Journalllllll April 2007 Vol2 Issue1

TheLinguisticsJournal
April2007 Volume2,Issue 1
Editors:Paul Robertson andJohnAdamson
PublishedbytheLinguisticsJournalPress
LinguisticsJournalPress ADivisionofTimeTaylorInternationalLtd TrustnetChambers P.O.Box3444 RoadTown,Tortola BritishVirginIslands http://www.linguisticsjournal.com LinguisticsJournalPress2007
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Editor:Dr.PaulRobertson SeniorAssociateEditor:Dr.JohnAdamson AssociateEditor:DarrenLingley
ISSN17381460
LinguisticsJournalVolume2Issue1
TableofContents:
ForewordbyJohnAdamson. 1.LarisaNikitinaandFumitakaFuruoka. BeliefsaboutLanguageLearning:AComparisonbetween NoviceandIntermediateLevelStudentsLearningRussianat aMalaysianUniversity 2.HessaAlFalasi. JustSayThankYou:AStudyofComplimentResponses 3. MohammadAliSalmaniNodoushan PolitenessMarkersinPersianRequestives 4. MohammadRezaTalebinezhadandGitiMousapourNegari. TheEffectofExplicitTeachingofConceptMappingin ExpositoryWritingonEFLStudentsSelfregulation 5.FarzanehKhodabandeh AContrastiveAnalysisofEnglishandPersianNewspaperHeadlines 6.DanielNkemleke Youwillcomewhen?Thepragmaticsofcertain questionsinCameroonEnglish 7.RaphiqIbrahim. DoesExposuretoSecondSpokenLanguage FacilitateWordReadingAbility? 8.YanWang. AFunctionalStudyoftheFinalParticlemono inJapaneseConversationalDiscourse 46 727
2842 4368 6990
91127 128142
143161
162183
Foreword Forthis first edition oftheLinguisticsJournal for2007wearepleasedtopresent eight articles.Congratulations to all the authors whose papers have been accepted. Interest in the journal has increased significantly from the end of 2006 and so the structure of the editorial board has been changed accordingly. Three new Associate Editors, Helmut Daller,JulianGoodandBiljanaCubrovichavebeenappointedtosupervisesubmissions andtherearenowmorethanthirtyfiveeditorsreviewingpapers.Letushopethishealthy situationforthejournalcontinues. ThefirstpaperbyLarisaNikitinaandFumitakaFuruokalooksatbeliefsaboutRussian language learning among novice and intermediate level students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) in Malaysia. Using an adapted selfreported questionnaire based on Horwitz (1988), Nikitina and Furuoka explore the similarities and differences between the two sets of learners. Their quantitative analysis concludes that the tenacity of learnersbeliefsdependsonwhetherthosebeliefswereshapedbythemicrocontext(the learning situation) or macrocontext, the former of which is less stable. The most malleable beliefs concern language aptitude, perceptions of how difficult learning is, andhowcommunicationandlearningstrategiesshouldbeused. Thesecondpapercomes fromHessaAlFalasiattheAmericanUniversity ofSharjah, intheUnitedArabEmirates.AlFalasisstudyinvestigatescomplimentresponsesamong mostly female Arabic learners of English, asking whether pragmatic transfer can occur. Using discourse completion tests (DCTs) and interviews to study the compliment response strategies by native speakers (NSs) and Arabic nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English,findingssuggestthatsomeL1pragmaticnormswereinfacttransferredoverto English usage. It is revealed that these norms are sometimes perceived by Arabic speakersasbeinguniversalinnature.AlFalasisstudystandsininterestingcontrasttoa Thaibasedstudypublishedinthe LinguisticsJournalJune2006editionbyPayungCedar.
The next paper is by Mohammad Ali SalmaniNodoushan from the University of Zanjan in IranwhoinvestigatespolitenessmarkersinPersianrequestives.Thisstudyvery muchcomplementsanarticlepublishedintheJanuary2006editionbyHamidAllamion griping. In Nodoushans study, the effects of 465 complainers' sex, age, perceived situational seriousness, and social class on the use of conversational strategies in their complainingbehaviorare observed.Twononparametrictestswere conducted,aMann WhitneyUTestandKruskalWallisHTest,theresultsof whichNodoushanrepresentsin aclineofsignificanceforeachoftheindependentvariablesinquestion. Mohammad Reza Talebinezhad and Giti Mousapour Negari, both from Isfahan University inIran,lookattheeffectofexplicitteachingofconceptmappinginexpository writing on Iranian EFL students selfregulation. This highly practical study employs Printrich et als (1991) questionnaire on motivation strategies for learning among sixty university students, divided into experimental and control groups. Findings reveal that conceptmappinghadapositiveeffectonthesubjectsunderinvestigation. Farzaneh Khodabandeh, from Mobarakeh Payameh Noor University in Iran, contrasts English and Persian newspaper headlines. Khodabandehs study employs Conversation Analysis to analyze the syntactic and lexical features in the headlines and reveals that thereweresimilaritiesintheuseofdynamicverbs,activevoice,shortwords,declarative sentences,finiteclauses,andsimplesentences.Differenceswereseenintheuseoftense forms,headlinetypes,modification,andomissionofwords. Daniel Nkemleke from the Technische Universitt Chemnitz in Germany looks at the pragmatic use ofquestionsinCameroonEnglish,particularlythespeechactofasking in informal contexts. 160 questions not conforming to native English categories of questionsinQuirketal(1985)wereidentifiedfromrecordeddataofCameroonianBantu home languages. The paper concludes that the interplay of syntax between English andhomelanguagesmayresultinthetypeofquestionformsfoundinthedata. Raphiq Ibrahim from the University of Haifa and Rambam Medical Center in Israel asks whether exposure to second spoken language facilitates word reading ability, the purposeofwhichistoprovidedirectevidenceofacausalroleforbilingualisminreading acquisition. Three groups of first graders of monolingual Hebrew speakers, bilingual RussianHebrew speakers and monolingual Arab speakers are observed in various
reading skills, the data of which is analyzed with oneway ANOVA and correlations to compare the reading speed, errors of text and measures of vocabulary between Hebrew and Arabic groups. Among the conclusions drawn is that early exposure to L2 has a positiveeffectonreadingability showingthatbilingualismisapowerfulpredictorofthe speedandeffieciencyofreadingacquisition. The final article based on the MA dissertation byYan Wang from the University of WisconsinMadison looks at a functional study of the final particle mono in Japanese conversationaldiscourse.Usingadiscourseanalyticapproach,theemploymentofmono insequence organizationandhowitshowsattitudestowardspropositionsandaddresses arebothexamined.Thisstudyillustrateshowthisparticlerevealsaspeakerssubjectivity andoperatesasamodalitymarkerinconversationaldiscourse. We hope you enjoy reading these articles in the Spring edition of the Linguistics Journalandlookforwardtoyourowncontributionsin2007.
JohnAdamson,Ed.D. SeniorAssociateEditor TheLinguisticsJournal
BeliefsaboutLanguageLearning: AComparisonbetweenNoviceandIntermediateLevelStudents LearningRussian ataMalaysianUniversity

LarisaNikitinaandFumitakaFuruoka UniversitiMalaysiaSabah,Malaysia BioData: LarisaNikitina(B.A.,M.A.)isalectureratUniversitiMalaysiaSabahwheresheteaches theRussianlanguage.Hercurrentresearchinterestfocusesontheaffectiveaspectsof languagelearningandthestudyoflanguagelearningmotivation. Fumitaka Furuoka (Ph.D.) teaches Economics at Universiti Malaysia Sabah. He is the author of numerous publications that employ quantitative analysis in various social sciencesfields.Hismostrecentmajorpublicationisthebookentitled NewChallengesfor Japan'sOfficialDevelopmentAssistance(ODA)Policy:HumanRights,Democracyand Aid Sanctions (Universiti Malaysia Sabah Press, 2006). Fumitaka Furuoka's research interestsincludethequantitativeanalysisand measurement ofpsychometricqualitiesof tools employed in the field of second language acquisition to assess learners' characteristics. Abstract Elaine Horwitzs influential research on the nature of students and teachers beliefs about language learning in the 1980s initiated a multitude ofinquiries into the subject. Malaysia as a multicultural and multilingual country provides an interesting socio linguistic setting to explore the nature of beliefs about language learning. However, research on this topic in the Malaysian context is lacking. This studyaimed to address this gap and examined beliefs about learning a foreign language held by 107 Russian language students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS). The present inquiryjuxtaposed beliefsheldbythebeginnersandintermediatelearners inordertoassesswhichareasof beliefs werecommonlysharedbythetwogroupsoflearnersand whichareas contained considerable differences in beliefs. This study employed a selfreported questionnaire based on Horwitzs (1988) Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) as a research instrument, with some modifications done to suit the Malaysian context. Statistical analysis detected five items where opinions of two groups of students were significantly different. Although participants in this study were the Russian language students, there are no obstacles to viewing the findings of this research in a broader perspectiveofforeignlanguagelearningandteaching. Keywords:foreignlanguage learning,foreignlanguageteaching,languagelearning beliefs,Malaysia,theRussianlanguage
1.Introduction In the 1980s, ElaineHorwitz of the University of Texas at Austininitiated research on beliefs about language learning held bylanguage students and teachers. Since then the topic has been attracting considerable interest and a multitude of studies exploring language learning beliefs were done in different countries (Truitt, 1995 Park, 1995 Kuntz, 1999 Kunt, 1997 Peacock, 1998 Sakui & Gaies, 1999 Kimura et al., 2001 Siebert,2003Bernat,2006). Researcherslooked atlanguagelearningbeliefsfromdifferentperspectives.Mori(1999) examined relationship between language learning beliefs and epistemological beliefs, Wenden (1999) focused on the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and learnersbeliefs,Yang(1992)lookedattheconnectionbetweenlanguagelearningbeliefs andtheuseoflearningstrategieswhileCarter(1999)exploredthelinkbetweenlearners beliefsandautonomy.Despitetheavailabilityofextensiveresearchonlanguagelearning beliefs, studies on this topic in the Malaysian context are lacking. The present inquiry aimstoaddressthisgap. Malaysia as a multiethnic and multilingual country represents an interesting socio linguistic setting. First of all, multilingualism is promoted in Malaysia. While Malay is the national and official language of the country, English is widely used for business transactions, in superior courts and every day life. There are radio and TV stations that broadcast programs mainlyin the English language. Moreover, in government primary andsecondaryschools,mathematicsandsciencesubjectsaretaughtinEnglish. OthermajorlanguagesanddialectsspokeninMalaysiaareHokkien,Cantonese,Hakka, TeochewandHainaneseamongtheChinesedialectsTamil,Telugu,Malayalam,Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu among Indian languages there are also numerous indigenous languages and dialects. A large part of the Malaysian population speaks two, three or morelanguagesanddialects. Secondly, the Malay and English languages are compulsory school subjects. Schoolchildren attending Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools learn Mandarin and Tamil,respectively,andtheArabiclanguageistaughtatsomeschools.However,foreign
1 languagesarenotapartofschoolcurriculuminMalaysia. Therefore,studentswhobegin
learning foreign languages at tertiary level despite their extensive language learning
experiencesin either formal (e.g.school) orinformal(e.g.through contactswith family andfriends)settingshavehadnopreviousexperienceoflearningaforeignlanguage,i.e. language notspokenintheirimmediatesurroundings.Therefore,itwouldbeinteresting toinquire what set of beliefs about language learning do Malaysian university students holdandwhetherthelengthofforeignlanguageinstructioninfluencesthosebeliefs. The present research study was conducted among learners ofthe Russian language at UniversitiMalaysiaSabah(UMS)withtheaimtoassessandcomparelanguagelearning beliefs of Malaysian university students at different stages of their foreign language program.
2.LiteratureReview Human beliefs on a wide number of subjects are shaped by peoples surroundings, backgrounds and previous experiences. As Barcelos (2000,p.4) asserts, Beliefs cannot beseparatedfromouridentities,actions,andsocialexperiences.Ithasbeenrecognized thatstudentsenteralanguageclassroomwithasetofideasastowhatlearningaforeign language involves. Such assumptions have been described as folklinguistics (Preston, 1991). Students who begin learning a new language usually have some ideas about the languagedifficulty,theirownabilitytomasterthenewlanguage,etc.Fromtheirprevious languagelearningexperiencetheymighthavegatheredwhatlearningstrategiesworkbest for them and have formed their own views about classroom proceedings and teachers role. Richardson (1996, p.103) describes beliefs as psychologically held understandings, premises,orpropositionsabouttheworldthatarefelttobetrue.Workingdefinitionof language learning beliefs in the present study is that language learning beliefs are intangiblepropertyofhumanmindaboutwhatisright/trueorwrong/falseintheprocess of foreign language acquisition which may change depending upon the length of instruction. Rokeach (1968)maintainsthatsomebeliefs maybequitecentraland well entrenched while other beliefs are peripheral and are hinged on less fundamental assumption. A question whether human beliefs are malleable was raised by psychologists and educationalists. However, research studies yield contradictory results. While some
inquiries lend support to the proposition that learners beliefs are resistant to change (Peacock, 2001) others indicate that beliefs do evolve over time and teachers play important role in shaping learners beliefs (Rubin, 1987 Wenden, 1987). The latter conclusion appears more feasible to the present authors since people and learners need to constantly adapt to their new circumstances, and this involves making some rectificationstoonespersonalbeliefsandassumptions. In this connection, context should be viewed as an important factor when exploring students beliefs. A number of studies lend support that learners beliefs are context specific(Tumposky,1991Yang,1992Sakui&Gaies,1999Chawhan&Oliver,2000). Astudy conductedby Tumposky (1991)comparedlanguagelearningbeliefs ofRussian exchangestudentsinthe USAtothebeliefs of AmericanstudentslearningSpanishand FrenchinAmericanuniversities.AsreportedbyTumposky(1991),theRussianstudents believedthatwhenlearningaforeignlanguageitwasimportanttopracticealotandtake linguistic risks while American students did not share those beliefs. Also, the Russian students,coming froma multilinguistic environment ofthe former USSRbelievedthat learning a language was important in order to know native speakers of English while AmericanstudentsinTumposkysstudydidnotsharethisopinion.AsTumposky(1991, p.62) concluded, It seems that culture does contribute to the belief system of foreign languagelearners. AmorerecentstudyconductedbySiebert(2003)intheUSAconsideredtheinfluence of ethnicity and nationality on the beliefs of students learning English in American universities.ParticipantsinSiebertsstudycamefromdifferentcountries,suchasBrazil, Egypt, Japan, Russia, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, etc. All students were taking intensive Englishlanguagecourses.AccordingtotheresultsofSiebertsstudy,nationalorigindid have an influence on students beliefs about language learning. The most significant differences concerned such aspects of language study as length of time one needs to master the English language, the difficulty of English, and foreign language aptitude. Thus,Japanesestudentstendedtohavelessconfidenceintheirownlanguageabilitythan did students from the Middle East. Also, therewere differences regarding the length of timeneededtomasteraforeignlanguagebetweenstudentsofdifferentnationalities.
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Differences in language learning beliefs among learners of different national origins and ethnicity lend support to an assumption that learners background is an important aspect to consider when examining language learning beliefs. Wenden (1999) mentions the importance of social knowledge about the target language and culture. This knowledge is shaped by and acquired from the environment which is the setting for learning(Wenden1999,p.435).However,theroleofcontextinshapinglearnersbeliefs hasnotbeenaccordedsufficientattentioninpreviousstudies.Itissuggestedinthisstudy thatlanguagelearning/teachingcontextshouldbeseparatedintomacroandmicrolevels, and be viewed as macrocontext and microcontext. The former incorporates socio cultural mores and predominant views on multilingualism and the attitudes towards language learning in learners society. The latter includes individual learners previous experiences of language study (successful or otherwise) and their current learning situation. Separating context into two different levels adds some structure to learners language beliefs which allows a better insight into organization and nature of those beliefs. For example, this would allow making tentative propositions as to which of the learners assumptionsaremorecentralsincetheywereshapedbythesocietalfactorsormacro contextand,therefore,bemoreresistanttochange.Ontheotherhand,learnersbeliefs shapedbymicrocontextcouldbeviewedasperipheraland,assuch,ofamoretransient nature. Some researchers examined how learners beliefs are modified in the course of language learning. Allen (1996) employed contextual approach to investigate whether and how teachers beliefs influence learners beliefs. In her study, initially, there was a mismatchbetweenthelearnersandteachersbeliefs.Thus,thesubject,aLybianstudent learningEnglishinCanada,thoughtitwasbettertolearnlanguagefromnativespeakers, placed a considerable importance on acquiring nativelike pronunciation and preferred teacherdirected activities in the classroom. Those views did not coincide with the teachers perspective on language learning. By the end of semester, the students and teachersbeliefsconverged.Thestudentrealizedthatlearnersshouldtakemoreinitiative in their learning and that to become a competent speaker one did not need to have an excellentpronunciation,allofwhichreflectedhisteachersopinion.
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Kern(1995)conductedalongitudinalstudyamonguniversitystudentsofFrenchatthe beginning of their first semester of the language study and at the end of their second semester.Thoughhefoundverylittlechangeovertime,heconcedesthatsomebeliefsare moreeasilymodifiedthanothers.Kernmaintainsthatstudentstakeheedofandinterpret messages fromtheirlanguageteachersregarding whatthelatter consideranappropriate approachtolanguagelearning.Aslanguagestudentsinvolvementwiththeirinstructoris quite intensive, in order to ensure a more successful learning outcome students may choose to arrange their learning behaviour to accommodate the perceptions of their teachers.Thisisanimportantobservationtoconsider.Apparently,thenatureandstability of language learning beliefs could be probed further by examining similarities and differencesofbeliefsheldbylearnersatdifferentstagesoftheirlanguageprogram. Kuntz (1999) investigated beliefs about language learning among schoolchildren of different languages (French, German, Latin, Spanish) at five levels of language instruction. Though the learners in her research were of much younger age than universitystudents,theresultsprovidesomeusefulinsights forthepresentstudy.Kuntz assessed beliefs that had been most commonly shared by the students of different languagesatdifferentlevelsofinstructionaswellasbeliefsthathaddifferedsignificantly between the groups of learners. She concluded that learnersassumptions about foreign language learning do change with the length of instruction, and some beliefs weaken while others grow stronger. Especially, beliefs concerning communication strategies underwent most significant changes. For example, students of all languages at more advanced levels expressed stronger disagreement with the statements that learning a foreignlanguageismostlyamatteroftranslation,andthatonehastoknowallthewords for a good reading comprehension. Also, the students acquired more realistic beliefs about time span needed for learning a foreign language. Kuntz (1999, p.33) concludes thatthesechangesmayreflectprogramactivitiesandpersonalexperiences. Thecurrentresearchaimstoinvestigatewhetherlengthofinstructioneffectsstudents language learning beliefs. Questions of significance here are: (1) Do the novice and intermediate level learners hold uniform beliefs about language learning? (2) What are theareaswherethelearnersbeliefsaremostuniformandwhataretheareaswherethose
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beliefs are most inconsistent? and (3) Do the intermediate level students have more realisticviewsregardinglanguagelearning?
3.ResearchMethod Participants OnehundredsevenstudentslearningtheRussianlanguageatUniversitiMalaysiaSabah (UMS)participatedinthisresearch.Thirtyone(31)studentscompletedonesemesterof the language program and were at the beginners level seventy six (76) students completed three semesters of the Russian language studyand reached the intermediate level. Foreign language is a compulsory course for the participants the duration of the programisfoursemesters.
Instrument The students were given questionnaires, one per person. First part ofthe questionnaire elicited information regarding demographic profile of the respondents (e.g. age, gender, mother tongue, etc). Second part of the questionnaire employed a 5point Likert scale rangingfromstronglydisagreetostronglyagreestatements. Horwitzs (1988) Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) was consulted andmodifiedtosuittheobjectivesofthisstudyandtheMalaysiancontext.InHorwitzs BALLIitemsaregroupedintofivethemes:(1)languagedifficulty,(2)foreignlanguage aptitude,(3)natureoflearning,(4)learningstrategy,and(5)motivation.Theinstrument employedinthepresentinquiry omitsthose statementsofHorwitzsBALLI thatdealwith learners motivation. It was done because motivation is a psychological construct that involves incentives extrinsic or intrinsic to learn and, as such, is not based on the premise that something is right/true or wrong/false, which is an inseparable part of the conceptofbeliefs.Secondly,theinstrumentusedinthisstudyincludesanewparameter to examine the learners beliefs about the importance of learning a foreign language. Considering the Malaysian sociolinguistic context (i.e. multilingual environment, widelyspread usage of the English language), the learners opinions about the importanceoflearningaforeignlanguagewasaninterestingaspecttoexamine.Finally,
13
questionnaireitems that assess thesame parameters ofthe learners beliefs are grouped together inthisresearch. The instrument used in the present inquiry contains 20 items and focuses on the following areas of the learners beliefs: (1) foreign language aptitude (items 14), (2) difficulty oflanguagelearning(items58),(3)natureoflanguagelearning(items912), (4) learning and communication strategies (items 1316), and (5) the importance of learningaforeignlanguage(1720) Thefirstfoursectionsofthequestionnaireexaminedthebeliefswhichwereshapedby thelearnerspreviousandpresentlearning experiences(i.e. microcontext domain).The fifth section of the questionnaire sought the learners opinions about foreign language learningandmultilingualism,whichincorporatedmacrocontextdomain.
