negative pragmatic transfer in complaining by vietnamese efl learners = nghiên cứu về chuyển di ngữ dụng tiêu cực trong hành động ngôn từ phàn nàn của người việt nam học tiếng anh

Studies on pragmatic transfer, especially negative pragmatic transfer, examine the influence of learners‘ L1-based perceptions of politeness and appropriateness and their L1 performance

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-

VŨ THU HÀ

NEGATIVE PRAGMATIC TRANSFER

IN COMPLAINING BY VIETNAMESE EFL LEARNERS

NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CHUYỂN DI NGỮ DỤNG TIÊU CỰC TRONG HÀNH ĐỘNG NGÔN TỪ PHÀN NÀN CỦA NGƯỜI VIỆT NAM HỌC TIẾNG ANH

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

HANOI – 2013

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-

VŨ THU HÀ

NEGATIVE PRAGMATIC TRANSFER

IN COMPLAINING BY VIETNAMESE EFL LEARNERS

NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CHUYỂN DI NGỮ DỤNG TIÊU CỰC TRONG HÀNH ĐỘNG NGÔN TỪ PHÀN NÀN CỦA NGƯỜI VIỆT NAM HỌC TIẾNG ANH

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm

HANOI – 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Candidate‘s statement i

Acknowledgement ii

Abstract iii

Table of Contents v

List of Abbreviations viii

List of Tables ix

List of Figures x

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and scope of the study 2

3 Research questions 3

4 Method of the study 3

5 Organization of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Pragmatics 5

1.2 Speech Act Theory 6

1.3 Politeness Theories 10

1.3.1 Brown and Levinson‘s Notion of Face 10

1.3.2 Social Variables 12

1.4 Interlanguage Pragmatics 14

1.5 Pragmatic Competence and Pragmatic Failure 15

1.5.1 Pragmatic competence 15

1.5.2 Pragmatic failure 16

1.6 Pragmatic Transfer in Interlanguage Pragmatics 19

1.7 Negative Pragmatic Transfer 20

1.7.1 Negative Pragmalinguistic Transfer 21

1.7.2 Negative Sociopragmatic Transfer 24

1.8 The Speech Act of Complaint 26

1.9 Modifications 30

1.10 Studies on Complaints by EFL learners 30

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 36

2.1 Research Questions 36

2.2 Participants 36

2.3 Data Collection Methods 37

2.4 Data Collection Instruments 39

2.4.1 Social variables manipulated in data collection instruments 39

2.4.2 The content of the instruments 41

2.5 Data collection procedure 42

2.6 Results of the MPQ 42

2.6.1 The interpretation of the scores 44

2.6.2 Six selected situations for the DCT 44

2.7 Analytical framework 45

2.7.1 Complaint strategies 45

2.7.2 External modifications 46

2.7.3 Internal modifications 47

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 49

3.1 Negative Pragmalinguistic Transfer 49

3.1.1 In the choice of complaint strategies 49

3.1.1.1 In higher power context (+P) 49

3.1.1.2 In lower power context (-P) 51

3.1.1.3 In equal power context (=P) 52

3.1.1.4 In unfamiliar context (+D) 54

3.1.1.5 In familiar context (-D) 55

3.1.2 In the choice of external modifications 56

3.1.2.1 In different power contexts (+P, =P, -P) 56

3.1.2.2 In different distance contexts (+D, -D) 58

3.1.3 In the choice of internal modifications 59

3.1.3.1 In different power contexts (+P, =P, -P) 59

3.1.3.2 In different distance contexts (+D, -D) 61

3.1.4 Summary 62

3.2 Negative Sociopragmatic Transfer 63

3.2.1 With regard to social power (P) 63

3.2.1.1 In the choice of complaint strategies 63

3.2.1.2 In the choice of external modifications 65

3.2.1.3 In the choice of internal modifications 66

3.2.2 With regard to social distance (D) 67

3.2.2.1 In the choice of complaint strategies 67

3.2.2.2 In the choice of external modifications 68

3.2.2.3 In the choice of internal modifications 69

3.2.3 Summary 70

PART C: CONCLUSION 71

1 Conclusions 71

1.1 Negative pragmalinguistic transfer 71

1.2 Negative sociopragmatic transfer 72

2 Implications 73

3 Limitations and suggestions for further study 74

REFERENCES 75

APPENDIXES I

Appendix 1: Metapragmatic Questionnaire (MPQ) I Appendix 2A: Discourse Completion Task (DCT) (English Version) VI Appendix 2B: Discourse Completion Task (DCT) (Vietnamese Version) IX

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

SLA Second Language Acquisition

CCP Cross-Cultural Pragmatics

CP Contrastive Pragmatics

ILP Interlanguage Pragmatics

FTA Face Threatening Act

DCT Discourse Completion Test

MPQ Metapragmatic Questionnaire

L1 The first language

L2 The second language

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ENSs Native speakers of English

VLs Vietnamese learners of English

VNSs Native speakers of Vietnamese

NL Native language

TL Target language

LIST OF TABLES

Table a : Assessment of social variables by native speakers of English Table b : Assessment of social variables by Vietnamese learners of English Table 1 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to +P

Table 2 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to –P

Table 3 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to =P

Table 4 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to +D

Table 5 :Choice of complaint strategies with respect to –D

Table 6 : Choice of external modification with respect to P

Table 7 : Choice of external modification with respect to D

Table 8 : Choice of internal modification with respect to P

Table 9 : Choice of downgraders with respect to P

Table 10 : Choice of upgraders with respect to P

Table 11 : Choice of internal modification with respect to D

Table 12 : Choice of downgraders with respect to D

Table 13 : Choice of upgraders with respect to D

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to +P

Figure 2 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to –P

Figure 3 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to =P

Figure 4 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to +D

Figure 5 : Choice of complaint strategies with respect to -D

Figure 6 : English speakers‘ choice of complaint strategies across P Figure 7 : Vietnamese speakers‘ choice of complaint strategies across P Figure 8 : Learners‘ choice of complaint strategies across P

Figure 9 : Choice of external modifications across P

Figure 10 : Choice of downgraders across P

Figure 11 : Choice of upgraders across P

Figure 12 : English speakers‘ choice of complaint strategies across D Figure 13 : Vietnamese speakers‘ choice of complaint strategies across D Figure 14 : Learners‘ choice of complaint strategies across D

Figure 15 : Choice of external modifications across D

Figure 16 : Choice of downgraders across D

Figure 17 : Choice of upgraders across D

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

The nonstop growing globalization trends have gradually turned the world into a called ―Global Village‖, where people from different backgrounds live, study, work and communicate together Such a need for intercultural communication has led to the increasing dominance of the English language, which has always been referred to as an international language of business, commerce and education The English language teaching and learning has accordingly enjoyed more attention than ever before and undergone significant changes to meet learners‘ novel demands It is now more important for a learner to become a competent user of English in real communication than to be a master of English grammar rules and structures for reading and translation as in the past Correspondingly, there has been a steady shift of focus in the English language teaching from building up learners‘ grammatical competence to developing their pragmatic competence Pragmatic competence, as noted by Kasper (1997), is ―knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability

so-to use language appropriately according so-to context‖ However, intercultural communication involves interlocutors with diverse sociocultural norms and linguistic conventions, and thus, a clash of perceptions of appropriateness in communication is very likely unavoidable, which also means that miscommunication in intercultural contexts can occur Intercultural miscommunication can be attributed to many causes, among which are learners‘ incomplete understandings of the other interlocutors‘ sociocultural values together with learners‘ falling back on their L1 norms in realizing speech acts in communication

