A Contrastive Study Of Invitation Between Dongxiang Minority Language And Lanzhou Dialect In China

Invitation is an important speech act to maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships,it is benefit for both the speaker and the hearer and it belongs to the commissive and directive speech acts.This study is aimed to make a contrastive analysis to the characteristics of invitation strategies in DML and LD from social pragmatic perspective,moreover,this study probes into how age and social distance affect the choice of pragmatics strategies in DML and LD.The total number of participants involved in this study is 696.For role play,there were 16 participants(DML 8,LD 8);as for pilot study,there were 80 participants(DML 40,LD 40);for the questionnaire,there were 600 participants(DML 300,LD 300).The participants of DML were selected randomly from remote villages in Dongxiang,while the LD participants were native speakers at village in Yuzhong County,Lanzhou.The age of participants ranged from 16 to 70 in the investigation.According to their true age,the participants were divided into the younger group(16-35)and the elder group(55-70)with same gender ratio in each group.Role play and questionnaire were adopted to elicit data in this study.Role play was the closest to real-life interactions,in which the participants performed the role according to the designed situations.It was available to control the social variables and at the same time obtain semi-natural language materials in role play.In role play,there were 24 situations and each situation contained 8 dialogues(young male-old male,young male-old female,young female-old male,young female-old female,old male-young male,old male-young female,old female-young female,old female-young male).The participants made an invitation according to each situation.At last,I collected 384 valid videos(DML 192,LD 192).The language materials elicited from the role play videos were transcribed and used for designing the questionnaire.The pilot study included 24 questions and I collected 80 valid questionnaires(DML 40,LD 40).The analysis of pilot study results proved that the questionnaires were valid and feasible.At the same time,I also adopted the suggestions from the participants in interview,made a revision and deletion to the 24 questionnaires.At last,the formal questionnaire included 12 questions and I collected600 valid questionnaires(DML 300,LD 300).According to the study of Blum-Kulka et al.(1989)and Garcia(2008),the taxonomy of invitation speech act strategies were segmented into head acts,internal modification of head acts,alerters and supportive moves.The head acts were classified into direct invitation(mood derivable,explicit perfomative,order and wish)and indirect(suggestion,query and hint).The internal modification of head acts were classified into politeness marker,understater,subjectiviser and conditional.The alerters are classified into professional address and relative address.The supportive moves are classified into explanation,alternative and query.The data were analyzed by SPSS16.0.The result of data analysis revealed that: when the DML speakers make an invitation,(1)they prefer to make a direct invitation.As for supportive moves,explanation and query are the most frequently used strategies.(2)The younger and the elder are different in their choices of invitation strategies,as age differences affected the realization of the invitation strategies in DML.Both groups adopt direct invitation in head acts.The elder tend to use more professional address than the younger.In supportive moves,the strategies of explanation and query are preferred by the elder,the younger tend to provide more reasons than the elder.(3)Social distance affected on DML speakers? choices of invitation strategies.When social distance is longer,DML speakers employ more direct invitation and provide more alternative and query in supportive moves.In addition,they use more politeness vocabulary professional address.When social distance is shorter,the politeness degree is reduced and the language choice is in causal style.The contrastive analysis of invitation strategies adopted by the speakers of DML and LD revealed that there exist similarities and differences.(1)Concerning the similarities,they all employ more direct invitation as head acts and use explanation the most frequently in supportive moves.Both speakers in the two regions adopt more professional addresses than relative addresses.(2)The differences are proved from these three aspects.The DML speakers seldom use wish strategy in making an invitation.The DML speakers adopt more direct invitation and less politeness vocabulary than the LD speakers.It is happy for the interlocutor to be invited.The speakers expresses endorse and intimacy to the interlocutor by making an invitation.Making an invitation would embolden the positive face of the speaker and at the same time,the speaker wants to be approved by the hearer.It is the reason that the speaker adopts direct invitation strategy.