Pragmatics across Languages and Cultures
Abstract
This handbook provides a comprehensive overview, as well as breaking new ground, in a versatile and fast growing field. It contains four sections: Contrastive, Cross-cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics, Interlanguage Pragmatics, Teaching and Testing of Second/Foreign Language Pragmatics, and Pragmatics in Corporate Culture Communication, covering a wide range of topics, from speech acts and politeness issues to Lingua Franca and Corporate Crises Communication. The approach is theoretical, methodological as well as applied, with a focus on authentic, interactional data. All articles are written by renowned leading specialists, who provide in-depth, up-to-date overviews, and view new directions and visions for future research.
... The subfields of L2/FL pragmatics are discussed in detail in LoCastro (2003LoCastro ( , 2012, Cutting (2008), Trosborg (2010) and Kecskés (2012). For more on the distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, as well as on pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure, the reader is referred to Thomas (1983), Alcón-Soler and Martínez-Flor (2008), Trosborg (2010) and LoCastro (2012). ...
... The subfields of L2/FL pragmatics are discussed in detail in LoCastro (2003LoCastro ( , 2012, Cutting (2008), Trosborg (2010) and Kecskés (2012). For more on the distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, as well as on pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure, the reader is referred to Thomas (1983), Alcón-Soler and Martínez-Flor (2008), Trosborg (2010) and LoCastro (2012). In this chapter, we focus on how and why developing learners' communicative (primarily, pragmatic) competence in a foreign language is important and how it should be approached. ...
... The possibility and the necessity of teaching L2/FL pragmatics is argued for at length in Bardovi-Harlig and Mahan-Taylor (2003), as well as Ishihara and Cohen (2010), Trosborg (2010), LoCastro (2012) and Taguchi (2012). ...
This practical guide aims to give a brief introduction to some of the
key issues in cross-cultural communication and to draw the readers’
attention to the importance of competently engaging in such
communication, which implies performing not only successfully and
correctly in everyday interactions in the FL but also doing so in a
manner which corresponds to native speakers’ expectations. No prior
knowledge about cross-cultural communication is assumed, therefore
the book can be used as a self-study book as well a companion to general
courses on (foreign language) pragmatics.
The resource book is aimed not only at developing the readers’
own communicative competence in (E)FL (Part I) but also at giving
them guidelines for conducting research in this field (Part II), as well
as highlighting the importance of explicit instruction in the L2/FL
classroom and suggesting how the results of research can be used to
accomplish this demanding task.
... These expectations may be linked to differences in the realization of particular speech acts (e.g. Alemi et al. 2021, Haugh & Chang 2019, Litvinova & Larina 2023, Trosborg 2010, Wierzbicka 2003, or they may be linked to broader and often more diffuse issues of discourse organization and communicative style (House 2006, Larina 2015. Thomas (1983) has shown that when speakers do not share the same cultural background, sociopragmatic failure is more likely, resulting largely from a lack of shared resources for understanding the interlocutor's communicative intention and the pragmatic meaning of their utterance. ...
... Культурно обусловленные различия в том, какое поведение является ожидаемым от собеседника, могут быть источником существенных трудностей в межкультурном общении (Eslami 2004, Gudykunst & Kim 1992, Thomas 1983. Эти ожидания могут быть связаны как с особенностями реализации конкретных речевых актов (Alemi et al. 2021, Haugh & Chang 2019, Litvinova & Larina 2023, Trosborg 2010, Wierzbicka 2003, так и с особенностями организации дискурса и стиля коммуникации (House 2006, Larina 2015. Когда говорящие не принадлежат к одному культурному сообществу, возможны социопрагматические неудачи (Thomas 1983), возникающие в основном из-за непонимания коммуникативного намерения собеседника и прагматического значения его высказывания в конкретной ситуации общения. ...
This special issue continues the discussion of the impact of culture on identity, communication, politeness, and discourse strategies (see Russian Journal of Linguistics 22 (4) 2018, 23 (4) 2019, 24 (2) 2020). The topic has become particularly relevant in the context of two multidirectional processes, i.e., globalization resulting from current geopolitical trends and technological advancements, which have encouraged the intensification of contacts between people, languages, and cultures; and deglobalization focused on the preservation of national cultures and development of a multipolar and multicultural world. In our introductory article, we attempt to trace the impact of communication technologies, language, and culture contacts on digital, face-to-face, and public communication in different settings and discourses and outline its influence on communication, language variation, and change. In this introductory article we present a summary of the contributions of our authors to the issue, which showed that the implications of globalization and language contact are multifaceted, they can have both positive and negative effects on language use, maintenance, and change, as well as on cultural identity and diversity. Pursuing these latter factors contributes to developing trends of deglobalization. Our authors invite the reader to reflect on these processes. In conclusion, we sum up their major findings and suggest a brief avenue for further research.
... We mathematically formulate two capabilities that a bounded pragmatic agent must possess in order to generate optimally pragmatic utterances. These conditions correspond to wellknown cognitive capabilities of humans: (i) the ability to efficiently generate relevant utterances (the search capability) (Bloom and Fischler, 1980;Gold et al., 2000;Trosborg, 2010) and (ii) the ability to accurately simulate the listener's interpretations of their utterances (the pragmatic capability) (Premack and Woodruff, 1978;Gopnik and Astington, 1988;Tomasello, 2019;Call and Tomasello, 2011;Frank and Goodman, 2012). We design a simple procedure to quantitatively evaluate these capabilities of a language model. ...
... Different from communication within agents (Lazaridou et al., 2020;Roman Roman et al., 2020), human communication is a cooperative act (Grice, 1975;Scott-Phillips, 2014;Tomasello, 2019). Pragmatic communication in humans may involve different cognitive capabilities like basic understanding of language and social rules (Trosborg, 2010) and reasoning about the physical world (Bender and Koller, 2020) and human behavior (Enrici et al., 2019;Rubio-Fernandez, 2021). Our work describes similar capabilities but provides a formal mathematical description. ...
... We derive the optimality conditions that a bounded pragmatic agent must satisfy in order to generate optimally pragmatic instructions. These conditions correspond to well-known cognitive capabilities of humans: (i) the ability to efficiently generate relevant utterances (the search capability) (Bloom and Fischler, 1980;Gold et al., 2000;Trosborg, 2010) and (ii) the ability to accurately simulate the listener's interpretations of their utterances in the environment (the theory-of-mind capability) (Premack and Woodruff, 1978;Gopnik and Astington, 1988;Tomasello, 2019;Call and Tomasello, 2011). We then design an evaluation scheme for assessing these capabilities of an agent, measuring how close it is to satisfying our optimality conditions. ...
