General Discussion

As reported, the three factors were all proved to have influence on the subjects’ perception of the strategy effectiveness of comforting strategy use. To begin with, for the power factor, most strategies were considered more effective in the condition of facing the comfortees of higher power, and significant differences were revealed in the strategy perception of the encouragement and soother strategies. However, the advice strategy was seen as less effective in the condition of addressing higher powered comfortees. It could be associated and explained by Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987), which states that acts such as advice and suggestion threaten a hearer’s negative face by forcing him to do something. In addition, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that the relative power that the hearer has over the speaker will add the weightiness of a face-threatening act (FTA). It thus made sense that the subjects evaluated

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the designed advice strategy especially in an imperative mood as less effective in the condition of facing comfortees of higher power to avoid the FTA. For the significant differences of the encouragement and soother strategies, it is possible that the encouragement strategy offers a better future and the soother strategy relieves the hearer’s negative feeling without threatening the higher-powered hearers’ face.

Secondly, the factor of severity was found to influence the subjects’ perception of the effectiveness of strategy use in different degrees. The strategies of encouragement, soother, and offer of support were perceived to be more effective in the severe condition than in the non-severe condition with a significant difference found in the strategy of offer of support. On the other hand, the subjects took the sympathy and advice as the more effective strategies in the non-severe condition with a significant difference found in both strategies. One possible reason might be explained by the Optimal Matching Model² (Cutrona 1990, Cutrona & Russel 1990, often abbreviated as OMM). When the problem is severe, the comfortee needs strategies that can help them temporarily distract their negative mood or immediately downgrade the degree of severity. In this way, the strategy of offer of support which directly offered physical and mental involvement or served as a distractor could be evaluated as more effective. Similarly, the soother strategy minimizing the problem and the encouragement strategy providing the

2 The Optimal Matching Model Theory proposes that certain supportive strategies are viewed more positively when they are “better matched” with the needs of support seekers. For example, providing a car driver who has run out of gas directions to a gas station is obviously more effective than offering sympathy (Cutrona 1990, Cutrona & Russell 1990).

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comfortee with a better future would help tone down the severity. In contrast, the sympathy strategy merely acknowledging the comfortee’ distress and the advice strategy involving less with the comfortee obtained a lower score of effectiveness in the severe situation.

Thirdly, for the effects of situation types, it was found that the strategies of soother, encouragement, and advice were significantly more effective in the academic performance (AP) situation than in the situation of social rejection (SR). Such finding accords with the results of Clark, MacGeorge & Robinson (2008), who explained the differences by the OMM theory (Cutrona 1990) and argued that it was easier for the recipients to control the problem of academic difficulty than social rejection with others’ advice, which seems to be a demonstrable fact in the present study. Compared with the problem of social rejection, speakers normally can take the initiative to solve academic difficulties by changing mindset and adopting better learning strategies. As for social rejection, the victim is never in the driving seat of the situation.

Therefore, the strategies of soother, encouragement, and advice were considered significantly more effective in the condition of academic performance. On the other hand, the reason why the sympathy strategy appeared to be the most effective in the situation of social rejection can be explained in the same way: What a recipient needs most is the recognition and the acknowledgement of the socially lost acceptance and inclusion (Clark, MacGeorge & Robinson 2008).

Table 4-4 summarizes the p-values reported in the previous parts and presents the effects

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of the three factors affecting subjects’ perception of strategy effectiveness. From the table, we can see that the factor of situation types had the greatest impact, followed by severity, and then power.

Table 4-4. Effects of the Three Moderating Factors on Subjects’ Perception of Strategy Effectiveness

Power Severity Situation Types

E J C All E J C All E J C All globalization or Westernization. By adopting Western values and concepts, Eastern cultures nowadays stress equalities of human beings instead of rigid social hierarchies, which gradually decreases the impact of power relationship (Thong 2012). On the contrary, a clear cut of the characteristics of situation types makes the factor stand out. Compared with types of situations, the degree of severity depending more on individual subjectiveness thus affected the subjects’

perception in a moderate way (Holmstrom et al. 2013).

Finally, for the between-group differences, no significant difference was found except the strategy of offer of support, showing that our L2 subjects have acquired native-like pragmatic competence of perceiving comforting strategy effectiveness to a certain degree. Nevertheless, they were invariably found to especially take the offer of support strategy less effective than

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the native controls, implying that there was still room for improvement. The strategies of offer of support designed in the present study consisted of implicit utterances which were challenging for the L2 learners. For example, “Ni manman shuo, women dou zai zheli.” ‘Take your time to tell us. We are all here with you.’ The implicit message somehow caused the L2 leaners to have the difficulty decoding the perlocutionary effect (Leech 1983) of physical and mental support.