Procedure ThequestionnairesweredistributedinDecember2005duringthefirstclassofthesecond semester of academic year 2005/2006. The students completed answering the questionnairesintheclassandreturnedtheformstothelecturer.Thustheresponserate was100percent.Inordertoensurethattherespondentsexpressedtheirownviews,they wereencouragedtogiveanswersindividuallywithoutconsultingtheirclassmates.
ResearchHypothesis This study has one research hypothesis regarding the relationship between language learningbeliefsandlengthoflanguageinstruction.Itishypothesizedherethattherewere significant differences in the language learning beliefs between the novice and intermediate students including the learners perceptions about their own foreign languageaptitude,theperceivedlevelofdifficultyofthelanguageunderstudy,thenature oflanguagelearning,theemploymentoflearningandcommunicationstrategies,andthe importanceoflearningaforeignlanguage.
DataAnalysis Inthisstudy,descriptiveandinferentialstatisticswereemployedtoanalyzethedata.The frequencies of the occurrence for each of the questionnaire statements were computed
14
first. Then, analysis of the data was performed using the SPSS software, version 13. Frequencies,percentages,meansandstandarddeviationsforeachstatementarereported in Tables 15. In the data analysis, responses strongly disagree and disagree were grouped as disagreement with a statement, while strongly agree and agree answers were interpretedasagreement. Ttest was used to test the research hypothesis. The respondents were separated into twogroupsaccordingtothedurationoftheirlanguageprogram:(1)thebeginnerstudents whohadstudiedRussianonlyonesemester,and(2)intermediatelevelstudentswhohad completedthreesemestersoftheRussianlanguageprogram.
4.Findings The participants in this study were predominantly science students (71%, n=76). The majorityoftherespondents(97.2%,n=104)werebetween19to22yearsoldtherewere considerably more females(60.7%,n=65)than males(39.3%,n=42).Byethnic groups, Chinese students represented 42.1% (n=45) of respondents, Malay students represented
2 14%(n=15),Indian10.3%(n=11),Kadazan15.0%(n=16),andothers18.7%(n=20).
Regardinglinguisticbackground,the majority of respondents(45.8%,n=49)indicated the Chinese language as their mother tongue 26% (n=28) of respondents listed the Malaylanguage,10.3%(n=11)Indian,9.3%(n=10)Kadazan,and8.4%(n=9)other astheirmothertongue.Noneoftherespondentswasmonolingual.Bilingualsrepresented 24.3% (n=26) of the cohort the majority of respondents (39.3%, n=41) spoke three languages,whileaconsiderablenumberspokefour(21.55%,n=23)orfive(14.0%,n=15) languagesand/or dialects.Alltherespondentslearnedthe MalayandEnglishlanguages at school, and more than half of them (54.2%, n=58) learned three languages (Malay, English,andMandarin).Asthesedataindicate,allofthestudentshavehadanextensive language learning experience. However, none of the respondents mentioned learning a
3 foreignlanguageatschool.
Asresultsofthedataanalysisshow,studentsheldquitedefinitebeliefsaboutlanguage learning. Only one statement of the questionnaire gathered the majority of neutral responses(i.e.IbelievethatIhaveaspecialabilitytolearntheRussianlanguage).
15
Regarding the existence of foreign language aptitude (see Table 1), the majority of students agreed that children were more adept language learners than adults (statement #1). They expressed overall agreement that some people have special language ability (#2).Therespondentswereundecidedastowhethertheypersonallyhadaspecialtalent for language study (#3), and disagreed that people who are good at science and mathematicsare lessadeptlanguagelearners(#4). Table1:ForeignLanguageAptitude(Items14) Item 1 2345 Mean
(SDD N A SA)
Standard Deviation
1.Itiseasierforchildrenthanadultsto learnaforeignlanguage. Overall 112164731 Beginners 067153 Intermediate 1693228 tvalue 2.798**
3.89 3.48 4.05
0.98 0.92 0.96
2.Somepeopleareborn withaspecial ability which helps them to learn a foreignlanguage. Overall 616363514 Beginners 3611 101 Intermediate 310252513 tvalue 2.066*
3.33 3.00 3.46
1.06 1.03 1.05
3.IbelievethatIhaveaspecialability tolearnforeignlanguages. Overall 52946234 Beginners 251491 Intermediate 32432143 tvalue 1.013
2.93 3.06 2.87
0.91 0.92 0.99
4.Peoplewhoaregoodatmathematics and science are not good at learning foreignlanguages. Overall 27542132 Beginners 320710 Intermediate 24341422
2.06 2.19 2.00
0.86 0.65 0.92
16
tvalue
1.062
Note: Tables15usethefollowingabbreviations 1=SD (Strongly Disagree), 2=D (Disagree), 3=N (Neither agree nor disagree), 4=A (Agree), 5=SA(StronglyAgree). *indicatessignificanceat0.05level,**indicatessignificanceat0.01level
The ttest indicates significant shift in beliefs concerning two statements (#1 and #2). As the results show, beliefs that children are better at languages than adults (t= 2.798) and that some people are born with special ability to learn languages (t= 2.066) were strongeramongtheintermediatelevelstudents.
Table2:DifficultyofLanguageLearning(Items58) Item 12345

(SD DNASA)
Mean
Standard Deviation
5. The Russian language is: (1) very difficult (2) difficult (3) medium difficult(4)easy(5)veryeasy. Overall 11375540 Beginners 39181 0 Intermediate 8283730 tvalue 0.561
2.49 2.55 2.46
0.73 0.72 0.73
6. If someone spent one hour a day learningtheRussianlanguage,howlong wouldittakehim/hertobecomefluent? (1)lessthan1year(2)12years(3)35 years(4)510years(5)notpossibleto learnRussianwith1hourperdaystudy. Overall 114133139 2.70 Beginners 3141031 2.52 Intermediate 82723108 2.78 tvalue 1.128 7.Ithinkitisdifficultto understandthe Russianlanguage. Overall Beginners Intermediate tvalue
1.08 0.92 1.13
1820699 3.72 0312151 3.45 158548 3.84 2.373**
0.76 0.72 0.75
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8. I think that Russian grammar is difficult. Overall Beginners Intermediate tvalue
07185626 3.14 057136 3.65 02 114320 4.07 2.156*
0.82 0.98 0.71
Thenextsectionofthequestionnaireexploredthestudentsbeliefsaboutthedifficulty oflanguagelearning(seeTable2). As the results show, the majority of students at all levels considered the Russian language of medium difficulty (#5), and thought they could become proficient in 12 years with1hourper daystudy (#6).Likewise,the majority ofstudentsinboth groups agreed that it was difficult to understand the Russian language (#7) and that Russian grammar is difficult (#8). Agreement of the learners at the intermediate level was considerablyhigherforthelasttwostatementscomparedwiththebeginnerlearners(t= 2.373andt=2.156forstatements#7and#8,respectively). Answers to the questions regardingthe studentsbeliefs about the nature of language learning (see Table 3) indicate that students at two levels share strikingly uniform opinionsastohowalanguageshouldbelearned.The majorityofstudentsateachlevel agreed that learning a language mostly involves memorizing new vocabulary (#9) and grammar(#10),andrequiresdifferentstrategiesfromlearningother schoolsubjects(#11). Bycontrast,theydisagreedthatlearningalanguageisaboutperformingtranslationfrom ones mother tongue. Especially consistent in this section was the belief that learning grammar constitutes an important part of the language program with a very small discrepancyinopinionsbetweenthegroups(t=0.050). Regarding learning and communication strategies (see Table 4), the majority of studentsatbothlevelsagreedthatexcellentpronunciationwasimportant(#13),disagreed thatoneshouldspeakonlywhenabletoproduceerrorfreelanguage(#14)werewilling to practice the language with native speakers (#15) and take linguistic risks at guessing unknownwords(#16).Inthissectionofthequestionnaire,onlyonestatementregarding theimportance ofanexcellentpronunciation(#13)produceddifferent opinionsbetween
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two groups of students (t= 2.020) the intermediate level students attributed less importancetoagoodaccentthanthenovicelearners.
Table3:NatureofLanguageLearning(Items912) Item 12 345 Mean (SDDN ASA) 9. Learning a foreign language is mostly about memorizing many new words. Overall 213115922 3.80 Beginners 042169 3.97 Intermediate 2994313 3.74 tvalue 1.123
Standard Deviation
0.96 0.94 0.97
10. Learning a foreign language is mostly about learning many of grammarrules. Overall 117144926 3.77 Beginners 142186 3.77 Intermediate 013123120 3.76 tvalue 0.050
1.02 1.02 1.03
11. Learning a foreign language requires different strategies from learningotheracademicsubjects. Overall 0 11155328 3.92 Beginners 024214 3.87 Intermediate 09113224 3.93 tvalue 0.328
0.90 0.71 0.97
12. Learning the Russian language is mostlya matteroftranslating from my nativelanguage. Overall 103532282 2.79 Beginners 597100 2.71 Intermediate 52625182 2.82 tvalue 0.496
1.00 1.10 0.96
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Table4:LearningandCommunicationStrategies(Items1316) Item 13.ItisimportanttospeaktheRussian languagewithexcellentpronunciation. Overall Beginners Intermediate tvalue 12345

(SDD NA SA)
Mean
Standard Deviation
010324916 017176 09253210 2.020*
3.66 3.90 3.57
0.84 0.74 0.86
14. You should not say anything in the Russian language until you say it correctly. Overall 35529 110 1.96 Beginners 1015240 2.00 Intermediate 2537770 1.95 tvalue 0.270
0.91 0.96 0.89
15. If I heard someone speaking the Russian language, I would approach them and try to practice speaking Russian. Overall 116364014 3.47 Beginners 055165 3.68 Intermediate 11131249 3.38 tvalue 1.494
0.93 0.94 0.92
16. It is OK to guess a Russian word if youdontknowitsmeaning. Overall 510265511 3.53 Beginners 247162 3.39 Intermediate 3619399 3.59 tvalue 0.997
0.97 1.02 0.94
The final section of the questionnaire sought the students opinions about the importanceoflearningaforeignlanguage.TheresultsarereportedinTable5.
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Table5:ImportanceofLearningaForeignLanguage(Items1720) Item
1 2 345 Mean (SDD NASA)
Standard Deviation
17.Itisimportantthateveryoneknowsa foreignlanguage(otherthanEnglish). Overall 24313931 Beginners 1271110 Intermediate 12242821 tvalue 0.013
3.87 3.87 3.87
0.94 1.05 0.90
18. I think knowing a foreign language besidesEnglishisimportantforme. Overall 0585143 Beginners 0321214 Intermediate 0263929 tvalue 0.336
4.23 4.19 4.25
0.79 0.94 0.71
19. I think everybody should have an opportunity to learn a foreign language eitheratschooloruniversity. Overall 1045448 Beginners 1011712 Intermediate 0033736 tvalue 20.Ithinkawelleducatedpersonshould knowforeignlanguage(s). Overall Beginners Intermediate tvalue 1.268
4.38 4.26 4.43
0.65 0.81 0.57
215243432 244138 011202124 0.364
3.74 3.68 3.76
1.09 1.19 1.05
Answers to the questions demonstrate an amazing uniformity of the students beliefs regardlessof thelengthoflanguageinstruction.Thus,themajorityofrespondentsateach level thought that knowing a foreign language was important for everyone (#17) and personally for themselves (#18). They overwhelmingly supported the statement that foreignlanguagesshouldbetaughtatschoolsoruniversities.Thoughthere hasbeen no
21
significant divergence in students opinion in this section of the questionnaire, the intermediatelevel learners tended to hold a somewhat stronger belief regarding the importanceofforeignlanguagelearning.
5.DiscussionandConclusion Statistical analysis done in this study revealed five (5) significant discrepancies in the beliefsofthebeginnerandintermediatelevelstudents.Twostatementseachconcerned language aptitude and the difficulty of learning the Russian language one statement involvedlearningandcommunicationstrategies. Firstofall,thebeliefsthatchildrenlearnforeignlanguageseasierandfasterthanadults andthatsomepeoplehaveaninherenttalentforlearninglanguageswerestrongeramong the intermediate level students. Such responses may reflect the students waning confidenceinthesuccessoflearningoutcome.Thiscouldbeduetothestudentsmaking comparisons between their previous and present language learning achievements. Languages that the participants learned at primary and secondary school (e.g. Malay, English,Tamil,Mandarin)andata youngeragewerewidelyspokenintheirimmediate surroundings. This allowed the learners to practice newlyacquired skills outside the classroom and cement their knowledge. However, learning a foreign language in a countrywherepossibilitiestopracticethelanguageareverylimitedcanbeachallenging task. Slower than expected progress in attaining fluency in the Russian language may haveled the students toa conclusionthat special talent for language learningis needed and thatstarting ageisanimportantfactor inlanguagelearning. Secondly, statements that it is difficult to understand the Russian language and that Russian grammar is difficult received stronger agreement from the intermediate level students. This result is not controversial. As students advance in their language study, they become exposed to increasingly complex linguistic structures. This makes them aware of different aspects of language learning and shows that mastering different language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) requires various degrees of effort onthepartoflearners. Lastly, the importance of an excellent pronunciation is another variable where the divergence in the beliefs between the beginner and intermediate level students was
22
statisticallysignificant.Theintermediatelevelstudentsgave lessvalue tospeakingwith a nativelike accent thus demonstrating enhanced learning and communication strategies thandid thebeginnerstudents. Beliefsthatweremostconsistentbetweentwocohortsoflearnersinvolvedinthisstudy wereintheareas ofthe natureoflanguagelearning(section3ofthequestionnaire)and the importance of learning a foreign language (section 5). Only slight differences transpired in the opinions of the novice and intermediate level students and no statistically significant relationship was detected. Regarding the nature of language learning, although both groups agreed that a major part of language learning was memorizing new words, the intermediate level students were slightly more aware that enrichingonesvocabularywasnotthe mostimportantpartinachievinggoodlanguage proficiency. Also,agreaterproportion oftheintermediatelevelstudentsviewedforeign language study asanecessaryand integralcomponentof education. To conclude, findings of the present research lend support to a proposition that the tenacityoflearnersbeliefsdependsonwhetherthosebeliefswereshapedbythemicro context or macrocontext. Beliefs formed by the microcontext (e.g. learning situation) tendedtobelessstable.Inthisstudy,themostmalleablebeliefsconcernedthelearners perception of language aptitude, their assessment of the difficulty of language learning andemploymentofcommunicationandlearningstrategies. Bycontrast,beliefsshapedbythemacrocontext(i.e.prevailingattitudeswithinsociety toward language learning and multilingualism) were more tenacious. An interesting finding ofthepresentresearchwas thatalltheparticipantswerevery enthusiasticabout learning a foreign language and thought that everybody should have an opportunity to learn a foreign language either at school or university. This attitude reflects Malaysias sociolinguisticcontextwheremultilingualismisnotonlypromotedbutisthewayoflife. This finding could be of interest to educational policymakers and school curriculum plannerssinceitlendssupporttotheideaofintroducingforeignlanguagesprogramatan earlierstageofeducation,suchasprimary or secondaryschools. Results of this study offer some useful insights into language learning beliefs of students living in a multilingual and multicultural country. The findings indicate that languagelearningbeliefsdoevolveoverthedurationofthelanguageprogram.However,
23
therearelimitationstothisresearch.Firstofall,theparticipantsinthisstudywerefrom the same university and the sample size was relatively small. Therefore, some caution shouldbeexercisedregardingapplicabilityofthefindingstootherMalaysianuniversity students. For future research, a wider population sample from various institutions of higherlearninginMalaysiacouldbeconsidered.Secondly,thepresentinquiryemployed theLikertscalequestionnaire,whichisrecognizedaseconomicalandeffectiveresearch technique. However, as Sakui & Gaies (1999, p.486) maintain, Questionnaires consistingofcloseditemsallowrespondentsonly to statetheirbeliefsand thenonlythe beliefswhichareincludedinthequestionnaire.Futurestudiesonthetopicmayconsider including data from interviews, learning diaries and openended questionnaires to supplementresearchfindings. To conclude, knowledge of students beliefs about language learning is important for languageinstructorsasitcanprovideavaluableinsightintothelearnersperceptionsof andideasonlanguagelearning.Thisisespeciallyimportant forexpatriateteachers who have different learning experiences and backgrounds from their students. Ideas and opinions about language learning tend to influence students learning behaviour. Therefore,assessinglearnersbeliefscouldhelptoidentifypotentialproblemareasand makesomeadjustmenttotheclassroomprocedure.
Notes
1
Morerecently,teachingoftheArabicandMandarinlanguagesatschoolshasbeen promoted.Also,someresidentialschoolsoffertheJapaneseandGermanlanguage courses.

2
Among others such ethnic groups as bajau,bajaudusun, sinokadazan, sino dusun,bidayuh,ibanwerelisted.

3
MandarinbeingalinguafrancafortheChinesecommunitycannotbeconsideredasa foreignlanguageinMalaysia,sinceethnicChineserepresentabout24%ofthe countryspopulation.
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Peacock,M(1998).Thelinksbetweenlearnerbeliefs,teacherbeliefs,andEFL proficiency.In Perspectives:WorkingPapers,10(1).CityUniversityof HongKong,125159. Peacock,M.(2001).PreserviceESLteachersbeliefsaboutsecondlanguagelearning:A longitudinalstudy.System29(2),177195. Preston,D.(1991).Languageteachingandlearning:Folklinguisticperspectives.InJ. Alatis(Ed.),GeorgetownUniversityRoundTableinLanguageandLinguistics 1991(pp. 583603).WashingtonDC:GeorgetownUniversityPress. Richardson,V.(1996).Theroleofattitudesandbeliefsinlearningtoteach.InJ. Sikula,T.J.ButteryandE.Guyton(Eds.),Handbookofresearchonteacher education(pp.102119).NewYork:Macmillan. Rokeach,M.(1968).Beliefs,attitudesandvalues:atheoryoforganizationand change.SanFrancisco:JosseyBass. Rubin,G.(1987).Learnerstrategies:Theoreticalassumptions,researchhistoryand typology.InA.WendenandJ.Rubin(Eds.),Learnerstrategiesinlanguage learning(pp.1529).London:PrenticeHall. Sakui,K.& Gaies,S.J.(1999).InvestigatingJapaneselearnersbeliefsaboutlanguage learning.System27(4),473492. Siebert,L.(2003).Studentandteacherbeliefsaboutlanguagelearning.TheORTESOL Journal,21, 739 Truitt,S.N.(1995).Beliefsaboutlanguage learning:A studyofKoreanuniversity studentslearningEnglish.TexasPapersinForeignLanguageEducation,2(1), 114. Tumposky,N.R.(1991).Studentbeliefsaboutlanguagelearning:Acrosscultural study.CarletonPapersinAppliedLanguageStudies,8, 5065. Wenden,A.(1987).Howtobeasuccessfullanguagelearner:InsightsandPrescriptions fromL2learners.InA.WendenandJ.Rubin(Eds.),Learnerstrategiesin languagelearning(pp.103117).London:PrenticeHall. Wenden,A.(1999).Anintroductiontometacognitiveknowledgeandbeliefsabout languagelearning:Beyondthebasics.System,27, 435441. Yang,N.D.(1992). Secondlanguagelearnersbeliefsaboutlanguagelearningandtheir
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use of learning strategies: A study of college students of English in Taiwan. Unpublisheddoctoraldissertation,TheUniversityofTexas,Austin.
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JustSayThankYou:AStudyofComplimentResponses
HessaAlFalasi, AmericanUniversityofSharjah,UnitedArabEmirates BioData: HessaGhanemAlFalasiisinherthirdyearofteaching.SheisteachingGrade6and7in Fujairah School for Basic Education, a government school in Fujairah. She is also completinganMAinTESOLintheAmericanUniversityofSharjah.Sheisinterestedin assessment and evaluation. Ms. Al Falasi is currently working on her thesis, which is a textbookevaluationofthenewEnglishnationalcurriculumUAEEnglishSkills.
