The Use of Japanese Language Directive Speech Acts by Malaysian Tour Guides

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Cultural collisions in tourism communication can elicit obstacles or failure to achieve communication goals in social interactions with people of different backgrounds. A communication between cultures can present misunderstandings, vagueness in meanings and frustration due to the diverse social and cultural norms arising from various discourse systems. Among the several types of tourism communication, this study attempted to foreground delivering instructions, which is a frequently utilised speech act (SA) during tour sessions. More specifically, the study examined the use of SA in giving instructions, as expressed by tour guides throughout tour sessions. Delivering instructions is a straightforward mode of communication, even in intercultural context.
 
 Methodology: This study adopted a qualitative research method through the collection of data from audio and visual recordings, along with observational notes from interactions between tour guides and tourists particularly during the five Free Independent Travel (FIT) packages. Five Japanese speaking Malaysian tour guides and 17 Japanese tourists (JTs) were recruited for this study. Categorisation of directive speech act (DSA) by Searle (1979) and structure formation of SDA by Blum-Kulka (1989) were employed to analyse the subcategories of directive.
 
 Findings: Findings indicate that only three subcategories were used, namely the command, insist, and request. The findings also reveal that there were alignments and adjustments to the expressions or utterances when giving instructions. With the aim of effective intercultural communication, the tour guides were identified to have adapted to the tourist culture. The expression of instructions even in an intercultural context did not confer any contradiction of cultural norms, and were unlikely to cause conflict between the tour guides and the JTs.
 
 Contributions: This research is expected to serve as a foundation and reference for parties involved in the teaching and learning of the Japanese language, especially in the expression of SA for tourism communication.
 
 Keywords: Speech act, giving directive, Malaysian tourism, tourism communication, Malaysia tour guide.
 
 Cite as: Rashid, R. A., Mat, N. H., Kamaruzaman, A. S., Ibrahim, M. Y., Noh, C. H. C., & Matsutani, S. (2021). The descriptive analysis of Japanese language directive speech acts in intercultural context by Malaysian tour guides in tour sessions communication. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(2), 358-378. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss2pp358-378

Directive Acts in Onward Film by Dan Scanlon

“…Previously, the study of directive speech acts has been conducted by a number of researchers on various data sources, for instance, a movie entitled Frozen (Amanda & Marlina, 2018), utterances of the Syrian President Bashar al Assad in news interviews (Chairunisa & Ariatmi, 2018), Austen's novel (Suryanovika and Julhijah, 2018), utterances of Malaysian tour guides (Rashid et al 2021), two kinds of the movie scripts for comparison (Oktoberia, 2012), interactive videos of Indonesian language learners in senior high school (Oktavia, Siwandi & Setiawan, 2020), and the English translation of surah Ali-Imran by Abdul Haleem (Al-Farisi, 2018). It is apparent from these studies that the dominant kinds of directive acts are varied.…”

“…It is apparent from these studies that the dominant kinds of directive acts are varied. Questions are the most dominant directive acts in Amanda and Marlina (2018) and Suryanovika and Julhijah (2018), commands are the biggest in number in Chairunnisa & Ariatmi (2018), Oktoberia (2012) and&Rashid et al (2021), and requests are the most often apparent directives in Oktavia, Siwandi & Setiawan (2020) and Al-Farisi (2018). The different results need further research to have more confirmation whether questions will be the most dominant ones in the Onward movie as those in Amanda and Marlina (2018) or commands as those in Oktoberia (2012).…”

“…Many researchers abovementioned have conducted the studies on directive acts using different theories as the basis of analysis. Amanda and Marlina (2018), and Chairunisa and Ariatmi (2018) researched the directive act by applying Levinson's classification of directive acts (1983), meanwhile Suryanovika and Julhijah (2018) and Rashid et al (2021) researched the directive act utilizing Searle's classification (1981). Meanwhile, Oktoberia (2020), Oktavia, Siwandi & Setiawan (2020), analyzed the directive acts by applying Yule's categorization (1996).…”