“It Would Never Happen in My Country I Must Say”: A Corpus-Pragmatic Study on Asian English Learners’ Preferred Uses of Must and Should

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate Asian English learners' preferred uses of the modal auxiliaries must and should by using both syntactic, topical and semantic annotation as well as various corpus linguistic tools. Our primary goal is to identify culture-specific motivations in the use of the two modal verbs and to demonstrate how those relate to the use of the two items in language produced by L1 speakers of English. We adhere to Hinkel's study (TESOL Q 29(2):325-343. 1995(TESOL Q 29(2):325-343. , doi: 10.2307 and her findings as a springboard into our analysis. She suggested that differences in the use of modals between Asian English learners (AELs) and English L1 speakers may be culturally founded. We see the essential need to question and deepen the understanding of such implications, arguing that a count of tokens and their correlation with essay topics alone cannot be sufficiently informative. This is why we pursue a more in-depth approach which combines both corpus and pragmatic tools. First of all, we will conduct a contrastive analysis of quantitative data from two different learners' corpora on the one hand, and three available corpora of contemporary English on the other hand. The goal of this analysis is to carve out certain AEL and/or English native speakers' patterns in using must and should in their deontic and epistemic senses. Secondly, we will evaluate the AEL data in regard to whether and how they reflect cultural values different from the ones expressed in native English speech. Our findings show that, whereas ENSs and AELs alike do demonstrate a preference in the less face-threatening modal should over the more direct must in deontic uses, both must and should tend to be used more deliberately and more purposefully by AELs than by ENSs, who seem to apply them much more vaguely and polysemously. With regard to Hinkel's major claim that AELs' use of must and & Istvan Kecskes

A Pragmatic and Semantic Analysis of EFL Learners’ Use of Modal Verbs: A Perception Study

“…For instance, Hinkel"s (1995) analysis proposed that culture has an impact on the employment of modals between the English L1 speakers and Asian EFL learners. Confirming Hinkel"s main claim that Asian English learners" tendency to use the modals, should and must, is due to the cultural influence, compared to those forms used by the English L1 speakers, Kecskes & Kirner-Ludwig (2017) found that while both English native speakers and Asian English learners used the deontic modal should more the direct must, Asian English learners used must and should more purposefully than English natives, who appeared to apply them much more vaguely and polysemously. In the same line of research, Yang (2018) found that Chinese students tended to use modal verbs more frequently than professional researchers.…”

“…There is also a considerable body of literature on the use of English modal verbs by EFL learners with different L1 backgrounds (e.g., Hinkel, 1995Hinkel, , 2009Kecskes & Kirner-Ludwig 2017;Yang, 2018). For instance, Hinkel"s (1995) analysis proposed that culture has an impact on the employment of modals between the English L1 speakers and Asian EFL learners.…”

The Complexity of Pragmatic Competence: A Comparative Analysis of Native English Speakers’ and Turkish ESL Students’ Advice-giving Strategies

“…DeCapua and Huber (1995) highlighted the use of similar situations, softeners, downgraders, and mitigators as other strategies to be polite and support advice seekers' faces in advicegiving. Kecskes and Kirner-Ludwig (2017) noted a limited use of imperatives and verbs with strong illocutionary force to save the advice-seekers' faces and be polite and indirect. Morrow (2006) and Zeyrek (2001) suggested the inclusion of greetings in the openings and good or empathetic wishes and exclamations in the endings to form solidarity between the advice seeker and the advice giver.…”

Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use

“…For example, we used data from more than 1,500 speakers in producing Figure 1. To perform analysis on this scale, advanced computational technology is required to search through the data, compute frequencies, and provide statistical summaries such as those shown in the graph, which was produced using #LancsBox (Brezina et al, 2015; for an example of the program in use, see Kecskes & Kirner-Ludwig, 2017). Fourth, corpus findings are based on the observation of a very large number of examples of language use.…”