... Human communication is a cooperative act (Grice, 1975;Scott-Phillips, 2014;Tomasello, 2019). Pragmatic communication in humans may involve different cognitive capabilities like basic understanding of language and social rules (Trosborg, 2010) and reasoning about the physical world (Bender and Koller, 2020) and human behavior (Ganaie and Mudasir, 2015;Enrici et al., 2019;Rubio-Fernandez, 2021). Our work describes similar capabilities but provides a mathematical interpretation that allows for computational evaluation of those capabilities. ...
We mathematically characterize the cognitive capabilities that enable humans to effectively guide others through natural language. We show that neural-network-based instruction generation agents possess similar cognitive capabilities, and design an evaluation scheme for probing those capabilities. Our results indicate that these agents, while capable of effectively narrowing the search space, poorly predict the listener's interpretations of their instructions and thus often fail to select the best instructions even from a small candidate set. We augment the agents with better theory-of-mind models of the listener and obtain significant performance boost in guiding real humans. Yet, there remains a considerable gap between our best agent and human guides. We discuss the challenges in closing this gap, emphasizing the need to construct better models of human behavior when interacting with AI-based agents.
... En muchos casos, no se lleva a cabo una comparación real entre lenguas, no se trabaja con datos fiables, salvo alguna excepción próxima a un planteamiento universal, aunque no llegue a serlo, como CCSARP (Blum-kulka y Olshtain, 1984), donde se analizan bastantes lenguas (inglés, hebreo, ruso, etc.). Trosborg (2010), por ejemplo, ya señala de un modo preciso, evidente y objetivo las diferencias cualitativas y cuantitativas que hay entre estudios sobre pragmática universal, dependiendo de si se hiciera a través de corpus o sin estos. ...
... El estudio de los actos de habla puede hacerse a partir de tres metodologías distintas: desde el sillón, desde el laboratorio y desde el terreno (Trosborg, 2010). La primera de las opciones es la que goza de un menor crédito, especialmente cuando se trata de estudios empíricos como en el caso de los universales superficiales. ...
Este estudio se ocupa de la interrelación entre universales lingüísticos, pragmática
y lingüística de corpus. Por una parte, se analizan las principales limitaciones de
los corpus existentes para la sistematización de universales pragmáticos. Por otra,
se defiende el uso de estos corpus como herramienta útil para la detección de
universales pragmáticos. Posteriormente, se analizan cualitativamente dos
herramientas de etiquetado de actos de habla en lengua inglesa (DART y DAMSL)
y dos corpus de actos de habla en esta misma lengua (SPAADIA y SWDA). Dicho
análisis nos permite extraer las características esenciales (y las principales
dificultades) para extrapolar dicha metodología a un conjunto de lenguas
tipológicamente equilibrado. Finalmente, se propone un protocolo para la
compilación de corpus de actos de habla en distintas lenguas para la extracción de
universales lingüísticos.
... The crucial importance of pragmatic competence or functional use of the language for effective communication is a matter of record. As Trosborg (2010) puts it, effective and appropriate communication implies the knowledge of pragmatic rules as well as the knowledge of linguistic system. The necessity of pragmatic instruction in order to facilitate and speed up learners' pragmatic development has been confirmed and reiterated by many scholars (e.g., Alcón & Martínez-Flor, 2008;Eslami-Rasekh, 2005;Kasper & Roever 2005;Kite & Tatsuki 2005;Schauer, 2009). ...
Despite the well-established importance and effectiveness of pragmatic instruction in expediting ESL and EFL learners' pragmatic development as frequently corroborated by many scholars, the cognitive and psychological dimensions of learners in pragmatic learning and the way those might impact their pragmatic learning has so far received insufficient attention. Therefore, the present study has made every possible effort to delve into the possible impact of ideal L2 self, and ought-to L2 self on EFL Learners' L2 functional use. Fifty-two Iranian English students took part in this research project. First, the two questionnaires (i.e. ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self) adopted from Dörnyei and Taguchi (2010) were distributed among the participants. Moreover, the participants went through a six-week instructional period and received pragmatic instruction at the end of their regular class hour for thirty minutes. Finally, all the participants were required to complete two discourse completion tests containing eight scenarios borrowed from both Schauer's (2009), and Jalilifar's (2009) as pretest and posttest. This would enable the researchers to assess the participants' pre-and post-instructional pragmatic knowledge. Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-tests were run to analyze the data. The findings indicate that high ideal L2 self group significantly outperformed the high ought-to L2 self group with regard to their pragmatic performances on discourse completion tests. The study further implies that factors such as the individuals' ideal L2 self can be regarded as determining and pivotal when it comes to the amount of learning that takes place in learners with either high ideal L2 self or those with high ought-to L2 self.
... The inclusion of our properties into our higher education gives a sense of belongingness. The translational construct indicated that if translating cultural and linguistic assets is to make sense, translations must also convey the ''spirit and manner'' of the original (Campbell, 1789, as cited in Awasthi, 2011). However, the process of maintaining translational equivalence of literary genres is to relate the prior notion of language pedagogy to promote teaching and preserve the intelligibility of the original literature. ...
This paper explores the perceptions and practices of postgraduate-level students about translation in language education. More specifically, it aims to examine the significance of translation studies in language pedagogy. Thus, the prime concern of this study is to see how translation is connected through language and culture to establish the relationship among and between teachers, students, curriculum and methodology. Data for the study were collected from primary sources. In doing so, the narrative inquiry method was employed in which five postgraduate-level students having translation as a specialization were purposively selected for the interview. The finding reveals that translation has an undeniable contribution to promoting language, culture and literature in our academia. The study concludes that translation assists students to theorize complex theories, approaches, and philosophies to gain in-depth knowledge and skills in relation to language pedagogy.
... Though in general speakers of different languages perform the same acts during interaction, the way they perform them varies widely across societies (see Alemi et al., 2021;Bilá & Ivanova, 2020;Kotorova, 2017;Trosborg, 2010;Wierzbicka, 1985Wierzbicka, , 2003. As Kecskes (2014) rightly states, 'it is important to emphasise the difference between what we do and how we do it. ...
