（英语语言文学专业论文）中国英语学习者恭维语及其应答的策略研究.pdf

descriptive chinese abstract i 摘 要 恭维是人们日常交际中频繁使用的一种礼貌言语行为。恭维及其应答构成了人们言 语交际能力的一个方面。诸多研究表明这一言语行为并不像看上去那么简单，它涉及到 社会文化的许多方面。 语际语用学是从语用学的角度研究语言学习者的目的语行为的实施及其语用能力 发展的科学。国内外对语际语言中的言语行为的探讨越来越多, 例如, “道歉” 、 “拒绝” 、 “请求”等，但是针对中国英语学习者恭维语际语言语行为的研究甚少。 本文围绕中国英语学习者、操汉语的本族语者和操英语的本族语者，在恭维言语行 为实施过程中使用的策略类型进行比较分析，旨在探讨中国英语学习者的言语行为，揭 示不同的语言文化下恭维语体现的不同文化规范和价值观念。 汉语和英语在语用和文化上均存在很大的差异。中国人很难把握英语恭维语主要是 以下两方面原因造成的。一是称赞语被西方人用于更为广泛的场合，而在某些场合下对 于中国人来说恭维别人有时候是不适合或者是不礼貌的行为；二是西方人往往倾向于欣 赏或接受赞美之意（例如， 谢谢你 ） ，而中国人回应别人的恭维往往采取自谦式的拒 绝（例如： 哪里，哪里 ） ，这对于西方人来说是很不礼貌甚至是粗鲁的行为。 本研究主要采用语际语用学广泛所用的语篇补全测试（dct）形式获得数据，依据 pomerantz 对恭维语及其应答实施策略类型进行分类。具体研究数据来自三组大学生群 体：以汉语为母语的 3 2人提供汉语数据，以英语为外语的中国学习者和以英语为母语 的西方人（各 3 2 人）提供英语数据，男女各半。 研究结果表明，操英语的人，无论是英语本族语或者非英语本族语者，使用恭维语 的频率要明显多于操汉语的人。在回应恭维语时，西方人倾向于接受恭维而不是拒绝， 而以汉语为母语的中国人和以英语为外语的中国学习者更倾向于拒绝恭维。此外，男性 和女性在恭维语及其应答策略选择上也存在很大不同。 本文进一步将研究结果与国内外的研究结果加以比较，并探讨了语言的规约性 （linguistic conventionality） ， pomerantz的制约系统论 （constraint system theory） ， 和brown strategies; speech act; politeness 湘潭大学 学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成 果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表 或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式 标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留并向 国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权湘 潭大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、 缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 涉密论文按学校规定处理。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 introduction 1 introduction the aim of this study is to examine the speech act of chinese learners of english, focusing on the strategies which they give and respond to compliments in a second language (l2). i wish to identify the difficulties that distinguish the behavior of these learners from that of native english speakers and to see whether these difficulties can be related to features of their native language (l1). interlanguage pragmatics studies learners- specific pragmatic performance and its relationship to learners l1 and l2. this line of research shows that even advanced learners communicative behavior often deviates from l2 conventions so as to cause many cross- cultural misunderstanding (e.g., cohen wolfson, 1989a). miscommunication can occur because acquiring a language involves learning not only its formal aspects, such as grammar and vocabulary, but also its pragmatic aspects, i.e., rules for appropriate use in a given sociocultural context. sociolinguistic competence can be generally divided into two areas. one is appropriateness of form, that is, pragmalinguistics, which signals “ the particular resources that a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions” (leech, 1983:11); the other is appropriateness of meaning, i.e., sociopragmatics, which defines the ways in which pragmatic performance is subject to specific social conventions and values ( kasper wolfson, 1989a, 1989b; herbert, 1989,1990). in this study, to elicit these linguistic strategies, a discourse completion questionnaire, the most frequent method of assessing speech act performance cross- linguistically (e.g., kasper cohen manes holmes, 1986). the growing research in interlanguage pragmatics has studied a number of speech acts, such as requests and apologies, but relatively few studies examine l2 learners compliment and compliment response behavior. further, though having compared learner populations from a variety of cultural backgrounds, including speakers of arabic, hebrew, spanish, russian, etc., rarely have interlanguage studies explored chinese speech act. so far, no research has specifically focused on how chinese pay and respond compliments in an l2, while studies of chinese speakers l1 performance suggest that it may vary substantially from english (chen, 1993). we therefore know very little about how chinese learners may experience difficulties concerning the rules for performing this speech act. accordingly, this study extends the scope of interlanguage research to chinese english as- a- second- language (esl) learners compliment and compliment response. chinese and english are pragmatically and culturally different. there are two reasons why compliments in english may be difficult for chinese. first, native english speakers give praise in a much wider variety of situations than chinese so that their compliments in some situations are considered inappropriate or impolite by chinese (yang, 1987). second, in many situations where chinese respond to praise, they prefer routinized denials (e.g., i m not ), rather than appreciation tokens (e.g., thank you ). to native english speakers, such routinized denials might be considered impolite or even rude. since compliments have been shown to be closely related to the speaker s linguistic and cultural norms (e.g., pomerantz, 1978; wolfson, 1989a; kasper, 1990), chinese learners compliment and compliment response behavior are worth investigating because it may be affected by their native language and culture so as to differ from that of english speakers in the linguistic forms embodying this speech act, and in the distribution and frequency of the strategies used. in this study, l2 learners compliment and compliment response performance are compared with that of speakers of their native and target languages to reveal how they perform this speech act in context that vary listener characteristics. the summary of the chapters in this dissertation is as follows: chapter 1 reviews some of the literature of theoretical speech act studies and application of speech act studies that are most relevant to the present study. it begins with a discussion of the major formulations of the theoretical speech act research and is often followed by an introduction 3 overview of empirical studies in this field. as it is often suggested that speech act performance is related to politeness, the western and chinese concepts of face and