Studies of Negative Pragmatic Transfer in Interlanguage Pragmatics

Studies on Negative Pragmatic Transfer in Interlanguage Pragmatics

Shaozhong Liu

Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, 541004, China

Abstract: Transfer is a pervasive term and this has led to diverse interpretations and research practices of it. This paper reviewed the related literature on transfer studies in second language acquisition, linguistic studies and non-linguistic. It also made a survey about approaches in transfer studies, native speakers attitudes toward transfer, and transfers made by Chinese learners of English. It was argued that transfer research evolved from a linguistic-to- non-linguistic path, and there is a necessity in the current trend to shift from the former to the latter.

Keywords: transfer, linguistic transfer, pragmatic transfer, second language acquisition

What is negative pragmatic transfer?

As was mentioned in Section 1.1, transfer to pragmaticians means difference of use due to NL influence. And to understand what is different, a preliminary step was to sort out similarities and differences between languages and the use of these languages. The effort to study how non-native speakers understand and realize a speech act in the TL has spiraled into a tradition identified as the study of pragmatic universals. As many as 11 speech acts have been covered to date: requests, suggestions, invitations, refusals, expressions of disagreement, corrections, complaints, apologies, expression of gratitude, compliments and indirect answers (Kasper, 1992).Kasper (1995) focused on pragmatic transfer and defined it as the influence exerted by learners pragmatic knowledge of languages and cultures other than L2 on their comprehension, production, and acquisition of L2 pragmatic information (Kasper, 1992; 1995).

2.1 Role of negative pragmatic transfer in interlanguage pragmatic studies

The study of the learner language has been a growing source of concern also in pragmatics in recent years. The pragmatic perspective toward the learner language led to the birth of a new interdiscipline, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP).

As the main focus of pragmatics is to examine how an utterance meaning is perceived, interlanguage pragmatics mainly concerns with how non-native speakers differ from native speakers in interpreting and producing a speech act in the TL. To find out the differences, ILP researchers will base their studies on collected data. The first issue they will tackle is the range of difference between non-natives and natives in performing and comprehending a speech act. On this basis, they will proceed to the contextual distribution of such differences, strategies in target language use, linguistic forms used for conveying an idea in the target language, illocutionary meanings and politeness (Blum-Kulka et al, 1989; Kasper, 1992; Takahashi, 1990). All this is related to transfer in one way or another.

The relatedness of transfer is also apparent in current issues of ILP research. For instance, one of the topics of immediate research interest in ILP nowadays is to investigate language universals underlying cross-linguistic variation and its role in ILP. The sorting out of language universals naturally helps us find out what is a negative pragmatic transfer. Measuring approximation of the learners language to TL norms is another current topic. Placing the learner language against the TL norm also helps us to find out the difference between the learner language and the target language and similarity between the learner language and the learners native language. Another current research topic in ILP is to study NL influence on the learning of TL. This is direct topic addressing the transfer issue (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; He Ziran, 1996; Liu Shaozhong, 1997d). It is not hard to see the importance of pragmatic transfer in all these research topics.

2.2 Contrastive studies of speech acts

A host of transfer-related studies have been documented. These cross-cultural examinations were conducted with a view to find out how non-native speakers, due to their NL influence, differ from native speakers in understanding and realizing a particular speech act.

Cohen & Olshtain (1981) studied how Hebrew learners of English as L2 did things with their interlanguage of English, and discovered that the nonnative use of apology semantic formula was generally fewer than that of the native English speakers. By this, the study displayed the transfer of Hebrew features into the realization of apology making.

Olshtain (1983) also attempted at finding the degree and types of transfer among some English and Russian speaking learners of Hebrew as L2. Her elicitation questionnaire on apology of eight situations showed that English learners percentage of apology making was the highest, and next was that by the Russians, with that by the Hebrews the lowest. She further illustrated this tendency in another similar test among the Hebrew IL of English-speaking learners.

Different from Olshtain, Scarcella (1983) (cited in Kasper, 1992) specifically examined the discourse accent of some Spanish-speaking English learners. She found the communicative style of her informants comparable to those in their native language Spanish. Thus Scarcella claimed that Spanish learners of English as a second language (ESL) shifted what was conceived of as communicatively appropriate L1 styles into English.

