The purpose of the study was to investigate Chinese EFL interlanguage request behaviors in terms of both perception and production on the perspective of pragmatic transfer based on theoretical issues of Speech Act Theory, politeness theory and cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism. Data were obtained from three groups of participants: 30 native speakers of Chinese college students (CL1s), 30 non-English-major Chinese EFLs college students (Chinese EFLs) and 30 native speakers of English college students (EL1s). Data for analysis consisted of 5400 perception responses collected with the instrument of 5-point Scale-response Questionnaires (SRQ) and 1800 production responses collected with the instrument of 20-item Discourse Completion Task (DCT) varied with contextual factors of Degree of Imposition, Status and Distance. Responses of perceptions were analyzed in terms of Degree of Imposition, Degree of Difficulty, and the Likelihood of Request on performing the act. Responses of productions were coded into two parts: the head act of request strategies consisting of Direct (including Mood Derivable, Explicit Performative, Hedge Performative, Locution Derivable, Want Statement), Conventional Indirect (including Suggestory Formula, Query Preparatory), Non-conventional Indirect strategies (Strong Hint, Mild Hints) and external modifications (i.e. supportive moves) according to the coding schema of CCSARP (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989). With qualitative and quantitative data analysis, some important findings were obtained. Regarding the perception task, CL1s and EFLs did not differ in their judgment on the Likelihood of Request, which further verified the validity of the questionnaire. However, CL1s generally perceived higher Degree of Imposition and Difficulty than did EL1s on requestive behaviors regardless of the shifting of contextual factors Status, Distance and Degree of Imposition and such perception reflected in their more frequent use of supportive moves than EL1s in all contexts. With regard to strategy use, the three groups yielded the same preference order: Conventional Indirect>Direct> Non-Conventional Indirect strategies in all contexts. Although CL1s were found to use more Direct strategies than did their EL1 counterparts, significant difference lay only in Low Imposition, Low Status and Low Distance situations. As for pragmatic transfer, negative pragmalinguistic transfers were found in Chinese EFLs¡¦ use of linguistic forms of Direct strategies such as Bare-imperative Help, Please+Imperative, Please+help and the Conventional Indirect strategy, Would you let me¡K? Negative sociolinguistic pragmatic transfers were found in Chinese EFLs¡¦ use of Direct strategies in Low Status/Distance situations, and the Conventional Indirect strategy of Can (Could) ¡K? /¯à¤£¯à (Neng bu neng )¡K? in Low Imposition/Distance and May I ¡K? Positive pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic transfers were also found in either Chinese EFLs¡¦ Direct or Conventional Indiret strategies. The study ends up with some theoretical and pedagogical implications. It is suggested that both participants¡¦ requestive responses of production and perception be considered when analyzing interlanguage speech act behaviors in order to gain a better understanding of speakers¡¦ and learners¡¦ pragmatic awareness of speech act behaviors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0526106-155518 |
| Date | 26 May 2006 |
| Creators | Chen, Hsiang-Lin |
| Contributors | Yuh-Huey Lin, Feng-fu Tsao, Syu-ing Shyu |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0526106-155518 |
| Rights | withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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