Abstract This study aims at finding out whether Arabic learners of English (Emarati Females in particular) produce targetlike compliment responses in English and whether pragmatic transfercanoccur.Discoursecompletiontests(DCTs)andinterviewswereusedtostudy the strategies employed when responding to compliments by native speakers (NSs) and Arabic nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English. Findings suggest that Arabic (L1) expressions and strategies were sometimes transferred to English (L2). This study also indicates that Emarati female learners of English transfer some of their L1 pragmatic normstoL2becausetheyperceivethesenormstobe universalamonglanguagesrather than being language specific. It also indicates that Arabic NNSs of English have some misconceptionsaboutNSsthataffectthe waythey respondtotheir compliments.Some importantculturalandpedagogicalimplicationsarediscussedattheendofthepaper.
Keywords: pragmatictransfer,complimentresponses,raisingculturalawarenessinthe EFL/ESLclassroom.
Introduction
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Communicating with speakers of other languages is a complex behaviour that requires both linguistic and pragmatic competence. Whether we speak in a first or second language,weareinfluencedbysocioculturalnormsandconstraintsthataffectthewaywe communicate.Rizk(2003)pointsoutthatwhatisconsideredappropriateinonelanguage mightnotbesoinanother.Praisingagirlofbeingfat,forinstanceinaWesternAfrican communityisconsideredacomplimentwhilein anAmerican contextitisperceivedas aninsult. MostoftheproblemsthatEFLlearnersfaceininterculturalcommunicationaremainly pragmatic. Teachers of EFL often choose not to stress pragmatic knowledge in their classrooms, focusing instead on linguistic knowledge. EslamiRasekh (2004) warns that this might result in pragmatic failure when EFL learners actually communicate with nativespeakers(NSs),somethingthatisattributedtosomeothercause,suchasrudeness. The only way to minimize pragmatic failure between NSs and NNSs is by acquiring pragmatic competence, that is, the ability to use language effectively in order to understandlanguageincontext(ElSamaty2005,p.341).EmaratiEFLstudentsarenot exposed to the target community and culture and they find it extremely difficult to produceorsometimesunderstandaspeechact. ComplimentresponsesareonetypeofspeechactsthatdiffersconsiderablyfromArabic toEnglish.NativespeakersofEnglish might considerthe way Arabicspeakersrespond tocomplimentsoffendingorbizarre,becausetheyunderstoodonlythewordswithoutthe cultural rules that govern them and vice versa. This study aims at finding out whether Arabic learners of English produce targetlike compliment responses and whether pragmatic transfer can occur. It examines how compliment responses are used in the UAEcultureandthedifferencesbetweenthemandtheonesusedintheAmericanculture. Despitethewealthofempiricalstudiesconductedaboutspeechactsingeneral,fewdata basedstudieshaveever focusedonL1transferofcomplimentresponses.Moreresearch is necessary in this area to better understand the relationship between L1 transfer and complimentresponsesinL2use.Thepresentstudy contributestothelimited collection of research done on compliment responses in Arabic. This will be achieved by: (1) reviewing studies on pragmatic transfer and compliment responses, (2) discussing the
29
methodologyandresultsofthepresentstudy,andfinally(3)suggestingsomeclassroom implicationsthatcouldapplytoEFLteachingintheUAEcontext.
LiteratureReview PragmaticTransfer Intercultural miscommunication is often caused when learners fall back on their L1 sociocultural norms in realizing speech acts in a target language. This is referred to as pragmatictransfer.Rizk(2003)definespragmatictransferas theinfluence oflearners pragmatic knowledge of language and culture other than the target language on their comprehension, production, and acquisition of L2 pragmatic information (p. 404). Pragmatic transfer can be either positive, which is considered an evidence of sociocultural and pragmatic universality among languages, or negative, which indicates inappropriatetransferofL1sociolinguisticnormsintoL2.Thisoftenresultsinpragmatic failure,orbeingunabletounderstandthemeaningofanutteranceinthetargetlanguage. (Liu, 1997). Negative pragmatic transfer, as Rizk (2003) explains, takes the form of translatingsomeformulaicexpressions/phrasesfunctioningtoexpressdifferentspeech acts in (L1) to express the equivalent speech act in L2. (p.405). El Samaty (2005) mentions one factor that might influence pragmatic transfer and that is learners perceptionofwhatconstitutesalanguagespecificorauniversalissue(p.342).Learners wouldnottransferanL1pragmaticfeaturetoL2iftheyknowthatitislanguagespecific.
ResearchonPragmaticTransfer Pragmaticstudiesdealingwithdifferentspeechactshavebeenconductedsincetheearly 1980s. These studies focused on L1 in most cases, but later, L2 and crosscultural variations have been introduced. The L2 pragmatic transfer studies have shown that despitebeinglinguisticallycompetentinasecondlanguage,learnersarelikelytotransfer L1pragmaticrulesintheirL2production(ElSamaty,2005).TakahashiandBeebe(1987) hypothesized that there is a positive correlation between L2 proficiency and pragmatic transfer. They argued that more proficient learners tend to transfer L1 sociocultural norms more than less proficient learners because they have enough control over L2 to expressL1sentimentsatthepragmaticlevel.EslamiRasekh(2004)supportsthis claim
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by stating that linguistically competent learners do not necessarily possess comparable pragmatic competence. Even grammatically advanced learners may use language inappropriatelyandshowdifferencesfromtargetlanguagepragmaticnorms. In 1986, Blumkulka and Olshtain used discourse completion tests to analyze the utterance length of requesting strategies in Hebrew. They collected the data from non native speakers of Hebrew at three proficiency level, and they found out that high intermediatelearnersproducedutteranceslongerthantheutterancesoflowintermediate and advanced learners, which was considered by the researchers as pragmatic failure (Ghawi1993,p.39).
Complimentsandcomplimentresponses A compliment is one form of speech acts and it can be defined as an utterance containingapositiveevaluationbythespeakertotheaddressee(Liu,1997).Thereisan infinitenumberofwordsthatcouldbechosentocompliment,butthesetoflexicalitems and grammaticalpatternswe usein our dailyinteractionwhen complimentingandhave high frequencyin our daily discourseare very restricted. AccordingtoWolfson (1986), twothirdsofEnglishcomplimentsusetheadjectives"nice,good,beautiful,pretty,great", and90%makeuseofjusttwoverbs"likeandlove(p.116).Thelackofcreativityinthe formandcontentofEnglishcomplimentsisrelatedtotheirfunctionindiscourse.Herbert (1986) demonstrates that compliments are used to negotiate solidarity with the addressee (p.76). Their aim is to make the addressee feel good and their formulaic natureminimizesthechancethattheywillbemisinterpretedbytheaddressee. Onthesurfacelevel,thereisnotmuchdifferencebetweenArabicandEnglishcultures in the use of compliments. However, if we look at compliment responses, differences arise. When communicating with native speakers of English, Arabs may sometimes soundbizarre oroffending.Thisisduotosome differencesinthe waythetwo cultures usecomplimentresponses.IntheArabsociety,itisadeeplyrootedreligiousbeliefthat humility is a virtue. Even when accepting a compliment, Arabs tend to return the compliment(whichmightsoundinsinceretoNSs),orinsistonofferingtheobjectofthe complimenttothespeaker(somethingthatmightbeembarrassingtotheNSswhodidnot
31
expect this behavior). Therefore, differences may result in serious communicative interferenceincrossArabicandEnglishculturecommunication.
ResearchonComplimentResponses The first researcher who discussed compliment responses from a pragmatic perspective wasPomerantzin1978.SheclaimedthatAmericansfacetwodilemmaswhenresponding tocompliments:(A)theyhavetoagreewiththespeaker,and(B)theyhavetoavoidself praise.Urano(1998),furtherexplainsthisdilemmabystatingthatwhenarecipientofa complimentrespondsbyagreeingwiththespeaker(ConditionA),itviolatesConditionB asthisresponsegoesagainstthesociolinguisticexpectationsofthespeaker.Ontheother hand,ifthespeakerdoesntacceptthecomplimenttoavoidselfpraise,theresponsewill be facethreatening since it violates Condition A. To mediate this conflict, recipients of complimentsresolvetoavarietyofsolutions:(1)Acceptance,(2)Rejection,and(3)Self praiseavoidance. Herbert (1986) revised Pomerantzs taxonomy by analyzing American English speakers compliment responses. He collected more than a thousand samples of compliment responses from American college students in a threeyears period project. Surprisingly, only 36.35% compliment responses were accounted for by acceptance. Herbertendedupwithathreecategory,twelvetypetaxonomyofcomplimentresponses. (Table1) ResponseType Example
A.Agreement I. Acceptances 1.AppreciationToken 2.CommentAcceptance 3.PraiseUpgrade II.CommentHistory III.Transfers 1.Reassignment Mybrothergaveittome. Thanksthankyou(smile) Thanksitsmyfavouritetoo. Reallybringsouttheblueinmyeyes,doesntit? IboughtitforthetriptoArizona.
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2.Return B.Nonagreement I.ScaleDown II.Question III.Nonacceptances 1.Disagreement 2.Qualification IV.NoAcknowledgment C.OtherInterpretations I.Request
Sosyours.
Itsreallyquiteold. Doyoureallythinkso?
Ihateit. Itsalright,butLensisnicer. (silence)
Youwannaborrowthisonetoo?
Table1.HerbertsTaxonomyofComplimentresponses(Herbert1986,p.79)
Since then, a number of contrastive studies have been conducted to compare compliment responses in different languages and language varieties. Arabic and South African English speakers were found to prefer accepting compliments rather than reject them.SpeakersofAsianlanguages,ontheotherhand,werelikelytorejectcompliments (Urano, 1998). In 1989, Wolfson collected observational data on compliments from authenticinteractionbetweennativeandnonnativespeakersoveraperiodoftwoyears. She foundoutthatL2speakersdid understandthe function of complimentsasasocial lubricant in the American culture. They had difficulty in responding appropriately to compliments(Ghawi1993,p.40).Inanother contrastivestudy of compliment responses betweenChineselearnersofEnglishandAmericanNSsofEnglish,Chen(1993),found outthatthemajorityofChineseNNSsofEnglishrejectedcompliments,comparedtothe AmericanNSswhoacceptedandappreciatedthosecompliments. Morerecently,Cedars(2006)contrastivestudyofcomplimentresponsesusedbyThai NNSs of English and American NSs of English revealed significant differences in responses to English compliments between the two groups.While Americans tended to accept compliments and elaborate positively in their responses, Thai NNSs of English refrained from elaborating and used formulaic expressions in their responses. Cedar
33
explained this by stating that the English conversational competence of Thai subjects wasnotdevelopedenoughtoexpresstheirfeelingsofpositiveelaboration(p.15). Despitetheabovereviewedstudiesoncomplimentsandcomplimentresponses,thelack ofstudiesonArabiclearnersofEnglishinthisareaisobvious.
Researchquestions As mentioned earlier, the purpose of this study is to examine pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Arabic learners of English. Three related research questions emerged: 1. Whatarethesimilaritiesanddifferencesincomplimentresponsesbetweenfemale NSsandEmaratifemaleNNSsofEnglish? 2. WhenspeakinginEnglish,willEmaratifemalescomplimentresponsesbecloser toArabicorEnglish? 3. Doeslanguage proficiencyplayaroleintheiruseofcomplimentresponses? Inordertoanswerthesequestions,itisnecessarytofirstexaminethepatternsof compliment responses by Americans and Emarati females in their L1, and second to observecomplimentresponsesbyEmaratifemalesintheirL2(English).
Methodology Forvalidityandreliability,Iusedtriangulationbynotconcentratingonjustonesourceof information. I approached the topic from different points of view by combining quantitative data from discourse completion tasks (DCTs) and qualitative data from interviews. I also used theories and background knowledge from books and journals articlesthatguidedmetoapproachmytopicintherightway. Participants The subjects of the study were all female participants divided into three main groups: - Group1:American NSsofEnglish =10(HCTteachingstaff) - Group2:EmaratiNNs+English majors=10.AllofthemareEnglishTeachers attheFujairahElementarySchoolforGirls.
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- Group3:EmaratiNNsnonEnglishmajors=6.2Housewives+4Mathteachers attheFujairahElementarySchoolforGirls. The reason why females were chosen for this study is because they tend to use politeness strategies more than men do. According to Guodong & Jing (2005), many research studies support this claim. They explain that studies on the relation of gender and language have found out that women are more sensitive than men to being polite. Studies conducted by Liao & Breneham and Brown in1996 and 1998 also found that women are more status sensitive than men. Therefore, it ispredictable that women will usemorepolitenessstrategiesthanmendo.Whatisalsoimportanttonote,asLiu(1997) explains,isthatwomenaretraditionallyassumedinbothculturestobemoreconcerned thanmenwithpersonaltopicssuchasphysicalappearance,clothing,foodanddiet.
Tools 1. DiscourseCompletionTest: TheDiscourseCompletionTest(DCT)consistsofsixscenarios,inwhichparticipantsare expectedtorespondtocompliments.Thesescenariosweredesignedtomeetthepurpose of this study and to elicit data on compliment responses from both NSs and NNSs of English.ThefinalversioninEnglishwastranslatedbytheresearchertoArabic.Groups1 and2tooktheEnglishversion,andgroup3tooktheArabicversion.
2. Interviews: Thistoolwasusedtoaccountforthereasonsoftheparticipantsresponsesandminimize theresearchersbiaswheninterpretingthedata.
Findings The data collected from the three groups through the discourse completion test will be presently analyzed for the six scenarios. The analysis will be based on Herberts taxonomy of compliment responses to examine the similarities and differences between nativeandnonnativespeakersofEnglish. Scenario1:
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Youhavejustfinishedpresentingyourresearchpaper.Attheendoftheclass(whenyou werejustleavingtheclassroom),oneofyourclassmatessay:Youdidanexcellentjob!I reallyenjoyedyourpresentation.Youanswer:_________________ AlmostalloftheNSsresponsestothisscenariowereagreement.Theirresponsesvaried betweenappreciationtoken oh,thank you!,to commentacceptance thanks!Im glad youenjoyedit,andpraiseupgradeyouhavenoideahowhardIworkedforthat!.Only oneNSrespondedbydisagreeingandquestioningReally?Ithoughtitwasjustok.On the other hand, almost all of the native speakers of Arabic (NSAs), have responded by either transfer (returning the compliment) oh, your presentation was much better, or interpreting it as a request do you want me to help you with your presentation? Only oneoftheNSAsrespondedwithasimplethankyou.TheresponsesofNNSswhotook the English version of the DCT showed more use of the agreement responses like thanks!andItsniceof youtosayso.However,theyalsoshowedliteraltranslation of Arabic formulaic expressions used as compliment responses. These translations included Im your pupil, which is a scale down expression that means the speaker is muchbetterthantheaddressee,andImashamedwhichmightstrikeaNSasextremely outofplace,butisliterallytranslatedfromthewidelyusedArabicformulaicexpression ( )akhjaltomtawaadona.
Scenario2: You havesome friendsandrelativesover for coffeeandcakethat youbaked.Someone says:TastesYummy!.Youanswer:_________________ EightofthetenNSsrespondedwiththanksandthenofferingtogivethespeakerthe recipe would you like the recipe?. The other two responded by giving information or history,itsafamilyrecipe.NNSswhoansweredinArabicusedquestionsreally?Did you really like it?, disagreement no its not, youre just complimenting me!, and reassignmentmymomgavemetherecipe.NSAswhoansweredinEnglishdidnotuse thosetwostrategiesintheirresponses.Instead,theyresolvedagaintoliterallytranslating ArabicformulaicexpressionslikeYourtasteisyummy,andIaddedmymagictoit/ thats because I dipped my sweet finger init. Only one person responded with thank you.
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Scenario3: You were shopping for a skirt and a stranger (male) approaches you and says: This wouldlookamazingonyou!Youanswer:____________________ NSsallrespondedwitheithernoacknowledgment,orbynotacceptingthecompliment whats it got to do with you?. NNSs who answered in Arabic and English also respondedwithnoacknowledgment,orbyoffendingtheman.
Scenario4: You were shopping for a skirt and a stranger (female) approaches you and says: This wouldlookamazingonyou!Youanswer:__________________ NSsrespondedwitheitheraquestionreally?/oh,sodoyouthinkIshouldbuyit?oran appreciationtokenthanks/thankyou.NNSswhorespondedinArabicusedformulaic expressions like May Allah bliss you jazaaki allah khair, May Allah make all your days beautiful Allah yhalli ayyamek. NNSs who answered in English used tokens of appreciation thanks/ how sweet of you to say so, or returned the compliment by translatingArabicformulaicexpressionsYoureyesarebeautifuloyoonechelhelwa.
Scenario5: Some friendsare overat your house.One ofthemlooksataclock hanging onthe wall andsays:Iloveyourclock.Itlooksgreatinyourlivingroom!.Youanswer:_____ NSsrespondedwithcommenthistoryItwasapresentfrommydaughter/Iboughtitin Harrods,oracceptanceyes,IloveditwhenIboughtit.NNSswhoansweredinArabic interpreted this compliment as a request and responded with offering the clock to the speakerandinsistingthattheytakeit.NNSsansweringinEnglishalsoinsistedthatthe speakertakethewatchyoumusttakeit!Iswear,youmust!.OnlyoneNNSanswered withanappreciationtokenyoulikeit!Thankyou!.
Scenario 6: Yourewearinganewshirtandacolleaguelooksatyouandsays:Thisshirtlooksgreat onyou!Blueisagreatcolorforyou.Youanswer:___________________
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NSsresponded withappreciationtokens thanks/ you made my day!,questionsisit really?/ do you think so?, disagreement I dunno, I prefer pink, and comment acceptance oh, its my favorite color. Thanks. NNSs who answered in Arabic responded with returning the compliment youre more beautiful/ this is because you have a good taste, disagreement thanks, but I know this is only a compliment, and questionsreally?Swear!!.NNSswhoansweredinEnglishreturnedthecomplimentby translatingArabicformulaicexpressionsyoureyesarebeautifulandtheyseeeverything beautiful, disagreement please dont say that, youre embarrassing me!, scale down oh, its so cheap! I bought it in the sales, and comment acceptance thanks, I like it too.
Discussion It was clear from the above analysis that in most cases, female Emarati learners of English did not produce targetlike compliment responses. Theyunconsciously brought about some L1 expressions and strategies which might result in communicative breakdown. For instance, they literally translated Arabic formulaic expressions used in complimentresponsesandtheseexpressionswerenotalwayssuitableforthecompliment giveninEnglish.Theyintendedtheirresponsestobepolitebuttheywerenotappropriate. Forexample,theexpressionImashamedwouldbemoreappropriatewhenanoffence iscommitted,ratherthantoshowgratitudeandappreciation.Thesestrategieswereused both by English and nonEnglish majors, which means that communicating with NSs might slightly affect their use of compliment responses, but does not have changed it completelytoatargetlikeresponse. Another important issue that rises from the findings is that NNSs had some misconceptions about the way NSs responded to compliments. These misconceptions have affected the way NNSs would deal with NSs considering compliment responses. This was illustrated through scenario 3 (see above). In the UAE culture, compliments frommenaregenerallynotacceptedunlessthemanisamemberofthefamily.However, ifthey happen,theappropriateresponse fromthefemale wouldbetosimplyignorethe man. Responses to other compliments are normally answered based on the real circumstanceorpositiontheaddresseeisinatthemomenthe/sheisgreeted.
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Scenario 3 illustrates a situation that many females in the UAE are likely to find themselvesinwhileshopping.TheresponsesoftheNNSswereanalysedaboveandthey rangedfromnoacknowledgement,tooffendingthemale.Aftergroups2,and3finished theirDCTs,Iaskedthemthefollowingquestionhowdo youthinkafemaleNSwould respondinthissituation?AlloftheNNSsansweredthataNSwouldbehappytogetthis compliment, would highly appreciate it, and would thank the man. While, as obvious fromthedataanalysisabove,allbutoneNSansweredthattheywouldeitherignorethe man or tell him to mind his own business.When I asked the NNSs how this idea they haveofNSsaffectedthem,halfofthemstatedthatitdoesnotaffecttheminanywaythe other half, however, explained that an American male would expect the female to be happy when complimented while a local male would know that this female would be insulted. If the man who complimented me was a foreigner, I would accept the complimentandthank him,ifitwasalocalguy,saidoneoftheinterviewee,Iwould certainlyignorehim. AnotherissueisthewayNSsandNNSsviewcompliments.ComplimentsintheUAE hadturnedintoaroutineandtheyareperceivedtobeinsincere mostofthetime.There areseveralfactorsthataffecttheuseofcomplimentsintheUAE,like socialdistance,age, gender,andsocialstatus.SomeofthereasonswhypeopleintheUAEusecompliments are, as Boyle (2005) explained, 1) to avoid hurting other peoples feelings 2) to give peoplesomehopeandencouragement3)toprotectoneselffrommorepowerfulpeople 4)becausetheywantotherpeopletocomplimentthemtoo5)itsencouraging(p.356). Forthesereasons,manypeopleusecomplimentseveniftheywereinsincere,asameans ofmakingpeoplefeelgood.ThatswhyitwasfoundinNNSsresponsesexpressionslike oh, this is not true, youre only complimenting me! and Really? Or is it just a compliment? It was obvious also that language proficiency did not play a role in producing target like compliment responses. Both English majors and non majors produced the same compliment responses. The only difference is that group 2 translated those responses literallytoEnglish. Other deviations from the native norms are the following: (1) NNSs used longer compliment responses because there is a general understanding that the longer the
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response to compliments, the more sincere it is, (2) NNSs, sometimes, responded to complimentswithajokethatmightbemisunderstoodbyspeakersofotherlanguages,(3) becauseoftheirstrongtieswiththeirreligion,EmaratiNNSs havetheirfaithin(Allah) God deeply embedded within their speech acts. Thats why most of the compliment responses are in the form of a small prayer that the speaker beblessed from Allah, and he/shegetswhatevertheywantwiththehelpofAllah allaheykhaleech,allahysallemch.