This assumption has interested linguistic researchers and educators a lot, and has drawn more of their attention to a new SLA discipline that studies learners‘ enactment of linguistic action in the second language, namely interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) ILP is still a young discipline, which as claimed by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), is needed in order to discover ―how learners do things with words in a second language‖ (p.9) ILP focuses

on linguistic actions, speech acts and the realization by learners to understand what might interfere with a learner‘s comprehension and production of pragmatic meaning It is, thus,

interested in identifying the obstacles to or failures of learners‘ appropriate production of pragmatics Pragmatic transfer, among some other concerns, can be seen as the major focus of ILP studies Studies on pragmatic transfer, especially negative pragmatic transfer, examine the influence of learners‘ L1-based perceptions of politeness and appropriateness and their L1 performance of a speech act on their realization of the same speech act in L2, which might cause pragmatic failure Studies on pragmatic transfer, hence, will provide teachers and learners with precious knowledge about the pragmatic errors learners might make in intercultural communication and help them find ways to be more appropriate, polite and pragmatically competent in intercultural contexts

Pragmatic transfer has received much interest worldwide with a wide range of studies

on the realization of such speech acts as apologies, requests, complaints, chastisement, or compliments by Japanese, Turkish, German, Arabian, Danish, Thai EFL learners and so on However, the number of studies on pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese EFL is very modest Therefore, more studies on this issue are in need in order to promote Vietnamese teachers and learners‘ understanding of the possible influence of L1 on learners‘ interlanguage performance

As a response to the need to enrich the literature about the occurrences of pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners, this study investigates the negative pragmatic transfer in the performance of the face-threatening act of complaining by Vietnamese EFL learners and the social factors that lead to the negative transfer Negative pragmatic transfer is chosen for the study because negative transfer, not positive transfer, deals with the inappropriate translation

of L1 norms into interlanguage performance and it is considered as one of the main causes of learners‘ pragmatic failures Besides, complaining is picked up as the head act in investigation

as complaining is an act that can hardly be avoided in everyday communication but it is very likely to put both the speaker and the hearer at risk of losing their faces unless the complaint is made with caution

2 Aims and scope of the study

The study aims to find out the evidence of negative pragmatic transfer in the performance of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners In other words, it will examine the

extent to which learners‘ L1 pragmatic knowledge of complaining interferes with their performance of the speech act in English The negative transfer will be investigated at two levels: pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer At the pragmalinguistic level, the study seeks information about the extent to which negative transfer occurs in the learners‘ preferences for complaint strategies, external modifications and internal modifications At the sociopragmatic level, the impact of learners‘ L1 perceptions on their choices of complaint strategies, external and internal modifications will be examined

The study is then limited to the investigation of negative transfer seen in the performance of complaining speech act only Moreover, since the study focuses on the influence of social factors, the Vietnamese learners who are to be chosen as informants will be

at the same language proficiency

3 Research questions

The study seeks answer to the following questions:

(1) To what extent is negative pragmalinguistic transfer evident in the performance of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners in the context of the study?

(2) To what extent is negative sociopragmatic transfer evident in the performance of complaints by Vietnamese EFL learners in the context of the study?

4 Method of the study

In this study data were collected via Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MPQ) and Discourse Completion Task (DCT) The MPQ is a questionnaire in which informants, who were native speakers of English and Vietnamese learners of English, were asked to assess the

15 given situations based on 3 criteria, namely relative social power, relative social distance and ranking of imposition on the hearer Out of 15 given situations, 6 situations were selected for the DCT questionnaires These 6 situations must satisfy the constellation of contextual factors, including social power and social distance The DCT questionnaires were then administered to three groups of participants: 20 native speakers of English, 20 native speakers

of Vietnamese and 20 Vietnamese learners of English; all the learners are at intermediate proficiency level The DCT questionnaires were translated into Vietnamese for the group of Vietnamese speakers and an online DCT questionnaire version was created for the group of

English speakers The data from DCT were then analyzed by calculating frequency of groups‘ use of complaint strategies, external and internal modifications

5 Organization of the study

This study is divided into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 presents an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research, the

aims and scope of the study, the research questions, and the methods of the study as well as the organization of the study were briefly presented

Chapter 2 reviews the theoretical issues relevant to the study including speech acts and

the speech act of complaining Then, the notions of politeness and indirectness in complaining

as well as some previous studies on complaining are discussed

Chapter 3 discusses issues of methodology and outlines the study design, data

collection instruments, procedure of data collection, and analytical framework

Chapter 4 presents the data analysis and discusses the findings on the negative

pragmatic transfer on the choices of complaint strategies, external modifications and internal modifications at the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic level

Chapter 5 provides an overview of major findings and interpretations, implications,

limitations of the study and suggestions for further research

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

The purpose of this chapter is to provide information pertaining to this thesis, which was obtained from reviewing the related literature and studies It begins with the overview of pragmatics and main concerns of pragmatics, including speech act theory, politeness theory and social variables P, D and R, and then some issues of interlanguage pragmatics, most strikingly negative pragmatic transfer, will be discussed Finally, literature on the FTA of complaining and related studies on IL complaints by EFL learners will be reviewed

Pragmatics, as compared to syntax and semantics, is a relatively new discipline in the history of linguistics and philosophy Morris (1938) defined pragmatics as a branch of semiotics, i.e the study of signs (cited in Schiffrin 1994, p 191) He also distinguished the

three ways of studying signs: syntax is the study of formal relations of signs to one another,

semantics is the study of how signs are related to the objects to which they are applicable,

whereas pragmatics is the study of the relations of signs to interpreters or users Another way

of distinction was later provided by Levinson (1983), in which he claimed that syntax is ―the study of combinatorial properties of words and their parts‖, semantics is ―the study of meaning‖, and pragmatics, on the other hand, comprises ―the study of language usage‖ (p 5,

cited in Trosborg 1995) These distinctions signify that pragmatics copes with how the linguistic signs or expressions are related to their users or interpreters Similarly, Yule (1996) shared the same view that the relationship between language usage and users is central to pragmatics As he put it, ―pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or a writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader) It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves‖ (cited in Minh 2005, p 6) This definition distinguishes between ―semantic meaning‖, which means ―a property of expressions in a given language (What does X mean?), and ―pragmatic meaning‖, which is

―relative to a speaker or user of the language‖ (What did you mean by X?) (Leech 1983, p 6; cited in Trosborg, 1995, p 6)

A breakthrough in the history of pragmatic research was marked with Austin‘s (1962) influential work, ―How to do things with words‖ In this work, his realization that ―in doing something a person also does something‖ gave rise to a new outlook on language – the view of language as action His idea was widely accepted, and his categorization of speech acts into locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts has paved the way for the development of communicative functions Austin‘s speech act theory was then further developed by Searle (1969, 1975, 1976) Searle established the conditions for a speech act to be successfully carried out, which are so-called ―felicity conditions‖, as well as made distinctions between direct and indirect speech acts As Rintell (1979) asserted that ―pragmatics is the study of speech acts‖, the notion of speech acts has ever since remained of central interest in pragmatic research The other aspects of language that make the focuses of study in pragmatics include

―deixis‖, i.e what the speaker means by a particular utterance in a given speech context,

―presupposition‖, i.e the logical meaning of a sentence or meanings logically associated with

or entailed by a sentence, and ―implicature‖, i.e the things that are communicated even though they are not explicitly expressed

In addition, pragmatic principles, which generally denote some certain rules that interlocutors are expected to obey in order to successfully converse with each other, are also of great concern The most influential work on these issues comprises of Paul Grice‘s Cooperative Principle and Conversational Maxims (1975), which stresses that in communication, ―make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs,

by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged‖; Leech‘s Politeness Principles (1983), which is quite similar to Grice‘s principles and made up of six different maxims; and Brown and Levinson‘s notion of Face (1978, 1987)

The notion of speech acts was originated by Austin (1962) According to Austin, speech is itself a form of action He assumed that language is not just a passive practice of describing a given reality, but a particular practice that can be used to invent and affect

realities Accordingly, in his most influential work ―How to do things with words‖ (1962),

