A Contrastive Study of Request Speech Act in English and Persian Novels: Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach

International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research

مقاله 4، دوره 7، شماره 27، اسفند 2019، صفحه 59-69   

نوع مقاله: Research Papers

نویسندگان

Ziba Amini؛ Laya Heidari Darani^*

Department of English, Falavarjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

چکیده

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) Approach claims that there are some universalities in all languages. Speech acts seem to be present in all languages, but considering this approach, research has not indicated whether request speech act differs from one language to another. Thus, this study intended to investigate whether request strategies are used differently in English and Persian romantic novels and whether Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach can be considered in English and Persian requests. To reach these objectives, the corpus consisting of two English and Persian romantic novels were used. It was analyzed using Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984)’s classification. Results indicated that mood derivable was the most frequent request strategy in both novels. Moreover, a statistically significant difference was not observed between request strategies in English and Persian romantic novels and thus the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach can be considered in English and Persian requests. The conclusion drawn is that considering the applicability of this approach, both American and Iranian native speakers can presumably use imperative structures, with the politeness marker please or without it, as a request strategy, when the interlocutors are close friends or members of the same family.

کلیدواژه‌ها

Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach؛ pragmatics؛ request strategies؛ romantic novels؛ speech acts

مراجع

Blum-Kulka, S. (1991). Interlanguage pragmatics: The case of requests. In R. Phillipson, E. Kellerman, L. Selinker, M. Sharwood Smith, & M. Swain (Eds.), Foreign/ second language pedagogy research (pp. 255-272).    Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Blum-Kulka, Sh. & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A crosscultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5, 196-213.

Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing) Corporation.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction (pp. 256-289). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Can, H. (2011). A cross-cultural study of the speech act of congratulation in British English and Turkish using a corpus approach (Unpublished MA thesis). Department of English Language Teaching, Middle-East Technical University. 

Eslami-Rasekh, Z. (1993). A cross-cultural comparison of requestive speech act realization patterns in Persian and American English. Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series, 4, 85-103.

Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Cultural scripts. Special Issue of Intercultural Pragmatics 1(2).

Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hassall, T. (2003). Requests by Australian learners of Indonesian. Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 1903–1928.

House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas, (Ed.), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech (pp. 157-185). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

House, J., & Kasper, G. (1987). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requesting in a foreign language. In W. Lörscher & R. Schulze (Eds.), Perspectives on language in performance (pp.1250-1288).

Jafari, B. & Biria, R. (2015). The contrastive pragmatic analysis of refusal speech acts in English and Persian fairy tales: A Natural Semantic MetaLanguage (NSM) approach. Elixir Literature, 78, 29622-29628.

Jalilifar, A. R. (2009). Request strategies: Cross-sectional study of Iranian EFL learners and Australian native speakers. English Language Teaching, 2(1), 46-61.

Karimnia, A. (2010). On the applicability of cultural scripts in teaching L2 compliments. English Language Teaching, 3(3), 71-80.

Karimnia, A. (2012). A Cross-Cultural Approach to Contrasting Offers in English and Persian. World Applied Sciences Journal, 16(2), 280-289.

Kim, H. (2008). The semantic and pragmatic analysis of South Korean and Australian English apologetic speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 257-278.

Koosha, B., & Vahid Dastjerdi, H. (2012). Investigating pragmatic competence: The case of requests in Interchange Series. Asian Social Science, 8(1), 54-61.

Maher, B. (2002). Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory and some Italian speech act verbs. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the Pragmatics Society of Japan), 4, 33-48.

Rezvani, E., Eslami-Rasekh, A., & Vahid Dastjerdi, H. (2014). Investigating the effects of explicit and implicit instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic development: Speech acts of request and suggestion in focus. International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning, 3(7), 1-12.

Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Culturally speaking: Culture, communication and politeness theory. Continuum International Publishing Group.

Wei, H. (2012). Cross-cultural comparisons of English request speech acts in native speakers of English and Chinese. Cross-Cultural Communication, 8(4), 24-29.

Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different Culture, Different Language, Different Speech Acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 145-178.

Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs, 53.

Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wierzbicka, A. (2001). What did Jesus mean? Explaining the Sermont on the Mount and the Parables in the simple and universal human concepts. New York: Oxfor University Press.

Wierzbicka, A. (2007). The semantics of colour: A new paradigm. In C. P. Biggam & Ch. J. Kay (Eds), Progress in Colour Studies: Language and Culture, (pp. 1-24). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wierzbicka, A. (2013). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wong, J. (2016). A critical look at the description of speech acts. In A. Capone & J. L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society, Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology 4 (pp. 825-855). Cham: Springer International Publishing.