics different from the western ones. At the same time, Persian maxim 'Respect' matches English 'Approbation', while Persian 'Humility' – unlike English 'Modesty' – has specific feature of self-humiliation together with considerable increasing the interlocutor's status. Persian maxim 'Cordiality' seems to be most special and includes four maxims by G. Leech, viz.: Tact, Generosity, Agreement, and Sympathy. This maxim envisages the use of such communicative tactics as persistent offer of assistance or service, all kinds of invitations (very often ostensible), obligatory rejecting anything being proposed, etc. Performed analysis allows concluding that attempts to 'keep face', both of one's own and that of interlocutor, in the Iranian communicative cultureoften cannot be separated from the intent to establish and keep nice long-term friendly relations.

Budaya Permintaan Maaf Di Tempat Kerja Dalam Drama Jepang: Tinjauan Sosiolinguistik

The apology is an action in which a person states his/her regret on the mistake which he/she did. The procedures in apology are closely related to the culture which is applicable in a region. This research in general aims to understand the apology culture in the workplace of Japan. The specific objectives of this research are 1) to identify the expression of apology used in the workplace; 2) to identify the apology strategy used in the workplace; and 3) to analyze the aspects which affect choices of expression and apology strategy. The qualitative research methodology was used, while the problem of research was viewed from the perspective of sociolinguistics. Source of the data in this research is a Japanese drama entitled Haken no Hinkaku (2007). In the drama, there are 78 (seventy-eight) apology expressions used in the workplace. The apology strategies are as follows: 1) directly apologizing; 2) providing explanation or stating the reason; 3) being responsible; 4) offering replacement of the damaged goods; and 5) making a promise to not repeat the same mistake. Furthermore, the aspects which play role in choosing expression and apology strategy are situation, degree of the mistake which was made, and the status of interlocutors.

Refusal strategies of Turkish pre-service teachers of English: A focus on gender and status of interlocutor

In today’s world, the great demand for using English entails language users to be pragmatically competent so that they could adopt themselves to differing requirements of various contexts. Within those contexts, some factors such as the culture of the target language, the speech act used in the interaction, status and gender of the interlocutors are accepted as essential components. Refusals, one of the most difficult speech acts to perform based on its face threatening nature, were chosen as the main concern of the present study. In an attempt to find out what kind of refusal strategies are employed by Turkish pre-service teachers of English, 27 first year students (14 males and 13 females) at A‡ukurova University were randomly chosen. Data for the study were collected via a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) in which the participants were to respond nine scenarios (three lower, three equal and three higher interlocutors). Data analysis concentrated on two main variables: gender of the participants and the status of the interlocutors. In addition to those, refusal combinations utilized by the participants was another focal point of the study. The whole qualitative data were discussed through descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses, and “excuse, reason, explanation” was found to be the most frequent refusal strategy used by the participants. Another important finding is that males were found to directly utter “no” more frequently than females. It was also found that the number of the strategy combinations increase as the status of the interlocutor rises.

A study of dialogic expansion and contraction in spoken discourse using corpus and experimental techniques

This study examines the dialogic functions of expansion and contraction of first-person epistemic and evidential Complement-Taking Predicate (CTP) constructions, such as I think complement, I suppose complement and I know complement, in spoken discourse. It combines corpus and experimental methods (i) to investigate whether CTP constructions are used to open up the dialogic space for new ideas or counterarguments, or to fend off alternative views, and (ii) to identify what contextual factors play a role in determining the dialogic force of the constructions. First, an exploratory analysis of CTP constructions in the London–Lund Corpus (LLC) of spoken British English is carried out with the aim to identify important contextual factors and generate hypotheses about their dialogic effects. Then, a laboratory experiment is conducted to test the impact of the three most prominent factors for speakers' interpretations of utterances containing CTPs. The results indicate that CTP constructions do not only serve to expand the dialogic context in which they occur, but also to restrict alternative views. Interlocutor status, the co-occurrence of other stance markers and prosodic marking of first-person CTP are shown to have a significant effect on the dialogic function of the expressions. These findings call into question some claims in appraisal theory about the role of CTP constructions in discourse, and highlight the need for a flexible approach to the analysis of these poly-functional stance expressions.

