Perception of Disagreement

The SRQ results and opt-out reasons from DCT data imply the speaker’s perception of disagreement. They evidence the speakers’ sociopragmatic values and can be sources of possible explanations to the speaker’s choice of disagreement strategies. For the purpose to examine cross-cultural differences in perception, only the two groups of NS-C and NS-E provided data on the SRQ and opt-out reasons.

4.1.1.1 SRQ

The speakers scaled their perception of disagreement by measuring how seriously it would threaten the interlocutor’s face to disagree with him or her in each situation. The mean frequency and standard deviation of face-threat degree scaled by NS-C and NS-E in terms of perception of disagreement are presented by contextual factors in Table 5.

Table 5 Mean and standard deviation of degree of face threat scaled by NS-C & NS-E Acquaintance 2.4333 .66681 2.2625 .72256 1.346 (.181)

Stranger 2.1750 .76372 1.9167 .69603 1.937 (.055*)

3. C=close friend; A=acquaintance; S=stranger; H=high; E=equal; L=low

Generally, it can be seen from the SRQ results (see Table 5) that the Chinese speakers (mean: 2.4883) saw the speech act of disagreement much more face-threatening (P=.035) than the English speakers (mean: 2.2742). When disagreeing with interlocutors of different relationships, the Chinese participants perceived the act of disagreement more face-threatening than the English participants in all contexts.

Both the two groups were highly conscious of the factor of context formality (P=.000).

They regarded disagreement in public much more face-threatening than in private situations

(M=2.9783 > 1.9983 for NS-C, M=2.7517 > 1.7967 for NS-E). The two groups showed similar tendency in terms of several other contextual factors, such as social distance, social status, and interlocutor gender. They considered disagreeing with an acquaintance more face-threatening than with a close friend or a stranger and more face-face-threatening with a higher status and a lower status than with an equal status. On the other hand, the two groups differed in perception when speaker gender or topic was concerned. The Chinese female speakers regarded disagreement more face-threatening than the male speakers did while the English male speakers regarded disagreement more face-threatening than the female speakers did.

Disagreeing about sports was more face-threatening for the Chinese speakers while affection was for the English speakers.

Although the Chinese group perceived disagreement more face-threatening than the English group with all the interlocutors, their perceptions differed significantly only when disagreeing in private (p=.029), with the stranger (p=.055), with the lower-status (p=.059), with the female speaker (p=.026), and about sports (p=.000). The variation in perception of disagreement in reaction to different contextual factors will be elaborated in more details in Section 4.2, which present the results from SRQ and DCT by contextual factors.

4.1.1.2 Opt-out Reasons

Frequency and content of opt-out reasons given by the speakers are presented in Table 6, Table 7, and Figure 1.

Table 6 Mean frequency and standard deviation of opt-outs chosen by the four groups of speakers

Groups EFL NS-C

Low High

NS-E

Inter-group difference

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD F, (P value)

Opt-out

.3967 .16516 .3600 .19494 .3883 .15407 .3558 .12759 .837 (.475)

Table 7 Occurrence and distribution of opt-out reasons given by NS-C & NS-E

1. %= occurrence number of opt-outs/occurrence number of all responses, including both linguistic answers and opt-outs

speaker's face harmony goal condition contextual factors

NS-C NS-E

Figure 1 Opt-out reasons by categories

Although there was no significant difference in the mean frequency of opt-out strategy between the Chinese speakers and English speakers (Table 6), there were differences in the content and occurrences of opt-out reasons given by the two groups (Table 7). In comparison, the Chinese speakers and English speakers opted out more often because of ‘condition’,

‘contextual factors’, and ‘interlocutor’s face’ than because of ‘speaker’s face’, ‘harmony’, and

‘speaker’s goal’. In contrast, the English speakers were more concerned with ‘the condition of context’ while the Chinese speaker were more concerned with ‘contextual factors’,

‘interlocutor’s face’, ‘speaker’s face’, ‘harmony’, and ‘speaker’s goal’.

The English speakers opted out more often because of ‘the cond ition of context’ when disagreeing (NS-E: 144 occurrences, NS-C: 122 occurrences). They took more into account the weight of disagreement, respect for the interlocutor, and appropriateness of the act of

disagreement in a certain situation, the elements that involve the speaker’s assessment of the objective necessity of disagreement rather than a concern about subjective personal desire of

‘face’, or social goal of ‘harmony’, or ‘interpersonal relationships’.

On the other hand, the Chinese participants opted out more frequently because of the

‘interrelationships with the interlocutor’ (NS-C: 119 occurrences, NS-E: 80 occurrences), such as social distance or power distance between them, or gender difference. They were also more concerned with the speaker’s and the interlocutor’s face than the English counterparts (interlocutor’s face: 56 > 34, speaker’s face: 18 > 10) in that the Chinese L1 speakers mentioned ‘face’ 18 times while the English L1 speakers mentioned it only 2 times, which showed that ‘face’ is an important concept for the Chinese group.

The results from SRQ and opt-out reasons concerning ‘face’ match the prevalently accepted assumption that ‘face’ is valued highly in Chinese society. The great importance of mianzi ‘face’ in social activities regarded by the Chinese usually results in misconception and misunderstandings in cross-cultural encounters. It has been noted (Weidemann, 2001) that social psychological studies have demonstrated communication proble ms of Germans in China or in other German-Chinese encounters. Weidemann (2001) suggested that a major concern is the applicability of the Chinese concept of “face” to the Western culture. In cont rast to the Chinese’s overly concern with saving face, the Germans tend not to take “face” as seriously and thus suffer the consequences. These problems spotlight the fact that “face” is an important concept in social relationships and everyday encounters in China as well as in Taiwan (Hsu, 1996). Hsu noted that the plenty of Chinese expressions containing “lian” or

“mianzi” marks the importance of the concept and supports the claim that “‘face’ is the most prevalent and important factor in understanding Chinese people and their everyday behaviour”

(Hsu, 1996: 8).

In addition to the ‘face’ issue, the results demonstrated that the Chinese participants chose to keep silent more frequently for ‘harmony’ than the English participants (NS-C: 25 occurrences, NS-E: 9 occurrences), which implies that the Chinese are more restrained in arguments in order to keep social harmony.

The opt-outs are also categorized and compared according to the contextual factor each situation involves as Table 8 and Figure 2 show.

Table 8 Occurrence number of opt-outs by contextual factors chosen by NS-C & NS-E

Contextual factors Positive face of the

high low equal (M) equal (F) intimate stranger affection sports

NS-C NS-E

Figure 2 Occurrence number of opt-outs by contextual factors

The distribution of opt-out occurrences also revealed group differences. The Chinese speakers chose more opt-outs when disagreeing with the lower-status (NS-C: 47 occurrences, NS-E: 32 occurrences), equal-status (NS-C: 89 occurrences, NS-E: 63 occurrences), and when disagreeing about sports (NS-C: 45 occurrences, NS-E: 25 occurrences). The results seem to be mostly consistent with the SRQ results, which showed that the Chinese perceived disagreement much more face-threatening than the English participants did when disagreeing with the stranger, the lower-status, the female speaker and about sports. In general, the data on perception of disagreement, including the SRQ and opt-out reasons, demonstrate that significant difference between NS-C and NS-E lies in disagreement with the interlocutor at the most distance, such as the stranger and the lower-status. More detailed descriptions on the effect of contextual factors will be presented in Section 4.2, which display the results from SRQ and DCT by contextual factors.