House (1988) echoed Scarcella by executing her study among her German students learning British English. In apology realization, these German-speaking learners of English were observed to have transplanted their German communicative styles, for these learners were less inclined to use routine apology expressions such as sorry as by the British.

Garcia (1989) replicated a study among some Venezuelan Spanish speakers on the realization of the apology speech act. Different from the above studies, Garcias interest was to uncover whether the learners transfer their L1 politeness style in the role-play situations. Her findings were that the Venezuelans used more positive politeness strategies by saying something nice so as to express their friendliness or good feelings, while the native Spanish speakers applied more negative styles such as self-effacing.

Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz (1990) initiated a study among the Japanese learners of English as a second language concerning the making of refusals. The difference detected was apparent in that Japanese ESL learners conceptualized the necessity of stressing the status difference in interactions, while the Americans denied the existence of such differences even if such differences indeed existed.

In an exploration about politeness orientation among the Japanese ESL learners, Takahashi and Beebe (1993) reported that the Japanese turned to reject positive remarks in situation where the Americans favored them; and that the Japanese employed formulaic expressions, whereas the Americans denied them.

Takahashi & Beebes (1993) studied the performance of correction by Japanese ESL learners. In their article entitled Cross-linguistic influence in the speech act of correction, Takahashi & Beebe (1993:138-157) reported that the Japanese learners shifted styles from Japanese in the selection of strategies. In their previous studies on face-threatening acts carried out by the same groups of native and nonnative speakers, the authors pointed out the learners distinctive patterns of style shifting according to interlocutor status. Focusing on the modification of corrections by means of positive remarks and softeners, the Japanese learners style-shifting patterns were clearly influenced by transfer from Japanese. While Japanese learners, reflecting native sociopragmatic norms, shifted more styles than American respondents in performing refusing, contracting, and disagreeing. However, this study indicated dramatic style shifting in the American speakers use of positive remarks. Their prevalent use of positive remarks in the high-low condition, which was not matched by the Japanese learners or Japanese native speakers, provided more evidence of a positive politeness orientation in American interaction, and greater emphasis on status congruence in Japanese conversational behavior. The study also supported Beebe & Takahashis earlier claim that pragmatic transfer prevailed in higher proficiency learners.

Blum-Kulka (1982; 1983) investigated request realization by English learners of Hebrew as L2. She discovered that English learners of Hebrew negatively transferred their pragmalinguistic forms into the Hebrew ability (can you) questions, and in the choice of directness levels in request realization. The former case reflected the learners inability to convey the pragmatic force, while the latter displayed that where the Hebrew context demanded more directness, the learners preferred indirect strategies. However, for imperative questions, ability questions, why not questions and Do you mind if forms, English learners of Hebrew successfully transferred the cross-linguistically shared strategies. Thus, Blum-Kulka concluded that apparent similarity in form and function across languages did not hold for all contexts.

Olshtain (1983) repeated Blum-Kulkas study by looking into a particular semantic formula. Like Blum-Kulka, she also took as her informants the English learners of Hebrew. She detected that English learners were habitual to map the English semantic formulas into Hebrew when expressing apology and offering repairs, which was not preferred in Hebrew under the same speech situation. This study thus provided further evidences for her previous studies (Oshtain, 1981) and Olshtain & Cohen (1989).

By DCT (dialog completion test) technique, House & Kasper (1987) launched a CCSARP (cross-linguistic speech acts realization patterns) Project with a focus on mainly the German and Danish learners of British English for the purpose of locating deviations in the choice of directness levels in five request situations. They discovered that, among other things, both German and Danish learners of British English deviated from the British norm and followed their L1 norms in the choice of directness of the request in two of the five situations. For example, these L2 learners turned to use direct imperatives, while the British used less direct preparatory questions. Besides, in terms of internal and external modifications, analyses of the data suggested that negative pragmalinguistic transfer should be observed in that both learners use fewer syntactic downgraders. Finally, transfer operated differently between these two groups of learners in that more supportive moves by the Danish learners of English were identified in cases where the German learners of English employed frequently consultative devices.