Austin made an interesting point that in saying something a person is actually doing

something, which was considered as a breakthrough in linguistics and philosophy He attacked the predominant view in his time that sentences are primarily for stating facts, being ―true‖ when they succeed and ―false‖ when they fail in doing so By contrast, from his viewpoint, many everyday declarative sentences are not intended to make true or false statements, but they are used to ―do things‖, that is, to perform certain linguistic actions such as requesting, complimenting, complaining, gripping and so on Austin termed these sentences and the utterances realized by them ―performatives‖ as opposed to statements, assertions and utterances like them which he called ―constatives‖ ―Performatives‖, as noted by him, are thus characterized by a very significant feature that they cannot be true or false, yet they can still go wrong He then catalogued all the ways in which performatives can go wrong, or be

―unhappy‖ or ―infelicitous‖ For instance, a performative made by a British citizen when he

says to his wife “I hereby divorce you” can go wrong in that there is simply no such procedure

in Britain where merely by uttering divorce can be achieved Based on different ways a performative can fail to come off, he produced a set of conditions, which he called ―felicity conditions‖, for them to meet if those performatives are to succeed or be ―happy‖ The felicity conditions are divided by him into three categories:

A (i) There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect

(ii) The circumstances and persons must be appropriate, as specified in the procedure

B The procedure must be executed (i) correctly and (ii) completely

C Often, (i) the persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, as

specified in the procedure, and (ii) if consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant

parties must so do

(Austin, 1962, p 14-15)

Searle (1979), whose theory is largely the systemization and extension of Austin‘s original theory, suggested that felicity conditions are not merely dimensions on which utterances can go wrong, but are actually jointly constitutive of the various illocutionary forces He then recommended a classification of felicity conditions into four kinds, including

preparatory conditions, sincerity conditions, propositional content conditions and Essential conditions (Searle, 1979, p 44)

Another significant contribution that Austin made to the theory of speech act is his classification of kinds of acts that a person simultaneously performs when he/ she says something:

 Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference

 Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it

 Perlocutionary act: the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such as effects being special to the circumstances of utterances

Among the three acts, illocutionary act is the focus of Austin‘s interest, and the term

―speech act‖ has come to refer exclusively to that kind of act The illocutionary act in Austin‘s term is related to Searle‘s notion of illocutionary point, which refers to point or purpose of illocution (Searle, 1990a, p 351, cited in Tam, 2005, p 10) On the basis of purposes of acts, Searle (1976) proposed that there are just five kinds of action that one can perform in

speaking, by means of the following five types of utterance: (i) Representatives, which

commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition (paradigm cases: asserting,

concluding, etc.), (ii) Directives, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (paradigm cases: requesting, questioning), (iii) Commissives, which commit the

speaker to some future course of action (paradigm cases: promising, threatening, offering),

(iv) Expressives, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating), and (v) Declarations, which effect immediate changes in the

institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment)

In general pragmatics research, it is also significant to distinguish between direct speech acts, where the speaker says what he or she means, and indirect speech acts where he

or she means more than, or something other than, what he or she says (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989, p 2) Similarly, according to Searle (1975), direct speech acts refer to utterances in which the propositional content (sentence meaning) of the utterance is consistent

with what the speaker intends to accomplish (speaker meaning) Accordingly, in indirect speech acts, sentence meaning and speaker meaning may be different For instance, a speaker may utter the sentence ―Can you reach the salt?‖ and mean it not merely as a question but as a request to pass the salt The indirect speech acts, thus, might cause a problem, that is how it is possible for the hearer to understand them when the sentence he hears and understands means something else Regarding this problem, Searle (1979) noted that the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually-shared background knowledge, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general power of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer Searle also contends that certain linguistic forms will tend to become conventionalized standard idiomatic forms for indirect speech acts For

example, utterances such as “Can you reach the salt” and “Do you have the time?” are

conventionally used to make indirect requests

Although the speech act theory has been influential in many fields, especially pragmatics, the theory still poses some problems The first problem deals with the unit of analysis of a speech act in a speech act research Many researchers criticize traditional speech act studies for basing their findings on simulated speech in isolated and single-sentence utterances that are divorced from the context (cited in Lin, 2005, p 32) The second area of the theory being criticized is the notion of indirect speech acts According to Levinson (1983), basically, the diversity of actual language challenges the theory that there is a simple form-force correlation He argued that ―what people do with sentences seems quite unrestricted by the surface form (i.e sentence type) of the sentences uttered‖ (p 264) He then proposed that illocutionary force is entirely pragmatic and has no direct and simple correlation with sentence-form or –meaning; there are thus simply no significance in distinguishing between direct or indirect speech acts Last but not least, the speech act theory does not emphasize the fact that the realization of speech acts is culture-specific Recent studies have proved that there are cross-cultural differences in the realization of speech acts Specifically, the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP) project, examining the speech acts of requests and apologies in Hebrew, Danish, British English, American English, German, Canadian French

and Australian English (Blum- Kulka et al., 1989) further shows that in spite of sharing certain conventions of use, these languages differ in specific modes of realization

To sum up, the speech act theory, on the one hand, has made a great contribution in the linguistic theory in that it views language as action and offers interpretation of language through its actual use, rather than through its forms However, due to the problems above, it can provide a theoretical and methodological framework for investigation into the actual realization of speech acts only when speech acts are examined in a unit other than isolated sentences and the socio-cultural values are concerned

Speech acts, as discussed above, are one of the most compelling notions in the study of language usage, and as claimed by Brown and Levinson (1978), their modes of performance appear to be ruled by universal principles of cooperation and politeness The theory of politeness thus plays a crucial role in the study of speech acts It was formulated in 1978 by Brown and Levinson and has since expanded academic perception of politeness

1.3.1 Brown and Levinson’s Notion of Face

According to Hill et al (1986, p 282), politeness is ―is one of the constraints of human interaction, whose purpose is to consider other‘s feelings, establish levels of mutual comfort, and promote rapport‖ Similarly, Lakoff (1972, p 910) noted that politeness is what we think

is appropriate behaviour in particular situations in an attempt to achieve and maintain successful social relationships with others In other defintions, politeness is closely associated

with the notion of face Mills (2003, p 6) defined it as the expression of the speakers‘

intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts towards another Therefore, being polite involves attempting to save face for another Goffman (1967, p 319, cited in Watts, 2003, p 124) identified ―face‖ as ―the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself‖, i.e the public self-image ―Face‖ is hence precisely the conceptualization each of us makes of our ―self‖ through the construals of others in social interaction and particularly in verbal interaction, i.e through talk There is a distinction between ―positive face‖ and ―negative face‖ While ―positive face‖ refers to ―one‘s desire to be approved or accepted by others‖, ―negative face‖ is seen as ―one‘s desire to be free from imposition from

others ―Face‖, either ―positive face‖ or ―negative face‖, is ―something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced and must be constantly attended to in interaction‖ (Brown and Levinson, 1978, p 66) Therefore, it must be continually taken into account in the process of communication so that politeness can be achieved

However, in everyday communication, we may unavoidably perform a speech act which can cause another interlocutor to lose his or her face, or, in other words, we create a face-threatening act (FTA) These acts are defined by Brown and Levinson (1987, p 65) as

―acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/ or of the speakers‖ These FTAs impede the freedom of actions (negative face) and the wish that one‘s wants to be desired by others (positive face) – by either the speaker or the addressee or both (Phuong, 2006, p 9) Some examples of FTAs include refusing, criticizing, disagreeing or complaining

As stated above, FTAs can disturb the relationships between interlocutors, so interlocutors often use specific strategies to minimize the threat of their FTAs Brown and Levinson (1987, p.60) provided a set of payoff considerations for a speaker to choose when doing an FTA to a hearer This set can be illustrated in the diagram bellow:

