4.2 Overall Head Acts
4.2.1.3 Individual Strategy Use
4.2.1.3.5 Indirect Accusation
Indirect accusations are used by speakers to presuppose that “the hearer is guilty of offense” and to interrogate the hearer about the offense (Chen, 2007, p. 77). As
29 Details of Chinese use of concern to express their positive politeness will be discussed in section 4.4.2.
shown in Table 4.5, indirect accusations were frequently employed among direct strategies by the four groups (NSC: 60, EFL-L: 56, EFL-H: 55, NSE: 59). A test of goodness of fit shows that there were no significant differences in the use of indirect accusations among the four groups ( χ 2 = .296, df = 3, p = .961). However, the qualitative analysis again indicates that the participants had different preferences in the linguistic manifestations of indirect accusations.
Indirect accusations, based on Chen (2007), can be represented by wh-questions (e.g., Why are you so late? in situation 2), yes-no questions with negative orientations (e.g., Don’t you know that everyone is waiting for you? in situation 2), and yes-no questions with neutral polarity (e.g., Have you finished it yet? in situation 1). Table 4.12 shows that the Chinese used wh-questions most frequently, yes-no questions with negative orientation second, and yes-no questions with neutral polarity least, whereas Americans used wh-questions most, yes-no questions with neutral polarity second, and yes-no questions with negative orientation least. As for learners’ linguistic forms, learners of lower proficiency level had almost average use of the three kinds of questions, while those of higher proficiency level tended to approximate L2. Besides, the two EFL groups, the same as the NSC group, had strong preference for yes-no questions with negative orientation, whereas the NSE group did not. This may suggest the great influence of learners’ native language.
Table 4.12 Distribution of linguistic forms of indirect accusations by the four groups form group NSC EFL-L EFL-H NSE
wh-questions
29 (48.3%) 19 (33.9%) 25 (45%) 37 (62.7%)yes-no questions with
negative orientation 21 (35%) 18 (32.1%) 11 (20%)
5 (8.5%)yes-no questions with
neutral polarity
10 (16.7%) 19 (33.9%) 19 (34.5%) 17 (28.8%)Total
60 (100%) 56 (100%) 55 (100%) 59 (100%)In comparison with Chen’s (2007) result, there are similarities and differences in the linguistic forms of indirect accusations. The present study supports Chen’s (2007) study, which finds that NSC use more yes-no questions with negative orientation than Americans. However, Chen (2007) contends that in Chinese indirect accusations, Chinese used yes-no questions with negative orientation most frequently (65.31%), whereas we find that Chinese used wh-questions most. Furthermore, in Chen (2007), the learners of lower proficiency level used wh-questions most frequently, and those of higher proficiency level used yes-no questions with neutral polarity most.
Nevertheless, in the present study the less proficient learners had average use of the three types of indirect accusations, while the more proficient learners tended to use wh-questions most frequently.
The above discrepancies between Chen (2007) and the present study might be due to the following two factors. One is the different speech acts investigated (i.e., Chen, 2007: complaint, and the present study: correction) though there is some overlapping between these two acts. The other factor could be learners’ different proficiency levels between Chen’s (2007) study and the present study. Our learners were more proficient than those in Chen’s (2007) study. To be more specific, our less proficient learners were at intermediate level (i.e., B1 level of CEF) and our more proficient learners at intermediate-high level (i.e., B2 level of CEF), whereas the more proficient learners in Chen’s (2007) study were only at intermediate level. The influence of learners’ different proficiency levels was evidenced in the fact that our more proficient learners’ use of linguistic forms were closer to Americans’ (cf. Table 4.12), while those in Chen (2007) were not.
Apart from the linguistic forms involved in indirect accusations, L2 learners also differed from the NSE group in the formulaic expressions. In situation 2, in addition to Why are you late?, which was often expressed by Americans and learners, what
took you so long was also used by Americans to correct a familiar friend’s tardiness for assembling, whereas it was never used by learners. In situation 15 (i.e., to correct a boss’ forgetting to raise an employee’s salary), some American expressions were precisely used to address the crux of the hearers’ wrong-doing (e.g., Do you have any idea what the hold-up might be?, When will the raise go in affect?, and When is that raise we talked about going to take effect?), which were never employed by learners either. Besides, when using wh-questions to intensify the speakers’ displeasure, Americans usually used the formulaic expressions of what in the world, what the hell, or what the heck. However, these formulaic expressions were only used once by EFL-L (i.e., What the hell are you doing? in situation 2). Learners’ lack of using these expressions again shows that learners have not fully acquired the precise use of linguistic expressions in English indirect accusations. Further instructions are needed to help learners use indirect accusations in the native way.
4.2.1.4 Summary
In the overall use of direct strategies, no quantitative differences among the four groups were detected. This finding seemed to contradict previous studies (H. Chen, 2006; Liao, 1996; Liao & Bresnahan, 1996; Lin, 2006a, 2006b; Lin & Chen, 2006; M.
Chen, 2006; Xu & Xia, 2003) which indicated that Chinese and Americans had different preferences in the use of direct strategies to realize speech acts. The reason for the discrepancies could result from the different speech acts investigated.
