LSEL 11: Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and Interlanguage English

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and Interlanguage English

Bettina Kraft & Ronald Geluykens (eds.)
University of Southampton, University of Oldenburg

In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of research in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics. The present collection of papers focuses on the pragmatics of interlanguage English, a focus which is justified by the growing importance of English as a global lingua franca as well as by the fact that, in cross-cultural contexts, English is now predominantly used by EFL or interlanguage users rather than by native speakers. The volume also discusses methodological and terminological issues (and problems) in contrastive, interlanguage, intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics

A lot of work in interlanguage pragmatics has traditionally been speech act based; some of the papers in this volume follow this tradition and examine the realization of speech acts such as requests, apologies, complaints, and threat responses. Others investigate the use of interlanguage English (and, in a few cases, French) in a variety of interactional contexts. Such contexts include controlled elicitation procedures (e.g. interviews, role plays) as well as spontaneous conversational interactions.

In short, the collection explores a variety of data collection methods as well as examining a wide range of linguistic phenomena in the field of interlanguage pragmatics (intonation, coherence devices, word order, speech acts). Additionally, a number of methodologies are employed in the various papers (relevance theory, conversation analysis, speech act theory).

This book thus offers a representative overview of the current ‘state of the art’ in cross-cultural pragmatics in general, and the pragmatics of interlanguage English in particular.

Contents

PART I: Theoretical Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Pragmatics
1. Defining Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Pragmatics (Bettina Kraft and Ronald Geluykens)
2. On Methodology in Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (Ronald Geluykens)
3. Extending the Scope of Inquiry in Interlanguage Pragmatics: The Case of Focus Constructions (Marcus Callies)
4. Integrating Relevance: An Evaluation of Theoretical Accounts for the Acquisition of Pragmatic Abilities in a Second Language (Beatriz De Paiva)

PART II: Investigating Face-Threatening Acts through Production Questionnaires
5. Variation in British and American English Requests: A Contrastive Analysis (Anja Breuer and Ronald Geluykens)
6. Gender-Based Differences in English Apology Realizations (Eva Ogiermann)
7. Gender Variation in Native and Interlanguage Complaints (Ronald Geluykens and Bettina Kraft)
8. Investigating Preference Organization and Social Variation through Questionnaires: TheCase of Threat Responses (Holger Limberg and Ronald Geluykens)

PART III: Investigating Discourse Phenomena in Interactional Data
9. Intensifiers in the Responses of Native and Non-Native Speakers to Evaluating Questions (Aart Pouw)
10. Coherence Devices in the Englishes of Speakers in the Expanding Circle (Christiane Meierkord)
11. Discourse Patterns in Intercultural Conversations (Winnie Cheng)
12. Tone Choice in the English Intonation of Finns (Juhani Toivanen)

List of Contributors (in alphabetical order)

Anja Breuer (formerly at University of Muenster, Germany)
Marcus Callies (Univerity of Marburg, Germany)
Winnie Cheng (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)
Beatriz De Paiva (Heriot Watt University, UK)
Ronald Geluykens (University of Oldenburg, Germany)
Bettina Kraft (University of Southampton, UK)
Holger Limberg (University of Oldenburg, Germany)
Christiane Meierkord (University of Muenster, Germany)
Eva Ogiermann (University of Oldenburg, Germany)
Aart Pouw (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
Juhani Toivanen (University of Oulu, Finland)

ISBN 9783895867767. LINCOM Studies in English Linguistics 11. 260pp. 2007.