Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project Marketing Essay

Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project Marketing Essay

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Introduction

In order to prove whether South Asian people talk impolitely, it is

important to understand how they communicate with others. We will

focus our research on how South Asians make requests in their everyday

communication. In fact, making requests is a kind of face threatening act,

the speaker will put pressure on the hearer. In order to mitigate the

degree of imposition, the speaker needs to use different politeness

strategies. By examining the requests made by South Asian teenagers,

we can come up with an answer to our propose question. In addition, we

will evaluate an interview with a school principal whose students are

mostly South Asians in order to justify our findings.

Literature Review

Speech Act Theories

Speech acts are prevailing theories in pragmatics. There are many

different types of speech acts, for example, questions, requests, offers

and so on. According to Austin (1975) and Searle (1976), people use

languages to achieve different kinds of purposes. They believe that a

variety of acts are performed in speech. For Austin (1975), he

emphasizes on how speaker realize their intentions in speaking. On the

other hand, Searle (1976) pays attention to the responses of hearers to

utterances. There have been many speech acts studies carried out in the

past, their aim is to give illocutors a clear picture on how to perform

effectively in communications.

Politeness Theories

The concept of politeness was introduced by Goffman. He mentioned

about the importance of protecting the faces of both speakers and

hearers (1955, 1967). Leech (1987) also highlights the elements of social

power and social distance in interlocutions between the speaker and the

hearer. In general, the greater distance between the two, the more tact

should be employed by the speaker. The Politeness Principle has another

function, that is to maintain a friendly relationship and cooperation

among interlocutors. Later, Brown and Levinson (1978) introduce two

concepts regarding politeness, namely positive face and negative face.

Positive face is about the importance of begin accepted and admired

while negative face focuses on the need to be independent with being

imposed by others. Thus, speakers should try to avoid giving offense to

hearers when communicating.

Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP)

Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project was initiated by

Blum-Kulka. According to Blum-Kulka (1982), request strategies in all

languages consist of three levels of directness. Each level can then be

further divided into nine levels of increasing indirectness. Blum-Kulka

and House (1989) further investigates requesting behavior, in which the

relative importance of power, social distance, situational setting and

degree of imposition differ across cultures and languages. The

researchers have studied American English, Canadian French, Hebrew,

Argentinian, Spanish, Russian, German and Thai (Rosina 2000). As other

researchers later expanded their investigation into languages like

Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese. In order to explore the way of making

requests by South Asian youth, our research will include analysis for both

local Chinese and South Asian teenagers. One special feature about our

study is that both groups of teenagers are being analyze under their L2

rather than their L1.

The following research questions are to be examined:

Are South Asian teenagers impolite in speech?

Can South Asian teenagers employ different request strategies?

Why are South Asian people thought to be impolite in speech?

3. Methodology

3.1 Informants

The informants are 10 teenagers from two ethnic groups. With five

local Chinese students in one group and five South Asian students in

another. The students in both groups aged about 14 to 18 years. The

target group are composed of South Asian students coming from

countries like India, Pakistan and Philippines. The personal information

regard the students in the target group are shown in Table 1. The other

group consists of only local Chinese students. In order to obtain validated

results from our research, the students in both groups come from the

same Form and similar banding schools. In addition, both groups of

students are proficient L2 learners of English. Therefore, they should be

able to complete the survey questions without problems.

South Asian teenagers

Age

Sex

L1

Years of learning L2

16

F

Hindi

13

16

M

Tagalog

11

17

F

Hindi

14

17

F

Nepali

14

18

F

Tagalog

15

Table 1. Background information of the students in target group.

3.2 Data Processing

This is a cross-sectional and experimental study of a group of South

Asian teenagers. The data in this experiment is collected by means of

Dialogue Completion Task (DCT). DCT is one of the most widely used

methods in pragmatics and it involves a series of controlled elicitation

procedures. There are several advantages in using DCT in our research:

1. It helps to create 'an initial classification of semantic formulas and

strategies that will occur in natural speech.' (Beebe, as cited in Wouf,

2006, p.1460)

2. It is a less time-consuming method to collect and process data

3. It enables the researcher to collect the record of what people think

they

would say.

