Strategies of (in)directness in Spanish speakers’ production of complaints and disagreements in English and Spanish
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Laura Hidalgo-Downing
Abstract
This article presents the results of a study carried out with Spanish University students on their use of strategies of (in)directness when expressing complaints, disapprovals and disagreements in English and Spanish. We adopt a role-play eliciting procedure for the collection of what a speaker thinks and what s/ he actually says in a given situation. Our results show a tendency to mitigate the actual words uttered with regard to the thought processes in both languages. However, while in English students show a preference for conventional indirectness, in Spanish there is a greater variation in the strategies employed. Thus, mitigation, especially in Spanish, is often realised by means of the co-occurrence of negative and positive politeness strategies across several speech acts, thus performing complex utterances. These results point at an awareness of students’ attempts to adapt to the model of indirectness that is assumed of the English culture, vs. the model of directness associated to the Spanish culture.
Abstract
This article presents the results of a study carried out with Spanish University students on their use of strategies of (in)directness when expressing complaints, disapprovals and disagreements in English and Spanish. We adopt a role-play eliciting procedure for the collection of what a speaker thinks and what s/ he actually says in a given situation. Our results show a tendency to mitigate the actual words uttered with regard to the thought processes in both languages. However, while in English students show a preference for conventional indirectness, in Spanish there is a greater variation in the strategies employed. Thus, mitigation, especially in Spanish, is often realised by means of the co-occurrence of negative and positive politeness strategies across several speech acts, thus performing complex utterances. These results point at an awareness of students’ attempts to adapt to the model of indirectness that is assumed of the English culture, vs. the model of directness associated to the Spanish culture.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
-
Introduction
- On the relatedness of functionalism and pragmatics 1
-
I. Methods in the analysis of language and discourse
- Developing comprehensive criteria of adequacy 19
- A method of analysing recontextualisation in the communication of science 37
- Contrastive corpus annotation in the CONTRANOT project 57
- Form and function in evaluative language 87
- Life before Nation 111
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II. Pragmatics and grammar
- A lexico-paradigmatic approach to English setting-constructions 133
- How did we think? 149
- The adverb truly in Present-Day English 169
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III. Current trends in pragmatics and discourse analysis
- Nominal reference and the dynamics of discourse 189
- ‘Pragmatic punting’ and prosody 209
- Besides as a connective 223
- Searle and Sinclair on communicative acts 243
- Strategies of (in)directness in Spanish speakers’ production of complaints and disagreements in English and Spanish 261
- Name index 285
- Term index 289
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
-
Introduction
- On the relatedness of functionalism and pragmatics 1
-
I. Methods in the analysis of language and discourse
- Developing comprehensive criteria of adequacy 19
- A method of analysing recontextualisation in the communication of science 37
- Contrastive corpus annotation in the CONTRANOT project 57
- Form and function in evaluative language 87
- Life before Nation 111
-
II. Pragmatics and grammar
- A lexico-paradigmatic approach to English setting-constructions 133
- How did we think? 149
- The adverb truly in Present-Day English 169
-
III. Current trends in pragmatics and discourse analysis
- Nominal reference and the dynamics of discourse 189
- ‘Pragmatic punting’ and prosody 209
- Besides as a connective 223
- Searle and Sinclair on communicative acts 243
- Strategies of (in)directness in Spanish speakers’ production of complaints and disagreements in English and Spanish 261
- Name index 285
- Term index 289
