Ideas For Research Projects in Sociopragmatics - Anggit Budi Luhur - Unnes
Ideas For Research Projects in Sociopragmatics - Anggit Budi Luhur - Unnes
Ideas For Research Projects in Sociopragmatics - Anggit Budi Luhur - Unnes
Pragmatic glitches
01 Question 03 and misfires
Requests
02 and Refusal 04 Political discourse.
01
Questions
Question
Questions are so ubiquitous in everyday life that little attention is paid to
them unless personal experience leads to the awareness that they are
not without problems, particularly in cross-cultural contexts.
01 to get information
Line 1 illustrates the question substitute, while line 2 suggests that C was
unclear about how to interpret I’s request in line 1.
She argues that the targeted questions could only be interpreted as challenges
due to the existence of prior claims or actions in the talk.
“challenge questions.”
Further, the addressee of the challenge orients or reacts to the speaker’s talk
as a challenge. Here is an example from Koshik’s research (2003: 70):
In this excerpt, three participants are discussing a piece of work that Kathy had
made.
“challenge questions.”
In this excerpt, three participants are discussing a piece of work that Kathy had
made.
Rubin does not necessarily imply a strong negative assertion about Kathy’s
work, but rather seeks to clarify the phrasing of her talk in line 1.
B responds positively to A’s question: “Of course, I’ll go downtown to get some
ice cream – you know I love ice cream.” The question response is likely
designed to be humorous in addition.
There were instances in the collected data illustrating how a student showed
disagreement with a recommendation by an advisor (1991: 47):
In the subsequent exchanges of talk, the student avoided any direct indication
of disagreement by asking information questions.
“ In sum, questions are a rich area for study for both small and more
elaborated projects. In particular, more knowledge would be
valuable about cross-cultural differences and the processes of both
comprehending and producing language in use regarding the
indirectness of questions.
“
02
Carrying out studies of speech acts in context can be very useful for
preparing for a language-teaching career.
These two speech acts are often linked, with apologies commonly figuring as
part of the refusal sequence. A refusal tends to be a dispreferred response and
thus more problematic for the speaker to negotiate so as not to threaten the
face of the requester.
03
Pragmatic glitches
and misfires
Pragmatic glitches and misfires
The chapter on cross-cultural pragmatics discussed the notion of
pragmatic failure and the recent challenges to the view that
nonnative speakers’ pragmatic competence is insufficient to avoid
miscommunication with native speakers of the target language.
In the real world of everyday talk, with the great diversity of speakers as
nonnative users of the local language that is found in urban
environments in particular, it is still commonplace for what are called
misfires to occur.
A typical example arises when a nonnative speaker of French mistakenly
says “ Je suis plein ,” thinking it is a polite phrase to use to refuse any more
food at the dinner table. In fact, the transfer from English, “I am full,” is
not the translation equivalent as the French phrase means “I am pregnant.”
A project was assigned to students in an undergraduate second language
acquisition course to work with a conversational partner who did not speak
English as a first or primary language (they could also work with a
nonstandard speaker of English).
Gestures and other nonverbal forms of communication can also lead to misfires,
as in this case. A stereotype of Americans’ friendliness may suggest that hugging
is a norm, even for greeting a new person. A more appropriate return greeting
for the young woman would have been to offer her right hand to shake and to
say “It’s nice to meet you.”
Even though some Americans may seem to greetanyone with a hug, in fact it is
rare among strangers to do so and, as a nonnative to the culture, it is safer to use
a more neutral response.
Conversational partners provide an opportunity for both participants to
exchange language lessons and learn about each others’ cultural beliefs and
practices.
A joint project could develop so that both participants benefit from working
together and developing their language and interactional skills.
04
Political discourse
Political discourse
Studies of language use in African countries have become more and more
of interest for several reasons.
This picture of when ES is used, i.e. three times out of five, suggests that it is the
more dominant choice and that is most likely to be the choice when
spontaneous, spoken language is the norm.
Bwenge study
Readers of this book who need to do projects for course credit in the space of
one fifteen-week semester can read these examples for ideas and to spark
lateral thinking.
The hope is that this chapter encourages the readers to get into brainstorming,
testing out ideas by doing the opposite of what seems to be expected, and
generally putting on a new pair of glasses to become an astute observer of
people and our behaviors to come up with topics for projects.
Thank You