The DCT used in this research has been modified. The twelve situations

have been created based on students' experiences at school, at home and

at work. Also, the modified version of DCT does not include any response

of the hearer because of two reasons:

The presence of the hearer's response would somehow affect how the

participants give responses to the situation (Rintell & Mitchell, 1989).

The range of participants' responses will be limited and thus affect the

validity of the research.

Since the twelve situations given in the survey are familiar contexts to

the target students, they will be able to use their background knowledge

to complete the survey questions. The survey was conducted in a

classroom. The targeted students were given a DCT questionnaire with

twelve social situations. They were given a period of thirty minutes to

complete the survey without supervision.

The twelve situations in our questionnaire are designed based on the

three contextual and social variables as suggested by Brown and

Levinson in their politeness theory. According to Brown and Levinson

(1987), 'relative power' (P), 'social distance' (D) and 'absolute ranking'

(R) of imposition are the three independent variables in 'face threatening

acts'. Relative power refers to the power difference between the speaker

and the hearer. Social distance means whether the speaker and the

hearer are close in relationship. Absolute ranking of imposition

represents the severity of offence to the hearer. Politeness usually

involves high P, D and R so that the action of making request will be less

imposing to the hearer. In order to improve the accuracy of our research,

comprehensive data from the twelve situations should be obtained. The

twelve situations are listed it Table 2.

Relative Power (P)

Social Distance (D)

Absolute Ranking

of imposition (R)

equal status hearer (S = H)

+ SD

High

higher status hearer (S < H)

- SD

Low

lower status hearer (S > H)

* S refers to the speaker

* H refers to the hearer

* +SD refers to the situations where the social distance between the hearer and the speaker is far,

vice versa for -SD

* High absolute ranking means the request is very imposing and low ranking means less imposing

Table 2. The three variables in the 12 situations.

To make the comparison and analysis more systematically, the twelve

situations are grouped together when the three variables concerned are

more or less the same. Then, there are six categories in total. The

situations are arranged randomly so that the informants are unaware of

what is expected in the research. Therefore, it is hoped that the

responses can be natural and accurate. The twelve situations grouped

into six categories are shown in Table 3.

Category

1

2

3

4

5

6

Situation

1

3

4

8

2

6

9

11

5

7

10

12

( P )

S=H

S=H

S=H

S=H

S<H

S<H

S<H

S<H

S>H

S>H

S>H

S>H

( D )

+SD

+SD

-SD

-SD

+SD

+SD

-SD

-SD

+SD

+SD

-SD

-SD

( R )

Low

Low

High

High

High

High

Low

High

Low

Low

High

High

Table 3. The twelve situations categorized according to the three

variables.

In the questionnaire, there are four situations each for hearer with

higher (S<H), lower (S>H) or equal (S=H) status as the speaker. The

situations are designed with seven scenarios involving a high social

distance (+SD) and five scenarios with a low social distance.

Furthermore, there are six scenarios involving a high degree of

imposition and another six scenarios involving low degree of imposition.

In order to find out whether South Asian teenagers are really less polite

than the local Chinese students, both of their sociolinguistic and

pragmalinguistic competence are evaluated. The data are analyzed

according to the coding system of two different frameworks, namely

(CCSARP) adopted by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) and the

'Five Stages of L2 Request Development' suggested by Achiba (2002) and

Ellis (1992). As mentioned before, our research will take the 'Five stages

of L2 Request Development' into account in order to examine whether

the English proficiency of the informants would affect the way they make

requests. The framework of CCSARP and the 'Five Stages of L2 Request

Development' are summarized in Appendix B and C.

As a way of analyzing the data obtained, the percentage is calculated

with the number of cases using the specific strategy (from CCSARP) over

the total number of responses in each category. In addition, mitigating

devices are also analyzed in this study as they are effective tools to soften

the degree of imposition. The percentage of mitigating devices used is

calculated by dividing the total number of mitigating devices used in all

scenarios over the total number of responses.