Conclusion The present study explored pragmatic transfer of compliment responses in Arabic learners of English in comparison with the data from native speakers of American English.The findingsofthestudyshowthatArabiclearnersdid notproducetargetlike responsestocompliments.Thissuggeststhatitsnotenoughtobuildlearnerslinguistic competenceandthatitmightbenecessarytoalsodeveloptheirsociocultural,whichwill in turn develop their understanding of the frames of interaction and rules of politeness within the target culture. It is also important to provide learners with knowledge of the linguistic forms or stylistic strategies appropriate to convey the intended meaning in differentcontextsorsituations. Thestudyofferstwopedagogicalimplications,oneforsyllabusdesignersandtheother for instruction. First, when designing textbooks, syllabus designers should examine learnersneedsconsideringtheunderstandingandproductionofspeechactsinthetarget languageandwhichofthesespeechactstheyarelikelytocomeacross.Learnersshould be made aware of NSs usage of the variety of expressions to realize a certain function, dependingonthesituationwheretheyareused.Thiscouldbeaccomplishedbyeliciting complimentresponsesfromtheirownculture,andpresentingthetargetcultureswayof respondingtocomplimentstoraisetheirawareness. Second,EmaratiEFLlearners have no contact withNSs ofEnglish,andthat callsfor more communication in the classroom, as it contributes to interlanguage development. This could be achieved through: (a) using authentic materials from the target language that will help learners understand as many native and nonnative varieties and communicative styles as they can be expected to come across, (b) focusing on learner centredactivitieslikeroleplaysandrealdiscussionstodevelopefficientstrategiesofthe
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targetlanguage,(c)teamteachingwithNSstogivethestudentsachancetointeractand learnEnglishunderthesupervisionofaNS.
References Boyle,R.(2005).Pragmaticsascontentandstructureinargumentation.Proceedingsof
th the10 TESOL ArabiaConference,9, 353360.
Chen,R.(1993).Respondingtocompliments:Acontrastivestudyofpolitenessstrategies betweenAmericanEnglishandChinesespeakers. JournalofPragmatics,(20),4975. ElSamaty,M.(2005).Helpingforeignlanguagelearnersbecomepragmatically

th competent.Proceedingsofthe10 TESOLArabia Conference,9, 341351.
EslamiRasekh,Z.,EslamiRasekh,A.,&Fatahi,A.(2004).Theeffectofexplicit metapragmaticinstructiononthespeechactawarenessofadvancedEFLstudents.
th TESLEJ(8),2.RetrievedMay 5 ,2006,fromhttp://wwwwriting.berkeley.edu/TESl
EJ/ej30/a2.html Cedar.P.(2006).ThaiandAmericanResponsestoComplimentsinEnglish.The LinguisticsJournal,June,Vol.1No.2,pp.628. http://www.linguistics journal.com/June2006_pc.php Ghawi,M.(1993).PragmatictransferinArabiclearnersofEnglish.ElTwoTalk,1(1), 3952. Guodong,L.&Jing,H.(2005).Acontrastivestudyondisagreementstrategiesfor politenessbetweenAmericanEnglish&MandarinChinese.AsianEFLJournal(7), 1.

th RetrievedMay5 ,2006,from http://www.asianefljournal.com/march_05_lghj.php
Herbert,K.(1986).Saythankyouorsomething.AmericanSpeech,61(1),7688. RetrievedApril13,2006fromtheJSTORdatabase. Liu,S.(2003).Studiesonnegativepragmatictransferininternationalpragmatics. GuangxiNormalUniversityJournal.RetrievedApril1,2006,from http://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/negative%20pragmatic%20transfer.doc Rizk,S.(2003). WhysayNO!whenyourefuse?TESOLArabia2002Conference Proceedings,7, 401431.
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Takahashi,T.&Beebe,L.(1987).Thedevelopmentofpragmaticcompetencein JapaneselearnersofEnglish.JALTJournal,(8),131155. Urano,K.(1998).NegativepragmatictransferincomplimentresponsesbyJapanese learnersofEnglish.Unpublishedmanuscript,UniversityofHawai'iatManoa, Honolulu.RetrievedMay1,2006,from http://www2.hawaii.edu/~urano/research/esl660.html Wolfson,N.(1986).Complimentsincrossculturalperspectives.InJ.M.Valdes,Culture bound:Bridgingtheculturalgapinlanguageteaching(pp.112120).NewYork: CambridgeUniversityPress.
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PolitenessMarkersinPersianRequestives
MohammadAliSalmaniNodoushan,UniversityofZanjan,Iran BioData: DrMohammadAliSalmaniNodoushanisAssistantProfessorofTEFLattheUniversity of Zanjan, Iran. He has been teaching BA and MA courses at different Iranian UniversitiesforthepastfifteenyearandisamemberoftheeditorialboardsofAsianEFL Journal,TheLinguisticsJournal,andIManager'sJournalofEducationalTechnology.He isalsoeditorinchiefofIranianJournalofLanguageStudies(IJLS).Hisareasofinterest includelanguagetestingandEnglishforSpecificPurposes(ESP). Abstract In astudy of the effects of complainers' sex, age,perceived situational seriousness, and social class on the use of conversational strategies in their complaining behavior, 465 subjects of varying age, sex, and social class were observed and tape recorded in spontaneous conversation by 25 field workers. The field workers also filled out a checklist that provided the data of the study, which were then input into two nonparametric tests: (a) MannWhitney U Test, and (b) Kruskal Wallis H Test. The resultsofdataanalysisshowedthat'repetitionofcomplaint'wasanimportantstrategyin connection to the 'perceived situational seriousness' of the topic of complaint. Sex was foundtocausethedifferentialuseofthreeconversationalstrategies,socialclasstocause thedifferentialuseoftwoconversationalstrategies,andperceivedsituationalseriousness andage eachto causethatof only on conversationalstrategy.A cline ofsignificanceis suggested for each of the independent variables in question. Suggestions are made for furtherresearch. Key words: sociolinguistics pragmatics speech act theory facethreatening acts non facethreateningactgripingtroublestellingpolitenesswhingingsociopragmatics
1.Introduction Direct complaint (DC) is a facethreatening act through which a speaker makes complaintsaboutsomeoneorsomethingthatispresentinthespeechactscene(Murphy andNeu,1996OlshtainandWeinbach,1993).Indirectcomplaint(IC)orGriping,onthe other hand, can be described as a nonfacethreatening speech act in which the responsible party or object of the complaint is not present during the interaction within
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which the speech act is performed (DAmicoReisner, 1985). Both direct and indirect complaints have the potential of leading to lengthy interactions between speaker and addressee however, it is usually in the indirect complaint or griping that one finds conversational material upon which shared beliefs and attitudes may be expressed (Tatsuki, 2000). As such, the indirect complaint (IC) becomes a solidaritybuilding device since it freely invokes the listener to engage in a series of commiserative responsestodemonstrateattentionandconcern,ortomaintainintimacyandstablesocial relationships. Closely related to the concept of griping is what in Australian English is called whinging. Using Natural Semantic Approach, Wierzbicka (1991, pp.1812) defines whingingas: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) Isaysomethingbadishappeningtome Ifeelsomethingbadbecauseofthis Icantdoanythingbecauseofthis Iwantsomeonetoknowthis I wantsomeonetodosomethingbecauseofthis Ithinknoonewantstodoanythingbecauseofthis Iwanttosaythismanytimesbecauseofthis
Wierzbicka (1991) compared her own definition of whinge with the definitions of complaints(directandindirect)tohighlighttherangeofmeaningsawordcanhavewith respecttothecultureinwhichitisapart. AccordingtobothTannen (1990)andMichand&Warner (1997),indirect complaints frequently serve as backchannels or evaluative responses in an extended structure of discourse exchanges they may invoke expressions like Oh, thats horrible!, Yeah, I knowwhatyoumean,andThatstoobad.(cf.Allami,2006). 2.Reviewoftherelatedliterature BrownandLevinson's(1978)definitionofthenotionoffacecreatedinterestinthestudy ofspeechactsthathadtodowithface.Onesuchspeechactiscomplaining.Theearliest attempts at studying complaints were made in the 1980s.Jefferson and Lee (1981) and Jefferson (1984a, 1984b) studied troublestelling encounters from a conversation analysispointofview.Katriel(1985)conductedaresearchongriping.Katrielexamined
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the ritual gripings among Israelis. All of these studies referred to the potential of establishingsolidaritythroughgriping. AsAllami(2006)notices,Bayraktaroglu(1992),inastudy onTurkishcommiserative responses, found that griping was a common speech act among friends and intimates. Bayraktaroglusaid: When one of the speakers informs the other speaker of the existence of a personalproblem,thesubsequenttalkrevolvesaroundthistroubleforanumber ofexchanges,formingaunitintheconversationwheretroubleisthefocalpoint , [involving] the speaker who initiates it by making his or her trouble in public, the troubleteller, and the speaker who is on the receiving end, the troublerecipient. (Bayraktaroglu,1992,p.319,citedinAllami,2006) Bayraktaroglu also distinguished griping from troublestalking in that the latter is a type oforalnarrativewhichisinitiatedbytheformer. Indirect complaint (IC) refers to the expression of dissatisfaction to an interlocutor about someone or something that is not present. An indirect complaint is defined as a negative evaluation wherein the addressee is neither held responsible for the perceived offense nor capable of remedying the perceived offense. Native English speakers usually useindirectcomplaintsasapositivestrategyforestablishingpointsofcommonalitythey frequently employ indirect complaints (ICs) in an attempt to establish rapport or solidaritybetweenthemselvesandtheirinterlocutors. OneoftheearlyattemptsatstudyingICswasmadebyBoxer(1993a).Inboxer'sstudy, 295 interlocutors produced 533 indirect complaints.Boxeridentifiedthreedifferenttypes ofICthemes(personal,impersonal,andtrivial),andsixtypesofICresponses(nothingor topic switch, question, contradiction, joke/teasing, advice/lecture, and commiseration). The study focused mainly on the role of gender, social status, social distance, and theme in connection to ICs. Since half of interlocutors in Boxer's study were Jewish, it was possible to investigate ethnicity. Boxer found that approximately 25% of griping sequences, in her study, served to distance theinterlocutors from one another while 75% of the gripings were found, by a group of ten native Englishspeaking raters, to be rapportinspiring. Boxer's study found that speakers of English often employed gripings in sequential interaction in an attempt to establish solidarity. It was also found that
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women mostly commiserated with ICs, while men contradicted or gave advice. Boxer noticed that ESL textbooks, with respect to gender, did not includeICsorincludedthem but did not treat them as ICs. The study, therefore, suggested that nonnative speakers (NNSs)shouldknowthatcommiseratingwithcomplaintsisimportantinthatitsignalsto thespeaker(S)thatthehearer(H)issupportivethisbuildssolidarity. In another study by Boxer (1993b), indirect complaints as well as commiseration in conversations between Japanese ESL learners and their E1 peers were studied. Boxer used spontaneous speech or field notes. In this study, 295 interlocutors were recorded in spontaneousconversation(195womenand100men).Theissuethatemergedwasthatof how to respond to an indirect complaint. The results showed that natives used (a) joking/teasing, (b) nonsubstantive reply ("hmn"), (c) question, (d) advice/lecture, (e) contradiction, and(f)commiseration. With NSsmostresponseswerecommiserationwith some questioning. For NNSs, the major category was nonsubstantive, sometimes accompanied by some questioning and some commiseration. The study concluded that the Japanese ESL learners were missing out on opportunities for conversation by not engaging in the interaction more fully they did not utilize talk in the same way as NSs did. In a study in 1993 by Frescura, eighty three subjects provided the taperecorded role play data on reactions to complaints (mostly apologies). The subjects of the study belonged in four different groups: (a) native Italian speakers in Italy, (b) native English speakers in Canada,(c)ItaliansresidinginCanada,and(d)EnglishCanadianlearnersof Italian. The respondents, after being taperecorded in six roleplay interactions, were askedtolistentoallsixrecordingsandtoprovideretrospectiveverbalreporton: (a) howclosetoreallifetheyfelttheirperformancetobe (b)howdominanttheyfelttheirinterlocutorwas (c) theirsensitivitytotheseverityoftheoffenseandtothe toneofthecomplaintand (d)their possible linguistic difficulties (forItaliansinCanadaandCanadianlearnersof Italian). The data were coded according to a taxonomy comprising seven semantic formulas in two categories: (a) hearersupportive (including formulas providing gratification and
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support for the "face" of the complainers), and (b) selfsupportive (including formulas uttered by the speakers to defend and protect their own "face"). Performance was measured according to the three dimensions of (1) production (total output of formulas, including repetitions), (2) selection (types of formulas used, excluding repetitions), and (3) intensity of formulas produced. The results, after data analysis, revealed that native speakers of Italian had an overall preference for the selfsupportive category offormulas native speakers of English, however, had a preference for the hearersupportive category. Moreover, Canadian learners of Italian did not indicate any preference by way of contrast, ItalianCanadian speakers, though diverging some from the native norm, gave indicationoflanguagemaintenanceaswell.Frescura(1993)hadusedverbalreportwhich helped her establish, among other things, that the learners of Italian tended to think in Englishfirstbeforerespondingtotheroleplays. According to Du (1995), in Chinese culture face is not onlysociallyoriented but also reciprocal. Some method of maintaining 'face balance' is therefore required. Depending on(a)therelationshipbetweentheinterlocutorsand(b)thenatureofthemessage,theact of 'giving bad news' may in some cases be facesaving. However, 'complaining' and 'disagreeing' are in most cases, clearly facethreatening. The former indicates that the person's behavior is not approved or accepted by other social members and the latter indicates a contradiction or negative evaluation of a person's face. These acts, therefore, requiresomestrategyforpreservingthefaceofbothinterlocutors.Du(1995)conducteda study with thirty students (male and female) ranging from 19 to 30 years old. The study gave a definitionofthesethreefacethreateningactscomplaining,givingbadnews,and disagreeing. Du also discussed the illocutionary verbs which denote these acts and the semantics of face in Chinese culture. Du used a 19item questionnaire that described facethreatening situations and asked each subject to contemplate the situation and write his or her response. The results of Du's study showed that strategy choice varied according to(a)thereferentialgoaland(b)thenatureoftheinterlocutorrelationship.Du alsonoticeda general pattern: facethreatening acts in Chinese tend to be performedina cooperative rather than confrontational manner. Attention is paid to both participants' facebyemphasizingcommongroundandconstructiveproblemsolutions.