From the set of politeness strategies aforementioned, there come two concepts of positive politeness and negative politeness strategies First, positive politeness strategies attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer‘s positive face It means they are used to make the hearer feel good about himself, his interests or possessions, and are most usually used in situations where the social distance between interlocutors is quite small Besides avoiding

conflict, some positive politeness strategies also try to claim common ground between the speaker and the hearer, express friendship and solidarity, give compliments, seek agreement and give sympathy as well A good example was provided by Yule (1996, p 64), in which the strategies lead the requester (in the speech act of requesting) to appeal to common goal and

even friendship via such expressions as “How about letting me use your pen?” or “Hey,

buddy, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me use your pen” In the same fashion as positive

politeness strategies, negative politeness strategies are responsive with the hearer‘s negative face and hence emphasize the avoidance of imposition on the hearer By means of negative politeness strategies, the speaker can satisfy the hearer‘s desires to be unimpeded, which are directly challenged by the FTA The speaker, therefore, has to be conventionally indirect, minimize imposition on the hearer, beg forgiveness or give deference Moreover, these

strategies are typically in question form and used with a modal verbs like: “Could you lend me

a pen?” or “I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you for a pen or something?” According to

Yule (1996), in most English-speaking contexts, a face-saving act is more commonly performed via a negative politeness strategy than via a positive one About the whole set of strategies provided by Brown and Levinson (1987), he also stressed that ―the choice of a type

of expression that is less direct, potentially less clear, generally longer, and with more complex structure means that the speaker is making a greater effort, in terms of concern for face (i.e politeness), than is needed simply to get the basic message across efficiently‖ (Yule,

1996, p 65)

1.3.2 Social variables

Brown and Levinson (1987) claimed that the speaker‘s choices of politeness strategies

in realizing speech acts depend on the extent to which risk of loss of face is involved In the figure above, the risk factor increases as one moves up the scale of strategies from 1 to 5 with

1 being the least polite and 5 being the most polite To put it another way, the more an act threatens speaker‘s or hearer‘s face, the more likely the speaker will be to choose a higher-numbered strategy According to Brown and Levinson (1987, p 74), the degree of this risk or weight of face-threatening is determined by the cumulative effect of three universal social variables:

D: the social ‗distance‘ between the participants;

P: the relative ‗power‘ between them;

R: the absolute ‗ranking‘ of imposition in the particular culture

They further pointed out that the way in which the seriousness of a particular FTA is weighed seems to be neutral as to whether it is speaker‘s or hearer‘s face that is threatened The weightiness of an FTA is calculated as follows (1987, p 76):

Wx = D(S,H) + P(S,H) + Rx

Wx stands for the numerical value that measures the weightiness of the FTA D(S,H) refers to the social distance between the speaker and the hearer (the degree of familiarity and solidarity) whereas P(S,H) indicates the relative power between them (the degree to which the speaker can impose wants on the hearer) R is the absolute ranking of imposition (how

―threatening‖ the performed FTA is perceived to be within a particular culture) and x is the performed FTA Hence, the seriousness or weightiness of a particular FTA such as a request, a refusal or a complaint in any given situation in a particular culture is the sum of these three factors Based on the outcome of this calculation, the speaker will make his choices of the appropriate politeness strategies to use, i.e whether to use bald-on-record, off-record, negative politeness or positive politeness strategies or just simply avoid doing the FTA From Brown and Levinson‘s viewpoint, increase in the hearer‘s power (P), social distance (D) and the degree of imposition (R) will increase the weightiness of a FTA, which is assumed to result in the use of greater politeness For example, in Olshtain and Weinbach‘s study (1987), the findings showed that Hebrew EFL learners, in realizing complaints in English, tend to opt for less severe complaints to the hearer of higher status, and there is a tendency for severer complaints to equal-status or lower-status hearers Although they claimed that these three factors are universal, Brown and Levinson (1987, p 76) conceded that the content of each factor is culture- and context-dependent

However, there are still some criticisms against these three determinants of politeness strategies Many researchers contested their universality and their possibility to capture all the circumstances that may influence the production of politeness Moreover, the conclusions that Brown and Levinson came to about the correspondence between the weightiness of the FTA

and the amount of politeness to be used in interaction have also been challenged Lin (2005, p 61) provided two illustrations for this point: (1) Brown and Gilman (1989), in their study, pointed out that, social distance is not a major factor, but ―liking‖ is what increases politeness; (2) Holtgrave and Yang (1990) examined the influence of P and D on politeness choices among American and Korean subjects, and the results turned out to be contrary to Brown and Levinson‘s prediction, i.e the least polite strategies being used by the subjects in perceptions

of the greatest distance

From what discussed above, it cannot be denied that the three social variables introduced by Brown and Levinson (1987), regardless of some criticisms against them, still remain the most decisive factors affecting people‘s choices of politeness strategies in communication, and they can provide a good framework for investigating socio-pragmatic effect on interlocutors‘ realization of speech acts However, the extent to which they affect people‘s politeness choices might differ a lot from what was concluded by Brown and Levinson and demands more in-depth investigation from linguistic researchers

These maxims and notions were established largely based on Western or Anglo cultural norms, but they were then claimed to be ―universal‖, or true for every culture and every language, by their authors Meanwhile, many empirical studies have later shown that the realization of speech acts and politeness principles are actually culture- and context-specific

In other words, the pragmatic principles people abide by in one language or culture are often different in another The growing criticism against this so-called ―universality‖ led to the emergence of a new branch of pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP) According to Kasper and Blum-Kulka (1993), it is the study of linguistic acts carried out by language users

of different cultural backgrounds As noted by Wierzbicka (1991), the main ideas underlying this new direction in pragmatic research are that:

In different societies and different communities, people speak differently; these differences in ways of speaking are profound and systematic, they reflect different cultural values, or at least different hierarchies of values; different ways of speaking, different communication styles, can

be explained and made sense of in terms of independently established different cultural values and cultural priorities‖ (p 69)

Cross-cultural pragmatics investigates how social actions are translated into linguistic forms and therefore, can be divided into two subcategories: (1) Contrastive pragmatics (CP) and (2) Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) (Tam 2005, p 35) She further discussed that while CP compares speech acts across cultures and languages so as to understand how the linguistic actions interlocutors engage in reflect their background, ILP focuses on linguistic actions, speech acts and their enactment by learners to understand what might interfere with a learner‘s comprehension and production of pragmatic meaning Therefore, ILP, rather than CP, is more concerned with identifying the obstacles to or failures of learners‘ appropriate production of pragmatics, which is the focus of this study ILP, however, is still a young discipline, which

as claimed by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), is needed in order to discover ―how learners do things with words in a second language‖ (p.9) Trosborg (1995, p 55) also cited the fields of study that ILP involves, including contrasting non-native with native performance

of speech acts, learners‘ inappropriate realization of speech acts, pragmatic transfer, or how sociopragmatic factors governing speech act performance, such as age, gender, relative status

of the interlocutors and other situational constraints

1.5.1 Pragmatic competence

It is also vital to discuss ―pragmatic competence‖, which has recently aroused much attention in the field of second language acquisition As cited in Thomas (1983), pragmatic competence refers to ―the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context‖, as opposed to grammatical competence, i.e