The performance of speech acts varies widely across cultures due to differences in values, communicative norms and traditions as well as politeness strategies. This can cause problems in communication and lead to sociopragmatic failures. This paper aims to discover potential linguistic and sociocultural differences in refusal to invitations performed by Americans and Russians in interpersonal interaction. It explores the variations in the performance of refusal in terms of form (direct vs. indirect), length, face-saving moves/semantic formulas and politeness strategies in the contexts differed in social and power distance. The data were obtained through a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) with 120 participants (50 Americans and 70 Russians) and analysed drawing on Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, Speech Act Theory, Theory of Politeness and Cultural Studies with the implementation of contrastive qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings revealed some differences in the role of social factors in the realisation of refusals, while the most salient factor appears to be that of cultural context. Despite some obvious similarities in the performance of refusal in its form, miti- gation moves and politeness strategies, American refusal demonstrated a tendency to be more indirect and verbose, conventionally accompanied by a positive emotive adjunct aimed at enhancing the positive face of interlocutors. The findings showed that Americans use Positive and Negative politeness strategies with more regularity and thus do more facework aimed at mitigating the possible negative effect of this dispreferred act. The Russians, by contrast, used politeness strategies with less regularity, in some cases resorted to directness and were more focused on the clarity of their response to invitation rather than considerations of face. The findings are consistent with communicative values and politeness in the two cultures. They can contribute to the systematisation of culture-specific features of interpersonal interaction in American and Russian contexts and the description of communicative ethno-styles.
... Cenoz and Valencia (1996: 41) claim these cross-cultural studies of speech acts can foster SLA research by providing researchers with insights on "the strategies used by learners in the production of speech acts" (Bardovi-Harlig, 2010;Jung, 2002). Further, Kasper and Dahl (1991:216) denote that studies that examine speech acts from a linguistic perspective focus both on the perception and production of speech acts in investigational and natural settings (Lin, 2014;Trosborg, 2010;Martínez-Flor, 2005). To illustrate, Halupka-Rešetar (2014: 31) emphasises that a number of researchers such as Trosborg (1995); Hill (1997); Rose (2000); Woodfield (2006) (to mention but a few) have examined the production and comprehension of speech acts by L2 learners to find out to what extent their pragmatic competence deviates or approximates to that of NSs using methods and data from empirical, and specifically cross-cultural, pragmatics. ...
The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of pragmatics instruction on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ perception and production of requests as well as exploring the learners' attitudes towards their target language (TL) learning experience. Informed by Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis (1993,1995,2001) as the theoretical framework, this study was carried out to examine the role and the effect of pragmatic intervention in raising the learners’ awareness and sensitising them towards pragmatic aspects of target language in EFL Contexts. Forty-four EFL undergraduate Egyptian participants who share one common first language background, Egyptian Arabic, received 10-week of instruction using informed eclectic model of pragmatic instruction. The instruction involved metapragmatic information consolidated with meaningful practice, along with awareness raising techniques using proactive typographical input enhancement. Using a pre-and post-intervention design with two experimental groups, learners’ recognition and production of the target speech act were evaluated through Multiple- choice Discourse Completion Task (MDCT) and Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT), respectively. Data concerning the learners’ attitudes were gathered using four self-reported diaries. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively using statistical, quantitative approaches for the former and a pre-determined framework adapted from Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) for the latter. Grounded theory and qualitative approaches of analysis were employed to chart the learners’ burgeoning pragmatic awareness and their attitudes towards target language learning experience. Findings showed that learners were able to achieve statistically significant gains in their pragmatic perception and awareness on the post-intervention MDCT. Following the instructional phase, participants demonstrated significant improvement in their production of request forms. Results evinced significant increase in the variety and appropriate use of internal and external modifications as well as apparent decrease in the learners’ use of direct request strategies in the post-intervention productions. However, few strategies were seen to be inappropriately applied in few situations in the WDCT responses. Most of the learners were also noted to embrace a positive attitude towards the TL learning experience with varying degrees. The majority of the learners were able to identify and manage the affective barriers that seemed to impede their language learning; however, quite a few were still challenged. These findings suggest the strong instructional role of pragmatic instruction on the learners’ learning of request-making expressions and forms beneficially. This study contributes to the interventional and developmental research in L2 pragmatics by exploring three layers of knowledge, with special emphasis on the interplay between pragmatics competence and the learners’ voice.
... Previous research (e.g. Krulatz, 2018;Sadeghi, 2013) indicates that the use of appropriate strategies of apology is essential for interlocuters in order to establish the intended purpose of communication in a given social context (Kanık, 2017) and avoid the situations having the potential of leading to pragmatic failure (Thomas, 1984;Trosborg, 2011). Furthermore, gender, proficiency level in target language, and age too have a significant impact on the realization of speech acts (Li & Suleiman, 2017;Qari, 2019;Sultana & Khan, 2014). ...
... What the literature tells us about sociopragmatic competence is that it is more challenging to acquire than pragmalinguistic competence (e.g. Trosborg, 2010), it develops in much later stages under natural conditions (e.g. Cohen, 2008), and it is one of the main causes of pragmatic divergence in an L2 (e.g. ...
Whilst the study of second language pragmatic development in study abroad (SA) contexts has gained momentum in recent years, research on L2 Chinese pragmatics, in general, remains in its infancy and is therefore limited. Longitudinal studies on the effects of instruction before, during and after SA remain scant. Following a short pre-SA pragmatics intervention on formulaic expressions with a group of UK undergraduate learners of Chinese, qualitative data in three phases (before, during, and after a year abroad in China) were collected and analysed to shed light on the perceived benefits of the treatment. The findings show that in all three phases, learners highly valued the instruction provided, but they seemed to benefit from the sociopragmatic input the most, particularly in the pre-departure stage and after completion of the SA period. The findings will be discussed in relation to the learners' accounts of their SA experiences and the implications for pre-SA instruction.
... In comparison with other volumes on pragmatics (e.g. Poggi & Capone, 2017;Trosborg, 2010), the volume under review appears very concise. Of course, there is no harm in that as long as the work, to a greater extent, achieves the pre-set aims, which are "to deepen existing knowledge and to test the validity of assumptions and methodologies developed within the study of verbal interaction on new kinds of materials (p. ...
The ‘Pragmatics of sensitive activities in institutional discourse’ (Benjamins Current Topics,
96) is co-edited by two informed scholars in the field of pragmatics and readers in French and
Spanish linguistics, respectively: Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Rosina Márquez Reiter.
Moreover, they are not new to the business of book editing (e.g. Márquez Reiter & Placencia,
2005; Mosegaard Hansen & Visconti, 2012). This volume was originally published as a
special issue of ‘Pragmatics and Society’ (2016, 7:4), under a roughly similar title:
‘(Co-)Constructing interpersonally sensitive activities across institutional settings.’ The book
(194 pages) aims to examine relational work and negotiation of interests and identities while
performing interpersonally sensitive acts in institutional situations. Eleven authors have
amalgamated to investigate different institutional encounters in a number of languages. The
authors have investigated conversations in already well-documented settings (Chapters 2, 3, 6,
7) and also in arenas that have hardly ever (if not never) been explored (Chapters 1, 4, 5). In
this regard, the volume under review intends to enrich the existing literature and to put to the
test some well-established theories and methodologies on data drawn from institutional talk
(p. 2).