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Morrow (1995) studied twenty students enrolled in two spoken English classes in an intensiveESLprogramintheUnitedStates.Morrowusedathreehourinterventionusing model dialogues, prescribed speechact formulae, and various types of performance activities (games and role playing) about refusals and complaints. Oral data were collected in three phases: (a) prior to the intervention, (b) immediately following the intervention, and (c) six months after the intervention. Morrow collected the oral data by means of seven semistructured roleplay tasks which prompted subjects toperformthree directcomplaintsandfourrefusalswithpeerinterlocutors.Thedatawereanalyzedintwo ways: (a) using holistic ratings of clarity and politeness, and (b) comparing the pretest and posttest distributions of discourse features with those of native English speaking controls (N=14). Ttests were conducted to compare the pooled pretest and posttest holistic scores. The ttests, which were significant at p<.0005, revealed improvements in subjects' levels of clarity and politeness however, similar comparisons of the posttest from phase two of the study, and delayed posttest scores from phase three of the study, did not attain statistical significance. The refusal analysis of discourse features (semantic formulae) revealed increases in the use of politeness strategies, especially of negative politeness strategies. Frequently these developmental changes appeared pragmatically appropriate even when they failed to converge toward the native speaker frequencies. Morrow reported that analysis of propositions and modifiers in the complaint data revealed gains in pragmatic competence. These pragmatic gains were indicated by such changes as (a) increased indirectness, (b) more complete explanations, and (c) fewer explicit statements of dissatisfaction. Morrow's results, which corroborated the findings from the holistic ratings, suggested that speech act instruction helped the subjects to performcomplaintsandrefusalswhichwereclearer,morepolite,and,toalimitedextent, more nativelike. Additional intratask comparisons found that higher levels of pragmatic competencewereachievedwhentheinterlocutor'slevelofsocialdistancewaslower(i.e., friendsasopposedtoacquaintances). The study conducted by Murphy and Neu (1996) had two objectives: (1) to compare components of the speech act of complaining produced by American native speakers and Korean nonnative speakers of English, and (2) to ascertain how this speech act was judged by native speakers based on a number of factors (such as whether the act was
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aggressive, respectful, credible, appropriate, and similar to what a native would use). As such, the study had two parts: (a) the productive part, and (b) the receptive part.Forthe productive partofthestudy,thesubjectswerefourteenmaleAmericanandfourteenmale Korean graduate students from Penn State University. Twentythree undergraduate and fourgraduatestudents(foratotaloftwentyseven)participatedinthereceptivepartofthe study,who judged theacceptabilityofthespeechacts. The speech act data were collected by means of an oral discourse completion task (DCT). A hypothetical situation was presented in which the subject was placed in the position of a student whose paper had been unfairly marked and the subjects were directed to "go speak to the professor." Then,thesubjects'responses weretaperecorded. The instrument in the acceptability judgment part of the study was a questionnaire with 10 yesno questions and one openended question. Five of the yesno questions were "distractor items" and the other 5 were designed to measure the native speakers' perceptions about the speech act acceptability. The openended question asked, "If you were the student in this situation, would your approach be different from the student you've just heard? Please explain your answer for both speakerstudent 1 and speaker student 2." Each subject was alone during the DCT and his or her data were later transcribed into written form. The speech data elicited for the firstpartofthestudywere examined using Cohen and Olshtain's (1981) definition of speech act set. A .05 alpha level of significance was set for a Chisquare analysis of the American students' responses to the five yesno questions (which were not distractors) and the Yate's CorrectionforContinuitywasusedtoanalyzealldifferencesbetweenresponses. Murphy and Neu (1996) found that, when expressing disapproval about a grade received on a paper to a professor, most American native speakers of English would produceacomplaintspeechactset,whilemostKoreannonnativespeakers(11outof14) wouldnotbothnativeandnonnativespeakersusedan"explanationofpurpose"tobegin the speech act set in similar ways. The native speakers then produced a complaint only aftertheexplanationofpurpose.Thiscomplaintappearedtobewhatmostofthesenative speakersfeltwasthemostsociallyappropriateoptionforexpressingdisapproval.Theact involved: acceptance of responsibility, depersonalization of the problem, questioning techniques that used modals "would" and/or "could," use of mitigators, and use of the
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pronoun "we." The 11 nonnative speakers who did not use a complaint form employed what was perceived by native speakers as a form of criticism which served to abdicate responsibility, personalized the problem (placed blame), and used the modal "should." This represented a serious deviation from the native speakers' speech data. Both the native and nonnative speakers then used similar types of "justifications" in their speech act sets, referring to amount oftime,effort,and/orworkputintothepaper.Finallyallof the native and most (12 out of 14) of the nonnative speakers included a candidate solution: a request form in the speech act set in order to propose an option that would politely remedy the situation (such as reconsidering the grade, discussing the paper, or editing the paper further for an improved grade). As a result of the"criticism"formused by the many of the Korean nonnative speakers, native speakers judged the nonnative speakers' speech act sets to be more aggressive, less respectful, less credible, and less appropriatethanthecommon"complaint"speechactsetsofferedbynativespeakers. In a crosslinguistic study of the speech act of complaining, Nakabachi (1996) comparedcomplaintsproducedbyJapaneseL1speakersandJapaneseEFLspeakers.The study looked at whether Japanese EFL learners changed their strategies of complaint whentheyspokeinEnglish,andifso,whatfactorscausedthechange.Thesubjectsofthe studywerethirty nineundergraduatestudents with an intermediate level of proficiency in English who had no experience of living in English speaking countries. A discourse completion test (DCT)including eight situations wasusedfordatacollection.Nakabachi (1996) found that almost half of the subjects changed their speech strategies in English they used more severe expressions than natives did. This was interpreted as over accommodation to the target language norms, and seemed to suggest the risk involved withattemptingtoadapttothelocalsocioculturalnorms. The study conducted by Arent (1996) is an exploratory research that compares the relative frequency of the performance and avoidance of oral complaints by twenty two Chinese learners and twelve native speakers of American English. The subjects of the study were asked to respond to three problematic situations that were set in the same university housing complex. Three sets of data were obtained: (a) audiotaped roleplays, (b) interview data on perceived situational seriousness, and (c) verbal report data. The respondents were allowed to opt out in addition, the effects of social distance, power,
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and type of social contract were controlled for. Arent found that sociopragmatic decision makingforChineselearnersandNSsofAmericanEnglishappearedtobeassociatedwith (a) individual perceptions of situational seriousness and (b) with culturallyconditioned perceptionsoftheflexibilityofexplicitsocialcontracts. Boxer (1996)endorsedethnographicinterviewingasawayoftappingthenormsofthe communities (a) in research on speech act usage among native speakers in particular languagesand(b)inresearchonnonnativespeakerpragmatictransfer.Shediscussedthe results of two sets of interviews (one structured and another openended) which were designed to evaluate "troublestelling" in a group of native speakers. Troublestelling is defined as 'indirect complaining' designed for sharing mutual sentiment betweenspeakers andhearers.Boxer'sgoalinthestudieswastotapnotonlysociolinguisticknowledgethat was explicit, but knowledge that was tacit in the "naive" respondents. There were ten informants who were students, staff, faculty members, or alumni at a large university in the northeastern US. The spontaneous speech data consisted of 533 troublestelling exchanges that were tape recorded or recorded in field notes. Six major categories of responses emerged as ways in which these participants responded to indirect complaints: (1) response or topic switch, (2) contradiction, (3) agreement/commiseration, (4) joke/teasing,(5)advice/lecture,and (6) questions. Boxer found that troublestelling was used (a) to further conversation, (b) to establish solidarity, and (c) to build relationships. She also found that using the same questions witheachoftheparticipants,aswasdonewiththestructuredinterview,wasnotthebest idea because it inherently limited the depth of the participants' responses. In the second (openended) interview, Boxer used a more open format, which allowed not only for expansion of ideas but also for greater flexibility of responses. It was easier to obtain more information about the assumptions and perceptions, which shaped the respondents' answers and ideas about troublessharing.Shedescribedthefactorsthatmadeforamore ideal ethnographic interview, such as (a) rapport with the participants, (b) having participants whofeelcomfortabledoingmuchofthetalking,and(c)followingtheleadof the participants' narratives. Her findings revealed that in terms of troubles sharing, most respondents felt that while direct complaints qualified as "complaints," indirect complaints were not seen so much as complaining but rather a positive way of sharing
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mutual information and building relationships. She also found (a) that more females participated in troublestalk than males and (b) that females were recipients of more indirect complaints because they were seen as more supportive in general than males. Boxer claimed that, while the explicit assumption about complaining was that it constituted negativespeechbehavior,tacitassumptionsprovedotherwise. The subjects of Molloy and Shimura's (2003) study were 304 Japanese university studentsaged1821.TheywerestudentsatfiveuniversitiesintheKantoarea.Tocollect the data, a discourse completion test (DCT) with twelve complaint situations was used. TheDCTwasmeanttoassessEFLcomplaints.Therespondentswereallowedtooptout or to give a nonverbal response as well. The respondents tallied two things: (a) the strategies used and (b) the combinations of interactions. Molloy and Shimura found that thetwomostcommonstrategieswere (a) tonotifyand (b) toseekredress. Holmes (2003) reports on the Victoria University of Wellington Language in the Workplace(LWP)Projectfindingsregardingtalkintheworkplace.Thecorpushadatthe timeover2,000interactionsrecorded. Thefocusofthestudywasonwhatwasnecessary for fitting in and becoming an integrated member of the workplace as a community of practice.Holmes's paper examines the positive discourse strategies of small talk and humor it also illustrates how these provide a challenge for workers with an intellectual disability.Then the analysis turns to the more negatively affective area of workplace whingesandcomplaints.Holmesspecificallyexamines howwhingesandcomplaintsmay present difficulties to those from nonEnglishspeaking backgrounds.The studyprovides abasisfordevelopingusefulteachingmaterialsforthoseenteringworkplacesforthefirst time. Drawing on Politeness TheoryandtheCommunityofPracticemodel,Holmes,Newton, and Stubbe (2004) examined the uses and functions of the fourletter expletive 'f***' in interaction between workersinaNewZealandsoapfactoryworkteam. Theyextensively recorded thefactoryteamintheirdailyinteractionstoobtainacorpusofthirtyfivehours of authentic workplace talk from which they selected a small number of paradigmatic interactions for discussion in their paper. Particular attention was given to the way in which the expletive f*** was used in two face threatening speech acts,(a) direct
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complaints and refusals,and (b) its contrasting function in the speech act of whinging. The analysis focusedon the complexsociopragmaticfunctionsoff***anditsroleasan indicator of membership in a specific community of practice.Holmes, Newton, and Stubbe (2004) demonstrate how the speech act is accomplished over a series ofdifferent turns.They illustrated the slipperynature ofthe concept of politeness,in that they found theexpletivef***toserve as a positive politeness or solidaritymarkerwhenconfinedto membersofaparticularteamwithinthisfactory. Kumagai (2004) defined complaint conversations as conversations that involve two parties with distinct communicative orientations: (a) the complainer and (b) the complainee. She distinguished complaint conversations from quarrels in that the former involves an effort by the complainee to minimize the confrontation while, with thelatter, the two confront each other on a par. She took the two conversations she used for her study from a corpus she had collected earlier in 1991. In the first conversation the complainer was a male shopkeeper in downtown Tokyo and the complainee a male university student attempting to conduct a survey. Thecomplainer'smotherandwifealso participated in an effort to keep the peace when the shopkeeper returned to the shop to findthestudentthereafterhehadtoldhimhecouldnotdohissurveythere.Inthesecond conversation, one teenage girl was accusing the other ofbeinglatefortheirappointment. Kumagai (2004) focused on these two complaint conversations and discussed how the repetition of utterances within such conversations could function as a conversational strategy to: (1)express emotions (complainer expresses negative feelings and disapproval, and complainee expressesregretanddisagreement) (2)deal with the complaint situation effectively as a complainer or a complainee (complainer: intensification of reproach, maintaining stance by adding utterances, sarcasm using complainee's words complainee: repeating apologies,stallingor divertingthecomplaint) (3)provide rhetoric for argument (complainer: holding the floor by speaking fluently and adding utterances, controlling the topic of the complaint
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complainee: reorienting the conversation to a solution, closing the conversation)and (4)manipulatetheconversationaldevelopment. Inparticularshefocusedonusesofrepetition,bothexactrepetitionaswellasmodified repetition or paraphrase, of utterances made earlier in the same conversation. Kumagai's results supported Tannen's (1990) claim that repetition is a major means for creating speakerinvolvement,notmerelyamatterofredundancy. MolloyandShimura(2004)lookedatresponsestocomplaintsinuptotwelvesituations out of a sample of 259 Japanese university students (80% females). They performed a rigorous statistical analysis and found wide idiosyncratic variation in response patterns. Some respondents were more finetuned in their selection of speech acts relevant to the situation in question while others were less so. Molloy and Shimura raised numerous questionsastowhythiswasthecase,buttheydidnotprovide anypreferredexplanation. To sum up, the review of the literature related to complaints (whether direct (DC) or indirect (IC), and whether followed by troubles telling or not) revealed threemajor areas thathadpreviouslybeenstudied:(a)functionsofcomplaints,(b)responsestocomplaints, and (c) conversational strategies used by both complainers and complainees for complaining or troublestelling. According to literature, the functions of complaints are threefold: (a) to further conversation, (b) to build relationships, and (c) to establish solidarity(Boxer,1993Boxer1996).Sixresponsestocomplaintshavebeenidentifiedin theliterature:(a)noresponse,nonsubstantiveresponse,ortopicswitch(b)questions(c) contradiction (d) joke/teasing (e) advice/lecture and (f) agreement/commiseration (Boxer, 1993 Boxer, 1996). In addition, there were four conversational strategies which were used by complainers and complainees: (a) expressing emotions, (b) dealing with complaint situation, (c) providing rhetoric for argument, and (d) manipulating conversationaldevelopment(Kumagai,2004). 3.Aimofthestudy The literature reviewed in the previous section clearly shows the importance of the study of complaints. To date, no study has addressed this speech act in Farsi. As such, the
54
present study was an attempt at describing the salient conversational strategies that are used in the speech act of complaining in Farsi (See Appendix A for a summary of conversational strategies used in complaints). The study specifically focused on the role of complainers' sex, age, perceived situational seriousness, and social class in relation to theircomplainingbehavior. 4.METHOD 4.1.PARTICIPANTS A total of 465 participants (all of them complainers in their spontaneous conversations) comprised the sample of the study. They belonged to different age, social class, and gendergroups.Table1representsthefrequencyanalysisfortheparticipantsofthe study. Table1 Frequencyanalysisforparticipantsofthestudy
Sex Male Female AgeGroup Teen Young Adult Old SocialClass Low Mid High TOTAL Frequency 233 232 110 117 120 118 152 159 154 465 Percent 50.1 49.9 23.7 25.2 25.8 25.4 32.7 34.2 33.1 100 ValidPercent 50.1 49.9 23.7 25.2 25.8 25.4 32.7 34.2 33.1 100 CumulativePercent 50.1 100.0 23.7 48.8 74.6 100.0 32.7 66.9 100.0
From the participants of the study, 233 were male (50.1%) and232female(49.9%).As for the age groups, 110 participants (23.7%) were teenagers (between 13 and 19), 117 participants (or 25.2%) were young (between 19 and 35), 120 (or 25.8%) were adult (between35and50),and118(or25.4%)wereold(50+).152oftheparticipants(32.7%) belonged in the low social class, 159 (34.2%) came from the mid social class, and 154 (33.1%) were members of the high social class. The social class of participants was identified by such factors, as total monthly income, neighborhood of residence, brand of privatecar,possessionofprivatecellphones,andpossessionandtypeofprivatehouse(as theseareindicatorsofsocialclassinIran).
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4.2.Instrumentsandprocedures Thedataforthepresentstudywerecollectedby25fieldworkerswhoobservedandtape recorded the subjects in spontaneous conversation. The field workers were all master's students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) who had already passed their sociolinguistics and discourse analysis courses. They used hidden tape recorderstorecordthespontaneousconversationsofthesubjects.Theywereinstructedto tellthetruthabouttherecordingstothesubjectsaftertheyhadbeenrecorded,andtoask theirpermissionforusingthetapescriptsinthestudy.Thosesubjectswhodidnotpermit the use of their recorded conversations were discarded from the study, and the respective tape scripts were erased. The field workers assigned each tape script a unique reference number and filled out a checklist (one for each tape script) that providedthedataforthe study(SeeAppendixB).Thefieldworkersalsoindicatedtheirevaluationofthedegreeto which they thought the complainers perceived the situation to be serious, and provided anycommentsthatcouldmakethecodingofthedataeasier. The data collected in this way were then submitted to the SPSS 13.0 for Windows (SPSS, Inc., 2004). Three different statistics were used: (a) Frequency analysis, (b) MannWhitneyUTest,and(c)KruskalWallisHTest.Frequencyanalysiswasconducted to identify the proportion and percentage of subjects in the different subgroups of the sample (See table 1 above). The MannWhitney U Test (which is the nonparametric counterpart for independent samples ttest) is suitable for analyzing nominal data (where theindependentvariablehasonlytwolevels)therefore,itwasusedtomeasuretheeffect of participants' sex (i.e., male versus female) on their use of conversational strategies in the speech act of complaining. The Kruskal Wallis H Test (which is the nonparametric alternativetoOneWayBetweenGroupsANOVA)issuitableforanalyzingnominaldata (where the independent variable has more than two levels). As such, itwasperformedto measuretheeffectsofparticipants'socialclass,age,andperceivedsituationalseriousness on their use of conversational strategies in the speech act of complaining (For more on thesestatisticspleaseseePallant,2001).
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5.Resultsanddiscussion The first question addressed by the studywas"Domaleandfemalecomplainersdifferin terms of their use of conversational strategies in their complaints?" To answer this question, the data were analyzed by means of the MannWhitney U Test. Table 2 represents the results of this analysis for the four conversational strategies commonly usedincomplaints(SeeAppendixesAandB). Table2 MannWhitneyUtestfor Sexasthe Grouping Variable
STRATEGY1 MannWhitneyU WilcoxonW Z Asymp.Sig.(2tailed) 24054.500 51082.500 2.400 .016(*) STRATEGY2 23267.500 50528.500 2.690 .007(*) STRATEGY3 26499.000 53527.000 .388 .698 STRATEGY4 24129.000 51390.000 2.153 .031(*)
The four strategies under study were: (1) expressing emotions, (2) dealing with complaint
situation,(3)providingrhetoricforargument,and(4)manipulatingdevelopmentofconversation. As forstrategy1(i.e.,expressingemotions), maleandfemalecomplainers weredifferent intheir useofthestrategy[Z=2.4,p=02(rounded)].Maleandfemalecomplainerswerealsodifferent in their use of the second [Z = 2.69, p = .01 (rounded)] and the fourth [Z = 2.15, p = .03 (rounded)] strategies. However, the statistical difference between male and female subjects in theiruseofthethirdstrategywasnotsignificant[Z=.388,p=.7(rounded)].
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260 245.76 249.21
250
MeanRank
230.72
240
235.27
245.5
Female
220.56
230 220.18 216.86
Male
220
210
200 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3 Strategy4 ConversationalStrategy
Figure1.Comparisonofmeanranksforstrategyusebymalesandfemales.
Mean rank comparisons (figure 1 above) showed that males made use of the first strategy much more than females did. Females, however, made use of the second and fourth strategies much more than their male counterparts did. In other words, males
expressed their emotions more openly than females, while females dealt with the complaint situation andprovided rhetoricforargumentmoreeasilythanmales. The second question addressed by thestudy was whether there was a significant difference
in the complainers' use of conversational strategies across different social class groups. To answer this question, the data were analyzed by means of a Kruskal Wallis H Test. Table 3displaystheresultsofthisanalysis. Table 3:KruskalWallisH testfor SocialClassasthe Grouping Variable
STRATEGY1 ChiSquare df Asymp.Sig.(2tailed) 40.718 2 .000(*) STRATEGY2 100.037 2 .000(*) STRATEGY3 .171 2 .918 STRATEGY4 3.074 2 .215
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As it can be seen from table 3, complainers' social class related to their use of the first and the second conversational strategies in a statistically significant way. The most significant difference, however, related to the second strategy (ChiSquare = 100.037, df = 2, andp = .000). Subjects' social class also affected their use of the first strategy in a statisticallysignificantway(ChiSquare=40.718,df=2,p=.000).
350 275.41
300 231.51
318.46
235.73
233.48
229.81
250 MeanRank 191.6
200
189.64
191.67
219.01
236.38
243.32
Low Mid High
150
100
50
0 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3 Strategy4 ConversationalStrategy
Figure2.Comparisonofmeanranksforstrategyusebysubjectsacrosssocialclasses.
Lowclassparticipantsexpressedtheiremotionslessthantheirmidclassandhighclass counterparts. High class subjects, on the other hand, expressed more emotions that both midclassandlowclasssubjects.Midclasssubjectsstoodinbetween.Asfordealingwith the complaint situation, high class subjects used the strategy much more than both the mid class and the low class subjects. The difference between the mid class and the low classsubjects,however,wasverysmall. Still another question addressed by the present study was whether there was any statistically significant difference between participants' use of conversational strategies across different age groups. Here again, a Kruskal Wallis H Test was performed. The
59
resultsofthisanalysisaredisplayedintable4below.Inthiscase,agegroupwasafactor only in relation to the third strategy (i.e., providing rhetoric for the argument). The difference between subjects acrossdifferentagegroupswassignificantonlyinrelationto complainers'attemptsatholdingtheconversationalfloor[ChiSquare=9.272,df=3,and p = .03 (rounded)]. In connection to the other three strategies, age was not a significant factor. Table4 KruskalWallisH testfor Age asthe Grouping Variable
STRATEGY1 ChiSquare df Asymp.Sig.(2tailed) .932 3 .818 STRATEGY2 .596 3 .897 STRATEGY3 9.272 3 .026(*) STRATEGY4 3.128 3 .372
As is evident from graph 3 below, the only age group that had a mean rank much grater than the other groups in connection to thethird strategy was the age group 'old'. Thatis, subjects within the 50+ age group provided rhetoric for the argument by holding the conversationalfloormuchmorethanthesubjectswithintheotheragegroups.
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263.27
300 236.35 235.75 235.49 240.08 233.75
Teen
241.16 240.55
Young
233.64
230.24
227.61
223.77
227.24
221.04
215.39
250
220.18
Adult Old
200 MeanRank
150
100
50
0 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3 Strategy4 Conve rsationalStrategy
Figure3.Comparisonofmeanranksforstrategyusebysubjectsacrossagegroups.
The last question addressed by the present study was whether complainers' perceived situational seriousness affected their use of conversational strategies in any significant way.Oneagain,aKruskalWallisHTestwasperformed.Theresultsofthisanalysisare displayed intable5below. Table5 KruskalWallisH testfor PerceivedSituationalSeriousnessasthe Grouping Variable
STRATEGY1 ChiSquare df Asymp.Sig.(2tailed) .085 2 .959 STRATEGY2 4.687 2 .096 STRATEGY3 .989 2 .610 STRATEGY4 109.387 2 .000(*)
The results of data analysis indicated that perceived situational seriousness was a factor only in relation to the last conversational strategy (i.e., performers' manipulation of the
development ofconversation). Infact,whencomplainersthoughtthatthetopicofcomplaint
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was not that serious, they repeatedly talked about it, eitherbyrepeatingexactlythesame sentencesorbyparaphrasingtheircomplaintsandrepeatingthem(ChiSquare=109.387, df=2,andp=.000).Asfortopicswithahighlevelofperceivedsituationalseriousness, the subjects ofthestudyusedfewerrepetitions.Topicswithamediumlevelofperceived situational seriousness stood in between. The comparisons of mean ranks for the conversationalstrategiesareillustratedinfigure4below.
Low Mid High 246.46 Strategy4 156.14 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3
350
247.07
300 235.06 231.27 232.42 233.76
228.94
240.35
250
MeanRank
200
150
100
50
ConversationalStrategy
Figure 4. Comparison of mean ranks for strategy use by subjects in relation to perceived situationalseriousness.
This finding is rather odd. We logically expect more complaint when the topic of complaint is a serious matter, but the subjects of the study behaved in theoppositeway. The reason for this discrepancy can be found in the culturalnormsthatshapetheIranian community. We, Iranians, are culturally brought up in such a way as to avoid conversations that result in clash and conflict. We are repeatedly told by our parentsand teachers, from childhood to adolescence and beyond, that conflict and dispute is to be avoided. As such, it is not strange to see that when the topic of complaint is serious,
216.45
227.96
309.05
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Iranian native speakers of Farsi refrain from continuing their complaints. Serious matters are disputeprone zones they readily result in quarrels. Matters with a low level of perceived situational seriousness, however, take some time to result in quarrels. It is not very odd, therefore, to observe that Iranian complainers continue repeating their complaints about nonserious matters, until they realize that the complainee is about to reactaggressivelyatwhichtimetheygiveinand stopcomplaininganyfurther. 6.Conclusion Based on the findings of the study, a cline of significance can be suggested for each of theindependentvariablesinquestion.
IndependentVariables SEX SOCIALSTATUS AGE SITUATIONALSERIOUSNESS mostimportant strategy2( )strategy1() strategy2( )strategy1() strategy3( )strategy4 strategy4( )strategy2 leastimportant strategy4 strategy3 strategy2 strategy1
strategy3() strategy4 strategy1 strategy3
Such a cline might look something like the above illustration where the order of strategies (from left to right) identifies the degree to which they are affected by the independent variable in question, and where the symbol ( )represents statistical significance.Asitisindicatedbythecline,sexisthevariablethatcausesthedifferential use of three conversational strategies whereas social class causes the differential use of only two conversational strategies. Age and perceived situational seriousness cause the differential use of only one strategy age significantly affects complainers' use of 'providing rhetoric for argument' while perceived situational seriousness significantly affectscomplainers'manipulationofthedevelopmentofconversation. The present study only focused on the conversational strategies that were used by Iraniancomplainers.Similarstudiescanbedesignedtoresearchtheuseofconversational strategies by Iranian complainees. Moreover, similar studies may be designed that addressthefunctionsof complaintsinFarsi.