4. Findings

4.1 Request Strategies

Table 4 shows that all South Asian and local Chinese students all used

strategy 7 when asking a stranger the way to a fast food restaurant or

asking for time. Strategy 7 is usually employed to reduce the level of

directness when making a request as shown in Appendix B.

Situation:

1. Ask a stranger the way to a fast food restaurant

3. Ask a strange the time

Strategy

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

1. Mood Derivable

0

0

0

0

2.Explicit Performative

0

0

0

0

3.Hedged Performative

0

0

0

0

4.Locution Derivable

0

0

0

0

5. Want Statement

0

0

0

0

6.Suggestory Formula

0

0

0

0

7. Preparatory

10

100

10

100

8. Strong Hint

0

0

0

0

9. Mild Hint

0

0

0

0

Table 4

Tabel 5 indicates that 90% of the South Asian students use strategy 7

and 60% of the Chinese students adopt the same strategy when they

need to ask their friend to borrow a pen, or they need to ask their friend

for permission to use their computer. Other than strategy 7, 10% of

South Asian students and 20% of Chinese students also employed

strategy 1, which is the most direct strategy to make a request.

Situation:

4. Ask a friend to borrow his pen.

8. Ask a friend for permission to use his computer

Strategy

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

1. Mood Derivable

1

10

2

20

2.Explicit Performative

0

0

0

0

3.Hedged Performative

0

0

0

0

4.Locution Derivable

0

0

0

0

5. Want Statement

0

0

0

0

6.Suggestory Formula

0

0

0

0

7. Preparatory

9

90

8

80

8. Strong Hint

0

0

0

0

9. Mild Hint

0

0

0

0

Table 5

Table 6 depicted that most students in the two groups use strategy 7 in

situation 2,6 and 11. About 33.3% of the Chinese students use strategy 8,

which is an indirect strategy to reduce the level of directness and the

weight of imposition. In addition, there are about 6.7% of South Asian

students and 13.3% Chinese students used the most direct way to make a

request, or strategy 1.

Situation:

2. Ask your father for money to buy a pair of new shoes

6. Ask a teacher to help you with a math question

11. Ask the manager for a day off

Strategy

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

1. Mood Derivable

1

6.7

2

13.3

2.Explicit Performative

0

0

0

0

3.Hedged Performative

0

0

0

0

4.Locution Derivable

0

0

0

0

5. Want Statement

2

13.3

0

0

6.Suggestory Formula

0

0

0

0

7. Preparatory

12

80

8

53.3

8. Strong Hint

0

0

5

33.3

9. Mild Hint

0

0

0

0

Table 6

Table 7 shows us that when students need to ask the class monitors to

hand out workbooks, most South Asian students (80%) and Chinese

students (90%) use strategy 7. However, a couple of South Asian

students do prefer to use the most direct strategy to talk to their peers.

Situation:

9. Ask the class monitors to hand out workbooks

Strategy

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

1. Mood Derivable

2

40

0

0

2.Explicit Performative

0

0

0

0

3.Hedged Performative

0

0

0

0

4.Locution Derivable

0

0

0

0

5. Want Statement

0

0

0

0

6.Suggestory Formula

0

0

0

0

7. Preparatory

3

60

5

100

8. Strong Hint

0

0

0

0

9. Mild Hint

0

0

0

0

Table 7

Table 8 represents what the students used in situation 5 and 7. All South

Asian students chose to use strategy 7 while only 70% of the Chinese

students use this strategy. Then, 30% of the Chinese students use

strategy 1 and 5, meaning they make request more direct.

Situation:

5. Ask the store owner to get a product for a closer look

7. Ask a lower form classmate to decorate the classroom

Strategy

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

1. Mood Derivable

0

0

2

20

2.Explicit Performative

0

0

0

0

3.Hedged Performative

0

0

0

0

4.Locution Derivable

0

0

0

0

5. Want Statement

0

0

1

10

6.Suggestory Formula

0

0

0

0

7. Preparatory

10

100

7

70

8. Strong Hint

0

0

0

0

9. Mild Hint

0

0

0

0

Table 8

Table 9 shows the results obtained in situation 10 and 12. With about

80% of the South Asian students and 70% of the Chinese students employ

strategy 7. Furthermore, about 30% of the Chinese students chose to use

the most direct strategies to talk to younger relatives. On the other hand,

there are 20% of the South Asian students used the most direct strategy.