Trosborg (1987) conducted another study among the Danish learners of English relative to apology realization by way of role-play technique. In spite of the fact that he did not find any clear cases of negative L1 pragmalinguistic transfer, yet he discovered certain evidences showing a direction in the frequency of apology semantic formulas identical to Danish native speakers.

House (1988) showed that her German students of English over-used the formal L2 equivalent of excuse me in cases which did not entail needs for apologetic acts. This was due to the fact that in German the high rate of using Entschuldgen (=excuse me) was wholesome acceptable.

By observing the speech act realization of request, Faerch & Kasper (1989) probed into the internal and external modifications among Danish learners of English and German as against respectively the English and German speakers. They reported that the Danish learners turned to map formally the Danish modal verbs and consultative device into their L2 of English and German. In addition, the Danish learners were speculated to be following the Danish negation rule in realizing requests in German.

The Japanese heavily utilized indirect strategies in their speech. Takahashi & Dufon (1989) carried out a test just to examine whether Japanese learners of English as L2 would negatively transfer their pragmalinguistic features in the case of request strategy. Role-play was used, and it was displayed that the transfer had much association with specific goals of interaction. In cases with a strong desire for something, the Japanese depended on more directness strategies than the Americans do; while in cases when a desire was implicit, they used fewer indirect request strategies than the Americans.

DeCapua (1989) studied the choice of directness level. Her German learners of English as L2 were assigned to do five service-counter situational interactions concerning complaints. She showed that the German learners often directly transferred linguistic forms identical to their German into English.

Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz (1990) specifically explored into the use frequency of excuse among the Japanese learners of English as L2. They reported that, in terms of variables such as place, time, and parties, the Japanese, different from the Americans, seemed less specific in pleading for an excuse. However, in the speech act of refusals, the Japanese appeared to pose more frequency of negative pragmalinguistic transfer. Thus it was concluded that the chance of negatively transferring a pragmalinguistic feature into the TL was determined by the contents of semantic formula.

Bergman & Kasper (1993) scrutinized apology realization by Thai learners of English by means of 20 DCT situations. The result demonstrated that 50% of the responses cluster on the transfer side. Among these transfer features the Thai learners mapped into English included six situations of the Thai verbal redress.

Up till now, the following speech acts have been investigated cross-linguistically: request (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; House & Kasper, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; Takahashi & Dufon, 1989), complaint (DeCapua, 1989), and apology (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Olshtain, 1983; Trosborg, 1987; House, 1988; Garcia, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990; Bergman & Kasper, 1993), refusal (Beebe et al, 1990), and correction (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993). Besides, some other non-linguistic factors, such as discourse accent (Scarcella, 1983) and politeness orientation and styles (Takahashi & Beebe, 1993) were also scrutinized.

Subjects examined ranged from the English learners of Hebrew as TL (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; Olshtain, 1983), the German learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; House, 1988; DeCapua, 1989), the Danish learners of English (House & Kasper, 1987; Trosborg, 1987; Faerch & Kasper, 1989), the Japanese learners of English as TL (Takahashi & Dufon, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990), the Hebrew (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981), the Russian (Olshtain, 1983), the German (House, 1988), the Spanish (Scarcella, 1983), the Venezuelan (Garcia, 1989), and the Japanese (Beebe et al, 1990; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993), and the Thai learners of ESL (Bergman & Kasper, 1993). So in spite of the fact that the above studies were but indirect studies, yet they displayed some of the negative pragmatic transfer features in the learners language. Studies of speech act realization have at least highlighted ILP research in five ways: first, these reports suggested that even quite proficient learners tended to have less control over the conventions of forms and means used by native speakers in the performance of linguistic action. Second, there were differences between learners and native speakers sociopragmatic perceptions of comparable speech events that were systematically related to differences in their speech act performance. Third, pragmatic transfer at the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic levels persisted at higher levels of proficiency. Fourth, learners produced more speech than native speakers did when the task was less demanding on their control skills. Fifth, researchers should pay close attention to the constraints of different data collection instruments on learners performance (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993:63).

2.3 Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfers

Now we have some knowledge from the related studies of transfer in speech acts. But in terms of types, what has been transferred from his NL in interpreting and producing a speech act in the TL? This has evolved into an attractive question.