Available at:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-1182.html
... In order to understand why students report discomfort when required to use V, we first take a closer look at factors that influence people's adaptation to particular linguistic features in foreign languages. The benefits of such adaptation-and the pitfalls of failing to adapt-are well documented in research on both sociolinguistics and intercultural communication, much of which is explicitly aimed at facilitating such an adaptation by improving knowledge and awareness of other languages and cultures (Ng, Van Dyne, & Ang, 2012;Thomas et al., 2008;Trosborg, 2010). Yet, studies of language attitudes and intercultural pragmatics have shown that knowledge of these benefits, and of the rules governing appropriate linguistic choices in a foreign language, are not always sufficient-various individual and contextual factors can intervene to affect how learners interpret foreign pragmatic conventions and whether they adopt them (Barron, 2006;Gardner, 2007;Ishihara & Cohen, 2014;Jeon & Kaya, 2006;Liddicoat, 2006;Spencer-Oatey, 2010). ...
The article discusses discomfort with using the polite/formal form of address Sie among students and teachers in German CLIL courses at university level in Denmark. Based on focus group interviews with students and teachers, we show that Danish students and teachers find it awkward to adopt the German Sie when German is the language of instruction in Denmark, typically resulting in pragmatic transfer of the Danish informal norm instead. Adopting a critical pedagogy perspective, we discuss how Sie seems to violate Danish cultural values of egalitarianism, causing cultural cognitive dissonance (CCD) in CLIL learning environments. We show that Danes cope with CCD by rejecting Sie or employing (sometimes quite complex) strategies to avoid direct address altogether. However, our investigation also reveals that CCD is partly locational/situational, and that Danes are less reluctant to use Sie in Germany or towards a native German teacher, suggesting a need to raise awareness about this issue in CLIL-courses and foreign language courses where language and intercultural training is taking place ‘at home’ and possibly with a teacher who is not a native speaker of the language. Finally, we offer some suggestions for attenuating this discomfort by rethinking the way that German polite forms of address are taught, and we make the critical point that a major premise of CLIL teaching - the idea of learning a foreign language ‘on one’s own territory – may give rise to cultural resistance, to which teachers should be alert.
... Pragmatics has not been searched widely in second language field compared to pragmatics at large. The speech act has been the central domain of study within interlanguage pragmatics (Trosborg, 2010). ...
... Pragmatic capacity or ability to understand communicative intentions cannot develop without appropriate environmental inputs or cultural influences. To support this point, while developmental, longitudinal studies of pragmatics are relatively scarce, there are numerous cross-cultural studies that showed evidence of cultural influences on pragmatics [101]. For instance, there are some significant cultural differences in how politeness [102], self-assertion [103], requests [104], and interrogative communicative acts [103] are recognized and conveyed. ...
Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to attribute mental states to self and others. It has been debated whether or not language capacity precedes ToM in development. Evidence from both neurological and developmental studies suggested that while linguistic capacity is important for ToM understanding, pragmatic component, which is a non-structural part of language, is more important for ToM. Moreover, given that pragmatic component of language is subserved by the right hemisphere of the brain, the evidence also indicates a significant overlap between the neural basis of ToM and that of pragmatic comprehension. The pragmatic theory of ToM, which I aim to revive in this review, firmly links pragmatics to ToM. It regards pragmatic aspects of language and ToM as extensively overlapping functions. I argue that research results from both developmental and neurological studies of ToM are beginning to converge to support this theory. Furthermore, I maintain that the pragmatic theory of ToM provides the best explanation for the seemingly incongruent results from recent child and infant studies on the developmental trajectory of ToM. Lastly, I will discuss whether this theory is in agreement with the domain-specific, the nativist framework, or neither.
... We meet different forms of social behavior in different cultures around the globe that individuals categorize as mutually shared appreciation and consideration for others. Researchers in the field of Intercultural Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication have collected considerable data that illustrate how communicative behaviour varies across cultures [Kecskes 2014, Trosborg 2010, Wierzbicka 2003. They suggest that across societies and communities, people speak differently, and these differences in ways of speaking are profound and systematic, they reflect different cultural values, or at least different hierarchies of values [Wierzbicka 2003: 69]. ...
He article explores the speech act of refusal in British English and Russian and investigates British and Russian refusal strategies from the perspective of cross-cultural communication. The study aims to find similarities and differences between the ways of refusing requests, offers and invitations in different social contexts in two languages and cultures. It was conducted with the implementation of Speech Act Theo-ry (Austin 1962, Searle 1969, Searle & Vandervken 1985), Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson 1987, Leech 1983, 2014, Larina and Leech 2014, Watts 2003), and the Theory of Cultural Scripts (Wierzbicka 1991/2003). The modified version of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) developed by Beebe et al. (1990) was used for data collection. The study has revealed both quantitative and qualitative differences in refusal strategies which exist due to cultural differences, culture-specific politeness strategies and Communicative Styles (Larina 2015, Larina, Mustajoki, Protassova 2017). It has found that the Russians use more direct strategies than the British and are more taciturn and laconic. The British do more face-work to mitigate their refusal, they use both negative and positive strategies with higher regularity and are more voluble. The knowledge of communicative differences in refusal as well as in other speech acts is necessary for the acquisition and development of pragmatic competence of L2 English learners and successful intercul-tural communication.
... Context is where semantics does not deliberate. Trosborg (2010) divides pragmatics into two aspects: pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Pragmalinguistics focuses on knowledge of forms and strategies to convey particular illocutions, while sociopragmatics emphasizes on the use of the forms and strategies in appropriate context (Leech, 1983;Dippold, 2008). ...
This study investigates how the students of the Department of English Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta express their anger in English as anger is an expression which relies on contexts. The students’ conversations which contained anger expression were recorded. The expressions were analyzed based on pragmatic aspects: pragmalinguistic forms, communicative intention, context, and cultural background. The results showed that the students, mostly Javanese, did not use cursing or swearing forms in expressing anger in English which are typically in ‘direct anger’ and ‘introductory anger’. Interestingly, although Javanese people arewell-known as calm people, the students mostly rise their intonation in expressing their anger feeling in English.
