Email this article The Speech Act Set of Direct Complaints in American and Russian Cultures
- Authors: Gallaher B.1
-
Affiliations:
- Independent Scholar (USA)
- Issue: No 4 (2014)
- Pages: 167-177
- Section: Articles
- URL: https://journals.rcsi.science/2687-0088/article/view/331757
- ID: 331757
Cite item
Full Text
Abstract
This study investigates the speech act set of direct complaints performed by American speakers and Russian native speakers. This article explores the semantic categories that speakers in each language group used to structure their complaints and the order of occurrences of the categories from the point of view of face-saving strategies, as defined by Brown and Levinson (1978 [1987]). The data was obtained through a combination of oral responses to a discourse completion questionnaire and an assessment questionnaire. The findings demonstrate that speakers in each language group used the same range of semantic categories to structure their complaints. However, the frequency and the order of the categories greatly differed, which revealed differences in politeness norms and cultural values in American and Russian cultures. The results of the study indicate some language- and culture- specific features of complaints, which can have a significant effect on problem negotiations across cultures.
References
- Arent, Russel (1996). Sociopragmatic decisions regarding complaints by Chinese learners and NSs of American English. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 1: 125-147.
- Bergelson, Mira (2003). Russian cultural values and workplace communication styles. Communication studies 2003: Modern anthology 97-112. http://www.ffl.msu.ru/staff/ mbergelson/7.doc (accessed 12 July 2008).
- Blum-Kulka, Shoshana and Elite Olshtain (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics 5(3): 196-213.
- Boxer, Diana (1993). Social distance and speech behavior: The case of indirect complaints. Journal of Pragmatics 19(2): 103-125.
- Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson (1978 [1987]). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Cohen, Andrew D. and Elite Olshtain (1994). Researching the production of second-language speech acts. In Research Methodology in Second Language Acquisition, Elaine E. Tarone, Susan M. Gass, and Andrew D. Cohen (eds.), 143-156. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Fraser, Bruce. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219-236.
- Gershenson, Olga (1994). Mezhkul’turnoe neponimanie: Izrail’tiane i repatrianty iz Rossii. Slavianovedenie 53-58.
- Gershenson, Olga (2003). Misunderstanding between Israelis and Soviet immigrants: Linguistic and cultural factors. Multilingua 22: 275-290.
- Hoffman, Ewa (1990). Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. New York: Penguin Books.
- Kraft, Bettina and Ronald Geluykens (2002). Complaining in French L1 and L2: A cross-linguistic investigation. EUROSLA Yearbook 2: 227-242.
- Kraft, Bettina and Ronald Geluykens (2007). Cross-cultural pragmatics and interlanguage English.
- Lakoff, Robin. (1973). The logic of politeness; or, minding your p’s and q’s. In Claudia Corum, T. Cedric Smith-Stark and Ann Weiser (eds.), Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 292-305. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
- Leech, Geoffrey N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.
- Larina, Tatiana, V (2009). Kategoria vezhlivosti i stil’ kommunikatsii. Sopostavlenie angliiskikh i russkikh lingvokul’turnykh traditsii. Moskva: Rukopisnye pamiatniki Drevnei Rusi.
- Moskala-Gallaher, Beata (2012). The Speech Act of Complaint in English and in Russian and its Emergence in the Pragmatic Competence of Adult American Learners of Russian. Dissertation. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
- Murthy, Beth and Joyce Neu (1996). My grade’s too low: The speech act set of complaining. In Speech Acts across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language, Susan M. Gass and Joyce Neu (eds.), 191-216. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Ogiermann, Eva (2009a). Politeness and in-directness across cultures: A comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian requests. Journal of Politeness Research 5: 189-216.
- Ogiermann, Eva (2009b). On Apologizing in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Olshtain Elite and Andrew D. Cohen (1983). Apology: A speech-act set. In Nessa Wolfson and Elliot Judd (eds.), Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition, 18-35. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers.
- Olshtain Elite and Liora Weinbach (1987). Complaints: A study of speech act behavior among native and nonnative speakers of Hebrew. In Jef Verschueren and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi (eds.), 195-208. The Pragmatic Perspective: Selected Papers from the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Olshtain Elite and Liora Weinbach (1993). Interlanguage features of the speech act of complaining. In Interlanguage Pragmatics, Gabriele Kasper and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.), 108-122. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Owen, Jeanette (2001). Interlanguage pragmatics in Russian: A study of the effects of study abroad and proficiency levels of request strategies. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Bryn Mawr College.
- Piotrowska, Maria (1987). An investigation into the sociolinguistic competence of Hong Kong University students with specific reference to making complaints. Unpublished M.A. dissertation. Hong Kong University.
- Prykarpatska, Iryna (2008). Why are you late? Cross-cultural pragmatic study of complaints in American English and Ukrainian. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 21: 87-102.
- Rathmayr, Renate. (1994). Pragmatische and sprachlich konzeptualisierte Characteristika russicher direktiver Sprechakte. In H.R. Mehlig (ed.), Slavistische Linguistik 1993: Referate des XIX. Konstanzer Slavistischen Arbeitstreffens, 251-278. Munchen: Verlag Otto Sagner.
- Schaefer, Edward, J. (1982). An analysis of the discourse and syntax of oral complaints in English. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of California.
- Shardakova, Maria (2009). Intercultural Pragmatics of the Apology: How Americans Acquire Sociolinguistic Competence in Russian. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller.
- Tanck, Sharyl (2002). Speech act sets of refusals and complaint: A comparison of native and non-native English speakers’ production. TESL 523 Second Language Acquisition 1-22. Washington, DC: American University.
- Tran, Giao, Q. (2002). Pragmatic transfer and discourse transfer in complaining. Melbourne Papers in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2(2): 71-98.
- Trosborg, Anna (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Umar, Al-Tayib, A.M. (2006). The speech act of complaint as realized by advanced Sudanese learners of English. Umm Al-Qura University Journal of Educational & Social Sciences & Humanities 18(2) - Jumada II 1427AH.
- Wierzbicka, Anna (1985). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics 9: 145-178.
- Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Cross- Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Supplementary files
