Agreement and Disagreement Strategies in a Radio Conversation

Kuo, Shu-Yu

doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi2702_1

Cited by 31 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…These findings reinforce previous research that has shown that as with face-to-face communication (Kuo, 1994), there is a strong norm toward agreement in online settings (Baym, 1996;Guiller & Durndell, 2006). Online discussions in general are characterized by politeness and reluctance to criticize one another's ideas (Nussbaum, Hartley, Sinatra, Reynolds, & Bendixon, 2004); in the unusual cases where disagreements occur they are always presented in a delicate manner (Chen & Chiu, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Facilitating critical discourse through “meaningful disagreement” online

Dalley-Hewer

Clouder

Jackson

et al. 2012

Journal of Interprofessional Care

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This paper is concerned with identifying ways of facilitating "meaningful disagreement" amongst students in interprofessional online discussion forums. It builds on previous research that identified a trend toward polite agreement and only limited evidence of disagreement in this setting. Given the suggestion that disagreement indicates a deeper level of engagement in group discussion and therefore leads to deeper learning, our aim was to critique the pedagogical approach adopted by analyzing whether we were promoting a particular interprofessional discourse amongst students that favored agreement and therefore limited potential learning. Agreement in this context has been conceptualized as a form of online interprofessional "netiquette" existing amongst participants. Findings suggest that creating an online context for critical discourse is challenging; however, the careful construction of learning outcomes, trigger material/resources and learning activities, as well as attention to students' stage of study and life experience, can provoke the desired effects.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Facilitating critical discourse through “meaningful disagreement” online

Dalley-Hewer

Clouder

Jackson

et al. 2012

Journal of Interprofessional Care

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“…The use of token agreement as the most frequent strategy employed by native speakers has been corroborated by several authors (Pomerantz 1984;LoCastro 1986;Pearson 1986;Kothoff 1993;Kuo 1994;Burdine 2001;Locher 2004; among others). Despite being nonnative speakers of English, the current participants employ token agreement on 14 occasions, both as the only mitigating strategyas in example (5) -and, more frequently, as part of a more complex, combined answer (see Examples (6), (7), and (8)).…”

Section: Token Agreementmentioning

confidence: 73%

Expressing disagreement in English as a lingua franca: Whose pragmatic rules?

Arévalo¹

2014

Intercultural Pragmatics

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Multicultural classrooms provide the intercultural pragmatist with a breeding ground to get firsthand information on intercultural communication. In such a context, if English is used as a lingua franca, these classrooms also become an ideal setting to observe the pragmatics of this relatively unknown variety. The present article aims to analyze qualitatively a sample of data produced by a multicultural group of masters students in which English is used as the lingua franca. More specifically, I intend to answer the following research question: In a multicultural class where English is the medium of instruction and students' peer to peer communication, whose pragmatic "rules" are followed? In other words, do these speakers stick to their own cultural pragmatic rules or follow nativelike ones? More specifically, I focus on the speech act of disagreement given its face-threatening nature and its disruptive potential if carried out in what interlocutors might perceive as the "wrong" way. Disagreement was also chosen given the relative paucity of studies on this speech act -as opposed, for example, others like requests or compliments. For this purpose, the 10 students -from very different cultural backgrounds -were asked to carry out a group assignment. Their negotiation and discussion process, however, was computer-mediated via the use of forums rather than face-to-face. This allowed the researcher to collect naturally occurring, spontaneous data in a relatively easy way (without the need for transcription). It also gave the students the opportunity to interact in a more democratic way. In fact, by being an asynchronous discussion online, they did not have to fight for the conversational turn, but all of them had the chance to contribute to the discussion at their own pace. The sample so collected consists of 15,598 words. The limitation of the sample calls for a qualitative rather than a quantitative approach but is valuable insofar as it represents naturally occurring data. Disagreement expressions were classified according to two main categories: strong and mitigated disagreement (following Kreutel 2007;Pomerantz 1984 andRees-Miller 2000). Inspection of the data reveals that students on the whole show a tendency to avoid strong disagreement whilst favoring mitigated disagreement of different sorts (e.g., use of hedges, asking for clarification, giving explanations, etc.). Moreover, students with high linguistic proficiency displayed a wider range of strategies, following a more nativelike pattern -specifically; they seemed to follow the pragmatic rules of British English. On the other hand, students whose linguistic proficiency was lower also showed a tendency to avoid strong

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“…With regard to the teaching of pragmatics, this means that a teaching sequence starts by equipping the students with metapragmatic information. For instance, we tell our students that when native speakers of English want to disagree politely, they use extensive pausing and hesitation (Félix-Brasdefer, 2009;Houck & Fujii, 2006;Pomerantz, 1984;Santamaría-García, 2011), they often give reasons and explanations for their disagreement (Cheng & Tsui, 2009;García, 1989;Kuo, 1994;Locher, 2004;Yates, 2010), and they have been observed to employ requests for clarification (Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004;Burdine, 2001;Lawson, 2009). After this imparting of "rules" to the learners, the deductive approach continues with exercises and activities to practice these rules.…”

Section: When and How To Provide The Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%