英汉称赞语跨文化语用特征分析

英汉称赞语的跨文化语用特征分析
【摘要】恭维语作为一种表达的言语行为是一种普遍的社会语言现象, 然而在英汉文化中它们有着各自不同的表达方式。

本文通过深入地分析五组对应关系的本土化英汉恭维语及其答语的异同,
探究了中英跨文化交际方面的语用差异, 并且提出了5条行之有效的防止学生出现跨文化语用失误的教学策略,希望对其它英语教师有所裨益。

【关键词】跨文化语用学恭维语及其答语教学策略
on a cross-cultural pragmatic analysis of compliments in english and chinese
zhang mei
【abstract】compliments as an expressive speech act are a universal social-linguistic phenomenon; however they have their own expressive ways in american and chinese culture respectively. this paper mainly probes into such
cross-cultural pragmatic differences by analyzing five groups of parallel dialogues about how native speakers giving and responding to compliments in american and chinese own cultures. five effective teaching tips to avoid students’cross-cultural pragmatic failure are given afterwards.
hopefully, it is helpful to other english teachers.
【key words】ccp, compliments and responses, teaching tips
1.background theory
pragmatics is defined by yule (1996) as “the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms” (p. 4), in other words, it is the study of meaning derived from context, dealing with particular utterances in particular situations (richards & rodgers, 1986). and the part dealing with cross-cultural interaction is usually termed “cross-cultural pragmatics” (clyne, 1994). kasper and blum-kulka (1993) define cross-cultural pragmatics (ccp) as the study of linguistic acts performed by language users with different cultural backgrounds.
one area that has contributed immensely to cross-cultural pragmatics is speech acts. austin (1962) initiated speech act theory, with the belief of “saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons” (p.101)
this paper will narrow the scope down to one particular expressive speech act of compliments and try to examine how complicated and confusing such speech act is in the
cross-cultural contexts.
2.examples and discussion
with the major function of establishing and maintaining social “rapport”(manes & wolfson, 1981:124) and smoothness between participants, compliments are positive expression or evaluation directed to someone for something valued positively by the speaker and the hearer, and even the whole speech community (holmes, 1986; ye, 1995). it can be expressed either explicitly or implicitly according to different contexts and different cultures, thus, this section will focus on diversities of such a culturally-constrained speech act- compliments, made by americans and chinese respectively and a discussion of the causes to these similarities and differences will be given afterwards.
five groups of parallel dialogues are typical examples about how native speakers giving and responding to compliments in american and chinese own cultures.
group 1:
example 1: (american way)
a: you did a good job
b: thank you. (yang & li, 2001: 86)
example 2:(chinese way)
a: 我要能像你那么能干就好了。

b: 噢，没有，我还差的远呢。

(liu, 2007: 109)
group 2:
example 3: (american way)
a:i love your skirt, it’s really nice.
b: i ‘ m glad you like it.
example 4: (chinese way)
a: 你穿这条裙子真漂亮。

b: 真的吗？它才花了我50块。

(liu, 2007: 109－110)
group 3:
example 5: (american way)
a: your french is very good
b: well my listening is not bad, but i still have problem with speaking.
(pu, 2001: 122)
example 6: (chinese way)
a: 你的英语真棒，的确是非常流利。

b: 哪里，哪里，我的英语挺糟糕的。

(shi, 2004: 58)
group 4:
example 7: american way
a: you’re looking well!
b: thanks. so are you!(billmyer, 1990:36)
example 8: (chinese way)
a: 你看起来气色真不错。

b: 还可以啦，这都是托您的福 (chen, 2003: 172)
group 5
example 9: (american way)
a: it’s delicious!
b: oh, i am so glad that you liked it. i cook it especially for you.
(liu, 2007: 108)
example 10: (chinese way)
a: 他们都说你菜做的不错，果然名不虚传。

