Cultural Scripts and the Speech Act of Opinions in Irish English: A Study amongst Irish and Polish University Students

Abstract

Studies in pragmatics have been limited to a handful of illocutionary acts such as requests, apologies or compliments, and opinions remain underrepresented in the existing literature. In this paper I present the results of a study of opinions in Irish English, conducted in an intercultural environment of Irish-Polish interactions. departing from a traditional approach of speech act realisation studies, I applied the theory of cultural scripts to analyse opinions. In contrasting the Irish and Polish formulas for expressing opinions, as well as sociopragmatic attitudes towards this speech act, a difference in the cultural scripts for opinions in each culture was observable. Apart from already documented Polish frankness in opinions, the study discovered also a rational approach to presenting good arguments to support one's assertions among the participants. In relation to the Irish script for opinions, the findings are in line with previous classifications of opinions in Australian English, showing a certain level of variational uniformity amongst the English-speaking cultures in this regard.Keywords: opinions; Irish English; cultural scripts; Polish; intercultural pragmatics Kulturni skripti in govorno dejanje izražanja mnenja v irski angleščini: Raziskava med irskimi in poljskimi študentiPOVZETEK dosedanje raziskave na področju pragmatike so se omejevale na zgolj nekaj ilokucijskih dejanj, na primer na prošnje ali zahteve, opravičila in poklone, medtem ko so mnenja v obstoječi literaturi slabše zastopana. V članku so predstavljeni rezultati študije mnenj v irski angleščini, ki je bila izvedena v mednarodnem okolju irsko-poljske interakcije. Za razliko od tradicionalnejšega pristopa k raziskavam realizacije govornih dejanj je tu za analizo mnenj uporabljena teorija kulturnih skriptov. Skozi primerjavo irskih in poljskih formul za izražanje mnenj ter sociopragmatičnih stališč do tega govornega dejanja se pokaže razlika med kulturama pri kulturnih skriptih za mnenja. Poleg že dokumentirane poljske odkritosti v mnenjih razkriva študija tudi racionalni pristop k predstavljanju dobrih argumentov za podporo lastnih trditev nasproti drugim udeležencem. Ko gre za irski skript za mnenja, se ugotovitve ujemajo s predhodnimi klasifikacijami mnenj v avstralski angleščini in tako v tem oziru kažejo na določeno stopnjo variacijske uniformnosti med angleško govorečimi kulturami.

The Acquisition of Verbal Epistemic Stance Marking during Study Abroad: The Case of je pense in L2 French

“…In our dataset, Anglophone learners of French also appear less assertive than French speakers, as illustrated by the greater use of epistemic uses by learners of French at PT. This might reflect a transfer from native patterns of use, as suggested by Mullan (2012), since learners use je pense in a more tentative way than French natives; nine months abroad may not have been sufficient for learners to modify their deeply engrained cultural scripts regarding the expression of opinion (Mullan 2010(Mullan , 2012G ąsior 2015). Future comparative research on the expression of opinion by learners of different source languages might shed new light on the possibility to reconceptualize such form-function mappings over a prolonged SA period.…”

“…With French native speakers and English native speakers having different cultural scripts regarding the acceptability of assertiveness in conversation, see (Mullan 2010;G ąsior 2015).…”