Investigating Chinese EFL Learners' Politeness Strategies In Speech Acts-A Case Study

This paper reports a case study which explores the politeness strategies of Chinese EFL learners in performing four speech acts, i.e., compliment, compliment response, complaint, and apology. The subjects comprised two groups. Four native Americans served as informants in English L1; four Chinese college students and another four Chinese EFL learners with work experience were invited to be Chinese informants in English L2 and Chinese L1. The data, obtained with the instrument of oral discourse completion test (DCT), were analyzed in the following way. First, Chinese subjects' data in English L2 were analyzed in contrast to the American subjects' data in English L1, which revealed both deviations and conformities of politeness strategies between both groups of data. Then the comparison between Chinese subjects' data in Chinese and English provided the answers for the pragmatic failures in English L2 data, which while due to the cultural differences seemingly, can be interpreted as caused by deviations of the Chinese EFL learners' mental representations from those of native English speakers. What is more, Western cultures, especially that of America, influence more or less the Chinese EFL learners' politeness strategies in Chinese. Work experience did not enable the Chinese subjects to perform the speech acts appropriately all the time. The findings clearly have important implications, since unless Chinese EFL learners are made aware otherwise, they may activate their own mental representations, which are in close relation to the traditional Chinese culture. Further research into Chinese EFL learners' pragmatic competence on 'politeness', particularly within the field of second language acquisition, is therefore essential.