〖jp4〗b:您太抬举我了，随便做了几个菜，不好吃。

(liu, 2004: 9)〖jp〗
from the above examples, it can be seen that:
when giving compliments
1) americans often use basic sentence structures like “pronoun + is + (really) + adjective” (example 7: you’re looking well; example 9: it’s delicious!); or noun phrase + is/look + (really) + adjective (example 5: your french is good), which are quite similar to chinese expressive way (example 8: your complexion looks very good; example 6: your english is excellent) because both american and chinese cultures value the truth from facts.
2) american ways of complimenting tend to be explicit: they prefer to praise people or objects directly by putting the first pronoun “i” at the beginning of the sentence to show it’s their personal opinions (example 3: i love your skirt). because americans are highly individualism-oriented, they value individual decision-making and also believe that frankness itself is the best compliments; chinese ways are more implicit: they seldom give compliments directly but either by agreeing with others’ comments (example 10: they all say that you cook very well, you really deserve such a reputation) or by using subjunctive mood (example 2: i wish i could do as well as you did) to show their recognition. on the surface, these two ways violate the maxims of “quantity”and “manner”but it’s also acceptable because chinese are collectivism-oriented, collectivism is highly appreciated and consequently the collective opinions are more persuasive than personal views and in chinese tradition, modesty is a virtue, thus, chinese prefer to praise others in this way.
when responding to compliments:
1) pomerantz (1978) points out that responding to compliments is constrained by two seemingly contradictory conditions: “agree with the complimenter” and “avoid
self-praise” (p. 81-82). in most cases, when being complimented, americans would readily accept the compliment by saying something like “thank you” (c.f. example 1) or “i’ m so glad you like it…” (c.f. example 3 & 9) to show their appreciations to the praise, but oppositely, chinese people often negate the given praise by saying “no，no”(c.f. example 6), “oh，no, i really haven’t done enough “(c.f. example 2) and “you are over-praising me”(c.f. example 10), even when they know they deserve the credit or recognition that awarded them. obviously, such answers disobey the maxim of “quality” but it also meets chinese tradition of being humble and reserved.
2) it’s not true that americans accept compliments completely all the time and sometimes, chinese also accept compliments but with some modification, therefore,both of them take some responding strategies (pomerantz, 1978): scale-down agreement (example 5: well my listening is not bad, but i still have problem with speaking.)，down-grades (example 4: really? it cost me only fifty yuan.), reassignment of praise (example 8: it’s ok. it is all due to your blessing.) and return (example 7: thanks. so are you!)
in conclusion, compliments as an expressive speech act are a universal social-linguistic
phenomenon but has its own expressive ways in american and chinese culture respectively. the above five groups of examples show that apart from partial similarities, compliments of american ways and chinese ways are significantly different from giving to replying compliments and though being polite is preferred universally, the connotation of politeness might vary across culture: americans are being polite by accepting and showing appreciation of the compliment, avoiding hurting the positive face of the person who makes it; while in chinese society, modesty is invaluable virtue and the conceptualization of face is not an individual aspect of face but a public, communal image, which is determined by the participation of others, thus, chinese prefer to show politeness by denigrating oneself. within each culture there are acceptable ways to “deliberately”violate maxims because nothing is absolute. in a word, speech acts are”dependent on shared beliefs and values of the speech community coded into communicative patterns, and thus can not be interpreted apart from social and cultural context” (saville-troike, 1982:44).
3.implications for the classroom
based on the above examples and discussion, it is clear that where there are different cultures, there are different languages and different speech acts (wierzbicka, 2003). however, traditional ways of chinese efl teaching which value the memorization of language symbols and that of grammar rules and mechanical pattern drills, etc. fail to balance learners’ language proficiency and pragmatic competence, which may result in various cases of pragmatic failure. since cultural divergence is the original reason for the pragmatic failure, efl teachers in the chinese context, have the responsibility to teach the students both the forms of the language and its social functions. the suggestions will be given in five aspects as follows:
1. choosing teaching materials with more information on cross-cultural communication
2.integrating culture teaching into language class
3.helping learners develop the right attitude toward another culture
4. employing useful activities/tasks for promoting cross-culturally pragmatic development.
5.teachers’ development on pragmatic competence
knowledge
in a word, a competent language teacher should not only just stress on linguistic competence but try every means to enhance students’ cross-culturally pragmatic competence as well.
references:
［1］ austin, j. l. (1962). how to do things with words.
oxford: clarendon press.
［2］chen, s. h. (2003). compliment response strategies in mandarin chinese: politeness phenomenon revisited. concentric: studies in english literature and linguistics,
29, 157-184.
［3］ liu, l. p. (2007). differences mirrored in adjacent pairs of compliments and responses concerned. journal of ning
bo university (educational science), 29, 107-110.
［4］ pomerantz, a. (1978). compliment responses: notes on the cooperation of multiple constraints, in j. schenkein. (ed.), studies in the organization of conversational
interaction, pp. 79-112. new york: academic press.
［5］thomas, j. (1983). cross-cultural pragmatic failure.
applied linguistics, 4, 91-112.
［6］ yang, j. & li, f. (2001). cross-cultural comparison of compliment——response in english and chinese. journal of youjiang teachers college for nationalities guangxi, 14,
84-87.
［7］ yule, g. (1996). pragmatics, in h.g. widdowson (ed.), oxford introductions to language study. oxford: oxford
university press.。