The Pragmatic Transfer Of Chinese College Students In Speech Act Of Compliment

The present thesis intends to explore the pragmatic transfer of Chinese college students' speech act of compliment by investigating the strategies of compliments and compliment responses they may use with empirical research. It has three aims: (1) to investigate the current situation of Chinese college students' pragmatic transfer in cross-cultural speech act of compliment; (2) to compare the difference between males and females in the speech act of compliment; (3) to reveal the reasons for the pragmatic transfer that Chinese college students produce.In this paper, the data of pragmatic transfer in the speech act of compliment is collected on the basis of two English Questionnaires with their Chinese equivalents. The instrument used is a discourse completion test (DCT), originally developed for comparing the speech act of realization patterns of native speakers and learners (Blum-Kulka, 1982). Altogether 180 students in a university who speak Chinese as first language and learn English as a foreign language were involved in answering the questionnaires, who actually offer enough evidence for the further analysis.On the analysis of research data, it is found that certain pragmatic transfer in all the strategies of compliments and compliment responses by the Chinese college students does exist. And enough evidence is given to analyze prama-linguistic and socio-pragmatic transfer. One more type of transfer is also noticed: L2-L1 transfer, which means one's native language is to some degree influenced by the second language he is learning. Among all the strategies of compliments and compliment responses, the existence of implicit compliments indicates the specific social culture and value orientation of china, which is found as a typical transfer.Variables such as social distance and gender are considered in the research. Social distance is one of the important variables that affect one's behavior in the speech act of compliment. When the addressee and addresser are unequal, the Chinese EFL students show somewhat a low competence in complimenting and responding. Some of the compliment strategies and compliment responses strategies are not acceptable for native speakers. As to gender, there is also a difference between males and females. Generally speaking, Females tend to offer and receive far more compliments than males do. This may be due to the different social roles played by men and women in society, or probably, it is because of the different psychological characteristics of men and women, and this issue needs further study.Reasons for pragma-linguistic transfer may arise out of the two identifiable sources: different equivalents in English and Chinese and improper teaching. However, there is no clear boundary line about whether the pragma-linguistic transfer is caused by different equivalents or by improper teaching. What matters is that the pragmatic transfer really stands in the way of students' successful contact with the native speakers. Reasons for social-linguistic transfer are analyzed from the cross-cultural perspective and pragmatic perspective. Two cultural dimensions are examined: unit and opposite, high power distance and low power distance. The second perspective focuses on politeness in pragmatics, in which the best known approaches to an account of politeness is "face".Based on the conclusions draw from the analysis in this thesis, some implications can be found both for the English teachers and learners. The necessary condition for pragmatic learning is conscious attention to the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic information to be acquired, but to avoid negative stereotyping in intercultural communication simultaneously. The teachers have the responsibility of providing the students with the necessary tools to make the appropriate pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic decisions in the target language. One way is suggested that teachers can help students become cultural aware and improve their pragmatic competence by teaching them sociocultural norms in classroom settings with a tool labeled "Conversational Analysis".The study tries to make contributions theoretically and practically in several ways. It's a first attempt to study the speech act from perspective of pragmatic transfer, implicit compliments in particular. The findings and discussions of the thesis may shed some light on the research of the particular speech act of compliment from the perspective of pragmatic transfer and improvement of cross-cultural communication. What's more, the study will help to investigate the students' pragmatic characteristics and be of practical value to the classroom teaching and learning.