politeness are then addressed. in addition, research into the speech act of compliments and compliment responses is reviewed in detail. chapter 2 discusses the research methodology used in this study. it starts with an introduction to the research questions and hypotheses, followed by a description of the subjects. then how to collect data, whether the data gathered can be considered valid are addressed. finally, the procedure and coding scheme are presented in detail. chapter 3 focuses on the results of the present study. compliment and c ompliment response are described separately. it begins with a presentation of a means table and stacked bar graph of simple descriptive statistics, and we can hence see the distribution of the main strategies employed overall across all situations by each subject group. then the means table and stacked bar graph are further broken down for men and women separately to show how male and female subjects in each group perform this speech act overall. chapter 4 begins with a comparison of the findings of the present study with those of others, followed by a discussion of the issue of universality versus culture- specificity in speech act. three lines of theoretical formulations, (i) linguistic conventionality, (ii) pomerantz s theory of constraint systems, (iii) brown and levinson s universal theory of politeness, are specifically considered to see whether subjects compliment and compliment response behavior can be explained under the framework of these theses. then, the issue of gender differences in speech act is addressed. in the last part, the focused issues of the present study are described. two specific goals are summarized, which address the critical role of cultural norms may affect the speaker s speech act performance. then the pedagogical implications of the findings of this study are discussed. much attention is paid to the issue of the communicative competence in l2 acquisition. also, the limitations of this thesis are described. finally, this study concludes with suggestions for future research. chapter 1 theoretical backgrounds 4 chapter 1 theoretical backgrounds chapter 1 reviews some of the literature of theoretical speech act studies and applications of speech act studies that are most relevant to the present study. it starts with a discussion of the theses contributing significantly to theoretical speech act theory and of some frequently raised issues regarding the validity of that theory. this is followed by an overview of application on speech act studies, and some of the potential weaknesses of these studies are also discussed. as speech act is often suggested to be related to speakers politeness, western and chinese concepts of face and politeness are then addressed. finally, research on the speech act of compliments is reviewed in some detail. 1.1 speech act theory 1.1.1 the concept of an illocutionary act the idea of speech acts was originally proposed by austin (1962) as a tool for philosophical analysis, and was elaborated on by a number of theorists (e.g., searle, 1969, 1975; grice, 1975). they argue that the minimal unit of human communication is the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as refusing and thanking, rather than the linguistic utterance. austin introduces the idea that people can employ words to do more than make statements of facts so that“to say something is to do something”(austin,1962:12). thus, in sayingi apologize , one is not only stating something, but performing an act of apology. in other words, utterances are, in themselves, acts. in addition, austin emphasizes the importance of context, maintaining that utterances, in order for them to be “felicitous”or“happy”(austin,1962:14), need to be subject to a number of “appropriate circumstances” (austin,1962:13). for example, in a marriage ceremony, one of the appropriate conditions is that the person who saysi hereby pronounce you husband and wifemust be invested with the authority to do so. the conditions of the appropriate and successful performance of an act have generally been referred to asfelicity conditions . if any of these conditions is violated, the speaker s performative utterances can “misfire” or “go wrong”(austin,1962:16) in ways other than being false. for instance, if someone who does not have the status required to marry others says the formula above in a wedding, what he chapter 1 theoretical backgrounds 5 says is certainly not false; however, in austin s term, this attempt of his is indeed a sort of “infelicity”(austin,1962:22). austin claims that utterances can be classified based on three simultaneous dimensions, i.e., locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary: “the locutionary act which has a meaning; the illocutionary act which has a certain force in saying something; the perlocutionary act which is the achieving of certain effects by saying something” (austin,1962:120) for example, in uttering i m hungry , the speaker performs the locutionary act of saying something with a certain reference and sense to express his/her current physical state. s/he may also perform the illocutionary act of giving some value to this act so that his/her words are intended as a request for food. what the speaker intends his/her utterance to accomplish is generally referred to as illocutionary force. furthermore, the speaker may at the same time perform the perlocutionary act of producing “certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience” (austin,1962:101) so that the addressee may get him/her a pizza. 