Mitigation and politeness in Greek invitation refusals: Effects of length of residence in the target community and intensity of interaction on non-native speakers’ performance

Bella, Spyridoula

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.005

Cited by 93 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…That is why understanding and producing speech acts is thought to be an indispensable constituent of language learners' grammatical and social knowledge about learning a language and using the utterances appropriately in the target language. As such, Bella (2011) argues that deviation from the target norms due to cultural differences may have debilitating effects on the learners' language proficiency. Bayat (2013) mentions that though speech acts appear to be universal, their conceptualization can vary to a great extent across cultures.…”

Section: Final Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners’ Performance in Utilizing the Speech Acts of Advice and Suggestion

Darweesh¹,

Al-Aadili²

2017

IJEL

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This study explores the pragmatic strategies of the English speech acts of "suggestion" and "advice" as used by Iraqi EFL university students. The data analyzed in this study were collected in the Dept. of English, College of Education, University of Babylon. The subjects encompass 50 Iraqi EFL undergraduate learners who are native speakers of Arabic. The gender of the subjects is taken into consideration during the execution of the speech acts in question. The instrument of the study is a discourse completion task (DCT) consisting of two questions. In responding to the questions, the participants are asked to pay heed to the social variable of status to see whether it affects the execution of the speech acts under study.Keywords: speech acts, advice, suggestion, strategies, Iraqi EFL learners' performance PreliminariesBoth advice and suggestion are speech acts used in daily communication to influence other people. They are milder than commands since the decision about what to do is in the hands of the hearer, but in practice they are tactful ways of giving commands or instructions, thus, they are regarded as face-threatening acts that need to be softened or mitigated. In EFL classrooms, the major aim is not only to teach students how to utilize speech acts but also how to interpret and comprehend them with respect to the strategies used to indicate each act in order to develop a pragmatic competence that is computed on the basis of the ability to understand the intended meaning. This competence covers both sociolinguistic and illocutionary aspects and since the uses of the strategies which realize speech acts vary across cultures, the focus is on social appropriateness because the addresser could have in mind a variety of intended meanings which are considered a barrier to successful communication. These barriers may be educational and sociocultural. The problem would become more pressing because illocutionary competence is not always directly grasped from its surface structure that is why learning the pragmatic rules(appropriateness and politeness rules) of other languages enables the learners to produce forms of language that are socially and culturally appropriate since the native language of the learners and the other languages are not similar. As such, the study proposes the following hypotheses as a point of departure : (1)the speech acts of advice and suggestion are similar in certain respects and different in others, (2) different pragmatic strategies and syntactic formulae are employed by Iraqi EFL learners to accomplish the speech acts in question, (3)direct strategies are more frequent than others in the performance of the subjects, and (4) female subjects are more cognizant of status in responding to the situations they are given than their male counterparts, and (5) female learners use more politeness markers than their male counterparts..

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Section: Final Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners’ Performance in Utilizing the Speech Acts of Advice and Suggestion

Darweesh¹,

Al-Aadili²

2017

IJEL

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“…Adult native speakers of some languages, such as Chinese (Guo 2012;Li 2007;Wang 2001;Yang 2008) and Malay (Satter et al 2011), prefer indirect refusals, an inclination that is attributable to the indirect communication style prevalent in their cultures. Comparisons of L1 and L2 refusals as responses to requests, offers, invitations, and suggestions made by some adult native speakers and language learners, such as learners of Greek (Bella 2011 andBella 2014), learners of Spanish (Félix-Brasdefer 2006), and learners of English (e.g., Allami and Naeimi 2011;Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 1993;Beebe et al 1990;Chang 2009 andChang 2011;Liao and Bresnahan 1996), provide evidence for varied degrees of L1 pragmatic transfer in L2 refusals due to the learner's proficiency level and length of residence in the target community. Unlike requests that have been well researched in terms of semantic formulae from cross-cultural and crosslinguistic perspectives (e.g., Economidou-Kogetsidis 2011;Ellis 1992;Fukushima 1996;Hassall 2003;Lee 2004, Lee 2005, Lee 2011Rinnert and Kobayashi 1999) and L2 developmental patterns from childhood through the teens (Achiba 2003;Rose 2000, Rose 2009), refusals produced by other age groups and the ways in which their refusals' semantic formulae are different from or consistent with adult counterparts and development patterns are rarely investigated and discussed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding refusal style and pragmatic competence of teenage Cantonese English learners in refusals: An exploratory study

