Keeping the peace: A cross-cultural comparison of questions and requests in Australian English and French

Béal, Christine

doi:10.1515/mult.1994.13.1-2.35

Cited by 29 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This led Beaufrère-Bertheux (1997: 232) to refer to the 'hypermodestie' of Anglo-Saxon scientists and Sionis (1997: 211) to the "exaggerated self-confidence of French academics" who therefore sound arrogant to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts 7 . In line with the above mentioned authors, but referring to speech, Béal (1994, quoted in Sionis 2000 points out that, when asking questions and making requests, French people often sound blunt or arrogant to Australian English speakers, whereas the French considered their Australian-English colleagues as 'wishy-washy', 'beating around the bush' and even hypocritical. '…”

Section: 4 Cross-linguistic Comparison Of the Block-discriminatedmentioning

confidence: 75%

The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English Medical Discourse (1930–1995)

Salager‐Meyer

Ariza

Zambrano

2003

English for Specific Purposes

182

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The socio-pragmatic phenomenon of academic conflict (AC) is here addressed from a cross-cultural and diachronic perspective, and is examined by combining a quantitative approach and a qualitative discoursal analysis of its salient rhetorical features in a corpus of Spanish, French and English medical articles published between 1930 and 1995. The speech acts that conveyed AC were recorded in each paper and classified into 2 categories according to their level of commitment (direct author's involvement) or detachment (hedginess and AC responsibility shifting). The quantitative results were analyzed by means of the Chi-square test. Our overall findings indicate that French and Spanish scientists tend to be not only more critical, but also more authoritarian and passionate in the formulation of their AC than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. However, when analyzed diachronically, our results indicate that from the 1990s on, the rhetorical behavior of

show abstract

Section: 4 Cross-linguistic Comparison Of the Block-discriminatedmentioning

confidence: 75%

The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English Medical Discourse (1930–1995)

Salager‐Meyer

Ariza

Zambrano

2003

English for Specific Purposes

182

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although previous studies of requests in English are numerous, they have provided little insight into the specifics of how complex requests are negotiated in workplace situations. Such negotiations are, however, not only commonplace but may be especially problematic, both linguistically and culturally, for adult ESL learners whose previous work experiences were in a different culture (Beal, 1994;Yates, 2005).…”

Section: Rationale and Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating Difficult Requests in the Workplace: What Learners and Teachers Need to Know

Wigglesworth

Yates

2007

TESOL Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ⅢImmigrants to English-speaking countries, even those with advanced communicative skills in English, can experience misunderstanding in their workplace communication (Yates, 2005). Although such miscommunication is not restricted to those from other language backgrounds, users of English as a second or subsequent language who move to English-speaking countries as adults face particular challenges in correctly interpreting and conveying meaning. As Trosborg (2003, pp. 252-253) notes, for those from other language backgrounds, the workplace context may present challenges related not only to working in another language and culture, but also in a business culture which may well be different from the one with which they are familiar. Part of the onus for successful communication must, of course, rest with native English speakers (NESs), and increasing their awareness of cross-cultural communication is certainly crucial. However, the often lower status newcomers to a situation cannot always depend on interacting with sympathetic interlocutors but should and can be empowered to understand the intricacies of the communicative contexts in which they are now being called on to operate.There are few descriptions that are rich enough to furnish the specifics of how adults get other people to do things in workplace situations, and many teachers feel that they do not have enough information about how NESs undertake everyday speech acts to be able to teach their learners (Yates & Wigglesworth, 2005). In particular, mitigation skills-the use of linguistic and other means to soften the impact of an utteranceappear difficult to learn from exposure alone (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1996), but they have considerable impact on how a speaker is perceived by interlocutors (Holmes, 1984). Mitigation skills vary considerably not only across languages but also across different Englishspeaking cultures, so it is crucial to understand more about how such skills are managed in NES interactions in order to help teachers address these skills more specifically in the classroom. This article reports on a BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES 791 THE AUTHORSGillian Wigglesworth is Head of the School of Languages at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on language acquisition, both first and second, and language testing and assessment, and she is widely published in these areas. She has worked for many years with ESL teachers through her involvement with the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre.Lynda Yates is a senior lecturer in TESOL and applied linguistics at La Trobe University and a senior researcher with the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre. She has taught in a wide range of settings in the United Kingdom, Egypt, France, Armenia, and Australia, and conducts research in areas related to adult language learning and teaching and the professional development of teachers.

show abstract

“…What is considered "polite," or non-face threatening, in one culture can be offensive or inappropriate in another, and some mitigation strategies may be more or less effective in different cultural contexts. There have been several investigations of the various ways different cultural groups manage conflict and mitigate face-threats in questions [7,8] and other FTAs [9,10,11]. Beebe & Takahashi (1989) argue that FTAs are some of the most common trouble sources in cross-cultural communication [12], and quote an earlier researcher who wrote that the "transfer of the norms of one community to another may well lead to 'pragmatic failure' and to the judgment that the speaker is in some way being impolite" [13].…”

Section: Questions In Everyday Discourse and Institutional Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Face-threatening Terrain: Questioning Strategies in Cross-cultural Military Training Scenarios

Damari¹,

Rubin²,

Logan-Terry³

2015

Procedia Manufacturing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous research on interaction has shown that most questions demand a response, which imposes a questioner's will on their addressee, impinging on the addressee's freedom of action. We have identified ways that members of the military mitigate the imposition of their questions, using hedging, false starts, changes in questioning strategy, and what we call a "help frame." Using interactional data from a role play-based Army adaptability training, we examine differences in mitigation strategies used across different interactional contexts, including meetings with village elders, a village police chief, civilians, and suspicious diggers. In each of these contexts, the trainees adapt their questions to the characteristics of the immediate situation.

show abstract

Keeping the peace: A cross-cultural comparison of questions and requests in Australian English and French

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English Medical Discourse (1930–1995)

The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English Medical Discourse (1930–1995)

Mitigating Difficult Requests in the Workplace: What Learners and Teachers Need to Know

Navigating Face-threatening Terrain: Questioning Strategies in Cross-cultural Military Training Scenarios

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About