The Investigation of Pragmatic Transfer in the Speech Act of Congratulations by Punjabi EFL Learners (original) (raw)
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2021
People usually express their feelings and emotions positively to others when they have happy occasions. However, the ways of expressing congratulation may vary because the expressive speech act “congratulations” is not the only way to express happiness and share others their happy news. The present study investigates the congratulation strategies of Pakistani ESL learners and British English speakers under the influence of social distance variable. For this purpose, 120 participants were recruited, and who were further divided into four different groups: 30 British English speakers, 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the elite class, 30 Pakistani ESL learners of the middle class, and 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the lower class. For data collection, a Discourse completion test (DCT) was used as a tool. The findings reveal that the most frequently used types of congratulation strategy are IFID followed by overlapped strategies (a combination of two), an offer of a good wish, expression of ...
This study attempts to investigate how the participants’ social class affects types and frequency of EFL language learners’ compliment responses (CR).Data were collected from 60 Persian EFL Learners by using a DCT on various real life situations. The data were categorized and analyzed based onthe adapted version of CR categorization developed by Herbert (1989).The results indicated that both high and middle social class followed very similar patterns of CR. The CR pattern doesnot seem to fluctuate according to the social class of the participants.The discrepancy in the strategies utilized by the participants in this study between the data achieved from the Persian and English questionnaires does not support L1 pragmalinguistic transfer in CR patterns for the middle social class participants.The findings of the research contribute to social, psychological and linguistic aspects of language learning in terms of examining the effect ofinteracting factors on the process of language learning in general and pragmatics in particular.
2021
This study aims to describe (1) the form of compliment strategies and compliment responses of English learners at the Adab and Humanities Faculty of UIN Alauddin Makassar, (2) the factors related to the pragmatics of the transfer of English learners at the Adab and Humanities Faculty of UIN Alauddin Makassar. The population in this study is all students of semester 6 of the Class of 2017 English Language and Literature Faculty of Adab and Humanities UIN Alauddin Makassar, with a total of 70 respondents as a representative selected research sample, is considered as the representation of the entire research population. The data collection methods are conducted using DCT, interviews, and direct observations. The data obtained is analyzed with quantitative and qualitative techniques. Specifically, the quantitative data is processed with statistics using R analytics software, while the qualitative data is analyzed using pragmatic transfer analysis. The results showed that (1) The form of...
2019
The purpose of the present study is to investigate into the possibility of pragmatic failure in the L2 production of Yemeni EFL university learners. It, in particular, tackles the L1 negative pragmatic transfer in the speech act of responding to compliments. The participants of the study are thirty Yemeni learners of English representing the target group and two baseline groups: thirty Yemeni Arabic native speakers and thirty American English native speakers. The researchers used a Discourse Completion Task as to collect the relevant data based on six complimenting scenarios. Data were codified into compliment response formulas and analysed statistically via SPSS in terms of the overall frequency counts of the semantic formulas. The results revealed that pragmatic failure is highly evident in the learners' L2 production. L1 negative pragmatic transfer occurred in the response strategies of 'Comment Acceptance', 'Comment History', 'Praise Upgrade', 'Return', 'No Acknowledgement', 'Offer', 'Promise' and 'Wish'. They nearly represent 50% of the leaners' response utterances. The learners also showed a tendency of positively assimilating their L2 norms in the realization of compliment responses in half of their response utterances.
Pragmatic Transfer in Pakistani English Speakers Apology Responses: Impact of Social Power
The current study investigates the impact of social power on the performance and perception of Pakistani English Speakers' use of apology responses. Two instruments, a discourse completion test (DCT, translated version for Pakistani Urdu speakers) and a scale response questionnaire (SRQ, both in Urdu and English), are used for data collection. The findings illustrate that Pakistani English speakers (PakE) pragmatic choices are clearly influenced by their perceptions of various sociocultural, socio-religious and contextual variables. The PakE and Pakistani Urdu speakers (PakU) are found being influenced by the social power of their interlocutors. The participants of both PakE and PakU groups used Acceptance strategies (Adrefiza & Jones, 2013) when they responded to the apologies of higher status speakers, and preferred to acknowledge the apologies of equal and lower level interlocutors. They are also found using more Rejection strategies than British English speakers (BritE) while responding to lower level interlocutors, indicating that Pakistani society abides by non-egalitarian status. In contrast, British English speakers preferred to use Acceptance and Evasion strategies more often while interacting with the people of higher, equal and lower level interlocutors. The findings further highlight the influence of socio-religious aspects on the PakE and PakU groups, as they more often used positive politeness , in contrast, British English speakers prefer to use both (Holmes 1995; Adrefiza & Jones, 2013) positive and negative politeness.