The first attempt at a classification of negative pragmatic transfer was attributed to Kasper (1992) who held that pragmatic transfer manifested itself in two ways or categories, namely pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic.

Both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic are terms derived from Leechs (1983:10~11) treatment towards the scope of pragmatics and which Thomas (1983) picked up in classifying the types of pragmatic failure. Pragmalinguistics, in Leechs (1983) definition, refers to our linguistic knowledge of language use, and sociopragmatics is related with how our sociological knowledge influences our interaction.

Kasper (1992) saw it fit to introduce both terms to categorize the learners pragmatic transfer, for she remarked that Leechs (1983) distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, applied by Thomas (1983) to identify two major types of pragmatic failure, is equally suitable to broadly separate the two main loci of pragmatic transfer (Kasper, 1992:208).

A pragmalinguistic transfer is the influence of the learners knowledge about the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to particular linguistic form-functions in NL, which, when mapped by learners into the perception and production of a similar situation in TL, sounds different to native speakers. In Kaspers words, it is the process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to a particular linguistic material in NL influences learners perception and production of form-function mappings in TL (Kasper, 1992:209).

By a sociopragmatic transfer, it is a process operative when the social perceptions underlying language users interpretation and performance of linguistic action in TL are influenced by their assessment of subjectively equivalent NL contexts (Kasper, 1992:209).

Accordingly, it can be inferred from Kaspers dichotomous division of pragmatic transfer that negative pragmatic transfer also has two corresponding types. The first type is negative pragmalinguistic pragmatic transfer, and the other, negative sociopragmatic transfer.

Kaspers dichotomous treatment of pragmatic transfer, both positive and negative, seems to have embodied two considerations. First, by putting some of the pragmatic transfers under the category of pragmalinguistics, a due consideration has been attached to the internal linguistic features of a pragmatic transfer, and similarly, an inclusion of sociopragmatic transfer has given a due consideration to the social or communicative feature a pragmatic transfer takes. That seems a sound treatment and that is why her classification of pragmatic transfer, positive and negative, has never been challenged since 1992 and in fact her classification has been taken as a framework in pragmatic transfer studies.

Negative pragmalinguistic transfer has been documented in a host of studies focusing on mainly three speech acts request (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983; House and Kasper, 1987; Faerch and Kasper, 1989; Takahashi and Dufon, 1989), complaint (DeCapua, 1989), and apology (Cohen and Olshtain, 1981; Olshtain, 1983; Trosborg, 1987; House, 1988; Beebe et al, 1990; Bergman and Kasper, 1993).

Mother tongue-based pragmalinguistic forms such as the can you question form was also observed into the making of an ability (can you) question, displaying the learners inability to convey the pragmatic force (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983). Besides, mother tongue directness strategies were also transferred into the making of a request, manifesting the learners NL pragmatic preference in using indirect strategies in situations where the Hebrew as a TL demands more directness (Blum-Kulka, 1982; 1983). A similar observation was made among the Danish and German learners of British English (House and Kasper, 1987) and the direct German linguistic forms in realizing the speech act of complaint in English (DeCapua, 1989). Further reports showed that the level of directness or indirectness is associated with the level of desire for something among the Japanese (Takahashi and Dufon, 1989; Beebe et al, 1990). In cases with a strong desire for something, the Japanese depend on more directness strategies than the Americans do, while under cases when a desire is implicit, they incline to less indirect request strategies than the Americans (Takahashi and Dufon, 1989).

Then over-use of the excuse me expression was found among the German learners, showing a high rate of German influence (House, 1988). In a cross-cultural study (Olshtain, 1983), it was found that the frequency differences of apology making, with the English the highest, followed by the Russians and the Hebrews the lowest. However, the Japanese influence in the frequency of excuse me among the Japanese learners was found to be subject to situations and certain variables. In terms of time, place and parties, the Japanese learners use less pleadings than the Americans, while in making refusals, the Japanese use more pleadings (Beebe et al, 1990). All these reports display that non-native speakers negative pragmalinguistic transfers took either a semantic form mapping or a formal mapping.

