A Contrastive Analysis Of Speech Act Of Complaints Between Chinese And American Customers

The speech act of complaints is a face-threatening one which conveys the speaker's negative assessment of the hearer 's positive face or an element of his/her positive face in the human communication activities.The performance of this speech act is so context-sensitive that it can be a painful struggle for speakers and even lead to breakdowns in communication as well as in the relationship with other interactants.With the popularity of online shopping,the researchers' attention has been drawn to the speakers'performance of this speech act again for the specific interactive situations involved in the cross-cultural communication.The present research is also a part of those attempts to address the concern of the cross-cultural communication of complaint with the support of the immediate and readily accessible online platform to publish the customers' thoughts,feelings and viewpoints.There are three questions to be answered in my study:1.What are the strategies adopted in the speech act of complaints by the Chinese and American customers respectively?2.What are the similarities and differences in the complaint strategies adopted by the Chinese and American customers?3.What are the causes of the differences in the complaint strategies between the American customers and their Chinese counterparts?The cultural pragmatic description and analysis of the speech act of complaints has been supported with the data extracted from the customers' negative reviews posted on the Airbnb,a travel housing website labeled as "E-Bay in the housing".Based on the analytical framework of Olshtain and Weinbach(1987),Trosborg(1995)and Laforest(2002),the strategies of complaints under discussion have been classified as the following five categories:complaints with positive comments,expression of disapproval or annoyance,explicit complaint,request for repair,and warning&threat.The contrastive discussion on the complaint strategies has revealed that although both groups of customers adopt the direct complaint strategies,they differ significantly in the employment frequency of specific direct complaint strategies,such as complaints with positive comments,request for repair,and warning&threat.After a probe into the cultural rooted causes of the above difference,this thesis highlights the pedagogical significance of relating the complaint strategies to the cultural variables involved in the specific situation of cross-cultural communication.