The present study focused on changes over time in university-level Japanese students'
sociocultural perceptions of social status during their year abroad in Canada, and the
impact of such altered perceptions on their perceptions at subsequent time points. The
sociocultural perception to be examined was perceived "social status" which Brown and
Levinson (1987) discussed as a contributory factor in the perception of social asymmetry,
power and authority. The study attempted to examine (1) whether (and to what extent)
Japanese students, before they came to study in Canada, had recognized English native
speakers' understanding of social status and had learned how to offer advice
appropriately in English to individuals of various social statuses, (2) what proportion of
differential pragmatic development among Japanese students in Canada was accounted
for by their English proficiency and amount of exposure to English, and (3) whether (and
to what extent) living and studying in Canada facilitated Japanese students' pragmatic
development, which was assessed by the degree of approximation to native speech act
behavior in various advice-giving situations repeated during the course of an academic
year. To this end, the study compared the development of Japanese exchange students'
pragmatic competence during their year abroad in Canada with peers in Japan who did
not undertake a year abroad.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11254 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Matsumura, Shoichi |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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