Lee

2016

Intercultural Pragmatics

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The paper investigates the refusal style of teenage Cantonese learners of English in terms of strategy use, pattern, order, and content of refusals' semantic formulae quantitatively and qualitatively, and discusses learners' pragmatic competence and refusal style with reference to that of adult native Mandarin Chinese (L1) speakers and Chinese English learners reported in the literature. One hundred fifty-six Cantonese English learners aged between 14 and 18, studying in Form 2, Form 4, and Form 6, participated in the study. Refusals to requests were collected using five closed role plays in which sociolinguistic variables were controlled. It was found that three indirect refusal patterns were generally used by the three age groups across situations, with the strategy of giving a specific reason being dominant. Only the difference in use of single strategy was statistically significant (p < 0.05). The frequency rate of refusing directly decreased when age and language-learning exposure increased. The older teenage learners refused more indirectly than the young ones. The indirect-with-specific-reason refusal style for requests is consistent with the indirect Chinese communication style of adult native Chinese speakers and Chinese English learners. In addition, the direct-then-indirect development in L2 refusals is similar to that in L2 requests and complaints expressed by young Cantonese English learners, and there are some signs of L1 pragmatic transfer. Teenage learners were able to show sociopragmatic competence by using different refusal strategies in face of different request natures and relationships with interlocutors. However, their pramalinguistic resources were limited, and adjuncts did not exist.

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“…Among these aspects, the most researched fields are speech acts, and particularly requests (Alcón, 2014;Barron, 2003;Bataller, 2010;Bella, 2012;Schauer, 2006;Taguchi, 2013b) and apologies (Cohen & Olshtain, 1993;Shardakova, 2005). Other speech acts that have been observed to develop during SA are refusals (Barron, 2003;Bella, 2011;Félix-Brasdefer, 2004 suggestions (Koike, 1996), offers (Barron, 2003), opinions (Taguchi, 2013b) and complaints (Trosborg, 1995). Pragmatic features other than speech acts that are likely to develop in the SA setting include meta-pragmatic awareness (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998;Kinginger & Farrell, 2004); comprehension of implicature (Bouton, 1992, cited in Taguchi, 2011bTaguchi, 2008Taguchi, , 2011b, directness and politeness (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984;DuFon, 1999;Han, 2005, cited in Eslami & Jin Ahn, 2014, and pragmatic routines (Barron, 2003;Hoffman-Hicks, 1999;Shively, 2011).…”

Section: Study Abroad Programs As a Context For Learning Pragmaticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the studies which have found a stronger influence of intensity of interaction than length of stay include Bella (2011Bella ( , 2012 and Taguchi (2008). Bella (2011Bella ( , 2012 compared the effect of length of residence and intensity of interaction upon Greek learners' use of politeness strategies and mitigation devices; to refuse invitations (Bella, 2011) and to make requests (Bella, 2012 While the studies mentioned above have reported some influence of length of stay, and intensity of interaction, they have also pointed out the relevance of tracing individual trajectories to analyse the role of individual differences.…”

Section: Intensity Of Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bella (2011Bella ( , 2012 compared the effect of length of residence and intensity of interaction upon Greek learners' use of politeness strategies and mitigation devices; to refuse invitations (Bella, 2011) and to make requests (Bella, 2012 While the studies mentioned above have reported some influence of length of stay, and intensity of interaction, they have also pointed out the relevance of tracing individual trajectories to analyse the role of individual differences. The next section reviews the role of individual variables (that is, internal factors associated to the individual learners) on the acquisition of pragmatic competence.…”

Section: Intensity Of Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Acculturation and acquisition of pragmatic routines in the study abroad context

Hernández¹

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Mitigation and politeness in Greek invitation refusals: Effects of length of residence in the target community and intensity of interaction on non-native speakers’ performance

Cited by 93 publications

References 35 publications

Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners’ Performance in Utilizing the Speech Acts of Advice and Suggestion

Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners’ Performance in Utilizing the Speech Acts of Advice and Suggestion

Understanding refusal style and pragmatic competence of teenage Cantonese English learners in refusals: An exploratory study

Acculturation and acquisition of pragmatic routines in the study abroad context

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