This article examines the metalinguistic commentary on address practices in a Finnish autobiographical novel series, the 26-volume Iijoki-sarja ‘Iijoki Series’ (1971–1998) by Kalle Päätalo. Our aim is to show how the forms of address affect the protagonist and other characters. The study is anchored in previous sociopragmatic research on address and in folk linguistics. The analysis is based on searches in the digital corpus of the whole series by means of keywords related to forms of address. The analysis proceeds chronologically, from Kalle’s childhood and adolescence to his marriage and working life, including his social rise from a poor country boy to a full-time novel writer. Our results show that Kalle, the fictional protagonist of the series, mirrors his own and others’ choices in address practices throughout his life against the norms he has learned in his childhood. These choices are explained by the (relative) age, sex, status and regional background of the interlocutors. Metalinguistic comments reflect the characters’ social relations and changes in them during the protagonist’s linguistic biography. We argue that fiction can open up perceptions and contexts related to address practices that are not easily accessible by other methods or datasets.
This study aims to examine the pragmatic and linguistic aspects of politeness and impoliteness in Nigerian open letters. Its objectives are to: examine how linguistic choices indicate [IM]Politeness and investigate how common ground influences the expression of IM/Politeness in the selected open letters. The study employed the qualitative research method while it deployed the purposive sampling technique to select two open letters written to two sitting presidents in the Fourth Republic between 1999 and 2015. The letters are Wole Soyinka's 'You're Rambo on the loose', Umar Abubakar Dangiwa's 'The Devil Is It' and Olusegun Obasanjo's Before it is Too Late'. The Presidents were Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Only the letters that centred on political matters and the state of the nation were considered in this study. The study uses the pragmalinguistic framework of Geoffrey Leech (2014) to analyse how im/politeness is grammticalised in the selected open letters. The analysis showed that iterative lexemes such as 'never', more, many and routine iterative lexemes are deployed with the Irony Principle (innuendo) to activate face threatening acts to attack the recipient's face. From the analysis, it was revealed that the use of the iterative verb 'repeat' presupposes the writers' misalignments with the recipient's allegation of breaching the maxim of quality, i.e., fabricating lies; the adverb 'more' reveals a determination to debunk the allegation of mediocrity, etc. The study concludes that the open letters grammaticalise IM/Politeness in such a way that an understanding of the political narrative background prompting the writing of the letters is indispensable.
In this chapter, I discuss terms and concepts relevant to pragmatics and intercultural competence to provide a foundation for the upcoming chapters. I begin with different definitions of pragmatics before defining subfields of pragmatics that are relevant to the present study (cross-cultural pragmatics, variational pragmatics, and interlanguage, L2 or second language pragmatics) and discussing pragmatic competence. This is followed by a discussion of various conceptualizations of culture and the relationship between culture, language and pragmatics. The final part of this chapter focuses on intercultural (communicative) competence and how it relates to pragmatics.
Edimbilim, dil topluluklarına özgü işlevsel dil kullanımındaki sözel ve sözel olmayan işaretleri açıklığa kavuşturur. Dilin oluşum ve kullanım biçimlerinin ayırt edilebilmesi ve hangi durumda hangi stratejilerle söylemin bağlama uygun biçimde yapılandırılacağı konusunda edimbilim farkındalığı, bireyin iletişim yetisini olumlu yönde etkiler. Bireyin edimbilim dil kullanımlarında biçim ve anlam değişimlerinin etkisini gözlemleyebilmesi için edimbilim dil yapılarının farkında olması gerekir. Bireyin konuya ilişkin farkındalık kazanabilmesi ve edimbilim dil yapılarını sosyal ve kültürel normlar, değer ve yargı vb. etkenlere göre biçimlendirebilmesi için dil öğretim sürecinde edimbilimden yararlanılmalıdır. Edimbilim bağlamın içerdiği çeşitli anlam özelliklerini kullanım biçimlerine göre tanımladığı için etkileşimsel dil öğretimine katkıda bulunur. Böylece bağlama uygun dil kullanımlarının hem dolaylı ifade biçimlerinde hem de gerçek kullanımlarda nasıl biçimlendirildiğine ilişkin dinleyici ve konuşmacıda farkındalık geliştirir. Öte yandan dillerarası iletişimde kültürün dil üzerindeki etkisi göz önünde bulundurulduğunda dil öğretim sürecinde edimbilimden yararlanılması ve ilgili dil topluluğuna özgü kullanım kalıpları, söylem biçimleri ve bağlamların temel özelliklerine yer verilmesi öğrencinin daha doğru ve etkili iletişim kurmasını sağlar. Belirli bir amaç için oluşturulan söylemde yer alan örtük dil ve kültürel yapıların dil topluluğuna özgü göstergelerle nasıl kodlandığı ve dinleyici üzerindeki etkisinin pragmatik öğretilerle gerçekleştirilmesi mümkündür. Bu araştırmada edimbilimin dil öğretim sürecine katkıları gösterilmeye çalışılmıştır. Bununla birlikte edimbilimin dil öğretimi sırasında nasıl kullanılabileceğine ilişkin sözeylem stratejileri ve görev örneklerine yer verilmiştir.
The current research aims to find out if the perception of status is culture related. To this end, it compares the refusal strategies articulated by two groups of people namely, Tunisian EFL teachers who are currently working at the University of Jeddah and a group of British speakers when communicating with others with higher, equal, or lower status than theirs. Results indicated that the Tunisian group is much more sensitive to status than their British counterparts. The former group uses indirect refusal strategies with interlocutors of equal or higher positions but is more direct in expressing objection when talking to people with lower positions. By contrast, the British are found to be less sensitive to status as their answers were consistent irrespective of their interlocutors’ status. As a matter of fact, social status for the British group has nothing to do with the educational level or occupation while the opposite is true for the Tunisian group. The findings of the present paper are congruent with other studies which compared the Western and the Arab perceptions of status and found that the latter’s sensitivity to status originates from socio- cultural norms which underpins hierarchical social relationships.
This study aimed to analyze analyzes suggestion acts that were spoken by English instructors in conversation classes at the Andalas University Language Center. The purposes purposes of this study are are to identify and explain explain the types of speech acts, taxonomies, modifications, and reasons of the instructor expressing the speech. This study is descriptive study which data are taken from two conversation class instructors in language centre of Andalas University This study is descriptive study which data are taken from two conversation class instructors in language centre of Andalas University. The data are in the form of transcriptions, research notes, and interviews. The data are in the form of transcription, research notes, and interviews. The data are in the form of The data are in the form of transcription, research notes,, and interviews. The instruments used are observation sheets, audio recordings,, and interview guidelines. The findings indicate indicate that the two instructors expressed different suggestions at each meeting. The highest intensity of appearance of suggestion acts is is seen in the first meeting of the first instructor and the third meeting of the second instructor. Furthermore, the two instructors also express express the same type of taxonomy/suggestion acts as conventionalized forms. Then, a similar fact is is found from the modified aspect, namely subjectivizer. The reasons reason why the instructor expresses suggestions are are influenced by social distance, power,, and imposition. Based on these findings, it is is implied that the suggestion actions action taken by the instructors instructors are are influenced by the culture of the community and the class context.