Negative sociopragmatic transfers were also found to operate in Venezuelan politeness styles into Spanish (Garcia, 1989) and Japanese status difference in making refusals (Beebe et al, 1990) were documented. The Japanese were found rejecting positive remarks and using formulaic expressions in politeness orientation (Takahashi and Beebe, 1993) and modifying corrections by means of positive remarks and softeners (Takahashi and Beebe, 1993).

In addition, various forms of NL-TL communicative style-mappings were detected. Scarcella (1983) showed that learners transferred from Spanish (NL) and German (NL) their acquainted communicative styles into English. These communicative styles were neither pragmalinguistic nor sociopragmatic transfers.

Hence it seems that Kaspers division of negative pragmatic transfer needs expanding in order to incorporate those NL-based communicative styles. After all, her division was footed on two terms discussing the scope of pragmatics (Leech, 1983) and pragmatic failure (Thomas, 1983), and transfer, pragmatics, and pragmatic failure treat different entities.

2.4 Conditions of negative pragmatic transfer

2.4.1 Transferability

The condition of transfer occurrence was technically referred to as transferability (Kasper, 1992). Takahashi (1995:11) observed three dimensions of transferability in SLA research, namely the study on the developmental sequence of transferability, linguistic markedness, and non-surface form transfer. And these three dimensions, Takahashi further indicates, are usually approached in interlanguage pragmatics research from the perspective of psycholinguistics (Olshtain, 1983; Olshtain and Cohen, 1983; 1989; House and Kasper 1987; Kasper, 1981; Bodman and Eisenstein, 1988; Robinson, 1992; cited in Takahashi, 1995, pp.46-49).

In her Transferability of indirect request strategies, Takahashi (1992:69-124; 1993:50-83) made an explicit investigation on transferability of five indirectness strategies realized by the conventions of usage of Japanese indirect requests when Japanese learners of English realized English indirect requests in four situations. Takahashi used informants representing two proficiency groups: beginning-intermediate level students, considered as low ESL group, and advanced students, high ESL group. They were presented with an acceptability judgment task for five indirect request expressions in respectively Japanese and English for each situation. The transferability rate was computed for each strategy for each situation by subtracting the acceptability rate of the English indirect request from the acceptability rate of the corresponding Japanese indirect request. The obtained transferability rate was considered as the psycholinguistic markedness of each strategy, which determined its language-specificity or neutrality. This study manifested that contextual factors play a major role in determining transferability at the pragmatic level. The results also displayed that some proficiency effected on the transferability of those indirectness strategies. Following the initial findings, further attempts were made to explore the type of contextual factors that were most likely to affect transferability, and to expound the relationship between the proficiency effects on the transferability of the indirectness strategies.

The transferability of the five indirectness strategies realized by the Japanese learners of English was further discussed in Takahashi (1995). The study showed that the Japanese learners differentially transferred the Japanese indirectness strategies. Furthermore, Takahashi detected that the transferability of each L1 request strategy was determined by the interaction between politeness and conventionality perceived in each strategy and the degree of mitigation required in each imposition context. In addition, the transferability rate was influenced by the proficiency factor. However, there was not a definite tendency for a positive correlation or for a negative one between L1 transfer and proficiency.

2.4.2 TL pragmatic proficiency and its relation to negative pragmatic transfer

Concerning the function of the learners fluent TL pragmatic knowledge in negative pragmatic transfer, two views were presented. Takahashi and Beebe (1987; 1993) held that TL proficiency was positively related with pragmatic transfer. In other words, the more highly proficient learners had control over TL to express the NL native speakers sentiments at the pragmatic level, the more likely they would transfer their NL sociocultural norms than low proficient learners. They claimed that their hypothesis was rested on the observation of some proficient Japanese ESL learners who used more typically Japanese formal tones in refusing in TL. Their findings were supported by Maeshiba et al (1996).