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References Allami,H.(2006).Asociopragmaticanalysisofgriping:ThecaseofIranianstudents. TheLinguisticsJournal,1(1),5976. Arent,R.(1996).SociopragmaticdecisionsregardingcomplaintsbyChineselearnersand NSsofAmericanEnglish.HongKongJournalofAppliedLinguistics,1(1),125147. Bayraktaroglu,A.(1992).DisagreementinTurkishtroublestalk.Text,12,317338. Boxer,D.(1993a).Complainingandcommiserating:Aspeechactviewofsolidarityin spokenAmericanEnglish.NY:PeterLang. Boxer,D.(1993b).Complaintsaspositivestrategies:Whatthelearnerneedstoknow. TESOLQuarterly,27(2),277299. Boxer,D.(1996).Ethnographicinterviewingasaresearchtoolinspeechactanalysis: Thecaseofcomplaints.InS.M.Gass&J.Neu(Eds.).Speechactsacrosscultures: Challengestocommunicationinasecondlanguage(pp.217239).Berlin:Moutonde Gruyter. Brown,R.,&Levinson,S.(1978).Universalsinlanguageusage:Politenessphenomena. InE.N.Goody(Ed.),Questionsandpoliteness:Strategiesinsocialinteraction(pp. 56289).Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress. Daly,N.,Holmes,J., Newton,J., &Stubbe,M. (2004).Expletivesassolidaritysignalsin FTAsonthefactoryfloor.JournalofPragmatics,36(5), 945964. DAmicoReisner,L.(1985).Anethnolinguisticstudyofdisapprovalexchanges. Unpublisheddoctoraldissertation.UniversityofPennsylvania. Du,J.S.(1995).PerformanceoffacethreateningactsinChinese:Complaining,giving badnews,anddisagreeing.InG.Kasper(Ed.),PragmaticsofChineseasanativeand targetlanguage(pp.165206).Manoa,Hawai'i:UniversityofHawai'iPress. Frescura,M.A.(1993).Asociolinguisticcomparisonof"reactionstocomplaints":Italian L1vs.English L1,ItalianL2,andItalianasacommunitylanguage.Unpublished doctoraldissertation,UniversityofToronto,Toronto. Holmes,J. (2003).Talkatworkandfittingin: Asociopragmaticperspectiveon workplaceculture. InG. Wigglesworth(Ed.),Markingourdifference: Languagesin AustraliaandNewZealanduniversities. ProceedingsofConferenceonLanguage
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EducationinAustralianandNewZealandUniversities(pp.95 15). Melbourne: UniversityofMelbourne. Jefferson,G.(1984a).Onstepwisetransitionfromtalkaboutatroubletoinappropriately nearpositionedmatters.InJ.MaxwellandJ.Heritage(Eds.).Structuresofsocial action:Studiesinconversationalanalysis(pp.191 222).Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress. Jefferson,G.(1984b).Laughterorganizationintalkabouttroubles.InJ.MaxwellandJ. Heritage(Eds.).Structuresofsocialaction:Studiesinconversationalanalysis(pp. 346369).Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress. Jefferson,G.,&Lee,J.R.E.(1981).Therejectionofadvice:Managingtheproblematic convergenceofatroublestellingandaserviceencounter.JournalofPragmatics,5, 399422. Katriel,T.(1985).GripingasaverbalritualinsomeIsraelidiscourse.Dialogue,367 381. Kumagai,T.(2004).Theroleofrepetitionincomplaintconversations.InP.Szatrowski (Ed.),HiddenandopenconflictinJapaneseconversationalinteraction(pp.199220). Tokyo:Kurosio. Michaud,S.,&Warner,R.(1997).Genderdifferencesinselfreportedresponseto troublestalk.SexRoles, 37(78),pp.527 540. SPSSIncorporation(2004).SPSS13.0forWindows[ComputerSoftware].Chicago,IL.: SPSSIncorporation(1September2004). Molloy,H.P.L.,&Shimura,M.(2003).Approachestoatheoryofcomplaint interactions.PaperpresentedattheJACET42ndAnnualConvention,Sendai,Japan, September5,2003. Molloy,H.P.L.,&Shimura,M.(2004).Anexaminationofsituationalsensitivityin mediumscaleinterlanguagepragmaticsresearch.TempleUniversity,Tokyo,Japan, http://www.jalt.org/pansig/2004/HTML/ShimMoll.htm. Morrow,C.K.(1995).ThepragmaticeffectsofinstructiononESLlearners'production ofcomplaintandrefusalspeechacts.Unpublisheddoctoraldissertation,Universityof NewYorkatBuffalo,Amherst,NY.UMIMicroform,UMINumber:9603629.
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Murphy,B.,&.Neu,J.(1996).Mygrade'stoolow:Thespeechactsetofcomplaining.In S.M.Gass&J.Neu(Eds.),Speechactsacrosscultures:Challengestocommunication insecondlanguage(pp.191216).Berlin:MoutondeGruyer. Nakabachi,K.(1996).Pragmatictransferincomplaints:Strategiesofcomplainingin EnglishandJapanesebyJapaneseEFLspeakers.JACETBulletin,27,127142. Olshtain,E.,&Weinbach,L.(1993).Interlanguagefeaturesofthespeechactof complaining.InG.KasperandS.BlumKulka(Eds.). Interlanguagepragmatics(pp. 108122).Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress. Pallant,J.(2001).SPSSsurvivalmanual:Astepbystepguidetodataanalysisusing SPSSforWindows(version10).Philadelphia:OpenUniversityPress. Tannen,D.(1990). Youjustdontunderstand:Menandwomeninconversation.New York:WilliamMorrow&Company. Tatsuki,D.H.(2000).Ifmycomplaintscouldpassionsmove:Aninterlanguagestudyof aggression.JournalofPragmatics,32,10031017. Wierzbicka,A.(1991).Crossculturalpragmatics:Thesemanticsofhumaninteraction, Trendsinlinguisticsstudiesandmonographs53.Berlin:MoutonDeGruyter.
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APPENDIXA:SummaryofConversationalStrategiesUsedinComplaints
STRATEGIES 1)Expressing emotions COMPLAINER a)Expressingnegativefeelings b)Expressingdisapproval COMPLAINEE a)Expressingregret b)Expressingdisagreement a)Repeatingapologies b)Stallingthecomplaint c)Divertingthecomplaint
2)Dealingwith a)Intensificationofreproach complaintsituation b)Maintainingstancebyadding utterances c)Sarcasm (andinsulting) d)Usingcomplainee'swords humorously 3)Providingrhetoric forargument
Holdingthefloor a)Reorientingtheconversationtoa solution a)byspeakingfluently b)Closingtheconversation b)byaddingutterances c)bycontrollingcomplainttopic
4)Manipulating developmentof conversation
a)Continuingthecomplaint 1. by exactrepetition 2. by modifiedrepetitionor paraphrase b)Avoidingcontinuationof complaint
a)Minimizing theconfrontation b)Confronting thecomplaineron apar
APPENDIXB:Checklisttobefilledoutbytheobserver/interviewee
INTERVIEWEE'S/OBSERVER'SCHECKLIST TAPESCRIPTNUMBER: COMPLAINERDETAILS:
Sex:Male qFemaleq SocialClass:Low qMid qHigh q Age:Teen qYoung qAdult qOld q
SITUATIONALSERIOUSNESS: COMPLAININGSTRATEGIES
Low qMid qHigh q

COMPLAINER'SBEHAVIOUR
Expressingemotions (Strategy1)
a)Expressingnegativefeelings b)Expressingdisapproval a)Intensificationofreproach
q q q q q q
Dealingwithcomplaintsituation (Strategy2)
b)Maintainingstancebyaddingutterances c)Sarcasm (andinsulting) d)Usingcomplainee'swordshumorously
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Holdingthefloor Providingrhetoricforargument (Strategy3) a)byspeakingfluently b)byaddingutterances c)bycontrollingcomplainttopic
q q q q q q q q
a)Continuingthecomplaint
Manipulatingdevelopmentof conversation (Strategy4)
INTERVIEWEE'S/OBSERVER'S COMMENTS:
3. by exactrepetition 4. by modifiedrepetition/paraphrase b)Avoidingcontinuationofcomplaint
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TheEffectofExplicitTeachingofConceptMappinginExpository WritingonEFLStudentsSelfregulation
MohammadRezaTalebinezhad, IsfahanUniversity,Iran GitiMousapourNegari Sistan&BaluchestanUniversity,Iran BioData: Mohammad Reza Talebinezhad is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Isfahan University, Iran. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics (Sheffield,1994,U.K.).Hisresearchinterestsareinterlanguagedevelopmentandsecond language acquisition transfer in second language acquisition conceptual fluency and metaphoricalcompetence. GitiMousapourNegariisanAssistantProfessoratSistan&BaluchestanUniversity,Iran. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics (Isfahan University, 2006, Iran). Her research interests are learning strategies second language acquisition Cognition and Secondlanguageacquisitionandconceptualcompetence.
Abstract
Thispaperhasinvestigatedtheeffectivenessofconceptmappingasalearningstrategyon students selfregulation (metacognitive selfregulation, time and study environment, effort regulation, peer learning, and help seeking). Sixty university students, who were randomly selected,participated in the study and were randomly assigned to one control group and one experimental group, each including thirty students. They were at the intermediate level of English proficiency and studying English either as Translation or Literature. Their language proficiency was determined by the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency. The instrument to collect data on students selfregulation was Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Printrich et al., 1991), the findings revealing that students gained higher selfregulation as the result of concept mapping strategyteaching.Thesefindingshaveimplicationsforpedagogyaswellasforresearch.
Keywords:conceptmapping,selfregulation,learningstrategies,strategyteaching
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1.Introduction Writing is a very complex process in which numerous cognitive and metacognitive activitiestakeplace,forinstance,brainstorming,planning,outlining,organizing,drafting, revising,andsoon.Cognitiveaspectshavereceivedparticularattention,asinvestigators have attempted to understand the thought processes underlying the compositions of students (Flower & Hayes, 1981). Writing also involves composing, which implies the abilityeithertotellorretellpiecesofinformationintheformofnarrativesordescription, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing. Perhaps it is best viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanicalorformalaspectsofwritingdownontheoneendtothemorecomplexactof composingontheotherend(Omaggio Hadley,1993 p.23). Learning to write is difficult especially for those writing in a second or foreign language in academic contexts. As Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987, p.12) stated, by putting together concepts and solving problems, the writer engages in "a twoway interaction between continuously developing knowledge and continuously developing text". Composing is an advanced academic task which may not be developed without instructionandteachersassistance.Instructioninstrategy useisan effective means for promoting writing. There are a number of learning strategies which can help students become better learners. The strategies include meaningful learning, organizing, note taking, identifying important information, and summarizing (Pressley, 1982). Strategies such as concept mapping help students attend to task, focus on important textures, organize material, and maintain a productive psychological climate for learning (Weinstein&Mayer,1986). Theaimofthepresentstudyistoinvestigatetheeffectoftheuseofconceptmapping strategyinwritingtasksonuniversitystudentsselfregulation.
1.1.Conceptmapping A concept map, as a learning strategy, is defined as a visual representation of an individual's knowledge structure on a particular topic as constructed by the individual (Zimmaro & Cawley, 1998). Concept maps represent the relationships among concepts
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(Novak, 1981). With the visual representation of key words, students can identify main issuesofatextand organizethese keyissuesin a meaningful way.Learningstrategies, according to Stern (1992, p.261), are based on assumptions that learners consciously engageinactivitiestoachievecertaingoals,thattheyexerciseachoiceofprocedure,and that they undertake some form of longterm planning. It is assumed that concept mappingmayhavepositiveeffectsonstudentsselfregulation,too. Literature reports on the benefits of concept mapping for organizing information, assessing in learning, comprehension of particularly complex communications, refining literacyframework,andsuccessfulunderstandingofthetext(Ruddell&Boyle,1989).
1.2.Selfregulation Selfregulation refers to the degree to which individuals become metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning process (Zimmerman, 1986). It refers to students ability to control their learning. The students canbecomebetterlearnersiftheybecomemoreawareoftheirlearningandthenchoose toactonthatawareness.AsLivingston(1997,p.3)stated,Althoughmostindividualsof normalintelligenceengageinmetacognitiveregulationwhenconfrontedwithaneffortful cognitivetask,somearebetterthanothersare.Thosewithgreatermetacognitiveabilities tendtobemoresuccessfulintheircognitiveendeavors.Thegoodnewsisthatindividuals canlearnhowtoregulatetheir cognitiveactivities.Selfregulationisneitherameasure of mental intelligence that is unchangeable after a certain point in life nor a personal characteristic that is genetically based or formed early in life. Students learn self regulation through experience (Pintrich, 1995). Teachers can teach in ways that help students become selfregulating learners (Coppola, 1995). Since selfregulation is not a personalitytrait,studentscancontroltheirbehaviorsandaffectinordertoimprovetheir academic learning and performance. In addition, selfregulated learning is particularly appropriateforcollegestudents,astheyhavegreatcontrolovertheirowntimeschedule, andhowtheyapproachtheirstudyingandlearning(Pintrich,1995). 1.3.StrategyTeaching
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An examination of the literature reveals a wide range of terminology associated with learner training, which is also referred to as strategy teaching (Richards et al,1992)or strategiesbased instruction (SBI) (Brown, 2000). Since the 1970s, there has been growing interest in the concept of the good language learner and the importance of learning styles and learner preferences (Oxford, 1990). This has marked a continued investigation into learning processes and support for the communicative philosophy of teaching learners how to learn, and thus become independent and autonomous learners throughtheuseoflearningstrategies(Wenden,1991)togetherwithincreasinglearners language awareness through inductive learning approaches and activities, such as consciousnessraising(SharwoodSmith,1981). Wenden (1991, p.163) offers a detailed definition of learner training: the learning activities organized to help language learners improve their skills as learners includes learning to use strategies knowledge about the language learning process and attitude and development to support autonomous use of the strategies and knowledge learner education. Comparably, Richards et al (1992, p. 355) present a specific definition of strategy training and outline three different approaches: [It is] training in the use of learning strategies in order to improve a learners effectiveness. A number of approaches to strategy training are used, including: 1) Explicit or direct training: learners are given informationaboutthevalueandpurposeofparticularstrategies,taughthowtousethem and how to monitor their own use of the strategies. 2)Embedded strategy training: the strategiestobetaughtarenottaughtexplicitlybutareembeddedintheregularcontentof an academic subject area, such as reading, math or science. 3) Combination strategy training:explicitstrategytrainingisfollowedbyembeddedtraining. Brown(2000,p.130)acknowledgesworkontheeffectivenessoflearningstrategiesfor variouslearnersinavarietyofcontexts.Hethenstatesweprobeitsimplicationsfor yourteachingmethodologyintheclassroom,specifically,how yourlanguageclassroom techniques can encourage, build, and sustain effective languagelearning strategies in yourstudents. Learnertrainingcanthereforebesummarizedasteachinglearnershowtolearn,witha viewtobecomingindependentandautonomouslearners.
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1.4.Cognitiveaspectsofwritingskill Historically, researchers in the field of composition have focused on the processes in which writers engage as they compose a text (Hairston, 1990). During the past decade, researchers have attempted to address this complexity by the affective factors that influence writing. Beach (1989) suggested that students' selfperceptions of their own writing competence offer a particularly promising avenue of research for informing writinginstruction. Flower and Hayes (1980, p.40) conceptualized writing as a strategic action where writers employstrategiestojuggle withthe constraintsof composing.Theystatedthat composing strategies are decisions taken to cope with the problems (both linguisticand rhetorical)posedbythewritingtaskasperceivedbythewriters. HaysandFlower(1980) presentedamodelofskilledwriters.Themodelcomprisedthreemajorcomponents.The first component,task environment,included factorsthat were externaltothe writer,but influencedthewritingtask.Theseincludedbothsocialandphysicalfactors.Thesecond component,cognitiveprocesses,providedadescriptionofthementaloperationsinvolved inwriting.Theseincludedthreebasicprocesses:planningwhattosayandhowtosayit translating plans into written text and reviewing to improve existing text. Planning, in turn,was composed ofthreeingredients:setting goals,generatingideas,and organizing ideas into a writing plan whereas reviewing included reading and editing text. The executionofthesecognitiveprocesseswasthoughttobeunderthewriter'sdirectcontrol, anditwasproposedthatvirtuallyanysubprocesscouldinterruptorincorporateanyother subprocess. The third component, writer's longterm memory, included the author's knowledge about the topic, the intended audience, and general plans or formulas for accomplishingvariouswritingtasks.Concept mappingcouldbeusedasalearningtool. Smith (1987) found concept mapping a worthwhile heuristic for helping experts make their own understanding more evident to learners and for helping learners better understandthestructureofknowledge. GrahamandHarris(2000)believedthat writingrequired extensiveselfregulationand attention control. Research showed that adolescents who used different types of self regulatory processes wrote more effectively they produced more information in their
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papers they wrote more organized pieces and they received higher grades in writing (Zimmerman&Risemberg,1997). Many teachers attempted to influence the course of this development in a relatively straightforward and direct fashion. They might model and explicitly teach the types of strategies and selfcontrol procedures used by more skilled writers, or might establish predictableroutineswherewritingprocessessuchasplanningandrevisingwereexpected andreinforced(Graham& Harris,1996). Strategyinstructionisateachingapproachthatassistsstudentsindevelopingstrategies for all phases of the writing process and teaches selfregulation of performance of the strategies.Strategyinstructionassistsstudentwritersbybreakingdownwritingtasksand making the subprocesses and skills much more explicit (Sturm & Rankin Erickson, 2002). 2.Methodology 2.1.Restatementoftheproblem There has been growing interest inlearning processes and support for teaching learners howtolearn,andthusbecomeindependentandautonomouslearnersthroughtheuseof learning strategies. Some researchers as Hacker, Dunlosky, and Graesser (1998) suggested that instructional strategies that teach students topractice cognitive skills can increaselearnersperformanceinacademicsubjects.Theprincipalaimofthisstudywas to investigate the effectiveness of the strategy of concept mapping in students self regulationinexpositorywritingattheintermediateleveloflanguageproficiency.
2.2.Design The study had a pretestposttest control group design. Both control group and experimental groupparticipated inpretest and posttestselfregulation questionnaire, but onlytheexperimentalgroupreceivedthetreatment. 2.3.Participants Ninety university students volunteered to participate in the study. They were studying Englisheitherastranslationorliterature.They weremostlyfromsixandsevensemesters.
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All the students were administered Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency to determine their level of English proficiency. Sixty students at the intermediate level of languageproficiencywererandomlyselected.Ofthesixtystudents,thirtystudentswere randomly assigned to control group and thirty students to experimental group. In the experimentalgroup,twelvestudentsweremaleandeighteenstudentswerefemale.Inthe controlgroup,tenstudentsweremaleandtwentystudentswerefemale.
2.4.InstructionalMaterial The treatment for the experimental group was instruction and practice in concept mapping. Students were provided with handouts that included definition of concept mapping,differentusesandexamplesofconceptmaps.Studentspracticedtheapplication of concept mapping in writing essays. They were required to draw concept mapsoftheir own or to complete the incomplete maps. In the experimental group, the students practiced writing expository essays, using concept mapping strategy. The topics for the essays sequenced from easy and familiar topics (unnecessary to have specialized knowledge) to difficult and unfamiliar topics. They included: plants, time, weather, air pollution, the function of heart, and psychology. Familiarity/unfamiliarity and simplicity/difficulty of the topics were judged by three university teachers who were teaching writing courses. The control group wrote essays about the same topics without theuseofconceptmappingstrategy.(SeeAppendixB).
2.5.Instruments The instrument used to determine the level of the students English proficiency was Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency. Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire(Printrichetal.,1991)wasappliedtomeasurethestudentsselfregulation. First, the students were asked to participate in the test of language proficiency. From among ninety students, sixty students at the intermediate level of English proficiency wererandomlyselected.Thenthestudentswereaskedtofilloutthequestionnaire.Itwas designed to assess college students motivational orientations and their use of different learning strategies in college courses. The learning strategies section had 50 items
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regardingstudents'useofdifferentcognitiveandselfregulatedlearningstrategies.Only five scales in the learning strategies section (metacognitive selfregulation, time and study environment, effort regulation, peer learning, and help seeking) were relevant to selfregulationandwereusedinthisstudy.Thescaleswereadaptedtomeasurestudents selfregulationinwritingtasks.Cronbach'salphaforthescalewas.76(SeeAppendixA).
