Cross-cultural Perceptions of Impoliteness by Native English Speakers and EFL Learners : The Case of Apology Speech Act

Dr. TajeddinBy: Sh. Tamizrad

Fall 2014

Content

• Introduction• Literature Review• Purpose of the Study• Methodology• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

Introduction

• Two important linguistic phenomena: politeness and impoliteness.

• linguistic appropriateness is related to the proper use of

vocabulary, syntax, and idioms.

• Pragmatic appropriateness is a matter of being aware of the social

and cultural norms of the L2 community, including the observation of

politeness principles to avoid impoliteness and face-threatening act.

• L2 learners cannot master any second language without learning its

cultural norms and social conventions of politeness.

Introduction

• Culpeper,2005: Impoliteness is a phenomenon that deals with how

offence takes place and is communicated in the absence of

politeness. Impoliteness is an offence purposefully performed to

threaten the interlocutor’s face.

• The degree of face threat depends on the variables of social power,

social distance, and imposition.

• Interlocutors tend to seek harmonious interactions and to minimize

any conflict and confrontation in their conversational communication.

Introduction

• Focus of the study: Native speakers’ and English as a foreign language

(EFL) learners’ perception of (im)politeness realized in apology production

and on variation in the perceptions of (im)politeness across the two groups.

• Apology is used as the target speech act because:

1. Apology is among the speech acts which are most likely to be considered as

impolite when the speaker does not use sufficient apology strategies to produce it.

2. Due to its face-threatening nature and its roots in sociocultural norms, the study

of apology from a cross-cultural perspective can show how different cultures and

native/non-native speakers differ in their perception of what constitutes an instance

of impolite apology performance.

Literature Review

1. The Concepts of Politeness and Impoliteness

• Lakoff (1989): “A means of minimizing the risk of confrontation in discourse—both

the possibility of confrontation occurring at all, and the possibility that a

confrontation will be perceived as threatening.”

• Lakoff’s three politeness maxims: a) do not impose, b) give opinion, and c) make

the listener feel good.

• Lakoff’s politeness principle later developed by Leech (1983) and Brown and

Levinson (1987)

• Leech (1983): Politeness is a principle “to maintain the social equilibrium and the

friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being

cooperative in the first place”.

Literature Review

• While politeness focuses on the way intractants use linguistic strategies to

conduct a harmonious social contact, impoliteness concentrates on how

interactants use linguistic strategies to cause offence and face attack.

• According to Eelen (1999, 2001), most approaches to politeness are biased. They

do not consider impoliteness as prominent as politeness.

• Regarding the inadequacies of the current politeness theories, Bousfield (2008)

calls for a comprehensive framework of impoliteness and states that

impoliteness should be concentrated systematically.

• To Bousfield, a true impoliteness behavior occurs when the speaker has the

intention of offending the hearer and the hearer recognizes the offence which is

committed by the speaker.

Literature Review

1. Research on Politeness and Impoliteness

• Watts’ (2010): Explored whether there exists any relationship between politeness

and such variables as power, gender, culture, and face.

• Alemi and Tajeddin (2013): Investigated native English-speaking teachers’ and

non-native EFL teachers’ perceptions of politeness when rating refusal

performance in L2 English.

• Jalilifar (2009): explored cross-cultural variation in the use of request strategies by

EFL learners and Australian native speakers.

• Fernandez-Garcia (2000) focused on Spanish political campaign debates in order

to analyze the (im)politeness phenomenon.

• Culpeper (2005) conducted a study on how impoliteness can be entertaining.

Purpose of the Study

• The objective of this study: To examine variations in native English speakers’

and EFL learners’ perceptions of (im)politeness embedded in apology

production and to measure the differences and similarities in the two groups’

ratings of degree of impoliteness in apology production.

• Research Questions:

1. What criteria do native speakers of English and EFL learners apply in their

perception of (im)politeness in apology production?

2. Do native speakers of English and EFL learners differ in their rating of the

degree of (im)politeness in apology production?

Methodology

1. Participants:

• Two groups:

a) 177 participants for EFL learners, ages ranged from 19 to 30.

b) 75 participants for native English-speaking group, less homogeneous in terms

of age and education.

• Convenience sampling for the participants because both native and non-

native participants were selected on the basis of their availability

Methodology

2. Instrumentation:

• A discourse completion task (DCT) in English: consisted of eight scenarios,

each of which specified a situation for the production of apology.

• The researchers selected responses from the sample in a way that (1) the eight

responses would vary in their degrees of impoliteness for a wider range of ratings

by native speakers and EFL learners, and (2) the raters would be provided with

ample opportunity to be exposed to various realizations of impoliteness for

variation in both their ratings and their rating comments.

• A comment section in which the participant raters were asked to write down what

variables or criteria they took into account while rating a response as being polite

or impolite.

Methodology

3. Data Collection Procedure:

• Sample DCT responses were collected from elementary and intermediate learners.

• Sample DCT responses was given to native speakers and EFL learners.

• Both groups were asked to rate each of the DCT responses on a five-point rating

scale and to write down their rating comments to provide reasons for the selection

of a particular point on the scale.

• Native speakers’ rating data were collected electronically.

• EFL learners’ data were collected from the language center.

Methodology

4. Data Analysis:

ResultsNative Speakers’ and EFL Learners’ (Im)politeness Criteria:

Results

Differences in Rating (Im)politeness:

Conclusion

• The study investigated native English speakers’ and EFL learners’ criteria

and perceptions of (im)politeness of the speech act of apology.

• The findings revealed that both native speakers and EFL learners specified almost

identical criteria for judging the (im)politeness of apology.

• The findings provide us with insights into the criteria which underlie the perceptions

of native and non-native speakers in rating the degree of the (im)politeness of a

speech act.

• Although EFL learners draw on (im)politeness criteria similar to native speakers’,

the amount of emphasis they put on each criterion differs from that of native

speakers.

Conclusion

• This study implies that EFL instruction should raise learners’ awareness of

impoliteness criteria as perceived by native speakers and of variation in the

perception of impoliteness across languages.

• EFL textbooks should provide enough exposure to the realization of politeness and

impoliteness so that learners can get familiar with native speaker norms.

• Teachers should be aware of the culture-specific nature of the speech acts and

emphasize it in the EFL classroom.

• Further research needs to be conducted to clarify the cross-cultural contrasts in the

perception of face and FTAs and, in turn, the perception of (im)politeness related to

other speech acts.