A Cultural Study of Social Disagreement Strategies by Iranian EFL Male and Female Learners

The speech act of disagreement is one of the neglected areas of research in the Iranian context. This study seeks to investigate the ways in which this act is expressed by young male and female Persian speakers. To collect the data 100 participants (50 males, 50 females,) were selected randomly from among undergraduate and graduate students of University of Isfahan and Islamic Azad University (Najafabad branch). The focus of this study was the role that gender and power might play in the employment of strategies to mitigate the threat of the act of disagreement. Students were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researcher. They were supposed to read nine situations, and react to them via making disagreements. Respondents were expected to disagree with three interlocutors with higher status, three peers and three with lower status. In order to analyze the utterances of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1998) was employed. The results revealed that although both males and females were concerned about the power status of interlocutors and try to apply the appropriate strategies while expressing their disagreements, females were more cautious.

A cross-linguistic study of refusals: An analysis of pragmatic competence development in Iranian EFL learners

The present study aimed to recast the issue of production of refusals by Iranian EFL learners, exploring the frequency, shift and content of semantic formulas with regard to learners’ language proficiency (lower-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate), status of interlocutors (lower, equal and higher) and types of eliciting acts (requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions) on realization of the strategies. Thirty Persian-speaking learners of English were asked to fill out a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), consisting of 12 situations realizing the refusal of 4 types of eliciting acts. In addition, 31 native speakers of Persian were asked to fill out the same DCT, rendered into Persian, for comparative analyses. Responses of 37 American native speakers in a relevant study (conducted by Kwon, 2004) were also reviewed for evidence of common components of speech act sets to establish a set of baseline responses. All data were coded and analyzed according to the taxonomy of refusals developed by Beebe et al. (1990). The results revealed that there were differences in the frequency, shift and content of semantic formulas used in refusals by Iranian and American speakers when responding to a higher, an equal, and a lower status person. For instance, while both groups used providing excuse/reason for the refusal, the American participants’ excuses were more specific, concrete and to the point in both place and time. On the other hand, native speakers of Persian displayed a nearly high level of frequency shift in their use of several semantic formulas, whereas American patterns for refusals were quite consistent regardless of status level. Data also indicated pragmatic transfer in the realization of the speech act of refusal among Iranian EFL learners, and that there was a positive correlation between L2 proficiency and pragmatic transfer; upper-intermediate learners tended to transfer more L1 sociocultural norms to L2 and made more pragmatic errors than the lower-intermediate learners. The results indicate that refusing in an L2 is a complex task as it requires the acquisition of the sociocultural values of the target culture.

Effects of social power on language use across speech communities

This paper discusses the discourse strategies that status‐unequal inter‐locutors use in expressing disagreement. It reveals semantic formulas as influenced by the role relationships, thus the relative power and status of interlocutors. It also compares and contrasts the discourse strategies used by native speakers of Turkish and American English for the same speech event in order to obtain a cross‐cultural perspective. Data was collected from 80 native speakers of Turkish and 14 native speakers of American English using a written elicitation task (Takahashi & Beebe 1993). Analysis was done by uncovering the semantic strategies and politeness formulas which status‐unequal interlocutors use in carrying out this face‐threatening speech function. Findings indicate style variation in accordance with role relationships and reveal the sociolinguistic norms of different discourse communities in the execution of the same speech act.

Mentally retarded adolescents: evaluation of communication strategies in different settings.

The present project aims to evaluate communication strategies used by mentally retarded adolescents in different types of verbal interaction. The study was carried out on 17 subjects and notably shows that their language content is mostly informative and that the control of conversation varies according to the interlocutor's status. Moreover, the global developmental age of the subjects appears to be a significant factor in the use of communication strategies. This could have pedagogical implications.