―abstract‖ or decontextualized knowledge of intonation, phonology, syntax, semantics, etc (p 92) These two components, pragmatic competence and grammatical competence, are said to make up a speaker‘s ―linguistic competence‖ In the same fashion, in Bachman‘s model (1990), ―language competence‖ is subdivided into two components – ―organizational competence‖ and ―pragmatic competence‖ (cited in Kasper 1997) The former comprises of the knowledge of linguistic units and the rules of joining them together at the levels of sentence (―grammatical competence‖) and discourse (―textual competence‖) Meanwhile, the latter is then subdivided into ―illocutionary competence‖, i.e the ―knowledge of

communicative action and how to carry it out‖, and ―sociolinguistic competence‖, i.e the ability to use language appropriately according to context and the ability to select communicative acts and appropriate strategies to implement them‖ From other points of view, pragmatic competence is a part of ―communicative competence‖ (Kasper, 1997) Given Canale & Swain‘s 1980 model (Trosborg, 1995, p 10), communicative competence is categorized into four different components: linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence Based on the definitions of these components, it is quite apparent that pragmatic competence bears great similarity to sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence Specifically, Trosborg (1995) further discussed the subdivision of sociolinguistic competence upon two aspects: appropriateness of meanings – ―sociopragmatic competence‖ and appropriateness of forms - ―pragmalinguistic competence‖ (p 11) Moreover, Jung (2002) identified five things that a learner needs to acquire in order to be pragmatically competent, namely the ability to perform speech acts, to convey and interpret non-literal meanings, to perform politeness functions, to perform discourse functions, and to use cultural knowledge

However, learners‘ development of pragmatic competence might be interfered due to their lack of exposure to the target language or their lack of awareness of sociocultural differences between their mother language and the target language It is quite understandable that even an advanced language learner might encounter difficulty in performing speech acts

in the target language appropriately Thus, there is such likelihood that pragmatic failure

occurs in cross-cultural communication The seriousness of pragmatic failure was highlighted

in both pragmatic research and second language acquisition research

Perhaps the fascination that the study of cross-cultural pragmatics holds for language teachers, researchers, and students of linguistics stems from the serious trouble to which pragmatic failure can lead No ―error‖ of grammar can make a speaker seem so incompetent, so inappropriate, so foreign as the kind of trouble a learner gets into when

he or she doesn‘t understand or otherwise disregards a language‘s rules of use

(Rintell – Mitchell 1989, p 248, cited in Trosborg 1995, p 5)

1.5.2 Pragmatic failure

Thomas (1983) pointed out that pragmatic failure has occurred on any occasion ―on which H (the hearer) perceives the force of S‘s (the speaker‘s) utterance as other than S intended she or he should perceive it‖ She used the following examples to illustrate her definitions:

 H perceives the force of S‘s utterance stronger or weaker than S intended s/he should perceive it;

 H perceives as an order an utterance that S intended s/he should perceive as a request;

 H perceives S‘s utterance as ambivalent where S intended no ambivalence;

 S expects H to be able to infer the force of his/ her utterance, but is relying on the system of knowledge or beliefs that S and H do not share

(Thomas, 1983, p 94)

There is also distinction between pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure

Pragmalinguistics is the linguistic ends of pragmatic – ―particular resources that a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions‖ whereas sociopragmatics is the sociological interface of pragmatics – ―the ways in which pragmatic performance is subjected

to specific social conditions‖ (Leech, 1983, p.11, cited in Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper,

1989, p 3) Similarly, pragmalinguistics involves basically grammatical assessment of the pragmatic force of a linguistic token, and sociopragmatics refers to judgments concerning the size of imposition, cost/ benefit, social distance, and relative rights and obligations (Thomas,

1983, pp 103-104) To put it another way, pragmalinguistics is language-specific while sociopragmatics is culture-specific, reflecting the speaker‘s system of values and beliefs Accordingly, the two categories of pragmatic failure were identified by Thomas (1983, p 99)

as follows:

a Pragmalinguistic failure, which occurs when the pragmatic force mapped by S onto a given

utterance is systematically different from the force most frequently assigned to it by native speakers of the target language, or when speech act strategies are in appropriately transferred from L1 to L2

b Sociopragmatic failure […] refers to the social conditions placed on language in use […]

Social pragmatic failure stems from cross-culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior

Likewise, Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) believed that pragmalinguistic

failure occurs when learners‘ native procedures and linguistic means are transferred to L2, and sociopragmatic failure occurs when learners assess the relevant situational factors on the basis

of their native sociopragmatic norms (p 10)

Some instances of pragmalinguistic failure have been suggested For example, Richards and Sukwiwat (1983) provided a situation in which a Japanese learner of English (JE) has to express gratitude in English to a native speaker (E) may typically go as follows:

E: Look what I‘ve got for you! (Maybe a gift)

JE: Oh! I‘m sorry (Thank you doesn‘t sound sincere enough in Japanese)

A: Is this a good restaurant?

B: Of course [Gloss (for Russian speaker): Yes (indeed) it is (For English hearer): What a stupid question]

overgeneralization‖, which is particularly likely to occur where a narrow range of structure in the mother tongue has a wider range of possible ―translations‖ in the target language and vice versa

Regarding sociopragmatic failure, Minh (2005) found out that in realizing criticism, Vietnamese learners of English employed the two formulas of giving advice and demands with much higher frequency than native speakers It is, as explained by her, due to Vietnamese people‘s belief that the two formulas demonstrate care, sincerity, and friendliness Additionally, as the result of the fact that Vietnamese people tend to believe that strong arguments may be more convincing than hedged arguments, they were also found to use much fewer mitigating devices in their realization of criticisms compared to Australian native speakers As can be seen, sociopragmatic failure illustrates how learners‘ beliefs, perceptions and values interfere with their speech act performance in the target language

According to Thomas (1983, p 104), the ―cross-cultural mismatches in the assessment

of social distance, of what constitutes an imposition, of when an attempt at a face-threatening act should be abandoned, and in evaluating relative power, rights and obligations, etc.‖ are properly the primary causes of sociopragmatic failure

As discussed above, pragmatic transfer is one of the major attributing factors to pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication CCP and ILP studies have provided ample evidence that L2 learners‘ L1 pragmatic knowledge significantly influences their comprehension, production and learning of L2 pragmatic information (Kasper 1992) Pragmatic transfer is defined as the ―transfer of L1 sociocultural communicative competence

in performing L2 speech acts or any other function of language where the speaker is trying to achieve a particular function of language‖ (Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz, 1990, p 56, cited

in Yamagashira, 2001, p 2) The notion of pragmatic transfer is mainly based on the assumption that ―intercultural miscommunication is often caused by learners‘ falling back on their L1 sociocultural norms and conventions in realizing speech acts in a target language‖ (Takahashi 1996, p 189, cited in Yamagashira, 2001, p 2) This assumption virtually put such emphasis on the downside of transfer whereas it is proved that the transference of pragmatic

knowledge from L1 to L2 can occur in two main directions – both positive and negative

Therefore, the study of transfer might involve the study of both errors (negative transfer), which indicates inappropriate transfer of L1 sociolinguistic norms into L2, and facilitation

(positive transfer), which is considered an evidence of sociocultural and pragmatic

universality among languages However, negative pragmatic transfer, as it deals with errors or difficulties learners have in their performance of speech acts in the target language, might be

of greater interest than positive pragmatic transfer More precisely, it is also negative pragmatic transfer, not pragmatic transfer in general, that is the main cause of pragmatic failure or intercultural communication breakdown aforementioned Nonetheless, based on sociopragmatics-pragmalinguistics dichotomy advocated by Leech (1983) as treatment to scope of pragmatics, and applied by Thomas (1983) in her classification of pragmatic failure, Kasper (1992) proposed that pragmatic transfer should also be seen at two levels: pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer

Most of ILP studies address negative pragmatic transfer as the understanding of frequently-encountered errors both socioculturally and linguistically might provide researchers and teachers an insight into the second language acquisition and inspire them to find ways to help their students improve their pragmatic competence The question is how linguists and researchers identify the instances of negative transfer and distinguish it from positive transfer

in their interlanguage studies According to Minh (2005, p 33), the design developed by Selinker (1966, 1969) can provide a radical answer As described by her, in adopting this design, studies compare three data sets collected from (1) the native speaker of the learners‘

native language (NL); (2) the learners performing in the target language (IL); and (3) the native speaker of the target language (TL) Kasper (1992) then proposed to quantitatively

identify instances of positive and negative transfer based on the frequencies of a particular

pragmatic feature in the NL, TL, and IL data Accordingly, the evidence of positive transfer is

determined by the lack of statistically significant differences in the frequency of occurrences

of a pragmatic features in all three sets of data (IL = TL, NL = TL, IL = NL) Meanwhile, the

evidence of negative transfer is marked by the statistically significant differences between IL

and TL and between NL and TL in the frequency with which a pragmatic feature occurs, and

at the same time a lack of statistically significant differences in the frequency of occurrences

of that feature between IL and NL (IL # TL, NL # TL, IL = NL) Moreover, as mentioned

above, negative transfer, just like positive transfer, is examined at two levels: pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics

1.7.1 Negative pragmalinguistic transfer

As cited in Tam (2005, p 41), pragmalinguistic transfer has been noted in learners‘ use

of conventions of means and form, affecting the illocutionary force and politeness value in interlanguage utterances Kasper later defined pragmalinguistic transfer as ―the process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to particular linguistic material in L1 influences learners‘ perception and production of form-function mappings in L2‖ (Kasper

1992, p 209, cited in Takahashi 1995, p 112) To put it another way, the form-function mappings in L1 might interfere with those in L2 For example, in her study of request realization by English learners of Hebrew, Blum-Kulka (1982,1983) found out that English

learners had a tendency to use the Hebrew ability question (“Can you?”) in making requests

in Hebrew whereas this question form actually did not carry a pragmatic force of requesting in

Hebrew as they might have expected In this case, the form-function mapping (“can you”

question – making requests mapping) in English was negatively transferred to those English

learners‘ Hebrew interlanguage In addition, pragmalinguistic transfer is also referred to as the inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies from one language to another, usually from the mother tongue to the target language, for instance using a direct speech act where a native speaker would use an indirect speech act or ―off-record‖ politeness strategy (Thomas, 1983, p 102)

Pragmalinguistic transfer also deals with learners’ choice of directness levels in their

performance of speech acts in L2 Takahashi (1995) reviewed several studies which evidenced the learners‘ negative transfer in this aspect In the framework of the CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns) project, House and Kasper (1987) examined the request realizations by German learners of British English and Danish learners of British English via DCT elicitation technique with five situations The findings revealed that in two out of five

given situations, both German and Danish learners of English deviated from the British English norm and followed their L1 norms in their choice of directness levels Specifically, German and Danish learners favored direct imperatives while British English native speakers preferred more indirect preparatory questions Another example was taken from the study on the speech act of complaint by DeCapua (1989) In this study, she employed a five-situation DCT to investigate the complaint realization by German learners of English She found out that German speakers, in both their L1 and IL, used more instances of the second most face-

threatening degree of directness (i.e Escalated direct confrontation – The speaker asserts the

hearer’s action is bad) On the contrary, this level of directness was found to be rarely

employed by American English native speakers As can be seen, in both studies, German learners of English tended to negatively transfer their preference for direct strategies into their interlanguage

Transfer of internal and external modifications in learners‘ speech act realizations is

another dimension of pragmalinguistic transfer Back to the study by House and Kasper (1987) within the CCSARP project framework, negative pragmalinguistic transfer was detected in fewer syntactic downgraders for both German and Danish learner groups compared to British English native speakers

Additionally, pragmalinguistic transfer can also be evident in ―L1-based preferences

for frequencies of particular […] semantic formulas‖ in IL performance of speech acts

(Takahashi, 1995, p 113) Semantic formulas can be understood as ―a word, phrase, or sentence that meets a particular semantic criterion, any one or more of which can be used to perform the act in question (Cohen, 1996) Dogancay-Aktuna and Kamisli (1997), in their study on chastisements by advanced Turkish EFL learners, collected data from 80 native speakers of Turkish, 14 native speakers of American English, and 68 EFL learners via situated role plays in which individuals were asked to respond to wrongdoing of a status-unequal interlocutor in workplace One of their major findings revealed that, even though EFL learners used the same semantic formulas of ―statement of error‖ and ―request of repair‖ as American English in given situations, they used it at a significantly different frequency to the target group To be more detailed, Turkish EFL learners asked for repair from the lower status

interlocutors at an equal rate to those of native speakers of Turkish, but at a significantly lower rate than Americans, and thus transferring negatively their NL norms into the IL In another study on apologizing speech act, Olshtain (1983) indicated that English learners of Hebrew negatively transferred L1 preference for the semantic formulas of ―express apology‖ and

―offer of repair‖ while both Hebrew learners of English and Hebrew native speakers dispreferred them equally (Cited in Takahashi 1995, p 113)

According to Takahashi (1995), while the ―frequency counts‖ of L1-based semantic formulas in IL performance could provide clues for evidencing transfer occurrence, some ILP

researchers made attempt to identify pragmalinguistic transfer based on similar “content” of

the L1 and IL semantic formulas One example is from the recently-conducted study on Thai

EFL refusals by Wannaruk (2008) The study was made on 40 American English native speakers, 40 Thai native speakers and 40 Thai EFL learners, all of whom were graduates by means of a DCT with four situations for respondents to refuse One case of pragmalinguistic transfer from the findings was observed in the content of ―explanation‖ given by EFL members, especially low-proficiency learners In the situation of refusing an invitation to speak for an orientation program, American English native speakers were likely to give such reasons as being committed to something else, such as ―I already have a previous engagement

so I won‘t be able to attend‖ or ―I already have a commitment for that evening‖ while both Thai native speakers and Thai EFL learners had a tendency to be modest in responding to the same situation by saying ―I‘m not good at public speaking‖ or ―I‘m bad at speaking in front of people‖

In summary, from the reviewed studies, it is noticeable that pragmalinguistic transfer is demonstrated through learners‘ form-function mappings, choice of politeness strategies, choice of directness levels, choice of internal and external modifications, preferences for frequency of particular semantic formulas, and content of chosen semantic formulas All in all,

it can be seen that pragmalinguistic transfer involves L1-based language-specific choices that affect the illocutionary force and politeness value of learners‘ interlanguage utterances

1.7.2 Negative sociopragmatic transfer

Sociopragmatics, as defined by Leech (1983, p 10), is ―the sociological interface of pragmatics‖, referring to the social perceptions underlying participants‘ interpretation and performance of communicative action It was noted that speech communities differ in their assessment of speakers‘ and hearers‘ social distance and social power, their rights and obligations, and the degree of imposition involved in particular communicative acts Accordingly, sociopragmatic transfer is operative in ―learners‘ perceptions of contextual factors, of whether carrying out a particular linguistic action is appropriate, and of the overall politeness style adopted in an encounter‖ (Kasper 1992, p 213)

First, sociopragmatic transfer studies cope with the interference of learners‘ L1-based perceptions of contextual factors, such as interlocutors‘ relative social distance and social power, obligations or reasonability, with their IL performance Takahashi and Bee (1993) studied Japanese EFL learners‘ realization of refusals in English and found evidence of negative transfer at the sociopragmatic level That is, Japanese learners tended to negatively transfer their L1 emphasis of status differences into their IL performance; ―Japanese consider

it polite to emphasize the status differences when there actually exist such differences, whereas, from the American perspective, being polite is conveyed by denying that status differences do exist‖ (Takahashi 1995, p 110) Tam (2005), in her doctorate dissertation on requests by Vietnamese EFL learners, discovered that Australian English native speakers did not vary their choice of strategies in relation to the power values, whereas learners did To be more detailed, in situations where the speaker had greater power than the addressee and where they were not familiar, learners appeared most direct while native speakers were still indirect Similarly, in situations where the addressee and the speaker were familiar and the speaker had equal or less power than the addressee, Australian speakers tended to be even more indirect than Vietnamese EFL learners Many other studies on EFL learners of Asian origins also provided the same findings; that is, their IL performance is often negatively influenced by their L1 social norms that emphasize differences in social power and social distance between two interlocutors in interpersonal communication