1.1.2 indirect speech act in speech act theory, it is very common to find a distinction between direct speech acts, where speakers say what they mean, and indirect speech acts, where speakers mean more than, or something other than what they say. austin first proposed that speech acts could be expressed through both explicit and implicit performative sentences. the former, such asi order you to leave , are direct and unambiguous expressions used in naming a given speech act ( order ) by which in making an utterance, the speaker is performing that act. by contrast, the latter, such as i ll be there , are ambiguous and deniable expressions in terms of which act they are interpreted to be depending on the situation open to the hearer. for example, searle (1975) maintains that there are basically two types of indirectness in speech acts: nonconventional and conventional. the first involves utterances whose illocutionary force is not conventionally associated with any particular sentence patterns so that it must be “calculated”( grice,1975:50). thus, when x says to y “let s go to the movies tonight” （searle, 1975:61） and y replies “i had to study for an exam” , x needs to go through a calculation process to reach the conclusion that y s response is mainly intended to reject x s proposal, rather than asserting s/he has to study. obviously, the meaning of this type of indirect act is heavily context- embedded. pragmatically, nonconventionally indirect utterances are infinite in number, vague in realization, and high in deniability potential (grice, 1975; chapter 1 theoretical backgrounds 6 searle, 1975). the second type concerns those whose force is conventionally associated with specific sentence patterns so that though their force can be calculated, such is not done. these utterances are indirect because they are conventionally meant to perform a certain action that is not most immediately suggested by their literal meaning. that is to say, they will acquire conventional use while keeping their literal meaning. by focusing on directives, searle outlines in detail six groups of indirect forms (searle,1969:65- 67), such as those concerning the speaker s wish (e.g., “i would like you to go now” ) and the addressee s ability (e.g., “have you got change for a dollar?”). while the illocutionary points of this type are calculable, searle, like other theorists such as gordon and lakoff (1975), green (1975), thinks that the conventions of use in fact suppress the literal meaning; as a consequence, the intended illocutionary points areshort- circuitedand thus interpreted as a request for action without being calculated as such. searle, followed a number of researchers (e.g. brown leech, 1983), further claims that the prominent motivation for using the second type of indirect forms is politeness, especially in directive and commissive verbs. take requesting for example. the have youform above is polite in at least two respects: first, the speaker does not presume to know about the addressee s ability; second, the addressee is given an option to refuse. thus,“compliance can be made to appear a free act rather than obeying a command” ( searle, 1975:75). 1.1.3 speech act pairs vs adjacency pairs in the case of speech acts, the conversation analytic emphasis on sequential order can be realized particularly through schegloff and sacks (1973) concept of adjacency pairs, which are defined as a sequence of two successive speech acts occurring between speaker and addressee so that a particular range of second part utterances is deemed as a related, expected follow- up to a specific first part. speech act pairs that have been identified include cases such as greeting- greeting, closing- closing, threat- response, question- answer, request- granting/denial, and apology- acceptance/refusal. on the one hand, studies of the first part of speech act pairs have shown that the first part seems to be connected with the level of linguistic conventionality expressed by the degree of directness involved in performing that act ( e.g., schegloff blum- kulka, house, blum- klulka, 1987; herbert, 1989). generally, conventional ways of speaking are formulaic, direct, and unambiguous so that the speaker s intention is easily chapter 1 theoretical backgrounds 7 recognized, while nonconventional ways are less formulaic, involving more indirectness and ambiguity so that the decoding of what the speaker intends may require some additional contextual clues. take complimenting for example. in praising a person s books, the conventional way could bei enjoy reading your books very much , while the less conventional way could beit s really a shame that your books are published so infrequently that so many people have to wait like forever to read your work . on the other hand, research on the second part has shown that there are three types of adjacency pairs according to the nature of the second component: (i) the parts are reciprocal (e.g., greeting- greeting); (ii) there is only one possible second part (e.g., question- answer); (iii) there is more than one possibility (e.g., compliment- acceptance/rejection). for the last type, levinson (1983) argues that not all possible seconds assume“equal standing” (levinson,1983:307); rather, the alternatives should be ranked in preferred or dispreferred classes. by applying the concept of markedness used in linguistics, he further contends that preferred seconds are unmarked based on their comparative structural simplicity, while the dispreferred are marked by their structural complexity. as speakers of a given culture seem to have mutually shared expectations regarding what the appropriate behavior and its social meanings are in different contexts, whether a class of the second part is preferred or not has to do with a culture s ethos and its own specific way of speaking (hymes, 1974; blum- kulka, 1987). generally we can expect to find a high representation of the preferred as the second part. the theory of adjacency pairs can be seen as an elaboration of austin s perlocutionary act discussed above, for a second pair, such as a compliment response, reflect that the speaker may try to achieve certain effects by saying something. more important, the adjacency