A Contrastive Study Of Complaint Between Dongxiang Minority Language And Lanzhou Dialect

The Dongxiang minority language,used by the Dongxiang minority people who mainly live in Dongxiang County of Gansu Province,belongs to the Mongolian language of Altai language family.As a language without a written form,it is passed down orally.Thus it has become one of the endangered languages in China.Fortunately many scholars have attached great importance to its preservation.Many research study Dongxiang language from perspectives of phonetics,structure or lexicon,but relatively few from a perspective of pragmatics.In recent years,some pragmatic studies are conducted by a research group in the Institute of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Lanzhou University.This research group investigates the pragmatic features of several speech acts such as requesting,asking,apologizing,complimenting and expressing gratitude in DML,and compares them with those in Lanzhou dialect(LD),but still more studies of speech acts in DML are required.In this study,I investigate the similarities and differences in complaint's strategies and perspectives among mid-aged(40-50)Dongxiang male-male subjects,male-female subjects,female-male subjects and female-female subjects by keeping their age,social status(villagers)and education level the same respectively.I also intend to find out how the rank of imposition has effects on the aspects of complaint strategies and perspectives.Then a contrastive study concerning the strategies and perspectives of complaint between Dongxiang Minority Language(DML)and Lanzhou dialect(LD)is conducted.I aim to answer the following questions in this study.First,is gender the factor that influences the strategy and perspective choice of Dongxiang mid-aged(40-50)(40-50)people in giving complaint? What similarities and differences are displaying in complaint's strategies and perspectives of DML between the four groups? Second,what similarities and differences are presenting in providing complaint in bothstrategies and perspectives between DML and LD under the same gender conditions?Third,is rank of imposition the factor that influences the strategy and perspective choice of Dongxiang mid-aged(40-50)people in giving complaint? What similarities and differences are displaying in complaint strategies and perspectives of DML between the four groups when the ranks of imposition(higher or lower imposition)conditions are the same? Fourth,what similarities and differences are presenting in providing complaint in both strategies and perspectives between DML and LD when the ranks of imposition(higher or lower imposition)conditions are the same? To answer these four questions,our team chose 124 DML speakers(40-50)from Dongxiang County and 124 LD speakers(40-50)from Yu Zhong County,randomly,as our subjects.The study was conducted by the following procedures: 1)Interviewing,2)Designing of role-play(The design of role-play's situations and conversations closely related to the subjects' daily lives.The selected subjects from villages of Guo Yuan and Xia Guanying were asked to play the role,at the same time we made videos of all the role-plays.)3)Transcribing the videos and recordings.(All the videos were transcribed by a Dongxiang minority staff of local educational institute who speak DML and Chinese,she wrote down DML for all the valid videos by phonetic symbols and in Chinese,and then all the scripts were revised by DML expert).4)Pilot Study,5)Large-Scale Questionnaire,6)Data Coding and Analyzing.Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed in the study.I adopted open role-play and Discourse Completion Test(DCT)to elicit data.In open role-play,occurring in a way similar to real-life interactions,the participants performed the role with some other participants and thus semi-natural language materials were obtained.The role-play video recordings were transcribed into phonetic symbols according to Dongxiang Language and Chinese Dictionary by a Dongxiang minority staff of local educational institute who speak DML and Chinese,and then were translated into Chinese.The closed DCT questionnaire was designed,based on the data collected from the role-play.The collected data were analyzed based on previous studies conducted by scholars from home and abroad(especially AnnaTrosborg(1995)'s study)on the speech act of complaint,which were mainly from the following two aspects in my study: five strategies(annoyance,ill consequence,accusation,request for repair and blame)and four perspectives("I","YOU","IT" and "WE").The coded data were analyzed through SPSS 19.0.Results of the analyses indicate that:1)Gender influences speakers(40-50)of DML on their choice of complaint strategies.Generally speaking,the male complainers like to choose different ones of the five strategies.To be specific,when a male complains to a male,he would like to use more indirect strategies.When he complains to a female,he prefers blame and annoyance to accusation.As for perspective,"YOU" is men's most employed one to either a male or a female complainee.When a female complains to a male,she prefers request for repair and blame to other strategies.When the complainee is also a female,the female complainer would rather choose annoyance and request for repair than other strategies.Female subjects' use “YOU” the most no matter whether the hearer is a man or a woman.As for perspective,there is no significant difference regarding employment in "WE".For the rest,the trend is similar,but frequencies are different.2)All the four groups between DML and LD differ in their choice of complaint perspectives and strategies.The trend,in general,is similar.Both male and female subjects from the two villages prefer request for repair and blame for the rest strategies.It appears that DML group like request for repair more than LD group do.LD groups prefer "YOU" to other complaint perspective comparing with DML groups.There existed significant difference between the four groups from DML and LD in the aspects investigated.3)Under conditions of higher rank of imposition,male subjects of Dongxiang people in Guo Yuan village prefer the strategy of request for repair the most.Under situations of the lower rank of imposition,male subjects of Dongxiang people mostly used ill consequence and blame.As for female subjects of Dongxiang people,under conditions of higher rank of imposition,they like to employ annoyance as well as request for repair more.Under situations of lower rank of imposition,the females tended to use the strategy of ill consequence and blame more than others.As for DMLgroup,they did not use accusations at all.In almost all situations,"YOU" as a perspective of complaint remains the most employed one,closely following "IT";almost nobody chose "WE" in all the four groups.Rank of imposition affects both Dongxiang male and female subjects' choice of complaint strategies as well as perspectives.4)The statistics show: DML subjects from the male-male(40-50)group in the situations of higher rank of imposition employed the strategy of request for repair the most,while LD subjects mostly chose the strategy of ill consequence.When it comes to the situations under lower rank of imposition,DML subjects also mostly employed the strategy of request for repair,but LD subjects preferred the strategy of annoyance.As for the perspectives of complaint,there is no significant difference under any condition of rank of imposition.DML subjects from the male-female group in the situations of higher rank of imposition employed the strategies of request for repair and annoyance the most,while LD subjects mostly chose the strategies of blame and accusation.In situations under lower rank of imposition,DML subjects employed the strategies of ill consequence and request for repair the most.However,LD subjects mostly used the strategy of blame.As for the perspectives of complaint,“YOU” is the mostly employed one.DML subjects from the female-male group in the situations of higher rank of imposition employed the strategies of request for repair and annoyance the most,as for the perspectives of complaint,the most frequently used ones are“YOU” and “I”.While LD subjects mostly chose the strategies of blame and request for repair and the complaint perspectives of “YOU” and “WE”.Under lower rank of imposition,DML subjects employed the strategy of request for repair the most,the complaint perspective of “I”,but LD subjects mostly used the strategies of annoyance and accusation and the complaint perspective of “IT”.DML subjects from the female-female group in the situations of higher rank of imposition employed the strategies of annoyance and request for repair the most,concerning the perspectives of complaint;“YOU” is the mostly employed one.While LD subjects mostly chose the strategies of accusation and blame,as for perspectives of complaint,it is the same as it in DML group under higher rank of imposition.In situations under lower rank ofimposition,DML subjects employed the strategy of request for repair the most,LD subjects also mostly used the strategy of request for repair.As for the perspectives of complaint,the DML group selected the complaint perspective of “IT” the most,while it is the perspective of “YOU” that LD subjects liked using.In general,people(40-50)from DML and LD tended to use strategies that are more diverse if they have to complain to the other gender comparing with people from the same gender,especially the speakers(40-50)of LD.Request for repair,blame,and ill consequence are most in the employ of subjects from the two villages in a higher rank of imposition,"YOU" is their preferred complaint perspective.