Second, the influence of learners‘ L1-based judgments of the appropriateness of a linguistic action to be carried out in IL is also a concern of sociopragmatic transfer studies Robinson (1992) investigated IL refusals by Japanese EFL learners by analyzing the data obtained from the learners‘ concurrent verbal reports and the retrospective interviews with them As noted by her, one of her subjects obviously transferred the Japanese preference for not saying ―no‖ to a request to her IL English discourse Robinson also observed that,

―sociopragmatic transfer prompted at least part of this subject‘s confusion over what to say‖ in

a less familiar American cultural context (As cited in Takahashi 1995, p 112)

Third, sociopragmatic transfer might involve L1-based politeness styles or politeness orientation That means the orientation to or preference for one of two types of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), including positive politeness – redressive actions directed to the addressee‘s positive face (i.e the want to be approved) and negative politeness – redressive actions to maintain the addressee‘s negative face (i.e the want to be unimpeded) Takahashi and Beebe (1993) detected evidence of negative transference of Japanese ―less positive‖ politeness orientation into Japanese EFL learners‘ IL correction realization According to them, American English native speakers favored the use of positive remarks like

―That as a great account‖ before saying ―but‖ in correcting the lower-status interlocutor‘s statement Meanwhile, both Japanese native speakers and Japanese EFL learners seemed reluctant to use such positive remarks

Takahashi (1995) in his review on interlanguage pragmatics also discussed the transference of L1 communicative styles into learners‘ IL performance One dimension of

communicative style is the direct/ indirect dimension As noted by them, direct

communicative style refers to explicitly stating one‘s feelings, wants, and needs whereas indirect style stands for verbal messages that camouflage and conceal speakers‘ true intensions

in terms of their wants, needs and goals in the discourse situation For instance, Americans are often expected to communicate their ideas clearly and directly to others while Japanese people are expected to be involved with others with the utmost care not to reveal one‘s feeling directly This indicates that Americans are used to be direct in communication, presenting their ideas openly and straightforwardly whereas Japanese are so used to indirect

communication, reading the minds of the others and presenting one‘s idea indirectly (Kume, Tokui, Hasegawa and Kodama) One other dimension of communicative style identified in

available studies involves self-oriented/ other-oriented dimension House (1988) examined

English apology performed by German learners of British English and found out that German EFL learners transferred their L1-based self-oriented strategies (e.g expressing lack of intent),

in comparison with the British English speakers‘ preference for the use of other-oriented strategies (e.g showing concern for the hearer) (Takahashi 1995, p 111)

To sum up, while pragmalinguistic transfer involves L1-based language-specific choices of learners, sociopragmatic transfer deals with L1-oriented culture- and context-specific judgments of learners in performing a speech act In other words, learners‘ judgments

in IL performance are influenced by their L1 sociocultural norms and conventions It might include the transference of learners‘ L1-based perceptions of contextual factors like relative social power and social distance, their assessment of appropriateness, their politeness orientation and communicative style

Complaining is a speech act which occurs when the speaker (S) expresses displeasure

or annoyance to ensure – as a reaction to a past or going action – the consequences of which are perceived by S as affecting him/ her unfavorably As listed by Olshtain and Weinbach (1993), there are some pre-conditions for the speech act of complaining to take place as followed:

i Hearer (H) performs a socially unacceptable act (SUA) that is contrary to a social code of behavioral norms shared by S and H;

ii S perceives the SUA as having unfavorable consequences of herself, and/or for the general public;

iii The verbal expression of S relates post facto directly or indirectly to the SUA, thus having the illocutionary force of censure

iv S perceives the SUA as: (a) freeing S (at least partially) from the implicit understanding

of a social cooperative relationship with H; S therefore chooses to express her frustration

or annoyance and (b) giving S the legitimate right to ask for repair in order to undo the SUA, either for her benefit or for the public benefit

The speech act of complaint is said to probably cause ―a breach of social goal of maintaining comity and harmony between S and H‖ due to its conflictive nature (Leech, 1983,

cited in Olshtain and Weinbach, 1993) Place (1986) formulated that ―the act of moral censure

or blame is an act of social rejection – an act whereby the accuser breaks ties of affection, mutual support and cooperation‖ (p 145, cited in Trosborg 1995, p 312) The act of complaining is thus categorized as a face-threatening act (FTA) by Brown and Levinson (1978)

When people perform the FTA of complaint, they consider the effect of their actions

on the hearer‘s loss of or saving of face Taking into account the relationship and the harmony between himself and the hearer following his complaint, the speaker processes the sequence of payoff considerations, or the set of politeness strategies, before actually performing the act Take the ―water dripping‖ situation from Nakabachi (1996) as an example The situation is

precisely quoted as, “It is 2 o’clock in the morning Water is dripping from the ceiling in your

bedroom It is apparent that your upstairs neighbors have carelessly allowed their bathtub to overflow” In doing the complaint speech act to the neighbor, the speaker in this situation also

might go through the set of payoff considerations introduced above prior to making a choice

of the strategy that he/ she is going to use:

 Bald on Record: immediate threat or warning (e.g If you don‘t try anything, I‘ll go to the police)

 On Record without Redress: explicit complaint and request without any mitigation (E.g stop the water immediately!)

 On Record with Redress: inexplicit complaint and request with mitigation (E.g Could you please check your bathroom?)

 Off Record: hinting (E.g Do you know what‘s going on in my room?)

 Avoidance: do not say anything

However, as quite opposed to Brown and Levinson‘s theory in which solely single speech acts are defined, complaining, just like criticizing, is a complex speech act According

to Minh (2006, p 14), complaining may be composed of different acts, each of which carries a different illocutionary force and none of which is the head act She further suggested that complaining may be better described in terms of speech act sets which are made up by multiple components Moreover, as stated above, the realization of speech act is culture-specific and context-dependent; people from different socio-cultural and linguistic background

may differ in their choice of realization patterns and use the patterns in different sequence and with different frequency It is, therefore, crucial to look at the sets of speech acts, or in other way, realization patterns, of complaint proposed by different linguistic researchers

Olshtain and Weinbach (1987, cited in Olshtain and Weinbach 1993) suggested five categories of realization patterns of complaining based on the degree of face-threat that the speaker is willing to undertake when performing his complaining As claimed by them, the higher-numbered it is, the severer the strategy is The less severe strategy in their

categorization is below the level of reproach, with which the speaker avoids any explicit mentioning of either the action or the person The second is expression of annoyance or

disapproval; the speakers express annoyance at the violation of the addressee yet still without

mentioning the action or the addressee explicitly The third one is explicit complaint When

the speaker opts for explicit complaints, he/she decides to perform an open FTA towards the addressee, but this is done without implication of any sanctions However, when the speaker

draws on the fourth strategy on their scale – accusation and warning, he/she is implying potential sanctions against the addressee, for example, “Next time don’t expect me to lend you

anything” The severest strategy is immediate threat In choosing immediate threats in making

their complaints, the speakers openly attack the addressee

Another categorization of complaint strategies was set up by Trosborg (1995), based

on the directness level of a complaint She noted that complaint strategies were divided into

four main categories – no explicit reproach, expression of annoyance or disapproval,

accusation and blame – and eight sub-categories In the first category of “no explicit reproach”, the complainer resorts to hinting strategies, in which case both the addressee and

his/ her action are not mentioned There is just implication from the complainer that he/ she knows about the offence and holds the complainee indirectly responsible However, as a result

of this indirect expression, the complainee might not understand whether an offence is referred

or not While she regarded this strategy as a ―weak complaint strategy‖, Trosborg (1995, p 316) also noted that ―it might be used successfully to prepare for more forceful strategies

