negative pragmatic transfer.docx

1、negative pragmatic transferStudies on Negative Pragmatic Transfer in Interlanguage PragmaticsShaozhong LiuGuangxi Normal University, Guilin, 541004, China Abstract: Transfer is a pervasive term and this has led to diverse interpretations and research practices of it. This paper reviewed the related

2、literature on transfer studies in second language acquisition, linguistic studies and non-linguistic. It also made a survey about approaches in transfer studies, native speakers attitudes toward transfer, and transfers made by Chinese learners of English. It was argued that transfer research evolved

3、 from a linguistic-to- non-linguistic path, and there is a necessity in the current trend to shift from the former to the latter.Keywords: transfer, linguistic transfer, pragmatic transfer, second language acquisition What is negative pragmatic transfer? As was mentioned in Section 1.1, transfer to

4、pragmaticians means difference of use due to NL influence. And to understand what is different, a preliminary step was to sort out similarities and differences between languages and the use of these languages. The effort to study how non-native speakers understand and realize a speech act in the TL

5、has spiraled into a tradition identified as the study of pragmatic universals. As many as 11 speech acts have been covered to date: requests, suggestions, invitations, refusals, expressions of disagreement, corrections, complaints, apologies, expression of gratitude, compliments and indirect answers

6、 (Kasper, 1992).Kasper (1995) focused on pragmatic transfer and defined it as “the influence exerted by learners pragmatic knowledge of languages and cultures other than L2 on their comprehension, production, and acquisition of L2 pragmatic information” (Kasper, 1992; 1995). 2.1 Role of negative pra

7、gmatic transfer in interlanguage pragmatic studies The study of the learner language has been a growing source of concern also in pragmatics in recent years. The pragmatic perspective toward the learner language led to the birth of a new interdiscipline, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). As the main f

8、ocus of pragmatics is to examine how an utterance meaning is perceived, interlanguage pragmatics mainly concerns with how non-native speakers differ from native speakers in interpreting and producing a speech act in the TL. To find out the differences, ILP researchers will base their studies on coll

9、ected data. The first issue they will tackle is the range of difference between non-natives and natives in performing and comprehending a speech act. On this basis, they will proceed to the contextual distribution of such differences, strategies in target language use, linguistic forms used for conv

10、eying an idea in the target language, illocutionary meanings and politeness (Blum-Kulka et al, 1989; Kasper, 1992; Takahashi, 1990). All this is related to transfer in one way or another. The relatedness of transfer is also apparent in current issues of ILP research. For instance, one of the topics

11、of immediate research interest in ILP nowadays is to investigate language universals underlying cross-linguistic variation and its role in ILP. The sorting out of language universals naturally helps us find out what is a negative pragmatic transfer. Measuring approximation of the learners language t

12、o TL norms is another current topic. Placing the learner language against the TL norm also helps us to find out the difference between the learner language and the target language and similarity between the learner language and the learners native language. Another current research topic in ILP is t

13、o study NL influence on the learning of TL. This is direct topic addressing the transfer issue (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; He Ziran, 1996; Liu Shaozhong, 1997d). It is not hard to see the importance of pragmatic transfer in all these research topics. 2.2 Contrastive studies of speech acts A host of tra

14、nsfer-related studies have been documented. These cross-cultural examinations were conducted with a view to find out how non-native speakers, due to their NL influence, differ from native speakers in understanding and realizing a particular speech act. Cohen & Olshtain (1981) studied how Hebrew lear

15、ners of English as L2 did things with their interlanguage of English, and discovered that the nonnative use of apology semantic formula was generally fewer than that of the native English speakers. By this, the study displayed the transfer of Hebrew features into the realization of apology making. O

16、lshtain (1983) also attempted at finding the degree and types of transfer among some English and Russian speaking learners of Hebrew as L2. Her elicitation questionnaire on apology of eight situations showed that English learners percentage of apology making was the highest, and next was that by the