Overall, all the four groups favored the use of direct correction and indirect accusation rather than penalty, threat, and criticism. Despite this similarity among the four groups, our qualitative analyses pointed to cross-cultural differences in the use of threat, criticism, direct correction, and indirect accusation. Furthermore, the results also showed pragmalinguistic differences among participants’ correction, and
exhibited learners’ language transfer and interlanguage development. This calls for further instructions so that learners would approximate native use when they correct others in English.
4.2.2 Indirect Strategies
Indirect strategies are used to implicitly correct hearers because speakers’
communicative intent is ambiguous (Biq, 1984; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Searle, 1975). To make the imposition indirect and ambiguous, speakers frequently use various internal modifications to downtone the effect of head acts. However, a strategy with an internal modification is not sufficient to be an indirect one. For example, in If we miss the train, you will be responsible for it! in situation 2, the correction is mitigated by a syntactic downgrader (i.e., a conditional clause), but it is a direct strategy, i.e., a threat. Thus, internal modifications are the necessary condition (rather than the sufficient condition) for indirect strategies. In short, an indirect strategy should be one with ambiguous intent and with internal modifications.
4.2.2.1 Overall Use
In the use of indirect strategies (see Table 4.13), a test of goodness of fit shows that there were significant differences among the four groups (χ 2 = 17.048, df = 3, p
= .001**). Although the post-hoc comparisons did not indicate the differences, overall, learners and Americans employed more indirect strategies than Chinese monolinguals.
This could result from learners’ and Americans’ perception of greater face-threat in correcting others than the NSC group (cf. Table 4.1). The details of each indirect strategy will be presented in section 4.2.2.3.
Table 4.13 Distribution of indirect strategies by the four groups
Social factors could have different degrees of influence on participants’ use of indirect strategies. The influence of the two social factors, i.e., social status and social distance, is illustrated as follows.
4.2.2.2.1 Social Status
The use of indirect strategies was influenced by social status. As shown in Table 4.14, indirect strategies tended to be used in high to low and in equal status situations, especially those used by the EFL-L group and the NSC group. This seems to contradict the predictions made from SRQ and Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987)
Table 4.14 The influence of social status on the use indirect strategies
groupclaim, which suggest that it is more imposing to correct a person of higher social status and then more indirect strategies are employed. However, an in-depth analysis shows that this seeming contradiction is due to the influence of the strategies of suggested repairs. Suggested repairs30 were the most frequently employed strategies among indirect strategies (cf. Table 4.5). In fact the distribution of suggested repairs also contributes to the distribution of indirect strategies in different social status situations. Since the function of suggested repairs is to suggest amendment and to request for repair, such suggestions and requests often threaten the interlocutor’s negative face (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Thus, suggested repairs in the present study tended to be avoided when a person of lower status corrected somebody of higher position (see Table 4.15). On the other hand, the nature of other indirect strategies (i.e., mocking, modified correction, indirect correction, irony, no explicit reproach, and self-reproach) is for mitigation. Then they roughly followed the prediction from SRQ and Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) claims, and were largely used when one corrected a person of higher or equal status (see Table 4.15).
4.2.2.2.2 Social Distance
Social distance influenced the use of indirect strategies (see Table 4.16). The four groups tended to use more indirect strategies in correcting an unfamiliar person than a familiar person. This follows the predictions from SRQ in section 4.1.2 and Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) claim, which suggest that to correct an unfamiliar person would result in more face-threat and then more indirect strategies are employed for mitigation.
In spite of the similar tendency of using more indirect strategies in correcting unfamiliar people, the four groups had different degrees of sensitivity toward social
30 The detail of the use of suggested repairs will be discussed in section 4.2.2.3.1.
Table 4.15 The influence of social status on the use of each indirect strategy
distance. Specially, the EFL-H group and the NSE group demonstrated greater sensitivity toward social distance, and they preferred to use indirect strategies when correcting an unfamiliar person. The EFL-L group, however, were closer to the Chinese natives’ distribution. That is, social distance did not seem to play an important role when they employed an indirect strategy.
Table 4.16 The influence of social distance on the use of indirect strategies
groupstatus
NSC EFL-L EFL-H NSE
+D
117 (53.7%) 142 (51.4%) 175 (55.9%) 156 (58%) -D 101 (46.3%) 134 (48.6%) 138 (44.1%) 113 (42%)χ
2,df = 1, p
χ 2 = 1.174, df = 1, p = .279
χ 2 = .232, df = 1, p
= .63
χ 2 = 4.374, df = 1, p = .036*
χ 2 = 6.874, df = 1, p = .009**
Note. *p < .05, **p < .01
An additional finding is that there are mismatches between perception and
production in the NSC, EFL-L, and NSE groups. To be more specific, the NSC and EFL-L groups’ perception from SRQ demonstrated sensitivity to social distance (cf.Table 4.3), but their use of indirect strategies did not. Besides, the NSE group’s perception was not sensitive to social distance (cf. Table 4.3), but their use of indirect strategies was. This implies that there is not always a correspondence between participants’ perception and their production.
4.2.2.3 Individual Strategy Use
The result of each indirect strategy, i.e., suggested repair, mocking, modified correction, indirect correction, irony, no explicit reproach, and self-reproach, will be discussed in the following sections, from section 4.2.2.3.1 to section 4.2.2.3.7.