Speech Act of Responding to Rudeness: A Case Study of Malaysian University Students

Abstract

Politeness conventions vary across cultures and so is impoliteness and rudeness. In some cases, what is considered rude in one culture or a society is not necessarily rude or impolite in another. This cannot be explained unless more studies on the use of language functions in a specific culture are conducted. The aim of this paper is to investigate Malaysians university students' realization of responding to rudeness. For this purpose, 51 Malaysian university students at Universiti Sains Malaysia took part in this research. The respondents completed a Discourse Completion Task consisting of six situations in which they had to respond to an offensive or a rude language directed toward them. The findings were then analyzed using Beebe and Waring's (2005) a coding scheme of responding rudeness to examine the type and use of strategies in responding to rudeness. Moreover, a post-structured interview was conducted to explore the respondents' perception of politeness, cognition and language of thought (i.e. the language they think in their mind to produce response in the moment) in responding to rudeness. The results showed that participants employ different strategies with variations in contextual variables (i.e. social distance and social status) in their responses. The comparison of participants' production and perception in responding to rudeness provided significant results. It is hoped that the analysis of Malaysian university students' responding to rudeness could add to the body of knowledge in pragmatics and speech act studies in general and to our understanding of Malays university students' realization in responding to rudeness in particular.

الجنس والاجابة على الفظاظة : دراسة حالة المتعلمين العراقيين للغة الانجليزية لغةً أجنبية

“…Searle (1979) directives, commisives, expressives, and declarations. Based on Searle"s taxonomy of speech acts, responding to rudeness is considered as one of the expressive acts that shows the interlocutor"s psychological state, feelings and attitudes (Farnia et al, 2014). Beebe (1995) defines rudeness as a face threatening act that results in antagonism, distress, and conflict and causes problems in the social harmony.…”

“…Although rudeness is a frequently used act in our daily communication, it must not be considered a trivial issue because it may cause more discomfort than harmful acts such as theft or robbery. It appears in diverse forms and could be evaluated based on the rate of offensiveness (Farnia et al, 2014). Not every utterance makes individuals angry is rude.…”

“…in that it includes different categories of strategies which reveal the social values of diverse communities and cultures. It also requires knowledge of the linguistic forms and the proper use of them within a given culture (Farnia et al, 2014).…”

“…Responding to rudeness has been sparingly investigated in diverse languages and cultures such as English and Persian (Farnia et al, 2010) and Malay (Farnia et al, 2014). Moreover, it is contextually sensitive to such social factors as age, gender, status, distance, and imposition degree in order to maintain politeness resources.…”

“…Yet, learners of English as a second or foreign language may not have the ability to recognize rude utterances in a diverse cultural setting, or if they do, they may not have knowledge about the socially proper response to produce (Lanteigne, 2007). They may treat nicely, keep silent, or become angry (Farnia, Abdul Sattar, & Mei, 2014). Thus, second and foreign language learners should be acquainted with the suitable responses to rudeness in order not to face undesirable consequences if they do not respond or respond improperly to a situation (Farnia, Buchheit, & Vedaei, 2010).…”