Pragmatics is an essential part of communication, but it remains unclear what mechanisms underlie human pragmatic communication and whether NLP systems capture pragmatic language understanding. To investigate both these questions, we perform a fine-grained comparison of language models and humans on seven pragmatic phenomena, using zero-shot prompting on an expert-curated set of English materials. We ask whether models (1) select pragmatic interpretations of speaker utterances, (2) make similar error patterns as humans, and (3) use similar linguistic cues as humans to solve the tasks. We find that the largest models achieve high accuracy and match human error patterns: within incorrect responses, models favor the literal interpretation of an utterance over heuristic-based distractors. We also find evidence that models and humans are sensitive to similar linguistic cues. Our results suggest that even paradigmatic pragmatic phenomena may be solved without explicit representations of other agents' mental states, and that artificial models can be used to gain mechanistic insights into human pragmatic processing.
This chapter surveys and discusses research methods and research designs commonly and saliently adhered to within the field of intercultural pragmatics. A particular focus will be on data collection methods and qualitative analytical approaches to empirical data, with the guiding question of this chapter being: What are the most saliently trending research methods employed in current and recent research in intercultural pragmatics? As such, this chapter represents a hub among the contributions assembled in this handbook in that it intertwines with or at least closes contingent spaces between topics and issues discussed across the five strands covered. Thus, this chapter not only falls back on what has been established concerning the underlying theoretical foundations of the field and its methodologies as a whole, but also sets reference points to key issues in “doing” research in intercultural pragmatics. Sections included offer an extensive review of the massive body of literature on conventional and relevant terminology as well as salient aspects of data collection and data analysis in (intercultural) pragmatics overall. The core sections present research designs ranging from introspective, observational, and extracted data to (non- )experimental data elicitation techniques and tasks.
This research study arose from the lack of opportunities students had to communicate and express their ideas regarding the content they had already learned using English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Speaking as a linguistic component in EFL is one of the most important skills in this context as it enables students to have better interaction and communication. This qualitative participatory action research study aimed at exploring the contributions that class discussions based on cultural aspects have on eleventh graders from Jorge Eliécer Gaitán High School in Florencia, Caquetá. Each intervention process in this research was developed using Argawati’s (2014) cycle; the cycle was composed of three guidelines: greeting, main activity, and closing. The class discussions were conducted following the ‘group investigation’ method to give students more opportunities for participating and exchanging ideas. The surveys, field notes, and audio-tape recordings were the instruments to gather the data during the intervention. The findings suggest that it is beneficial to use class discussions based on cultural aspects in EFL to promote students’ participation, and thus, evidence significant progress in the EFL speaking skill. Besides, class discussions based on cultural aspects make EFL learners be constantly practicing, requesting information, sharing ideas, and concluding regarding the cultural aspects, fostering a meaningful development of their speaking skill.
For researchers, the typical way of determining whether a pedagogical innovation works is by conducting an experiment. In migrant settings, however, experiments are more challenging to carry out due to the diversity of the learner population. Unfortunately, how to deal with these challenges is not addressed in a practical way in research methods textbooks, which typically provide a normative view of the research process. This paper aims to draw attention to the realities of classroom research carried out in the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) setting. These classes consist of adult immigrants and refugees from a wide range of cultural, linguistic and educational backgrounds. We illustrate how this diversity along with other characteristics of LINC programs impact the decision-making of the researcher with respect to a pedagogical experiment focused on pragmatics. The study compared a formula-enhanced approach to teaching speech acts to the more mainstream approach aimed at raising learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness about speech act behaviour. The pre-post-delayed-post-test gains appear to favour the Formula group, but the interpretability of these results is compromised by the fact that the composition of the two classes was very different. Discussion of the limitations of this case study feeds into a broader consideration of the implications for classroom research of linguistic and cultural diversity typical of L2 educational contexts like LINC.
Methods in Intercultural Pragmatics are inherently multifaceted and varied, given discipline’s breaching of numerous cross-disciplinary boundaries. In fact, research in Intercultural Pragmatics represents merely new ways of thinking about language and, thus, of researching interactants’ (non-)verbal behaviors: With core common ground and shared knowledge about conventionalized frames of the target language being limited, intercultural communication features a number of unique characteristics in comparison to L1 communication. This being said, the range of methods employed in data collection and analysis in Intercultural Pragmatics is not only wide, but highly heterogeneous at the same time. The present paper takes a scientometric approach to data collection methods and data types in Intercultural Pragmatics research. In order to provide an extensive diachronic survey of methods and approaches featuring in empirical studies published specifically by the journal Intercultural Pragmatics (edited by Istvan Kecskés), this study includes a self-compiled corpus of 358 papers in 17 volumes published since its launch in 2004 thru 2020. The aim is to carve out diachronic method preferences and emerging as well as declining trends in data collection methods and data types adhered to within this discipline. These are further discussed within the context of relevant state-of-the-art accounts that have specifically offered surveys of methods and methodologies pertaining to issues in data collection and data analysis in (Intercultural) Pragmatics in recent years.
В статье анализируются новые идейно-эстетические взгляды в творчестве
узбекского поэта Махмуда Ходиева, сыгравшего достойную роль в культуре нации в период
национального возрождения. Он обобщает на теоретическом уровне сочетание творчества и веры,
профессии и цели, синтез реформирования и просвещения в поэзии, специфику литературной
интерпретации и критерии оценки творчества, предмета, духа периода и аналитических навыков. В
целом в творчестве Боту идея просвещения, реформы и пропаганды поднимается до уровня
предмета целостного лирического выражения. Это именно то, чему посвящена статья. Выводы
освещаются посредством анализа
Effective stance-taking is considered as a crucial skill for successful academic writing and sustainable development of writing scholarship. However, student writers often encounter difficulties in this aspect. Scholars have thus called for explicit instruction to develop students’ academic writing ability as a sustainable goal. Learning stance-taking is a particularly relevant area of intensive interest among writing scholars. Yet, few empirical studies have been conducted to examine its effectiveness on students’ academic writing quality and stance deployment. To fill this gap, a quasi-experimental research was conducted with 46 undergraduate students in a Chinese university, who were randomly assigned to two conditions: a treatment group and a comparison group. The treatment group received an eight-week explicit stance instruction, while the comparison group received curriculum-based writing instruction at the same time. Academic texts were collected both prior to and after the period of intervention. Results revealed that the treatment group outperformed the comparison group in the post-test in terms of academic writing quality and stance performance. Their writing also exhibited changes in the frequencies of an array of stance types deployed (e.g., proclaim: pronounce, proclaim: endorse, entertain, attribute), indicating their enhanced understanding of stance and improved competence of mitigation and integrating external voices for better academic writing. Implications for writing instruction are discussed.
