Dr. Gayle Nelson on Speech Acts
Speech acts - how language is used in specific situations
Examples: Greetings, invitations, refusals, compliments, apologies.
Original research was dependent on norms of target language. A lot of research was carried out in English. Assumption was that language learners would take on cultural norms of target language and shed original cultural norms. Speech act theory was an attempt to try to divide language into manageable, definable, analyzable units that would be comparable and researchable.
NNS must learn socio-linguistic norms of native speakers
Due to pragmatic transfer, also need to learn norms of NNS-therefore, conduct cross-cultural studies. Easier to teach English pragmatics to Arab speakers if you know what Arab norms are. Can predict what kinds of errors might be made.
This is problematic because it’s hard to find out what norms are, hard to generalize across cultures. Also many subcultures within a culture, so norms in a language group will vary. Data may only pertain to a certain subset. Also time-dependent, especially slang and colloquial usage. Status, gender, age, also come into play. Plus, many errors don’t stem from L1 but from interlanguage.
Discourse Completion Test
Advantages:
· Less face threatening to respondents
· Can get a lot of data without taking time to transcribe.
· Can elicit exactly the data you want
· Can add status, gender, age, etc: demographic info to compare across cultures-gives you exact comparisons
· Can do a spoken DCT rather than written
Disadvantages:
· Gender bias in this one we did in class, also no demographic info, nothing about status or intimacy of interlocutors.
· Respondents have too much time to think over what “right answer might be. Time limit might help, but might also stress respondents.
· Mood can affect response.
Semi-naturalistic data collection
Insert a compliment naturally into the conversation: in class, very difficult and a bit stressful because you have to concentrate on getting the compliment in naturally in a short time.
In her research, she told students they were doing interviews on something else, and randomly inserted compliments into interview.
Hard to write down exact phrasing. Better if you can tape and transcribe so you get laughter, etc. But audio doesn’t pick up gestures or expressions. Would be interesting to use video to look at non-verbal reactions to compliments across cultures. Transcription of this: look at Dr. Lindemann for discourse analysis.
Naturalistic data collection
Ethics issue: can have everyone consent afterwards.
Data that is hard to collect:
· Authenticity
· Comparability
· Time it takes to gather data
· Demographic data
· Quantity - in depth data? Or general patterns?
· Frequency of speech acts
· Purpose of speech acts (illocution)
Inter-coder Reliability - Requires more than one coder, very specific definitions, lots of training of other coders. Work with practice data first until people learn to agree on definitions.
Cross-cultural differences in purpose and frequency of compliments:
· Icebreaker, social solidarity
· Female to female - indicates that there is no competition between them
· Insincere perception can feel patronizing
· Complimenting possessions - compliment to taste? In some cultures, response has to be to give over complimented possession. Indicates envy? Syrian compliment article shows formulaic refusal for offered possession as well.
· Israel - too many compliments draw “evil eye,” too much attention.
Problems with idea that people should take on the rules of the culture of a language:
· World Englishes - taking on norms of native speaker doesn’t make much sense, because “native speaker” has difference meaning in this context.
· Orientalism - issues of power, west trying to control east. By saying language learners should learn norms of target language, it’s a power issue, they should become more like us.
· Otherization - any time you contrast cultures, you put people into groups, creates “we” and “other,” they’re different from us. Criticism of studying culture in general: not a healthy thing to do because you put people in “other” category.
· Essentialism - criticism for culture - the way that we look at culture is static, homogeneous, unchanging. Leads to stereotypes, doesn’t take individuality into consideration. Pragmatic and sociolinguistic rules change, are not static. But research results are static because they’re written down.
There’s a conflict between knowing about speech acts in different cultures, but also knowing about individuality, change, and dangers of essentialism. Be aware you’re teaching from your own POV. Hedge, give background, move outside your own experience.
Depends on level of students and reasons for learning the language, how much of this you address, and how you decide what’s useful. General rule of thumb is, if you’re in the country, follow the rules of that culture. It’s a negotiation. Get it out in the open you can talk about it: your rules or mine? Don’t want to change anyone completely.
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