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A Cognitive Study on Politeness Intention Processing and Its Association with Pragmatic Failure in Cross-Cultural Communication

  • Rong Yan

    Rong Yan is a senior associate professor of psychology at the Academy of Future Education, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. His primary research areas are psycholinguistics and language acquisition.

         , Tengfei Feng

    Tengfei Feng is an MA student at the School of English Language, Literature & Culture, Beijing International Studies University. Her research efforts have focused on TESOL.

         and Samad Zare

    Samad Zare (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor at the Learning Institute for Future Excellence, Academy of Future Education, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. His primary research areas are language acquisition, intercultural communication, cross-cultural studies, and TESOL.

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Published/Copyright: September 18, 2024
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Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics
From the journal Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Volume 47 Issue 3

Abstract

Although a large number of studies have focused on various aspects of politeness, very little is known about how politeness intention is activated cognitively during verbal communication. The present study aims to explore the cognitive mechanism of politeness intention processing, and how it is related to pragmatic failure during cross-cultural communication. Using 30 Chinese EFL university students who were instructed to finish a probe word judgment task with 96 virtual scenarios, the results indicate that within both mono- and cross-cultural contexts, the response time in the experimental scenarios was significantly slower than that of the filler scenarios. This suggests that politeness intention was activated while understanding the surface meaning of the conversation; however, the EFL learners could not completely avoid the negative transfer of their native politeness conventions when they were comprehending the conversational intention of the target language. Furthermore, no significant differences in response time were found between the groups with high and low English pragmatic competence, illustrating that transferring the pragmatic rules and principles into cross-cultural communication skills was more cognitively demanding. Overall, this study adds to the literature on politeness research and provides some implications for foreign language pragmatic instructions.

Keywords: politeness intention; cognitive processing; pragmatic failure; cross-cultural pragmatics; cross-cultural communication

About the authors

Rong Yan

Rong Yan is a senior associate professor of psychology at the Academy of Future Education, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. His primary research areas are psycholinguistics and language acquisition.

Tengfei Feng

Tengfei Feng is an MA student at the School of English Language, Literature & Culture, Beijing International Studies University. Her research efforts have focused on TESOL.

Samad Zare

Samad Zare (the corresponding author) is an assistant professor at the Learning Institute for Future Excellence, Academy of Future Education, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. His primary research areas are language acquisition, intercultural communication, cross-cultural studies, and TESOL.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Xingyue Xiang, Ningzi Sun, and Chundi Xu, three dedicated MA students from the Department of Educational Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Their diligent efforts during the preparation of this manuscript significantly enriched its quality.

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Published Online: 2024-09-18
Published in Print: 2024-09-25

© 2024 BFSU, FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Second Language Acquisition
  3. A Comparative Study of the L2 Pragmatic Competence of University Students in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland: The Contributions of Sociocultural Context and Linguistic Proficiency
  4. Effects of Collocational Congruency, Frequency and L2 Proficiency on the Processing of English Adjective-Noun Collocations
  5. Embodied Meaning in Comprehending Abstract Chinese Counterfactuals
  6. Text Difficulty, Working Memory Capacity and Mind Wandering During Chinese EFL Learners’ Reading
  7. Testing, Evaluation and Assessment
  8. Scoring and Consequential Validity Evidence of Computer- and Paper-Based Writing Tests in Times of Change
  9. Cross-Cultural Communication
  10. A Cognitive Study on Politeness Intention Processing and Its Association with Pragmatic Failure in Cross-Cultural Communication
  11. English-Medium Instruction
  12. Lecturers’ Efforts in Building Rapport in the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) Context: Focus on the Use of Communication Strategies
  13. Book Review
  14. Review of Accessing Academic Discourse: Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory
  15. Systematizing Teacher Development: A Review of Foreign Language Teacher Learning
  16. Abstracts
  17. Chinese Abstracts
https://doi.org/10.1515/CJAL-2024-0306
Keywords for this article
politeness intention; cognitive processing; pragmatic failure; cross-cultural pragmatics; cross-cultural communication

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Second Language Acquisition
  3. A Comparative Study of the L2 Pragmatic Competence of University Students in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland: The Contributions of Sociocultural Context and Linguistic Proficiency
  4. Effects of Collocational Congruency, Frequency and L2 Proficiency on the Processing of English Adjective-Noun Collocations
  5. Embodied Meaning in Comprehending Abstract Chinese Counterfactuals
  6. Text Difficulty, Working Memory Capacity and Mind Wandering During Chinese EFL Learners’ Reading
  7. Testing, Evaluation and Assessment
  8. Scoring and Consequential Validity Evidence of Computer- and Paper-Based Writing Tests in Times of Change
  9. Cross-Cultural Communication
  10. A Cognitive Study on Politeness Intention Processing and Its Association with Pragmatic Failure in Cross-Cultural Communication
  11. English-Medium Instruction
  12. Lecturers’ Efforts in Building Rapport in the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) Context: Focus on the Use of Communication Strategies
  13. Book Review
  14. Review of Accessing Academic Discourse: Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory
  15. Systematizing Teacher Development: A Review of Foreign Language Teacher Learning
  16. Abstracts
  17. Chinese Abstracts
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