In a context of increasing globalization of academic discourse, considerations of the impact of culture on different communicative genres and discursive practices become more relevant than ever, as the construction of pragmatic meaning and its appropriate interpretation by the recipient is seen to depend on lexico-grammatical features whose use is greatly affected by cultural factors. This paper concerns the genre of blind peer review, and examines how disagreement and negative evaluation are expressed in two cultural and linguistic settings, and to what extent they are mitigated. It is based on peer reviews submitted, in English and Russian, to the Russian Journal of Linguistics, in which the reviewer provides a negative evaluation (either “reject” or “to be resubmitted after substantial revisions”). Such reviews entail possible face damage, in the terms of (Brown and Levinson 1978); and therefore one might expect reviewers to engage in discursive strategies of mitigation. The paper analyses 120 authentic blind reviews (70 Russian and 50 British English), using a pragmatic, contextual and contrastive methodology. Drawing on discourse analysis, intercultural pragmatics, (im)politeness theory and cultural studies, we explore the construction of alternative meanings in reviewers’ messages, and theorise that consideration for the face requirements of the reviewee and politeness strategies, may account not only for individual but also culture-specific choices. The results show that, as well as variations in reviewers’ individual styles, there are some culture-specific traits in this area. Mitigation strategies are more typical of English communication than Russian. We account for these differences in terms of the sociocultural context, value differences and the use of different mechanisms of politeness. Our results suggest that politeness is based on different communicative styles and expressive traditions, which appear to vary across cultures.
To formulate appropriate speech acts necessitates the use of specific pragmatic and sociolinguistic skills which play a pivotal role in the knowledge of scripts and patterns of communicative events. Such an ability is influenced by the contextual and social variables that determine the linguistic resources required for choosing particular types of speech acts. Framed in speech act and sociopragmatic theories, this study sought to investigate the effect of using short stories vs. Video clips on the improvement of foreign language students’ oral production of English speech acts. To this end, from the target sample of students learning English at Isfahan University Language Center, those at the upper intermediate level were selected using a Quick Oxford Placement Test (QOPT). At the next step, the samples were randomly divided into three groups, twenty-five each and then they were assigned to one control and two experimental groups. The treatment included direct instruction of most commonly used speech acts across different cultures including disagreement, request, refusal, apology, and thanking through the application of carefully chosen short stories and video clips. While one of the experimental groups received their instruction through short stories, the other was exposed to video clips. Before and after the treatment, Two Discourse Completion Tests (DCT) were used as pre and posttests whereby the participants were encouraged to produce the targeted speech acts in specific but contrived real life contexts. The quantitative analyses of the data revealed that the students in the treatment groups significantly outperformed those of the control group in producing the target speech acts orally. Moreover, the students exposed to video mediated instruction displayed better oral production of speech acts than those receiving their instruction through short stories. Notably, the findings could offer practical benefits to those language teachers and curriculum developers who are concerned with finding the best ways of raising language learners’ consciousness about sociopragmatic related issues.
The present study aimed at developing a second language pragmatic aptitude test. To do so, the relevant literature was consulted, different components contributing to pragmatics aptitude were identified and tabulated and test items were developed for each component. The outcome was a test comprising four sections, i.e. memory for pragmatic rule learning, extroversion and cultural intelligence self-assessment questionnaire, mind-reading from films and mind-reading from voices. Three experts were invited to examine the face and content validity of the test. It was, then, administered to 40 native speakers of English. To establish the reliability of the test, the obtained data were subjected to Cronbach’s Alpha Analysis. The results indicated that the newly developed test was a valid and reliable measure of aptitude for learning pragmatics. In order to ensure the construct validation of the test, it was administered to another 160 participants. The data gathered were analyzed using Factor Analysis. The results revealed that three sections of the test measured the same construct showing quite high correlations but extroversion and cultural intelligence self-assessment questionnaire did not. Consequently, it was removed from the test.
While researchers have questioned the suitability of classic Western models for accommodating Chinese linguistic politeness phenomena, inadequate attention has been devoted to the role of ideologies in understanding Chinese language use. This study examines the key ideological notion of jiawenhua 家文化‘family culture’, and uses it to model some typical discursive practices of (im)politeness in contemporary China. As an ideology, ‘family culture’ has its roots in ancient Chinese philosophy, and it continues to prevail to the present day. Adopting this ideological notion as an analytic construct, this
study seeks to formulate a set of new maxims to account for some discursive practices of Chinese politeness, which neither previous Western nor Chinese models have captured. In so doing, it contributes
to emancipatory pragmatics by demonstrating the necessity of deploying culturally-grounded ideologies as analytic constructs, such as ‘family culture’ in this study, to rationalize some types of Chinese
sociopragmatic behaviour.
To date, the majority of task-based instructed second language acquisition studies have investigated the effects of tasks on second language morphosyntactic development, and little attention has been paid to the effectiveness of dialogic tasks on the learning of pragmatics in classroom contexts (Plonsky, L. & Y. Kim. 2016. Task-based learner production: A substantive and methodological review. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 36. 73–97). The present study is a partial replication study of Taguchi and Kim (2016. Collaborative dialogue in learning pragmatics: Pragmatic-related episodes as an opportunity for learning request-making. Applied Linguistics 37. 416–437) and aims to compare learning outcomes between collaborative and individual task groups while written corrective feedback is provided.
Thirty-two high beginner learners of Korean from two classes participated in this study. Each class was randomly assigned to either a collaborative or an individual group to complete e-mail writing tasks. In the collaborative group, students wrote e-mails with a partner, whereas the individual group wrote e-mails independently to introduce their professors during study abroad using four types of Korean honorifics. Both groups received indirect corrective feedback on honorifics used during task performance. Written description tests (WDT) were designed to investigate the short-term and long-term learning of Korean honorifics in line with the instructional tasks. Students’ responses on the WDT were analyzed in terms of the number of suppliance and accurate production of each target feature. Students’ responses to teacher feedback were analyzed using the following categories: resolved correctly, resolved incorrectly, and unresolved.
