A Study Of Pragmatic Transfer In The Speech Act Of Criticism At Both Levels Of Perception And Production

Pragmatic transfer is one of the hot research topics in interlanguage pragmatics.Attention of previous studies has been focused mainly on two aspects: discoveringevidences of pragmatic transfer in the speech acts and exploring the constraint factorsinfluencing pragmatic transfer. For the first aspect, most of the studies are only about someof the relatively well-defined speech acts such as “request”,“refusal”,“apology”,“compliment”,“invitation”, etc., while most other speech acts are under-researched; someof the studies found pragmatic transfer while some others did not, and most of the studiesare conducted only at the level of production while neglecting pragmatic transfer at thelevel of perception. For the second aspect, the relationship between L2proficiency andpragmatic transfer is investigated by a few researchers, but without consistent results: somefinding a positive relationship, some finding a negative one, while others finding norelationship.For the reasons mentioned above, the present study is intended to investigate ChineseEnglish learners’ pragmatic transfer in the speech act of “criticism” at both levels ofperception and production, and the relationship between L2proficiency and pragmatictransfer at the same time. With a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) and a contextualappropriateness assessment questionnaire as the instruments designed to collect theresearch data at both levels of production and perception, and with Independent-Sample TTest and the Degree of Discrepancy in use frequency or contextual appropriatenessassessment as the measuring instrument, this study attempts to probe into the followingquestions:1) What pragmalinguistic strategies are used by native American English speakers toperform the speech act of criticism?2) What pragmalinguistic strategies are used by native Chinese speakers to performthe speech act of criticism?3) Does pragmatic transfer occur at the level of production in the frequency ofsemantic formulas and modifiers in the speech acts of criticism made by Chinese Englishlearners?4) What is the relationship between L2proficiency and pragmatic transfer at the levelof production?5) Does pragmatic transfer occur when Chinese English learners perceive the speech acts of criticism?6) What is the relationship between L2proficiency and pragmatic transfer at the levelof perception?7) What are the connections between the pragmatic transfer at the level of productionand that at the level of perception when it occurs at both levels?Based on the analysis of the data provided by54native Chinese speakers,30nativeAmerican English speakers,30high proficiency Chinese English learners,31intermediateproficiency Chinese English learners and50low proficiency Chinese English learners, themajor findings of the study are as follows:1) Both native Chinese speakers and native American English speakers use theindirect strategies and semantic formulas and internal modifiers as the chief means toperform the speech act of criticism, but their frequently-used semantic formulas andmodifiers are not the same.2) The average number of semantic formulas in every speech act of criticism by everynative Chinese speaker and every native American English speaker is very similar, but theaverage number of modifiers in every speech act of criticism by every native AmericanEnglish speaker is much bigger than that by every native Chinese speaker. Besides, thetypes of semantic formulas and modifiers used frequently by native American Englishspeakers outnumber those by native Chinese speakers.3) Analysis of the Degree of Discrepancy in use frequency shows that pragmatictransfer occurs in some of the speech act semantic formulas and modifiers produced byChinese English learners, some as apparent pragmatic transfer while others as unapparentpragmatic transfer, and that four types of relationship between L2proficiency andpragmatic transfer are discovered–straight ascending type, straight descending type, Utype and inverted U type. And in general, the degree of pragmatic transfer decreases as L2proficiency increases.4) Analysis of the Degree of Discrepancy in contextual appropriateness assessmentshows that pragmatic transfer occurs when Chinese English learners perceive the speechacts of criticism produced by both native Chinese speakers and native American Englishspeakers, and that the above-mentioned four types of relationship between L2proficiencyand pragmatic transfer are also discovered, and in general, the degree of pragmatic transferdecreases as L2proficiency increases at the level of perception as at the level ofproduction.5) It is found that pragmatic transfer occurs in some of the semantic formulas and modifiers in the speech acts of criticism produced by Chinese English learners and in theircontextual appropriateness assessment of the speech acts of criticism produced by nativeChinese speakers and native American English speakers.The findings of the present research verify the effectiveness of the researchinstruments, methods and measuring instruments in spite of their weaknesses, and providesome references for further studies of pragmatic transfer and its relationship with L2proficiency. Theoretically, the present study makes some contributions to interlanguagepragmatics, and in practice, it could be applied to the teaching of pragmatic competence inthe foreign language classroom.