An opposite view was proposed by Takahashi & Dufon (1989), Robinson (1992) and Takahashi (1996). Takahashi & Dufon (1989) displayed that beginning-level Japanese learners of ESL were similar to the Japanese control group with an NL-based pattern of bimodal distribution of indirectness. Advanced students, on the other hand, were found not to transfer the Japanese hinting strategies and thus posed more directness strategies in their IL requests. Robinson (1992) made similar conclusion about her informants realization of refusals. She reported that her lower and higher proficient Japanese ESL learners were both aware of the differences in appropriate American and Japanese situations of the speech act. However, the lower proficient students were more influenced by their NL refusal style, whereas the more proficient learners knew how to apply the rules of English in doing the discourse completion test (DCT) items on refusals. Another more recent challenge for Takahashi & Beebe (1987; 1993) came from Takahashi (1996) who reported that the distribution of negative pragmatic transfers was conditioned by the imposition and form of request. As for the role of TL pragmatic proficiency in negative pragmatic transfer, it was found that a learner with advanced pragmatic knowledge about TL would not be likely to commit more transfers (Takahashi, 1992; 1993).

2.4.3 Sociopsychological factors and their relation to the occurrence of negative pragmatic transfer

Sociopsychological factors are of many facets. The one that was considered by researchers was the assessment or acceptability norm widely held in the native language community.

Blum-Kulka (1991) (cited in Takahashi, 1995:52-53) analyzed the relationship between length of residence and certain speech acts among some American immigrants to Israel. Although Blum-Kulkas study failed to bring up substantial findings regarding the effect a sociopsychological factor had on pragmatic transfer, she claimed that American immigrants differed significantly from both American and Israeli speech act patterns. They created some IL-specific cultural identity and, as a consequence, intercultural patterns of their own. Similar reports were found in Blum-Kulka & Sheffer (1993). Thus, research findings suggested that the sociopsychological factor did not affect the making of negative pragmatic transfers (Maeshiba et al, 1996).

2.4.4 Educational factors and their relationship to the occurrence of negative pragmatic transfer

Among the educational factors, the learning-context effect in relation to the distribution was investigated. Takahashi and Beebe (1987) and Beebe et al (1990) respectively examined the making of refusals by Japanese ESL and EFL learners. It was pointed out in both studies that while transfer occurred in both ESL and EFL learners, more evidences emerged in the context of EFL than ESL.

2.5 Native speakers attitudes towards negative pragmatic transfer

Potential effect of conversational styles was indicated in the research findings by interactional sociolinguists (Erickson & Shultz, 1982; Gumperz, 19982; Scollon & Scollon, 1983; Tannen, 1985), and a neutral attitude towards the issue of negative pragmatic transfer was called for (Kasper, 1992:209).

Chinese learners performance data, for instance, were discussed. Related studies first identified the learners pragmatic failure under Thomass (1983) dichotomous framework (Yan Zhuang, 1985; Mao Weili, 1986; Huang Cidong, 1984; He Ziran & Yan Zhuang, 1986; He Ziran, 1988; Duan Kaicheng, 1987) or cultural shocks or cross-cultural communicational breakdowns (Maley, 1988; Ouyang, 1988; Oatey, 1988). On this basis, native speakers attitude towards the learners pragmatic failure was attempted.

He Ziran (1991), for example, discussed the role of empathy in native and non-native speakers communications. He thus reported how native speakers empathy affected their judgment on Chinese learners pragmatic failures. Chen Feng (1992:69) also approached the potential effect of a transferred feature of use by looking into native speakers tolerance for pragmatic failures by Chinese learners of English and reported that native speakers do give empathy to Chinese learners ways of speaking.

Li Jie (1992) tackled the issue by focusing on the linguistic deviations and how native speakers viewed these deviated linguistic forms. He reported that native speakers hold tolerance towards some pragmatic failures items by Chinese students at different levels under different contexts, some can simply not be tolerated, some can be highly tolerated while some can be tolerated to a certain degree.

A more recent study was Chen Linhans (1996) investigation on native speakers comprehension on certain expressions from Chinas mostly widely read English newspaper, China Daily. The study indicated that some very commonly-used expressions in this highly prestige newspaper are not well understood by the English natives or posed difficulty in understandings to various degree. Different from the above practice, Yu Feixia (1995) made a comparison into the politeness strategies and speech patterns between native speakers and Chinese learners in realizing the speech acts of request and suggestion. She reported that compared with native speakers politeness strategies for realizing the speech act of request and suggestion, Chinese students are more straightforward instead of roundabout in their linguistic action, and leave an impression of being abrupt, bossy, and domineering(Yu Feixia, 1995:54).