The results showed that there was no significant difference in the production of target features during task performance when indirect WCF was provided to both conditions. Furthermore, both groups significantly outperformed in the immediate and delayed posttest than the pretest. However, the results found no difference in learning of Korean honorifics between the two groups.
Intercultural education, as an idea to understanding and respect other cultures, has been suggested as an important element of educational endeavor across the curriculum for primary and secondary schools in many countries worldwide, including Poland. If such key elements of intercultural education, as knowledge of other cultures, skills of negotiating meaning, or the attitude of tolerance and openness are to become the new goals in language education, it is incumbent on teachers and, first and foremost, on teacher trainers to be interculturally aware themselves before they can introduce the dimension into their foreign language classes. Thinking specifically about teaching intercultural pragmatics, that is acting with words in an intercultural context, neither the core curriculum nor the coursebooks provide sufficient encouragement and guidance for foreign language teachers.
Book synopsis: Exploring Intercultural Communication investigates the role of language in intercultural communication, paying particular attention to the interplay between cultural diversity and language practice. This second edition increases and updates the coverage on emerging key topics, including symbolic power, communicative turbulence, conversational inequality, stereotypes, racism, Nationality and Ethnicity talk and the impact and role of technology in intercultural communication. Including global examples from a range of genres, this book is an indispensable resource for students taking language and intercultural communication modules within applied linguistics, TESOL, education or communication studies courses.
Background and aims: Given that problems with social interaction and communication are defining features of autism spectrum disorder, it stands to reason that individuals with autism spectrum disorder have difficulties in conversation. There is a growing body of research on the conversation skills of individuals with autism spectrum disorder, including research conducted to compare these skills to those of typically developing individuals and those with other disabilities. Such comparisons may offer insight into the extent to which conversational skills may be deficient and whether deficits are unique to a particular diagnostic group.
Main contribution: This review provides an examination of comparative studies of pragmatic aspects of conversation that included individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Only a small number of consistent findings emerged from the analysis. Groups with autism spectrum disorder find it difficult to stay on topic and provide novel, relevant information. They also tend to perseverate more and initiate and respond less during conversation but, contrary to expectation, similar numbers of turns were offered to partners, and there was little difference in the way communication breakdowns were repaired or clarified. There was a contradictory finding on the use of eye gaze.
Conclusions and implications: Some consistent findings were reported but overall, fewer than expected between group differences were found. The fragmented nature of the research and inconsistent operational definitions of variables measured made analysis problematic. Further research and replication of studies is recommended before definitive conclusions can be drawn.
Culture Myths is intended for all educators who work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. The book is designed to help readers observe, evaluate, and appreciate cultural differences in values, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and worldviews by focusing on the underlying and mostly invisible reasons for these differences. Developing an awareness of one’s own cultural assumptions deepens understanding and empathy and contributes to the breaking down of the cultural barriers that can affect communication. A goal of this book is to help readers strike a balance between minimizing cultural differences and assuming similarities across cultures on one hand, and exoticizing other cultures or accentuating surface differences on the other. The myths about culture as it relates to the classroom that are explored in this book are: •We are all human beings, so how different can we really be? •The goal of education is to develop each individual’s potential. •Focusing on conversational skills in the classroom is overrated. •Not looking at the teacher shows disrespect. •How something is said is not as important as what is said. •Everyone knows what a good instructional environment is. •By the time students get to middle or high school, they know how to be a student.
In the increasingly globalised world, intercultural and cross-cultural relations are becoming ever more frequent and significant.
Within this diverse cultural space, miscommunications tend to arise and have the ability to significantly impact upon
intercultural interactions. Thus, this paper explores the use of politeness strategies by learners of Italian during the
performance of the speech act of apology. Specifically, the paper examines the presence of Italian and Australian English
politeness norms in the realisation of these apologies, focussing on three principle areas of investigation: (i) the way in which
the social variables of the scenario were evaluated by participants, (ii) the participants’ use of formal terms of address, and (iii)
the modification of explicit expressions of apology. It was found that although tendencies of both Italian politeness and
Australian English politeness were demonstrated by participants, the latter was more prominent, thus suggesting L1 influence
on L2 realisation and some difficulty in the negotiation of the intercultural space.
Cultural keywords are words around which whole discourses are organised. They are culturally revealing, difficult to translate and semantically diverse. They capture how speakers have paid attention to the worlds they live in and embody socially recognised ways of thinking and feeling. The book contributes to a global turn in cultural keyword studies by exploring keywords from discourse communities in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Melanesia, Mexico and Scandinavia. Providing new case studies, the volume showcases the diversity of ways in which cultural logics form and shape discourse. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is used as a unifying framework for the studies. This approach offers an attractive methodology for doing explorative discourse analysis on emic and culturally-sensitive grounds. Cultural Keywords in Discourse will be of interest to researchers and students of semantics, pragmatics, cultural discourse studies, linguistic ethnography and intercultural communication.
Introduction: One of the most important pragmatic skills is conversational skills. Among conversational skills,
conversational repair and request for clarification have important roles in preventing communication failures. So
presenting intervention focused on these skills is important. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness
of intervention focused on conversational repair and request for clarification.
Materials and Methods: This single subject multiple probe study was conducted in three 5 to 7 children with social
communication disorder. Children were assessed three sessions before and three sessions after therapy. A variety of
conversational repair and request for clarification strategies were taught across 12 therapy sessions, 40 minutes each.
The visual analysis and improvement rate difference (IRD) were used for data analysis.
Results: Visual analysis and IRD showed children improved in conversational repair and request for clarification
skills (IRD ≥ 91% and 83%, respectively). After intervention subjects could use different conversational repair and
request for clarification strategies.
Conclusion: Intervention focused on conversational repair and request for clarification skills in children with social
communication disorder was effective.
Translation scholars have been applying the Gricean maxims as analytical tools to handle pragmatic issues in translation. Not always this genuine application is successful regarding that the maxims are culture-bound in nature and may not have the same utility in a different culture and/or in translation. Rarely any attempts have been done to adjust these maxims to the needs of translation. The present article, while does not intend to criticize the basic applicability of the maxims in translation, aims at reformulating them, within a framework of faithfulness, to be more flexible and responsive to the needs of translation. To illustrate this and evaluate the maxims, examples are analyzed and re-analyzed.
Juliane House is emerita professor of Applied Linguistics and senior member of the German Science Foundation's Research Center on Multilingualism.
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