Secondly, in the category of “expression of disapproval”, the complainer shows his/ her

annoyance, dislike or disapproval, concerning a certain state of affairs he/ she considers bad

for him/herself In using these two strategies, the complainer implies that he/ she holds the complainee responsible but avoids mentioning him/ her as the guilty person Thirdly,

regarding the category of “accusation”, the complainer asserts the agentive role of the

complainee By using strategy 4 – ―indirect accusation‖, the complainer may make an assertion of the connection between the hearer and the offence and thus push forwards his/ her assertion by establishing the hearer as the agent of the complainable action An example is

“Look at the mess, haven’t you done any cleaning up for the last week?” Meanwhile, the use

of strategy 5 means the speaker directly accuses the addressee; for example, “You don’t even

clean up after you when you’ve been there, you used to do it, what’s up with you now?” In the

last category, there is a presupposition that the accused is guilty of the offence The complainer passes a value judgment on the complainee If the complainer chooses strategy 6 -

―modified blame‖, he/ she states a preference for an alternative approach not taken by the

accused – for instance, ―You could have said no, I mean, if you had so much to do” Strategy

7, on the other hand, indicates that the action for which the addressee is held responsible is bad

(“You never clean up after you, I’m sick and tired of it”) whereas strategy 8 emphasizes that

the accused person is a non-responsible social member

In realizing a complaint, the speaker can employ more than one strategy with different sequences of strategies being used Moreover, the realization patterns of a complaint might vary much from person to person, from context to context, and from culture to culture Olshtain and Weinbach (1987) and Trosborg (1995) provided a very useful and valuable framework for other pragmatic researchers to rely on in their study on the realization patterns

of complaint An appropriate combination of the two categorizations might be the best choice for this study

In addition to a number of strategies available to a complainer who wants to avoid a direct confrontation with the complainee, there is also a wide range of modifications, including internal and external modifications, which the complainer can make use of to mitigate their complaints Internal modifications refer to the ―downgraders‖, which play down the impact a complaint is likely to have on the accused and are said to make a complaint sound

more polite, and the ―upgraders‖, which, by contrast, increases the impact of a complaint on the hearer Meanwhile, external modifications include ―supportive statements‖ to rationalize the non-polite act of complaint According to Trosborg (1995), if a complaint is convincingly supported, it is difficult to overturn or dispute it The knowledge of mitigating devices or modifications is essential in studying the realization patterns of the speech act of complaint Internal modifications are also referred to as ―modality markers‖, and there is a distinction between ―downgraders‖ and ―upgraders‖ (Trosborg, 1995, p 327) Specifically, a complaint may be softened or weakened by the inclusion of downgraders, and aggravated or strengthened by the inclusion of upgraders Another important aspect that helps a complainer succeed in performing his/ her complaint is the ability to justify his/her accusation or reprimand so that it appears convincing (Place 1986, cited in Trosborg 1995); otherwise, a complainer him/herself might run the risk of losing face External modifications, specifically

―supportive moves‖, give the justification for the complainer‘s ―right‖ to place the blame for something on the complainee as well as provide face-saving arguments Supportive moves are

then categorized upon different levels of discourse: (1) at the structural level – preparators; (2) at the interpersonal level – disarmers; and finally, (3) at the content level – providing

evidence and substantiation

1.10 Studies on Complaints by EFL Learners

There are a number of studies which investigate the differences between EFL learners and native speakers in realizing complaints in the target language The differences have been examined at both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic levels In this part, most significant CCP and ILP studies on complaints (Trosborg 1995, Murphy and Neu 1996, or Moon 2001) as well as studies on complaints by EFL learners of such native language backgrounds as Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese will be reviewed Studies on learners from those language backgrounds are to be chosen because of the assumption that Japanese, Korean and Chinese cultures might share many similar characteristics and values Vietnamese culture

Trosborg (1995) carried out an experimental study on complaint strategies in native and native speakers of English The data were elicited from five groups of subjects: native speakers of English, native speakers of Danish, and three groups of Danish learners of

non-English at three proficiency levels Learners‘ performance was compared with non-English native speakers‘ performance in terms of complaint strategies, complaint perspective and choices of modifications; and the influence of P and D in learners‘ choices of strategies were also examined Her study showed that complaint is ―an extremely difficult act to master even for advanced learners of English‖ because ―one must be able to voice one‘s annoyance, anger, etc while, at the same time, it is important to avoid embarrassing your interlocutor by creating a situation in which it becomes impossible for him/ her to face the aversiveness of taking the blame‖ (Trosborg 1995, p 370) The study had some significant findings Firstly, it uncovered that learners not only produced fewer complaints than native speakers but also performed differently from them with regard to directness level and ability to support a complaint adequately They were also found to produce fewer modality markers, upgraders as well as downgraders, and not adjust their performance sufficiently to the parameters of dominance and social distance Secondly, the correlation between proficiency level and appropriateness in IL performance was evidenced; in other words, there was an approximation

to native speaker performance relative to increasing proficiency Last but not least, no significant differences were observed between English and Danish native speaker performance, so learners‘ inappropriate performance could hardly be attributed to pragmatic transfer, but more closely related to their proficiency

Murphy and Neu (1996) investigated components of the speech act set of complaining produced by American native speakers and Korean non-native speakers of English as well as ascertained how these speech act sets were judged by native speakers based on such factors as whether the act is aggressive, respectful, credible, appropriate, and similar to what a native would use The data for the productive part of the study were taken from 14 male Americans and 14 male Koreans, all of whom graduated from Penn State University; and those for the receptive part comprised 23 undergraduates and 4 graduates, who were asked to judge the acceptability of the speech act sets The data were elicited from an oral DCT situation, which placed the subjects in the position of a student whose paper had been unfairly marked and then asked the subjects to ―to to speak to the professor‖ Meanwhile, the data collection instrument for judgment part was a 10-yes-no-item questionnaire and an open-ended question The speech

act set used as analysis framework involves four categories: (1) an explanation of purpose; (2)

a complaint; (3) a justification; and (4) a candidate solution – request Regarding the subjects‘ realization of complaints, it is found that there was a high correlation between native and non-native speakers when producing three out of the four speech act components (1), (3) and (4) However, they differed in production of component (2) – complaint More specifically, the American subjects produced a complaint in each instance, i.e ―I think, uh, it‘s my opinion maybe the grade was a little low‖ whereas most Korean subjects tended to produce a criticism, i.e ―But you just only look at your point of view and uh you just didn‘t recognize my point‖ (cited in Tanck, 2002, p 3) According to judgments of American native speakers who participated in this study, non-native speakers‘ speech acts appeared more aggressive, less respectful, less credible and less appropriate than the common "complaint" speech act sets offered by native speakers

Moon (2001) also compared native and non-native performance of complaints in English The subjects consisted of 73 native speakers and 56 non-native speakers of English One different thing about his study is that the non-native speakers varied widely in their native language backgrounds (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Tagalog, Tigrigna, and Vietnamese) Besides, they also ranged in language proficiency from low-intermediate to fluent and differed in their stay length in the U.S from 3 months to 10 years The DCT questionnaire used included 4 situations, in each of which the social power (P) and social distance (D) between the hearer and the speaker as well as the rank of imposition (R) varied The analysis framework was modified from five categories proposed by Olshtain and Weinbach (1987) (for more details, see 2.6.) and then simplified into 2 categories – implicit and explicit complaints Implicit strategies included ―completely avoid explicit mention of the offensive event or person‖ and

―express annoyance about the offensive event and person, without direct reference, while explicit ones are ―explicitly refer to the event and person, involving ―you‖ and ―I‖‖ and

―accuse and threaten‖ The results revealed that non-native speakers tended to complain in a more explicit way whereas native speakers use more implicit ways of complaints In other words, non-native speakers did not always makes complaints following the appropriate ways