While considerable research in cross-cultural speech act theory has been conducted
across a number of languages since the 1980s, most notably the Cross-Cultural
Speech Act Realization Project, or CCSARP (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989),
studies involving Russian language data had been curiously few and far between
with the exception of Mills (1991, 1992, 1993). In recent years, however, interest
has been growing, resulting in a handful of Russian-related cross-cultural speech
act studies such as those presented by Belyaeva (1996, 2001, 2004), among others,
and investigations of the development of pragmatic competence among learners
of a second language (Owen 2001, Frank 2002, Shardakova 2004).
The proposed paper will present the results of a cross-cultural comparison of
over 100 native and non-native Russian speakers' approach to the request speech
act based on data gathered from a discourse completion task survey. The presentation
will draw on previous research in cross-cultural speech act theory for the purposes
of categorizing various components of the request, specifically the linguistic
means employed by the speaker to persuade the hearer to comply with the request.
Such measures, generally referred to as supportive moves, may include everything
from a promise of a reward to a threat or an effort to invoke guilt. While previous
investigations generally outline variation across cultures in the approach to
the request based on the age, status, gender, and degree of familiarity of the
interlocutors, as well as the degree of imposition of the request, the proposed
presentation will further the range of inquiry to include differences based
on the transparency of the request context (i.e., the extent to which the request
can be surmised based on the location and prescribed roles of the participants).
In particular, the researcher will present data demonstrating similarities and
differences between NS and NNS regarding the persuasive measures employed in
the articulation of the request speech act, as well as similarities and differences
within NS and NNS groups that can be attributed to the context of the request
speech act.
References
Belyaeva, E. I. 1996. Advice and Soviet: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Speech
Acts. Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of Berkeley Linguistics Society.
16-23
Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., Kasper, G. 1989. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests
and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Frank, V.M. 2002. “Ponimaesh', k tebe kakoe delo:” The Interlanguage
Pragmatic Competence of Classroom-based Learners of Russian. Michigan:
UMI Dissertation Services.
Mills, M. 1993. On Russian and English Pragmalinguistic Requestive Strategies.
Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1 (1), 92-115.