This section examines the second research question as to how the participants offer different types of advice when facing hearers of different social status. Section 4.2.1 explores the effect of social status on advice-giving, and Section 4.2.2 examines how social status interacts with other factors.
4.2.1 Overall Findings
The descriptive statistics5 of the participants’ response to the DCT and the MCQ concerning different social status are presented in Figure 4-2. The data grouped in other types in the DCT were excluded from the statistics in this section in order to be consistent with the MCQ. There was a significant difference in each type of advice (χ2=207.765, df =6, p
= .000*).
5 There were eight events in each task, each of which needed to be addressed to three interlocutors from different social statuses: high, equal, and low. The participants’ responses were categorized into four groups, including direct, hedged, indirect advice, and opting out. The frequency of choosing each types of advice was counted, and the percentage of each type was later derived from the statistics.
High Equal Low
Direct-frequency 229 452 476
Direct-percentage 18.72 36.78 38.33
Hedged-frequency 403 434 357
Hedged-percentage 32.95 35.31 28.74
Indirect-frequency 253 208 169
Indirect-percentage 20.69 16.92 13.61
Figure 4-2 The Participants’ Overall Performance concerning Social Status
It was found the participants chose to opt out mostly in situations facing high social status interlocutors, while there was least opting out in situations facing peers. When they decided to give advice to higher status interlocutors, hedged advice was their first choice, followed by indirect and direct advice. When addressing to equal status interlocutors, direct and hedged advice were their favorite with a drastic decrease in choosing indirect advice. Regarding lower status interlocutors, they chose direct advice the most, followed by hedged and indirect advice. To go deep into the results, the performance of each proficiency group was examined and a significant within-group difference (p < .05) was found, as presented in Table 4-4. A significant within-type difference (p < .05) was also found, as showed in Table 4-5. The descriptive statistics of each proficiency group is presented in Figure 4-3.
Table 4-4 The p-values for the within-group Differences Concerning Types of Advice and
Table 4-5 The p-values for the within-status Differences Concerning Types of Advice and Proficiency
G1: Elementary G2: Intermediate G3: Native
Direct-frequency 120 212 184 73 163 204 36 77 88
Figure 4-3 The Performance of Each Group concerning Each Social Status
Firstly, the participants chose to opt out in some cases. Like the participants’ overall performance presented in Figure 4-2, opting out happened mostly in situations facing higher social status interlocutors and least in facing equal status interlocutors. Furthermore, when the participants decided to give advice, each group had their preferences.
A huge portion of the native controls chose to opt out in the present study, regardless of the social status of the advisees. When they decided to give advice, they preferred indirect advice in situations facing higher advisees, hedged advice to equal status advisees, and direct advice to lower status interlocutors.
Concerning the experimental groups, they chose to opt out more often in situations facing advisees with higher social status (G1: 18.38%, G2: 20.87%). If they decided to give advice, the elementary group chose hedged advice when facing higher status advisees, while direct advice was given in situations involving equal and lower status interlocutors. As for the intermediate group, hedged advice was given to both higher and equal advisees, and direct advice only to lower status interlocutors.
The chi-square test showed that the social status of the advisees influenced the participants’ choice of advice types. Significant between-group differences were found between G1 and G2 (high: p = 0.09, equal: p = .004*, and low: p = .000*), between G1 and G3 (high: p = .000*, equal: p = .000*, and low: p = .000*), and between G2 and G3 (high: p
= .000*, equal: p = .000*, and low: p =.000*). There was no significant difference between the two experimental groups when facing higher social status advisees. Yet, there were significant between-group differences found in other conditions, indicating that the participants’ proficiency level indeed affected how they perceived social distance and the types of advice they chose. In general, compared to the elementary group, the intermediate
group performed more native-like though they still could not give indirect advice appropriately.
4.2.2 General Discussion
Generally speaking, in most speech acts, more short utterances and imperatives were used when giving instructions to the younger children but produced longer sentences, fewer imperatives, and more politeness strategies when giving instructions to adults or peers (Kuo, 2011; Shatzs & Gelman, 1973). In the present study, a similar tendency was found in all the groups that direct advice was more likely to be given to advisees with lower social status while hedged and indirect advice were given to higher social status, indicating that our participants could differentiate giving advice to advisees with different social status.