2.6.Procedure Theperiodofinstructionwasabouttwelveweeksandcomprisedofthreephases: 2.6.1.Pretesting Before the students in experimental group received any instruction, all the students intwogroupscompletedtheselfregulationquestionnaire. 2.6.2.Strategyinstruction Followingpretestingthestudentsparticipatedintwelvesixtyminutestudysessions. The students in experimental group received the instruction for concept mapping strategy. The strategy was taught followingHarris and Graham (1996): (1) Strategy description, (2) Discussion of goals and purposes, (3) Modeling of the strategy, (4) Studentmasteryofstrategysteps,and(5)Guidedpracticeandfeedback. 1. Strategy description. As an introduction to the first lesson, students were told that they were going to learn about the strategy of concept mapping. Concept mapping was described as a strategy that could be used to categorize information in a graphic form throughdrawing.Itwasalsodescribedasastrategythatcouldhelpthemwithvocabulary development,reading comprehension,studyskills,andprewritingactivities.Finally,the sequenceofstepsforcreatingaconceptmapwasdescribed. 2. Discussion of goals and purposes. The teacher discussed the students about the significanceandbenefitsofusingtheconceptmappingstrategyinwriting.Studentswere asked two questions: (1) How do you think this strategy might help you write? and (2) How could this strategy help you with different types of writing? To reinforce student participation as collaborators in the learning process, goals and purposes that students generatedwerewrittenonthewhiteboard.
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3. Modeling the strategy. The teacher modeled use of concept mapping strategy by creatingamapwhilestudentswereofferedseveraltopicstoselectfromfortheactivity. Oncethegroupagreedonatopic,theteacherwroteitonthewhiteboard.Thistopicwas labeledas"mainidea"oftheconceptmap.Nextpossiblesubtopicsweregenerated.The teacherdemonstrateduseofarrowstoconnectmainideasandsubtopics.Finally,details weregeneratedandadded toeachofthesubtopics.Studentsparticipatedintheprocessby brainstormingpossiblecategoriesanddetails.Studentsweretaughthowtowritesubtopic informationintelegraphicform.Theteachermodeleduseoftelegraphiclanguageforms and explained that this involves choosing the most important information. Students assistedbygeneratingideastobeplacedonthemap.Then,theteacherdiscussedhowthe categories and the details could be sequenced into paragraphs, and sentences within paragraphs,tocomposeanessay.Theteacherexplainedthateachsubtopicmayrepresent differentparagraphsintheessay.Uponcompletionofthemap,theteachermodeledthe transferofsubtopicinformationfromthemapintowrittenforminstructionfollowedthe sequence of procedures for transferring concept maps into written paragraphs, starting withtoplevelstructuresi.e.,topicsandsubtopics),theteacherreviewedtheinformation onthemap.Eachcategorywasreviewed,includingthemainideasandsupportingdetails. Theteachermodeledhowshewouldrewritetheinformationfromthemapintocomplete sentences. For each subtopic, a topic sentence was written, followed by supporting sentences. Finally, the concluding paragraph was explained and with the help of the studentstheteacherwroteaconcludingparagraph. 4. Student mastery of strategy steps. During this stage, students rehearsed and
memorizedthesequenceofactivitiesforconceptmapconstruction. 5. Guided practice and Feedback. During these sessions, feedback was provided for students performance. Students chose a topic and created maps. Then, they used the conceptmapstocomposeessays. The first three sessions were devoted to training the technique. The other nine sessionswerespentonpracticingthestrategyforthestudentstomasterthefundamental skills. One essay was composed every two weeks for a total of four essays for each student. During these sessions, other formal teaching techniques were not employed by theteacher.TheteacherwasanonnativeEnglishteacherwhotaughtwritingcoursesfor
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many yearsattheuniversity.Beforestartingtheproject,theteacher wastrainedhowto teachconceptmappingstrategy(followingHarrisandGraham'sstrategyteaching,1996). During the instructional period the students in the control group wrote as many expository essays as the experimental group but without the use of concept mapping strategy. 2.6.3.Posttesting After the instruction of the strategy of concept mapping (at the conclusion of the treatment period) all the students in two groups again completed the selfregulation questionnaire.
2.7.ScoringoftheData TheresearchappliedMotivated StrategiesforLearningQuestionnaire(MSLQ)toassess students'selfregulation.Responseswerescoredusinga5pointLikerttypescale:1)Not atalltrueofmyself2)Slightlytrueofmyself3)Abouthalfwaytrueofmyself4)Mostly true of myself 5) True of myself. Scale scores were determined by summing the items andtakinganaverage.
3.ResultsandDiscussion
The major question addressed in this study was whether the use of concept mapping strategy in writing expository essays would improve students selfregulation at the intermediateleveloflanguageproficiency.Tocapturetheinitialdifferencesbetweenthe two groups, t test was applied to compare the two groups on pretest measures. No significant difference was found (t = 1.06, df = 58, p>.05). It confirmed that the two groups were initially equivalent. Means and standard deviations of pretest and posttest scoresonselfregulationarepresentedinTable1.
Table1.Meansandstandarddeviationsforpretestandposttestscoresonselfregulation M SD N Pretest Experimentalgroup 2.51 .56 30 Controlgroup 2.35 .57 30
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Posttest Experimentalgroup Controlgroup
3.79 3.22
.58 .71
30 30
To investigate the effect of concept mapping strategy on students selfregulation, an ANCOVA on Post selfregulationscores by group (experimental vs. control), using Pre selfregulation scores as a covariate was conducted. The results indicated there was a significantdifferenceinposttestscoresbetweengroups(F=10.57,df=1P=.002).The conclusion is that concept mapping strategy significantly influenced students self regulation. In other words, it revealed that the implementation of concept mapping strategy in writing expository essays would positively affect students selfregulation in writingtasks.Table2displaystheresults.
Table2.ANCOVAonPostSelfregulationScoresbyGroup(experimentalvs.control),using PreSelfregulationasaCovariate Sourceofvariation F Sig. Group 10.57 .002 Covariate 25.63 .000 Error 1.97
Onepossibleexplanationfortheimprovementofthestudentsselfregulationmightbea changeinthestudentsattitudetowardwritingskill.AsBarnhardt(1997)statedthereisa relationshipbetweenstrategyuseandconfidenceinlanguagelearning.Forstudentswho hadnotpositiveattitudestowardwritingforalongtime,apositivechangeinattitudedue totheirsuccessintheapplicationoftheconceptmappingstrategycouldbetheinitialstep toward improved writing skill. It is also possible that when students were taught the mapping strategy to use with their writing, their positive attitudes toward writing increased.Itmeantthatwhenthestudentshadabetterideaofhowtogoaboutawriting task, they were more positive about the task. In other words, concept mapping strategy helped students attend to writing tasks, and control their learning more effectively. It helped students facilitate their learning by organizing key concepts into visual representation. They simply represented visually their understanding of ideas and their relationships. This created a much more tangible evidence of the quality of both the learningprocessandconceptunderstanding.
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It seemed that the construction of concept maps might have helped students to build more complex cognitivestructures inregardtoinformation whichwas vital for writing. According to Pintrich (2000), the cognitive area of selfregulation begins with goal setting, prior knowledge activation and planning. Pintrich places the actual use of cognitivestrategiesinthephaseofcognitivecontrolandregulation.Ithasbeensuggested that strategy instruction should be integrated into a larger framework of selfregulation involving the helping of students to identify their goals in a learning task (Butler, 2002).Butler states that by strategy intervention it is easier to demonstrate the different typesofknowledgewhichareessentialforfosteringstudentsselfregulatedstrategyuse. The positive effect of concept mapping strategy on the students selfregulation is confirmed by McAleese (1998) in that individuals are affected by control mechanisms that are both external and internal. According to McAleese (1998), there is some interaction between the external representation (concept mapping) and the internal understanding (selfregulation). The factors that determine students behavior shift betweenthe internalselfregulationandtheexternalfactorofconceptmapping.
4.Conclusionandimplications Thefindingsclearlydemonstratethatconceptmappingcanbenefituniversitystudentsat the intermediate level of English proficiency. In fact, the benefits of concept mapping mightextendbeyondachievementgainstosomevariablessuchasselfregulationwhich is an achievementrelated variable. This is consistent with the finding of Corno and Mandniach(1983)thatinstructioninstrategyuseisaneffectivemeansofpromotingself regulation.Itseemsthattheuseofconceptmappingstrategyinourcoursesofwritingin theuniversity hasbeenpersonally rewardingasameansof constructingknowledgeand promotingselfregulation.Thishasimportantimplicationsforbothstudentsandteachers. Studentsmaximizetheirlearningbyusingconceptmappingintheiressaywritinghence they feel moreindependentand feel moreresponsibility fortheirownlearning.Because conceptmappingiseasilyadoptedbythestudents,itdoesntrelytoomuchonteachers involvement. Teachers may enhance their students selfregulation in writing by familiarizingthemwiththeconceptmappingstrategy.
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Althoughthepresentstudysuggeststhatthestrategy of concept mappingisbeneficial to university students, there are areas that need to be studied further. In regard to universitystudents,itneedstobeinvestigated whetherthebenefitsof concept mapping would be the same for the students at the elementary level of English proficiency. Furthermore, it needs to be studied whether the concept mapping strategy would have positive effects on students selfregulation in other courses such as reading comprehension.
References Barnhardt, S. (1997). Selfefficacy and second language learning. The NCLRC LanguageResource,1(5). Beach, R. (1989). Showing students how to assess. Demonstrating techniques for response in the writing conference, In C. M. Anson (Ed.), Writing and response (pp. 127148).Urbana,IL:NCTE. Breiter, C., and Scardamalia, M. (1987). The psychology of written composition. Hillsdale,N.J:LawrenceErlbaum. Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching. (Fourth Edition) NewYork:Longman Butler, D.L. (2002). Individualizing instruction in selfregulated learning. Theory Into Practice,41,8192. Coppola,B.P.(1995).Progressinpractice: Using conceptsfrom motivationalandself regulated learning research to improve chemistry instruction. In P. R. Pintrich (Ed.), Understandingselfregulatedlearning(pp.878796).SanFrancisco,CA:JosseyBass. Corno,L.,andMandinach,E.B.(1983).Theroleofcognitiveengagementinclassroom learningandmotivation.EducationalPsychologist,18,88108. Flower,L.,Hayes,J.R.,(1980).Thedynamicsofcomposing:makingplansandjuggling constraints. In L. Gregg and E. Steinberg (Eds.), Cognitive processes in writing (pp. 3150).LawrenceErlbaumAssociates,Hillsdale. Flower, L. and Hayes, J. R. (1981).Plans that guide the composing process. In C. H. Fredeiksen, M. F. Whiteman, and J. F. Dominic (Eds.), Writing: the nature of
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development, and teaching of written communication. (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, N. J: Erlbaum. Graham, S. and Harris, K. (1996). Selfregulation and strategyinstruction for students who find writing and learning challenging. In M. Levy and S. Ransdell (Eds.), The science of writing: Theories, methods, individual differences and applications, (pp. 347360). Mahwah,NJ:Lawrence.Erlbaum. Graham,S.andHarris,K.(2000).Theroteofselfregulationand transcriptionskillsin writingandwritingdevelopment.Educationalpsychologist,35,312. Hacker,Dunlosky,&Graesser.(1998).Metacognitionineducationaltheoryandpractice. Mahwah,NewJersey:LawrenceErlbaumAssociates. Hairston,M.(1990).Thewindsofchange:ThomasKulmtherevolutionintheteachingof writing.InR.L.Grares(Ed.)RhetoricandComposition(pp.315).Portmouth,NH: Heinemann. Harris, K. R., & Graham, S. (1996). Making the writing process work: Strategies for compositionandselfregulation. Cambridge,MA:BrooklineBooks. Hayes,J.andFlower,L.(1980).Identifyingtheorganizationofwritingprocesses.InL. Gregg and E.Steinberg (Eds.), Cognitiveprocessesin writing (pp.330).Hillsdale, NJ:LawrenceErlbaum. Jonassen, D. H., & Grabowski, B. L. (1993). Handbook of individual differences, learning,andinstruction.Hillsdale,NJ:Erlbaum. Livingston, J. (1997). Metacognitive: An overview. State University of New York at BuffaloWebsite.RetrievedJuly24,2003,from http://gse.buffalo.edu/FAS/Shuell/CEP564/Metacog.htm McAleese, R. (1998). The knowledge arena as an extension to the concept map reflectioninaction.InteractiveLearningEnvironments,6(3),251272. Novak,J.D.(1981).Applyinglearningpsychologyandphilosophyofsciencetobiology teaching.TheAmericanBiologyTeacher,43(1),1220. OmaggioHadley,A.(1993). Teachinglanguageincontext. Boston:Heinle&Heinle. Oxford,R.(1990)Languagelearningstrategies:Whateveryteachershouldknow.New York,NewburyHouse.
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Pintrich, P. R. (1995). Understanding selfregulated learning. In P. R. Pintrich (Ed.), Understandingselfregulatedlearning(pp.312).SanFrancisco,CA:JosseyBass. Pintrich,P.R.(2000).Multiplegoals,multiplepathways:Therole of goalorientationin learningandachievement.JournalofEducationalPsychology,92,544555. Pressley,M.(1982).Elaborationandmemorydevelopment.ChildDevelopment,53,296 309. Printrich,P.R.,Smith,D.A.,Garcia,T.,&McKeachieW.J.(1991).Amanualforthe use of the MotivatedStrategiesfor Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). National Center forResearchtoImprovePostsecondaryTeachingandLearning.AnnArbor:University ofMichigan. Richards,J.C.,Platt,J.,andPlatt,H.(1992)Dictionaryoflanguageteaching&applied linguistics.(SecondEdition),Harlow,Essex:Longman. Ruddell, R. B., & Boyle, O. F. (1989). A study of cognitive mapping as a means to improve comprehension of expository text. Reading Research and Instruction, 29(1), 1222. Sharwood Smith, M. (1981), Consciousnessraising and the second language learner. AppliedLinguistics, 2,159168. Smith,K.A.(1987).Educationalengineering:Heuristicsforimprovingeffectivenessand efficiency. EngineeringEducation,71(5),274279. Stern,H.H.(1992)Issuesandoptionsinlanguageteaching.Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press. Sturm, J. &RankinErickson, J. (2002). Effects of handdrawn and computer generated concept mapping on the expository writing of middle school students with learning disabilities. LearningDisabilitiesResearchandPractice,17(2),124139. Wenden, A. (1991) Learning strategies for learner autonomy: planning and implementinglearnertrainingforlanguagelearners.HemelHemstead,Hertfordshire: PrenticeHall Weinstein, C. E. and Mayer, R. E. (1986). The teaching of learning strategies. In M. wittrock (Ed.), the Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 315327), New York. Macmillan.
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Zimmaro,D.M.andCawley,J.M.(1998).Conceptmapmodule.Schreyerinstitute for innovationinlearning,ThePennsylvaniaStateUniversity. Zimmerman,B. J. (1986). Development of selfregulated learning: which are the key subprocesses.ContemporaryEducationalPsychology,16,307313. Zimerman, B. and Risemberg, R. (1997). Becoming a selfregulated writer: a social cognitiveperspective.ContemporaryEducationalPsychology,22,73101.
AppendixA.TestofSelfregulation Please answer the following questionsby circling the response that best describes how youfeelwhenyoustudyandpracticewritingcourses.
Notat alltrue of myself 1 Slightly trueof myself 2 About halfway trueof myself 3 Mostly trueof myself 4 Trueof myself
1. DuringclasstimeIoftenmiss importantpointsbecauseIm thinkingofotherthings. 2. Whenwritingforthiscourse,Imake upquestionstohelpfocusmy writing.
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3. WhenIbecomeconfusedabout somethingImwritingforthisclass,I gobackandtrytofigureitout. 4. Ifcoursewritingtasksaredifficultto do,IchangethewayIamwriting. 5. BeforeIwritenewcoursematerial thoroughly,Ioftentrytoorganizeit. 6. IaskmyselfquestionstomakesureI understandthematerialIhavebeen studyinginthisclass. 7. ItrytochangethewayIwritein ordertofitthecourserequirements andtheinstructorsteachingstyle. 8. IoftenfindthatIhavebeenreading forthisclassbutdontknowwhatit wasallabout. 9. Itrytothinkthroughatopicand decidewhatIamsupposedtolearn fromitratherthanjustreadingitover whenstudying. 10. WhenwritingforthiscourseItryto determinewhichconceptsIdont understandwell. 11. WhenIwriteforthisclass,Isetgoals formyselfinordertodirectmy thoughtsineachperiod. 12. IfIgetconfusedwhilewritingin class,ImakesureIsortitout afterwards. 13. IusuallywriteinaplacewhereIcan concentrateonmycoursework. 14. Imakegooduseofmywritingtime forthiscourse. 15. Ifindithardtosticktoastudy schedule. 16. Ihavearegularplacesetasidefor writing. 17. ImakesurethatIkeepupwiththe weeklyreadingsandassignmentsfor thiscourse. 18. Iattendthisclassregularly. 19. IoftenfindthatIdontspendvery muchtimeonthiscoursebecauseof otheractivities. 20. Irarelyfindtimetoreviewmynotes orreadingsbeforeanexam. 21. IoftenfeelsolazyorboredwhenI writeforthisclassthatIquitbeforeI finishwhatIplannedtodo. 22. Iworkhardtodowellin thisclass evenifIdontlikewhatweare doing.
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23. Whencourseworkisdifficult,I eithergiveuporonlystudytheeasy parts. 24. Evenwhenwritingtasksaredulland uninteresting,Imanagetokeep workinguntilIfinish. 25. Whenstudyingforthiscourse,I oftentrytoexplainthematerialtoa classmateorfriend. 26. Itrytoworkwithotherstudentsfrom thisclasstocompletethecourse assignments. 27. Whenwritingforthiscourse,Ioften setasidetimetodiscusscourse materialwithagroupofstudents fromtheclass. 28. EvenifIhavetroublewritingthe materialinthisclass,Itrytodothe workonmyown,withouthelpfrom anyone. 29. Iasktheinstructortoclarifyconcepts Idontunderstandwell. 30. WhenIcantunderstandthematerial inthiscourse,Iaskanotherstudentin thisclassforhelp. 31. Itrytoidentifystudentsinthisclass whomIcanaskforhelpifnecessary.
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BasedonandadaptedfromPrintrich,P.R.,Smith,D.A.,Garcia,T.,&McKeachie,W.J. (1991).AmanualfortheuseoftheMotivatedStrategiesforLearningQuestionnaire (MSLQ).
AppendixB:InstructionalMaterial 1. Whatisaconceptmap? Conceptmapisagraphicrepresentationofideasandconcepts.Itconsistsofconcepts ornodeslinkedbylabeledlinestoshowrelationshipsandinterrelationshipsbetween terms. Concepts are arranged hierarchically so that the most inclusive, subsumptive conceptsappearatthetopofthemap,withlessinclusive,subordinateconceptsbelow (Jonassen&Grabowski,1993,p.439).Lookatfollowingexampleofconceptmap:
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2. Conceptmappingasalearningtool Tosummarizereadingmaterials Toorganizeknowledgedomains Toorganizeideasforwritingandresearch Toplanyourresearchprojectandidentifythevariablesinit Tofixlearnedmaterialsinlongtermmemory Toreviseeffectivelyforexamination 3. Usesofconceptmapping Developanunderstandingofabodyofknowledge Explorenew informationandrelationships Accesspriorknowledge Gathernewknowledgeandinformation Shareknowledgeandinformationgenerated
4. Howtoorganizeourthoughtsthroughconceptmapping
Aconceptmapissimplyawaytovisuallydisplaytheconceptsandrelationships among ideas. This will help you to further organize your ideas and define your topic. It allows you to quickly write down your ideas and then see the organizationofyourtopic.Asyoumap,thinkaboutwhatissuesyouwouldliketo focusonrelatedtothemainidea. Alsothinkaboutthewaysyouwillcollectdata andpresentthe materialLater you canreturnto your concept mapas you create youroutline.Youcanturneachlevelofbubbles(maintopic,subtopics,etc.)into a level on your outline. This is a way for you to gain exposure to multiple dimensions of a topic that you might not have considered. To create a concept mapyouhavetofollowsteps1through5. 1.Identifythegeneral/broadtopicthatyouareinterestedin. Example:Youareinterestedinthegeneraltopicofobesity 2. Brainstorm on the general topic and list all the concepts and themes that are relatedtothetopiconalargepieceofpaper.Keeptheconceptsasconciseas possible 3.usingunlinedpaper,writethemainthemeinthecenterofthepage.
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4.Taketheotherconceptsidentifiedinthebrainstormingandconnectthemtothe center concept. You can use other organizational patterns such as branches, arrows or groups. More important ideas should be put nearer to the center andlessimportantonesclosertotheedge.Identifytherelationshipbetween theconcepts 5.Afterthemaphasbeencreated,lookattheorganizationalpatternstoseeifthe piecesfittogetherandmakesenseandifthereisanythingmissing.Afterthe maphasbeencreated,lookattheorganizationalpatternstoseeifthepieces fittogetherandmakesenseandifthereisanythingmissing 5. Criticalquestions Afteryoucreatedthemap,youmayaskyourselfthefollowingquestions: Whatisthecentralword,concept,researchquestionorproblemaroundwhich tobuildthemap? Whataretheconcepts,items,descriptivewordsortellingquestionsthatyou canassociatewiththeconcept,topic,researchquestionorproblem? Whatissaidabouttheconcepts?Recordthequotesorparaphrase.