Caught between Two Cultures: Pragmatic Transfer in English-using Pakistanis Apology Responses
Revista Amazonia Investiga, 2020
In Pragmatics, scholars have given special attention to study the influence of leaners culture and social rules in understanding and using target language pragmatics. For this purpose, speech acts have been studied quite widely. This study investigates the speech act of responding to apology in Pakistani English, British English and Pakistani Urdu, and tries to highlight whether respondents transfer their cultural and social rules in the target language or not. The present study followed quantitative approach for data collection and analysis. A discourse completion test (DCT), consists of 12 apology response scenarios is used for data collection. The findings illustrate that English-using Pakistanis pragmatic choices are clearly influenced by their perceptions of various sociocultural and contextual variables. The English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers are found using two main strategies (Acceptance, and Acknowledgment). In contrast, British English speakers tend to us...
Investigating Iranian EFL Learners' Congratulation Speech Act Strategies and their L2 Productions
International Journal of English Language Teaching Studies, 2015
The aim of the present research was to find out the congratulation speech act strategies selected by Iranian EFL students at three levels of language proficiency. The participants of the present study were 60 (30 males and 30 females) Iranian students at Faramehr language institute, Esfahan, Iran. The data collection instruments used in the present study were the Oxford quick placement test to determine the proficiency level of the participants and a version of Discourse Completion Test (DCT) used in Allami and Nekouzadeh's (2011) study. To reach the objectives of the present research, the learners took the proficiency test in order to place them in three groups of low, intermediate, and advanced levels. Then all subjects were asked to fill out congratulation Discourse Completion Test (DCT) in which all situations were designed based on the combination of two variables: social status with three levels: low (L), high (H), and equal (E), and social distance with three levels: intimate (I), acquaintance (A) and stranger (S). After coding the data, the percentages of congratulation speech act strategies were calculated. The results indicated that 'IFID' was the most frequent congratulation formula used by Iranian EFL students at three levels of language proficiency.
Impoliteness in Interlanguage pragmatics of inviting by Indonesian EFL learners
This study aimed at finding impoliteness in making inviting strategy in the target language (Englis) by Indonesian EFL learners regarding social status, power, and rank of imposition. The method was by employing written DCT with nine scenarios adopted from Blum-Kulka (2000). The participants of this study were 66 students of Senior High School. The findings show that the proficiency of mastering English grammar does not guarantee the successful communication in terms of inviting others based on social status and familiarity. Impoliteness was found in the use of impolite (neutral) inviting strategies in terms of imperative forms and asking for willingness using neutral (impolite) strategies toward higher invetees as they only employ words grammatically ordered without considering context of situation. Brown-Levinson super strategies of politeness in the form of BR which was direct was also found in the interaction to higher invetees as well. A. Introduction Learning a language means learning the culture. This never takes into consideration. Teachers or instructors sometimes only pay attention to the constructing linguistic patterns rather than introducing culture beyond the language we learn. Culture differs one and another. What we act and speak reflect the culture of our language. Talking about culture means talking about sociopragmatics. It is about language in context situation where we adjust our linguistic behavior in where we make interaction and communicate. The area of pragmatic competence is studied in terms of sociolinguistic competence and discourse competence. Whereas, pragmatic competence in foreign language contexts is defined as the knowledge of communicative action or speech acts, how to perform it, and the ability to utilize the language in proper ways based on the context or contextual factors (Kasper: 1997). Since speech act broadly drew attention of many linguists to do the research, pragmatics seems to be one aspect not to be neglected. As pragmatics differs from one culture to other second or foreign language, learners should acquire the sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistic rules of the foreign or second language to enable them to make communication effectively with native speakers. Miscommunication often occurs due to incident that people make use of the rules of their native pragmatics to express intention in other culture without realizing the difference between these two. Error in grammar could be tolerable but inappropriateness will affect the communication outcomes. The conversation may lead to an awkward situation which is not realized by the learners of the language. " the appropriate usage and selection of language in accordance with context and the ability to understand the social conventions that govern communication " (Xiaole, 2009). However, the learning process tends to exclude socio pragmatic knowledge. In addition, the Indonesian students in Semarang Regency are not accustomed to the use of English politeness expression. They even are not aware whether the target language they learn has the norms of politeness in their daily basis communication or not. Pragmalinguistics is the way a learner generates utterances to maintain communication by using linguistic units in an appropriate way based on the social context and value of politeness related to the degree of power, rank, and imposition. It can be said that pragmatic competence is the core of communication, how to maintain feasible and accepted communication especially involving interactants from different cultural background, in terms of using appropriate linguistic units, strategies and real context of situation base where the language is used and developed. Therefore,