4. Conditional: A grammaticalised marker of politeness in Spanish

Chodorowska-Pilch, Marianna

doi:10.1075/pbns.123.08cho

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Lexical mitigators include modal adverbs ("maybe," "unfortunately"), mental state predicates ("I think"/"I believe"), degree modifiers ("sort of'/"kind of), modal adjectives ("possible"), diminu tives (unfavorcito "a little favor"), and forms of address to signal deferential politeness (usted "you-formal"). Syntactic mitigators, on the other hand, include the conditional to encode polite ness (Chodorowska-Pilch 2004), the subjunctive to express uncertainty/doubt, impersonal forms to produce a distancing effect between the speaker and the content of a proposition expressed (Haverkate 1994), expressions of uncertainty ("I don't know"), and tag questions ("is that right?"). Overall, lexical and syntactic mitigators represent one form of internal modification and serve to reduce the negative effects of a dispreferred response.…”

Section: Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Pragmatics in the Classroom: Instruction of Mitigation in Spanish as a Foreign Language

Félix-Brasdefer¹

2008

Hispania

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Hispania. Abstract:Using pedagogical intervention and a pre/posttest, and delayed posttest design, this study examines the effects of explicit instruction on the use of lexical and syntactic mitigators in refusal interactions among intermediate learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language. This quasi-experimental design included two intact classes assigned to two different groups: experimental and control. For both groups, pragmatic development was observed over the course of one semester. Baseline data (LI English, LI Spanish) were also collected. Learners participated in four role-play refusal situations with two native speakers of Spanish, one for formal and one for informal situations. The experimental group was exposed to metapragmatic information featuring explicit teaching on lexical and syntactic mitigators, followed by communicative practice. Results from the posttest (a week after treatment) showed that the pragmatic ability of learners in the experimental group, but not the control group, changed significantly. One change observed was the emergence of different and a higher fre quency of both lexical and syntactic mitigators on both posttests, while the control group mostly employed lexical mitigators. Another change noted among the experimental group was the retention of most mitigating devices one month after instruction.

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Section: Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Pragmatics in the Classroom: Instruction of Mitigation in Spanish as a Foreign Language

Félix-Brasdefer¹

2008

Hispania

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“…Retrieval strategies which are used to retrieve the pragmalinguistics information necessary to perform a speech act, such as the use of the conditional in Spanish to express politeness (Chodorowska-Pilch, 2004) b.…”

Section: Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Intercultural Communication Study of Chinese and Malaysian University Students’ Refusal to Invitation

Farnia¹,

Wu²

2012

IJEL

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One of the challenges brought about by intercultural communication is the cross-cultural understanding of whatis meant by what is said in another culture. Performing a given communicative act in a different cultural background than the speakers' own requires taking into consideration several issues in order not to be perceived as impolite, rude, or even offensive in the host community.The present study aims to investigate the pragmatic behavior of refusal to invitation by Chinese international university students and Malaysian university students in Malaysia. The second aim is to seek the respondents' perception in the process of refusing an invitation regarding their cognition, language of thought, and perception of insistence after refusing an invitation. The subjects were selected from forty Chinese international students and forty Malaysian students at University Sains Malaysia, Malaysia. Data were collected through a written discourse completion task and an immediate structured post-interview.An analysis of the data demonstrated that both Chinese and Malaysian respondents used similar type of strategies when refusing an invitation; however, they were different in terms of the number of strategies (i.e. frequency) used in each situation. It is hoped that the present research will not only make contributions to the studies of refusal behavior in the intercultural communication in general but to the pragmatic behavior of refusal to invitation between Chinese international students and Malaysian students in particular. Keywords:Intercultural communication, Speech act of refusal to invitation, Chinese international students, Malay university students, Malaysia, Strategies IntroductionIntercultural communication is not a new concept. There would be no need to study intercultural communication in the case in which people never come into contact with each other, and therefore, there would be no need to communicate with people who speak a different language and organize their lives according to completely different norms and values (Pinto, 2000). However, what is new about intercultural communication is the systematic study of exactly what happens when cross-cultural contacts and interactions take place-when message producer and message receiver are from different cultures (Gao, 2006).One of the challenges brought about by intercultural communication is the understanding of speech acts cross-culturally. Speech acts or the communicative acts (e.g. thanking, apology, request) vary cross-culturally and the appropriate use of a given speech acts is subject to variation as the cultures differ. For example, in complimenting someone on her new dress, a positive acceptance of the compliment by appreciation (e.g. thank you) is common in some cultures (e.g. the United States), while rejecting the compliment (e.g. no, it is not new) www.ccsenet.org/ijel

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“…The canonical use of the conditional is to express irrealis or hypothetical situations (Chodorowska-Pilch 2004), and, consequently, this use is emphasized in many Spanish textbooks. For example, the textbook ¿Qué te parece?…”

Section: Lesson 2: Using the Conditional To Make Requests And Suggestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammar in the Real World: Enhancing Grammar Lessons with Pragmatics

Rose¹

2012

hpn

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Previous work in the field of interlanguage pragmatics suggests that learners of a second or foreign language benefit from metapragmatic instruction (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer 2008a; Kasper and Rose 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005). The most common approach taken in studies on instruction is to focus on a speech act and to develop a lesson that acts as a separate unit for the learners (or study participants). The current article presents a slightly different approach, suggesting that language educators enhance grammar lessons that are already part of the curriculum with instruction on pragmatics. Instead of developing additional units, this article shows how grammar lessons can be extended and enhanced using internet searches on Google and YouTube to find authentic materials in addition to authentic written texts. These lessons, in addition to providing metapragmatic instruction, also present opportunities to make cross-cultural comparisons between different Spanish-speaking countries and the United States.

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4. Conditional: A grammaticalised marker of politeness in Spanish

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Teaching Pragmatics in the Classroom: Instruction of Mitigation in Spanish as a Foreign Language

Teaching Pragmatics in the Classroom: Instruction of Mitigation in Spanish as a Foreign Language

An Intercultural Communication Study of Chinese and Malaysian University Students’ Refusal to Invitation

Grammar in the Real World: Enhancing Grammar Lessons with Pragmatics

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