2.6 Summary

The reviewed limited literature so far suggests (i) that related studies have compared or contrasted how non-native speakers differed from native speakers due to their mother-tongue influences in the realization of speech acts in the TL;

(ii) that the related studies attempted to discuss issues pertaining to the identification of differences, typification of the transferred features, conditions of transfer-occurrences, and possible effects of such transfers.

(iii) that Kaspers attempt to divide pragmatic transfers into pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfers were helpful in describing the learners transfer data. At the same time, the dichotomous division was unable to account for the communicative styles in the learners interlanguage data.

(iv) that explicit studies of negative pragmatic transfer in interlanguage pragmatics have been few in spite of the apparent role of negative pragmatic transfer in interlanguage pragmatics.

2. 7 Aims of the present study and hypotheses

In spite of the above findings, our knowledge about negative pragmatic transfer is limited in that almost all cited literature under review based their finding claims on the survey of a single speech act. In addition, all the conclusions of comparison and contrasting were not explicit studies of negative pragmatic transfer. The related findings were mostly by-the-way claims of studies in speech acts, thus they provided us but an incomplete scene of the landscape of negative pragmatic transfer. As a result, we are not clear about what has been transferred, how the transfer takes place and how native speakers view our students negative pragmatic transfers (Kasper, 1992).

In terms of the contents of negative pragmatic transfer, we displayed in Section 1.2.4 that Kaspers dichotomous division was inadequate because it was unable to describe certain data.

With regards to how transfer takes place, we observed in Section 2.4 the significance in looking into those factors, social, psychological and educational. However we think it even more basic, for the sake of theory and practice, to look into the relationships between the learners levels, length of TL learning and negative pragmatic transfer.

Concerning the communicative effect of the learner language, relevant studies were driving at how native speakers perceive pragmatic failures and deviations. There has been no explicit studies exploring negative pragmatic transfer.

The limited related literature of negative pragmatic transfer and the availability for the study of transfer thus provided the rationale for this study which specifically aimed to investigate the classification, distribution and communicative effects of the negative pragmatic transfers committed by Chinese learners.

By classification, we mean the grouping up of negative pragmatic transfers according to their features (Longman Dictionary of Contemparary English, LDCE, 191). By adult Chinese EFL learners, we mean the learners above 18 years of age, of a 4-year university program, and majoring in English as a foreign language.

By distribution, we mean the way in which the negative pragmatic transfers of a group are distributed (LDCE: 318).

Effect, according to LDCE (350), refers to the result produced on the mind or feelings. Hence, we are interested in finding out how negative pragmatic transfers by Chinese students of English will affect the minds and feelings of English native speakers.

Accordingly, we hold three hypotheses for the three research questions:

(1) We believe Chinese students of English display more than two types of negative pragmatic transfers. By this, we imply that Kaspers dichotomous division of negative pragmatic transfer is not able to account for all the data of negative pragmatic transfer by Chinese learners.

(2) Negative pragmatic transfers may be reduced along with the improvement of the students TL pragmatic knowledge. By pragmatic knowledge, we mean the formal classroom teaching and advice on how TL linguistic items are used. This does not imply any special treatment to the classes of different levels of the students.

(3) Since negative pragmatic transfers are divergent uses of a linguistic item in comparable situations from the TL norm, we hypothesize that native speakers may accept our learners negative pragmatic transfers.

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About the author: Shaozhong Liu (1963-), earned his Ph.D in 1997 in linguistics and applied linguistics, with a focus on pragmatics, at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has lectured widely, including being a 2-year visiting professor at Wake Forest University. He is now Professor of Linguistics and Dean of Foreign Languages Department, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, China. His research interests include linguistics and applied linguistics in general, and pragmatics in particular. He has been looking at issues in cognitive pragmatics (the Relevance Theory) and interlanguage pragmatics, especially cross-cultural production and comprehension of speech acts, and pragmatic transfers.

(Guangxi Normal University Journal, 2002/3)

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