17、 Russians, with that by the Hebrews the lowest. She further illustrated this tendency in another similar test among the Hebrew IL of English-speaking learners. Different from Olshtain, Scarcella (1983) (cited in Kasper, 1992) specifically examined the discourse accent of some Spanish-speaking Englis

18、h learners. She found the communicative style of her informants comparable to those in their native language Spanish. Thus Scarcella claimed that Spanish learners of English as a second language (ESL) shifted what was conceived of as communicatively appropriate L1 styles into English. House (1988) e

19、choed Scarcella by executing her study among her German students learning British English. In apology realization, these German-speaking learners of English were observed to have transplanted their German communicative styles, for these learners were less inclined to use routine apology expressions

20、such as “sorry” as by the British. Garcia (1989) replicated a study among some Venezuelan Spanish speakers on the realization of the apology speech act. Different from the above studies, Garcias interest was to uncover whether the learners transfer their L1 politeness style in the role-play situatio

21、ns. Her findings were that the Venezuelans used more positive politeness strategies by saying something nice so as to express their friendliness or good feelings, while the native Spanish speakers applied more negative styles such as self-effacing. Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz (1990) initiated a

22、study among the Japanese learners of English as a second language concerning the making of refusals. The difference detected was apparent in that Japanese ESL learners conceptualized the necessity of stressing the status difference in interactions, while the Americans denied the existence of such di

23、fferences even if such differences indeed existed. In an exploration about politeness orientation among the Japanese ESL learners, Takahashi and Beebe (1993) reported that the Japanese turned to reject positive remarks in situation where the Americans favored them; and that the Japanese employed for

24、mulaic expressions, whereas the Americans denied them. Takahashi & Beebes (1993) studied the performance of correction by Japanese ESL learners. In their article entitled “Cross-linguistic influence in the speech act of correction”, Takahashi & Beebe (1993:138-157) reported that the Japanese learner

25、s shifted styles from Japanese in the selection of strategies. In their previous studies on face-threatening acts carried out by the same groups of native and nonnative speakers, the authors pointed out the learners distinctive patterns of style shifting according to interlocutor status. Focusing on

26、 the modification of corrections by means of positive remarks and softeners, the Japanese learners style-shifting patterns were clearly influenced by transfer from Japanese. While Japanese learners, reflecting native sociopragmatic norms, shifted more styles than American respondents in performing r

27、efusing, contracting, and disagreeing. However, this study indicated dramatic style shifting in the American speakers use of positive remarks. Their prevalent use of positive remarks in the high-low condition, which was not matched by the Japanese learners or Japanese native speakers, provided more

28、evidence of a positive politeness orientation in American interaction, and greater emphasis on status congruence in Japanese conversational behavior. The study also supported Beebe & Takahashis earlier claim that pragmatic transfer prevailed in higher proficiency learners. Blum-Kulka (1982; 1983) in

29、vestigated request realization by English learners of Hebrew as L2. She discovered that English learners of Hebrew negatively transferred their pragmalinguistic forms into the Hebrew ability (“can you”) questions, and in the choice of directness levels in request realization. The former case reflect

30、ed the learners inability to convey the pragmatic force, while the latter displayed that where the Hebrew context demanded more directness, the learners preferred indirect strategies. However, for imperative questions, ability questions, why not questions and Do you mind if forms, English learners o

31、f Hebrew successfully transferred the cross-linguistically shared strategies. Thus, Blum-Kulka concluded that apparent similarity in form and function across languages did not hold for all contexts. Olshtain (1983) repeated Blum-Kulkas study by looking into a particular semantic formula. Like Blum-K

32、ulka, she also took as her informants the English learners of Hebrew. She detected that English learners were habitual to map the English semantic formulas into Hebrew when expressing apology and offering repairs, which was not preferred in Hebrew under the same speech situation. This study thus pro

33、vided further evidences for her previous studies (Oshtain, 1981) and Olshtain & Cohen (1989). By DCT (dialog completion test) technique, House & Kasper (1987) launched a “CCSARP (cross-linguistic speech acts realization patterns) Project” with a focus on mainly the German and Danish learners of British English for the pu