Condolences in Cantonese and English: What People Say and Why

Wakefield, John C.; Chor, Winnie

doi:10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_3

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The point is that, if both interlocutors are from the same language or cultural background, there seems to be no problem. However, choosing the right words or actions regarding this sensitive speech act might turn into a big deal when the speaker and hearer are from different cultural backgrounds or languages (Wakefield, Chor & Lai 2020). Due to the delicate nature of the condolence speech act, fewer studies have considered this speech act in comparison with the other speech acts such as compliment, refusal, or request.…”

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to the delicate nature of the condolence speech act, fewer studies have considered this speech act in comparison with the other speech acts such as compliment, refusal, or request. This might stem from the difficulties in collecting natural data concerning someone's death as well as sociocultural issues attached to the concept of death -some cultures even believe talking about death is a taboo (Parkes 2015, Wakefield, Chor & Lai 2020. In this section, some of the most recent studies with regard to the speech act of condolence is presented.…”

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The results of their study proved the existence of pragmatic transfer and failure among the Iraqi EFL learners and also indicated that religion had a great impact on the type of used condolence strategies. Furthermore, Wakefield, Chor, and Lai's (2020) ethnographic study investigated the linguistic and cultural realization of death-related condolences among Cantonese and English speakers. Condolences that were offered to someone who has lost a close friend were collected through discourse completion tasks (DCTs).…”

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A cross-cultural study of condolence strategies in a computer-mediated social network

Alemi

Moakhar

Rezanejad

2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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Among the various speech acts, an under-investigated one is condolence speech act. The present study sought to investigate the verbal strategies of expressing condolence used by (1) Iranian native speakers of Persian, (2) Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, and (3) American native speakers of English. Accordingly, a total of 200, 42, and 50 responses were collected respectively from the informants who responded to an obituary post followed by a picture consisting of a situation related to the news of a celebritys death on Instagram (In the case of Iranians: Morteza Pashaii , a famous singer in the case of Americans: B. B. King , an American singer-songwriter). After creating a pool of responses to the death announcements and through careful content analysis, the utterances by native Persian speakers, EFL learners, and native English speakers were coded into seven, nine, and seven categories, with expression of affection ( n = 109, 46.38%), wishes for the deceased ( n = 34, 59.64%), and wishes for the deceased ( n = 32, 23.70%) being the most prevalent ones, correspondingly. Moreover, tests of Chi-square revealed that there was a statistically significant difference among the three groups. The results showed that there were significant differences among the participants in terms of using condolence strategies in Expression of affection (love and grief), Wishes for the deceased, Expression of shock, use of address terms, expression of gratitude, Offering condolences, expression of happiness for his peaceful death, and Seeking absolution from God categories, with Expression of affection being the most prevalent one among Iranian Persian speakers. The findings have pedagogical implications for EFL teachers as wells as textbook and course designers.

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Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A cross-cultural study of condolence strategies in a computer-mediated social network

Alemi

Moakhar

Rezanejad

2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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“…Later, Wakefield et al. (2019) examined the cultural‐based knowledge guiding Cantonese and English speakers when giving death‐related condolences. They found that condolence expressions by English native speakers typically focused on expressing sorrow for the bereaved's loss.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, deciding whether to express sympathy and, if so, how to display it is a crucial issue for language users, as commiserations might be “unwelcome if they are felt to intrude on the private feelings of the recipient” (Leech, 2014, p. 212). Although many scholars have investigated how people perform the speech act Sympathize in various languages (e.g., García, 2010; Meiners, 2017; Wakefield et al., 2019), regrettably, research on this speech act is still in its infancy. Since realizing Sympathize may require linguistic proficiency, the current study is set to investigate the production of the speech act Sympathize with advanced CFL learners as a case.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where there is suffering, there is sympathy: The speech act Sympathize in learning Chinese as a foreign language

Wang

Mao

Long

2023

Int J App Linguistics

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The present paper aims to explore the performance of Sympathize as a speech act by advanced learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). We collected data from both 16 advanced CFL learners and 16 native speakers of Chinese through a DCT, and we then asked 10 native speakers of Chinese to rate the appropriacy of the DCTs provided by the two groups. The results of our analysis show that the language use of native speakers and advanced learners only differed significantly when they employed three strategies “Minimize the negativity of the events,” “Analyze the negative events objectively,” and “Look at problems from a positive perspective,” while their behavior only marginally differed when it came to the two strategies of “Release the listeners’ negative emotions” and “Encourage.” However, learners received overall lower scores than native speakers regarding the appropriateness of their sympathizing expressions.

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La expresión de condolencias en cartas canarias del siglo XVIII

Bello Hernández

2023

Boletín de Filología

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ResumenEn las últimas décadas se ha observado un creciente interés por la descripción y análisis de algunos actos de habla, como agradecer, pedir o felicitar, que no ha tenido eco en estudios similares sobre las condolencias. Comparativamente, los trabajos dedicados a estas últimas son mucho más escasos, por motivos evidentes, y este vacío es aún más notable en el caso del español. Tampoco parece existir ningún estudio que analice el acto de dar el pésame desde el punto de vista diacrónico. Este trabajo pretende paliar un poco esta situación mediante la descripción de cartas de condolencia escritas en las Islas Canarias a lo largo de los siglos xviii y principios del xix. El objetivo es comprobar cuáles son las estrategias formales y semánticas más utilizadas para llevar a cabo este acto de habla, y cuánto se parecen estas estrategias a las descritas por otros autores en lenguas actuales.

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Condolences in Cantonese and English: What People Say and Why

Cited by 3 publications

References 16 publications

A cross-cultural study of condolence strategies in a computer-mediated social network

A cross-cultural study of condolence strategies in a computer-mediated social network

Where there is suffering, there is sympathy: The speech act Sympathize in learning Chinese as a foreign language

La expresión de condolencias en cartas canarias del siglo XVIII

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