Still, a portion of the participants chose to opt out, especially when they were addressing to higher social status interlocutors. The percentage of choosing to opt out in situations involving advice-giving reached a peak, especially in facing higher social status advisees.
Like other speech acts, opting out has been found to occur frequently when the speaker tended to preserve social harmony with the hearer or when the speaker was addressing to someone higher in status or someone unfamiliar (Bonikowska, 1988; Chen, 2006). Besides, based on the participants’ justifications, they thought the higher social status advisees were wise and mature enough to make their own decision. Consequently, they chose to opt out for fear that they would offend the interlocutors. In some cases, the participants still wanted to give advice to the higher social status interlocutors. When giving advice to higher social status interlocutors, most of the participants in the experimental groups chose to give hedged advice, which echoed to the result of the non-native speakers’ performance in Hinkel (1997).
Unlike the experimental groups, the native controls favored indirect advice when facing higher social status interlocutors, which corresponded to the native speakers’ performances in previous studies (Al-Shboul et al., 2012; Hinkel, 1997, Matsumura, 2001). The social distance between an adviser and a higher social status advisee extends since higher social status interlocutors have more authority. When making justification for their responses, the participants emphasized that the teacher (the higher status advisee of the study) was an authoritative figure; as a result, they were more careful and employed more politeness strategies in giving advice (Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2014). Furthermore, the native speakers of English are typically classified as an individualistic culture. People in an individualistic culture tend to be more aware of a horizontal relationship; therefore, they care more about authority. They feel uncomfortable when interacting with superiors or involving in FTAs like advice-giving (Al-Shboul et al., 2012).
Concerning equal status interlocutors, our native speakers of English and the intermediate group performed similarly when they chose to give advice. Unlike the previous studies, the participants of the present study preferred hedged advice the most when addressing to peers. However, in previous studies (Al-Shboul et al., 2012; Hinkel, 1997), more than half of the native participants favored indirect advice when facing peers. The result indicated that the distance between an addressor and a peer addressee has been shortened in the present study since familiarity minimizes the strength of an FTA, and they were more willingly to make direct utterance to people with whom we have a closer relationship (Brown
& Levinson, 1987; Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2014). On the other hand, direct advice was favored by the elementary group when facing peer advisees. The elementary group perceived peers as close friends with high familiarity. The responses in the DCT as showed in (8) and (9) can
serve as proofs:
(8) You are looks like a pig, so you should go on a diet. (Taken from G1S7) (9) You shouldn’t stay late. It is impolite. (Taken from G1S12)
With regard to lower status advisees, the choice of opting out captured our attention.
More than one-third of the participants in the control group chose to opt out when facing lower status interlocutors. The fact that the native speakers participated in the present study chose to opt out when facing lower status interlocutors might be because of familiarity.
According to the participants’ justifications of their choices, they didn’t see the junior from school as their acquaintance; hence, they chose not to give advice. Apart from opting out, there was no difference in the performance of each proficiency group. Our participants chose to give direct advice the most. The only study examining advice-giving to lower status interlocutors was Matsumura (2001). In his study, the Canadian participants chose direct advice the most when facing lower status advisees, which was parallel to the present findings.
Our native speakers indeed performed similarly to those in the previous studies (Al-Shboul et al., 2012; Hinkel, 1994 & 1997; Matsumura, 2001). As for the experimental groups, the intermediate group performed native-like but they lacked the knowledge of producing indirect responses. Moreover, when facing higher status advisees, the second option for the elementary group was direct advice. According to previous studies, however, indirect and hedged advice would be more appropriate in offering advice to higher social status interlocutors (Al-Shboul et al., 2012; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Hinkel, 1997;
Matsumura, 2001). Besides, more hedged advice was given in situations facing equal status interlocutors by the native control group and the intermediate group. Previous studies have
found that the native participants favored indirect advice when facing peers while the non-native participants of a collective culture (Chinese and Jordanian) chose more hedged advice (Al-Shboul et al., 2012; Hinkel, 1997). Yet, the participants in the elementary group selected direct advice the most to their peers, which indicated that they did not perceive their social distance with the peers as the same way the native speakers and intermediate participants did. The results proved that as learners’ proficiency develops, their awareness of pragmatic competence in social distance increases as well (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2011;
Keshmiri, 1999; Maeshiba et al., 1996; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993).