Volume 4, Issue 3

This article presents the results of our investigation into the giving of advice by native and non-native speakers of American English. Specifically, we examine how advice giving is enacted in a series of advice letters, which were modeled on letters to popular advice columns found around the world in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet. Our data indicate that there are important pragmatic differences between how native speakers and non-native speakers in the United States offered advice, regardless of the non-native speakers' English proficiency. The non-native speakers produced comparatively brief and formulaic responses, requiring coding and analysis based upon form categories. The native speakers produced narrative responses that required coding and analysis based upon content categories. Research such as this underscores the need to provide language learners with an awareness that pragmatic behaviors differ across cultures.

The present study investigates self-reported language choice for mental calculations among 1,454 adult multilinguals from a variety of linguistic, social and ethnic backgrounds. As mental calculation is a complex cognitive operation involving both language-dependent and language independent processes, we sought to establish a baseline of first language (L1) or foreign language(s) (LX) use for mental calculation and identify the factors that influence multilinguals' choice of language for mental calculation. A series of multiple regression analyses on calculation in the L1, L2, L3 and L4 showed that the following variables (in decreasing order) are the best predictors of language choice: frequency of general use, self-perceived proficiency in writing, socialization in the LX, context of acquisition, communicative and/or foreign language anxiety, perceived usefulness, and age of onset of acquisition. These variables explained over 40 percent of the variance in the foreign languages.

Studies on service encounters have thrown light on the diverse dimensions that can be distinguished in participants' talk in these situations, especially a “transactional dimension” and a “relational dimension”. In this paper, we examine an interactional activity frequently observed in Syrian service encounters, which seems to blur this distinction. Participants engage in this activity when the customer's request cannot be complied: the customer then begins to insist for getting the product or the service of which the seller has stated the unavailability. For a while, participants thus develop their interaction through re-uttering the request and re-stating that it cannot be complied. The paper proposes a detailed analysis of the step-by-step unfolding of this activity, out of which a discussion on its function in interaction is carried out.

In his recent interview with Ray Jackendoff (2006), Istvan Kecskes asked: “How do your ‘semantic primitives’ relate to Wierzbicka's ‘semantic primes’ described in her natural semantic metalanguage [NSM] theory (Wierzbicka 1996)?” After an acknowledgment that “Wierzbicka has offered many insightful discussions of word meaning,” Jackendoff more or less dismissed NSM semantics. “Conceptual Semantics,” (i.e., his own approach) he said, “is concerned with how linguistic utterances are related to human cognition, where cognition is a human capacity that is to a considerable degree independent of language (…). Wierzbicka, by contrast, stays very close to the linguistic ground. She analyzes words simply in terms of other words, so she never establishes any connection with cognitive capacities outside language.”

My interview with Istvan Kecskes, “On Conceptual Semantics” (OCS), offers some brief remarks on the relation of my approach to Anna Wierzbicka's theory of semantic primitives, Natural Language Metalanguage Theory (NSM). Wierzbicka's response, “Theory and empirical findings: A response to Jackendoff” (henceforth TEF) calls for some further commentary.

Cliff Goddard, ed. 2006. Review of Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Reviewed by N. J. Enfield Language and Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij and Elisabeth Piirainen. 2005. Figurative Language. Cross-cultural and Cross-linguistic Perspectives: Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface 13. Elsevier. 419 pp. Reviewed by M a Sandra Peña Cervel , National University of Distance Education, Madrid.