Situation:

10. Ask your sister to borrow her Mp3 player

12. Ask your younger cousin to borrow his digital camera

Strategy

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

1. Mood Derivable

2

20

3

30

2.Explicit Performative

0

0

0

0

3.Hedged Performative

0

0

0

0

4.Locution Derivable

0

0

0

0

5. Want Statement

0

0

0

0

6.Suggestory Formula

0

0

0

0

7. Preparatory

8

80

7

70

8. Strong Hint

0

0

0

0

9. Mild Hint

0

0

0

0

Table 9

4.2 Mitigating Devices

Table 10 shows that interrogative is mostly used by all the South Asian

and the local Chinese students. When comparing declarative and

imperative, interrogative is a common syntactic form adopted by the

subjects despite the different situations. The data obtained also shows

the local Chinese students tend to use past tense when making a request.

Devices

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Interrogative

104

88.1

92

76.7

Past tense

14

11.9

41

34.2

Embedded 'if' clause

1

0.9

0

0

Table 10. Syntactic Downgraders

Table 11 shows that both the South Asian and local Chinese students

adopt different kinds of internal modifiers when making a request. As

shown in the table, the students use grounders relatively frequent.

Grounders are used to give a reason to support one's request. In

addition, promises and sweeteners are occasionally used by the students

to soften the degree of imposition.

Devices

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

grounder

28

23.7

49

40.8

promise

6

5.1

8

6.7

checking on availability

2

1.7

4

3.3

getting a precommitment

1

0.85

0

0

sweetener

3

2.5

7

5.8

appreciation

3

2.5

0

0

disarmer

1

0.85

4

3.3

cost minimizer

2

1.7

1

0.83

Table 11. Internal Modifiers

Table 12 shows that both groups of students employ the mitigating

function 'Excuse me' when making request. They tend to use the alerter

'Excuse me' when talking to a stranger or someone with higher social

power. The students also used 'Hello', 'Hi' or 'Hey' to show friendliness

and in-group relationship to soften the degree of making a request.

Devices

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Excuse me

21

17.8

30

25

Dear

0

0

1

0.83

Hello

2

1.7

1

0.83

Hi

1

0.85

0

0

Hey

21

17.8

6

5

Table 12. Alerter

Table 13 illustrates an interesting difference in the choice of request

perspective. The South Asian students will focus on the role of the

speaker while the local Chinese students choose to focus on the role of

the hearer.

Devices

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Hearer oriented

53

44.9

70

58.3

Speaker oriented

61

51.7

43

35.8

Speaker and hearer oriented

0

0

1

0.8

Impersonal

4

3.4

6

5

Table 13. Request Perspective

4.3 Pragmalinguistic Competence

The data in Table 14 shows that both the South Asian teenagers and local

Chinese teenagers have improved their language skills because they are

able to fine-tune the force of their requests. The most frequent strategy

used is Stage 3 (Appendix C) is Unpacking, namely L2 learners are able

to shift to the use of conventionally indirect requests. Stage 4 - Pragmatic

expansion is the second most frequently used strategy for the South

Asian students. Overall, the L2 learners are able to increase the use of

mitigation devices.

Stage

South Asian

Local Chinese

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

1: Pre-basic

0

0

0

0

2: Formulaic

8

6.8

18

15

3: Unpacking

78

66.1

83

69.2

4: Pragmatic expansion

29

24.6

11

9.2

5: Fine-tuning

3

2.5

8

6.6

Table 14. Pragmalinguistic Competence according to the Five Stages of

L2 Request

Development (Achiba, 2002 and Ellis, 1992)

5. Results

5.1 Similarities

5.11 Sociolinguistic Competence