6. Practiceconceptmapping Thinkaboutthesportthatyoumostlike.Thentrytomapoutthegeneral andspecificideasonadiagram.Hereisanexample:
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7. Sometipsonmakingconceptmaps Use a top down approach, working from general to specific or use a free association approach by brainstorming nodes and then develop links and relationships. Use different colors and shapes for nodes andlinks to identify different types of information. Use different colored nodes to identify prior andnewinformation.Useacloudnodetoidentifyaquestion. Gatherinformationtoaquestioninthequestionnode.
8. Finalwords Different students may have different ways to represent what they think. Your concept map should reflect your information of a topic. It is always advisabletowritedownnotesdescribingwhatyouhavemapped.
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AppendixB.1.SampleTasks A. Create concept maps according to the following topics and compare yours with otherstudents. travel recreation B.Identifytheconceptsandfillintheconceptmapboxes.
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AContrastiveAnalysisofEnglishandPersianNewspaperHeadlines
FarzanehKhodabandeh MobarakehPayameNoorUniversity,Iran
BioData: Farzaneh Khodabadeh has been teaching English for 10 years at schools and4 years at university.ShehasaMaster'sinTeachingEnglishfromIsfahanUniversityinIran.Sheis currently teaching Discourse Analysis, Testing and Research Methods at Mobarakeh University. Herareas of research include Discourse Analysis. She has written 5 articles and published two books Preintermediate College English and Intermediate College English.
Abstract Considering the absence of contrasting English and Persian newspaper headlines, the present study was an attempt to conduct a contrastive analysis between the newspaper headlines of English and Persian languages in order to find the major similarities and differencesbetweenthem.Theanalysiswasbasedonaoneweekcorpusoftheheadlines ofEnglishandPersianlanguages.UtilizingCA,theresearcheranalyzedthevariabilityof syntactic and lexical features across and within the English and Persian newspaper headlines. It was concluded that the headlines of English and Persian languages were similar in using dynamic verbs, active voice, short words, declarative sentences, finite clauses, and simple sentences and different in the use of tense forms, headline types, modification, and omission of words. This study has pedagogical implications for teachingjournalisticEnglishandtranslation.
Keywords:Contrastiveanalysis,headlines,syntacticandlexicalfeatures.
1.Introduction Conventionally,itisbelievedthatnewspapershave morereadersthanany other kindof writtentext.AccordingtoVanDijk(1986),"formostcitizens,newsisperhapsthetype
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of written discourse with which they are confronted most frequently" (p. 156). In the newspaperitistheheadlinesthathavethehighestreadership.Itsummarizesthecontent ofastory,andenticesanaudienceintoreadingthearticle.AccordingtoUngerer(2000), "aheadlinedescribestheessenceofacomplicatednewsstoryinafewwords.Itinforms quickly and accurately and arouses the reader's curiosity" (p. 48). News headlines are particularlyimportantforthewayreaderscomprehendanewstext,theyaremarkersthat monitorattention,perceptionandthereadingprocess(VanDijk,1988). Many students of English find that newspaper headlines are especially difficult to understand.Obviously,itisnotjusta matter of vocabulary eventhestyle of writingis differentfromanyothertexttheyhavemetintheirstudies.Thelanguageofheadlinesis specialand hasitsown characteristics onthelexical,syntactic,andrhetoricallevels for itsbrevity,attractiveness,andclarity(Reah,1998).Theselanguagefeaturesposeagreat challenge to foreign learners of English when they begin to read English newspapers. This is hardly surprising for, as Waterhouse (as cited in Sanderson, 1999,p.29) points out, "this genre of language is not one that people actually use in normal, everyday speech."Thereis,however,aclearpatterninthisspecialgenreoncetherulesandtactics areunderstoodalotofdifficultiesmaydisappear. The key to ease the difficulty of this special genre lies in the comparison between foreignandnativelanguages(Connor,1996).Thereby,asystematiccontrastiveanalysis of English and Persian headlines was conducted to investigate the similarities and differencesbetweenthenewspaperheadlinesofEnglishandPersianlanguages.
2.Reviewoftherelatedliterature Headlinesareobviously oneofthestrikingfeaturesof modernnewspapers.Thereforeit isnotsurprisingthattheyhavebeenstudiedquiteextensivelynotonlybyjournalistsbut alsobylinguists.Someofthefewexistinglinguisticstudiesofheadlineswillbereviewed below. Straumann's (1935) study of headline English is undoubtedly pioneer work. His approach was to treat the language of headlines as an autonomous language. He classifieds headlines in terms of neutrals, nominals, verbals and particles. The first section of his classification contains words in their common form. In the following
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sections he arranges them in sforms, and in three variables, semivariables and invariables. Classification is further arranged in dforms, ing forms, ly, er and (e) st forms. The complexity of headlines has been investigated by Brisau (1969). He measured complexityintermsofclauses,whichwerethussingledoutfromotherunitsasagauge ofcomplexity.In3000headlinesBrisaufound264examplesofheadlinescontainingtwo or more clauses, which was less than 10% of the total number. Brisau concluded that morecomplexstructuresthantwoverysimpleclauseslinkedtogetherrarelyoccurredin headlines.Hementioned,however,thatthelinguisticmakeupoftheheadlinecouldvary widelyfromonenewspapertoanother. Mrdh(1980)offersanexhaustivestudy ofthecharacteristic featuresoftheheadlines of a range of English newspapers. She identifies the following linguistic features as typical of headlines in English newspapers: the omission of articles the omission of verbsandofauxiliaries(theverb'tobe'forexample)nominalisationsthefrequentuse ofcomplexnounphrasesinsubjectposition(inthemeposition)adverbialheadlines,with theomissionofbothverbandsubjecttheuseofshortwords('bid'insteadof'attempt') the widespread use of puns, word play and alliteration the importance of word order, withthemostimportantitemsplacedfirst,even,insomecases,averbandindependent 'wh'constructionsnotlinkedtoamainclause(anexample:WhytheFrenchdon'tgivea damn),aformnotfoundinstandardEnglish. Van Dijk (1988) analyzed a fivedecker from the New York Times. He sees the journalisticprocessasbeginningwithaheadlineandworkingthroughleadtobodycopy. He analyzed over 400 headlines in the Dutch press reporting the 1985 Tamil panic, an occasion of racialtensionsbetweenthe Dutchandimmigrant groups.Hefoundthatthe authorities dominated first position in the headline, with active verbs. When the disadvantagedTamilswerementionedfirst,theverbtendedtobepassive. Kniffka's (as cited in Bell, 1991) detailed comparison of leads and headlines found a high level of structural correspondence between the two. The subeditor tends to reproducethesyntacticpatternsoftheleadintheheadline.Kniffka(1980)foundthatthe presence of active or passive voice in the lead was carried over to the headline. AccordingtoKniffka,headlinestructuresappeartobeveryregularacrosslanguages.He
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confirmed his analysis of both German and American English news texts, finding their leadsandheadlinesstructurallyidentical.Theregularityissoconsistentthatheconcludes thereisasharedinternationalgrammarofleadandheadlinewriting. MouillaudandTtu(ascitedinDevelotte&Rechniewski,2000),analysingLeMonde, suggest the following features as typical of headlines: the suppression of spatial and particularlytemporalmarkerstheuseofthepresenttenseofverbs(wheretheyareused) as opposed to or in place of any other tenses the replacement of verbs by nominalisations the suppression of declarative verbs and the disappearance of signs of speech(quotationmarkspersonalpronouns). Scollon(2000),inhisstudyoffivedaysofthreeeditionsofthesamenewspaperinits Chinese and English editions, argues that the English headlines, following on general westernjournalisticpracticeputthemainpointrightintheheadlineinwhathasalsobeen called a deductive rhetorical mode. The Chinese headline, on the other hand, uses the headline to establish the setting but do not provide any further information about the content of the talks, which is the inductive ordering of the topics elsewhere found in contrast between Chinese and English language news stories. In other words the major differenceliesinwhethertheheadlinefocusesdirectlyonthecentraltopicfoundwithin thebodyofthe storyorthesetting. SulletNylander (2000) described and analysed the textual "genre" of the French newspaper headlines. According to him, the macrosyntactic configuration of a press headline can be represented in four types of phrasal constructions, one of which is consideredrelatively"unmarked."Thethreeothertypesnamely:parataxis,nounphrase+ prepositional and single nonverbal phrase are considered more specific of headlines. Compared withsimilar kindsof utterancessuchasbooktitlesorcaptions,the complete sentenceismuchmorefrequentinnewspaperheadlines.Histhesisshowsthataheadline can be characterized by regular linguistic/textual features, even though each newspaper hasdiversewaysofconstructingandstagingthenewsinitsheadlines,dependingonthe communicativefunctionsassignedtothem. As mentioned in the literature review of this study, some contrastive studies of headlines have raised the question of whether similar features can be found in varying cultures and languages. Considering the absence of such an analysis related to English
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and Persian, this study intended to investigate the application of syntactic and lexical features in newspaper headlines in order to uncover to what extent the two languages werecompatibleinthesedomains.
3.Method The information regarding the research method, materials and procedures is presented below.
3.1.Materials To carry out the comparison between the headlines, an English and a Persian news site wererandomlyselectedfromamongallavailableonlinenewssourcesfromtheInternet, namelyYahoo news fortheEnglishheadlinesandIRIBnews forthePersianones.The headlines issued during a sevenday period from November 29 to December 05, 2003. ThenumberofEnglishandPersianheadlinesarrivedatatotalof792and725fromthe twosourcesrespectively.
3.2.Procedure Thisresearch wasdirectedtowardstudyingthesyntacticandlexical featuresof English andPersian corporainsucha waythatbyasystematic comparison,the differencesand similaritiesbetweenthesample headlines ofthetwolanguageswouldbeidentified.At thestart,theinvestigationbeganwiththedescriptionofthebasicunitsofanalysisinthe English headline structures (categories, word classes, constructions) and continued with the analysis of the Persian headlines. In doing so, for the analysis of the structure of English headlines, the grammatical framework provided by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech andSavartvik(1985)waschosen,andfortheanalysisofPersianheadlines,thegrammar providedbyNatelKhanlari(1979)wasusedtoinformthestudy. As mentioned before, this study pinpointed the cases of utilization of lexical and syntactic featuresinEnglishandPersianheadlinesinordertoseeinwhatwaysthetwo languagesaredifferent.Belowisabriefdescriptionofsyntacticandlexicalfeatures.
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3.2.1.Syntacticfeatures Syntax refers to the rules for ordering and connecting words into sentences. More generally,itreferstothestudyoftheinterrelationshipsbetweenallelementsofsentence structure, and of the rules governing the arrangements of sentences in sequences. It allows various possibilities to be exploited for effective linguistic communication (Crystal,1992Radford,1997Trask,1999). A systematic description of syntactic features of headlines includes headline types, functionaltypes,andcomplexityinheadlinesofthetwolanguages.
3.2.1.1.Headlinetypes In order to get an overall picture of the structure of English and Persian headlines, Mrdh's model (1980) was chosen. Following Mrdh's model, the corpus was divided intothreebasicgroups:verbal,nominalandadverbialheadlines.
3.2.1.1.1.Verbalheadlines Averbalheadlinecontainsaverbphraseorpartofaverbphrasethatisnotdominatedby anounphrase(Mrdh,1980).Inthesampleheadlines,themainstructuraltypesofverbal headlines were distinguished according to finite verb phrases, nonfinite verb phrases, headlines with omitted auxiliary, subject complement (SCs) headlines, and subject adverbial(SA)headlines.
3.2.1.1.1.1. Finiteverbphrasescontainafiniteverbformwhichmaybeeitheranoperatororasimple presentorpastform(Quirketal.,1985). AustralianOppositionLeaderQuits(30.11.2003) Iranqhremankoshtiasiyashod(10.9.1382) (IranbecamethechampioninAsia.)
3.2.1.1.1.2. Nonfiniteverbphrasesconsistofaparticipleorinfinitivewhichmaybefollowedbyan objectoranadverbial(Spears,1976).
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GettingaSmallAudienceforBadNews(30.11.2003) Koshtehshodn54raqidratshsozi(12.9.1382) (54Iraqiwerekilledinafire.)
3.2.1.1.1.3. Subject adverbial headlines have no verb, but a form of the copula be can be inserted between the noun phrase and adverb in English sentences (Mrdh, 1980 Schneider, 2000),andstattheendofthePersianones.
BushinBaghdad(29.11.2003) 70%zxayernftjhandrxavremiyaneh(8.9.1382) (70%ofoilsuppliesinMiddleEast.)
3.2.1.1.1.4. Subject complement phrases or omissionofcopula type consist of a noun phrase as subject and a noun phrase as subject complement. In English structures, a form of the verb be, may be inserted between the subject noun phrase and the noun phrase functioningassubjectcomplement(Mrdh,1980Quirketal.,1985),andinthePersian, storshodcanbeinsertedattheendofthesentence.
SupremeCourtopinionsNotPrivateEnough(3.12.2003) Rezazadehbehtrinvrzeshkarjhan(9.9.1382) (Rezazadedthebestathleteintheworld)
3.2.1.1.1.5. Verbalheadlineswithomittedauxiliaryareheadlinesinwhichtheverbisnonfiniteand inwhichformsof'be'areleftoutbeforetheverb(Mrdh,1980).
SixSpanishIntelOfficersKilledinIraq(29.11.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
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3.2.1.1.2.Nominalheadlines A nominal phrase is an expression headed by a noun (Radford, 1997). In order to examine syntactic variation within the noun phrases across the two languages, the structural types of nominal headlines were analyzed according to unmodification, premodification,postmodificationandpre[+]postmodification.
3.2.1.1.2.1.Unmodification: Structures in which the head of noun phrase is not modified by any other item are referredtoasunmodifiedstructures(Quirketal.,1985Spears,1976).
Chief(30.11.2003) Felestin(8.9.1382) (Palestine)
3.2.1.1.2.2.Premodification: Apremodifierisamodifierthatprecedestheworditmodifies(Quirketal.,1985Spears, 1976). ArtificialSweeteners(30.11.2003) 14koshtehdrhadesehotobosdrmalezi(9.9.1382) (14peoplewerekilledinabusaccidentinMalaysia.) 3.2.1.1.2.3.Postmodification: Apostmodifierisamodifierorquantifierthatfollowstheconstituentitmodifies(Quirk etal.,1985Spears,1976). TheFutureofDataStorage(5.12.2003) Zobyxchalhayetbie(10.9.1382) (Glaciermelting)
3.2.1.1.2.4.Pre[+]postModifications: Structures which have both pre and postmodifiers are referred to as pre [+] post modifiedheadlines,e.g. TheSolarSystemthatNeptuneBuilt(1.12.2003)
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Sevominhmayeshmelizfran(12.9.1382) (The3rdinternationalmeetingofSaffron)
3.2.1.1.3.Adverbialheadlines Anadverbialclause(headline)isanexpressionheadedbyaword,phrase,orclausethat isequivalentin itsstructuralroletoanadverb(Fallahi,1991). BeforeYouBabysit(4.12.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
3.2.1.2.Analyzingheadlinetypesbyfunction Headlinescanbedividedintofourfunctionaltypes:statements,questions,commandsand exclamations(Mrdh,1980McLoughlin,2000). Astatementheadlinedescribesastateofaffairs,actions,feelingsorbelief. ChinatoLetForeignBanksProvideMoney(1.12.2003) Rezazadehbehtrinvrzeshkarjhan(9.9.1382) (Rezazadedthebestathletein theworld)
Acommandheadlineexpressesarequestoradvice. PutTheseQuestionMarksbytheHardware(30.11.2003) Bemrdomraqkomkkonid.(10.9.1382) (HelptheIraqipeople.)
Anexclamationheadlineshowsthewriter'sorspeakersfeelings. Turkey+Duck+Chicken=Turducken!(29.11.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
Aquestionheadlineisaddressedtoareaderorlistenerandasksforanexpressionoffact, opinion,beliefetc.
HotCocoa,theHealthyDrink?(5.12.2003) (Noexamplefrom thePersiancorpus)
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This study focused on the cases of functional headline types in the English and Persian headlinestoseewhethertheyareusedcommonlyinthetwolanguages.
3.2.1.3.Complexityinheadlines The classification of headlines was done in terms of simple, compound and complex sentences. Asimpleheadlinecontainsonlyonepredicate.
BushFocusesonRaisingCampaignFunds(1.12.2003) Iranemrosbaranyst.(10.9.1382) (Today,itisrainyinIran.)
A complex headline contains one or more dependent clauses, in addition to its independent,ormainclause.
DNAtestssayLindberghfatheredthreechildreninGermany(29.11.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
A compound headline contains two or more independent clauses which are joined by coordination.
Report:TeenAdmitsSubwaySlay(1.12.2003) Oropahoshdardad,amricatrefehralqvkrd(13.9.1382) (Europeordered,theUnitedStatesrejectedthetariff.)
Following Mrdh's model (1980), headlines which consisted of more than one clause weredividedintotwotypes:editedquotationanduneditedquotation.
3.2.1.3.1.Editedquotations: Ineditedquotationstheitemsthatwouldoccurindirectspeechareleftout.
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Report:TigerWoodsEngaged(29.11.2003) Xrazi:tnharahehleraq(12.9.1382) (Kharazi,TheonlysolutionofIraq)
3.2.1.3.2.Uneditedquotations: Incontrasttoeditedquotations,uneditedquotationsdonotdifferfromwhatmayactually beheardinspeech.
JudgetoBabs:YouAreDismissed(4.12.2003) Ivankovich:razinistm(8.9.1382) (Ivankovich:Iamnotsatisfied.)
3.2.1.4.Structureofverbphrases In terms of the structure of the verb phrase, the English and Persian headlines were dividedintofiniteclauses,nonfiniteclausesandverblessclausesinordertoinvestigate theirsimilaritiesanddifferencesinthetwolanguages.
Finiteclausesareclausesinwhichthefirstoronlywordoftheverbisafiniteform. BushPlaneFlewUnderFalseCoveronIraqTrip(5.12.2003) Zelzelehmazndranralrzand(12.9.1382) (EarthquakehitMazandaran.)
Nonfinite clauses are clauses whose phrase is nonfinite, i.e. the verb lacks tense, number,andmood.
ManCaughtwith177CigarettepacksinTrousers(29.1.2003) Napdidshodn10mohajerdrespania(10.9.1382) (10immigrantsdisappearedinSpain.) Verblessclausesareclauseswhichcontainnoverbelement,e.g.
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FactoryGrowthFastestin20Years(30.11.2003) Rezazadehbehtrinvrzeshkarjhan(9.9.1382) (Rezazadedthebestathleteintheworld)
3.2.1.5. Headlinelength In order to examine the equality of length in the headlines of the two languages, the headlinesinthe corpora wereinvestigated withrespecttotheaveragenumber of words perheadline. For example, the longest headlines found in the English and Persian headlines were consistedof12and15wordsineachsamplerespectively. Yes,I'llGiveYouMyCells IfYouBackManUnited(29.11.2003) Reisjomhor: ma tlash mikonim ke rvabete dostaneh v hsneh ba hmeyeh keshvrhayehhmsayehdashteh bashim.(8.9.1382) (President:wetrytomaintainfriendlyrelationswithallofourneighbors.)
3.2.2.Lexicalfeatures Lexicology, in its most general sense, is synonymous with vocabulary and, in its technicalsense,itdealswiththeanalysisofwords(Quirketal.,1985).Underlexicology, the individual words such as nouns, verbs, articles, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, conjunctions, pronouns and prepositions were analyzed in both English and Persian headlinesinordertodeterminethefrequencyof theiroccurrence.
3.2.2.1.Nouns Anounisawordwhich(a)canoccurasthesubjectorobjectofaverbortheobjectofa preposition, (b) can be modified by an adjective, and (c) can be used with determiners. Nouns typically refer to people, animals, places, things, or abstractions (Murphy, 1997, NatelKhanlari,1979).
BushCommentsonSurpriseTriptoBaghdad(30.11.2003) Ivanoif:englisbehrosiyehtohinkrd(9.9.1382) (Ivanoif:EnglandinsultedRussia.)
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The distinct features of nouns used in headlines are the frequent appearance of the propernouns,theacronyms,andtheabbreviations(Baddock,1988).Thesefeatureswere investigated in headlines of the two languages to determine the frequency of their occurrence.
3.2.2.1.1.Propernouns Proper nouns are basically names of specific people, places, months, days, festivals, magazines,andsoforth(Quirketal.,1985).
IOCMemberRobbedinAthens(29.11.2003) Pirozi,sayparamqlobkrd(9.9.1382) (PirozidefeatedSaypa.)
3.2.2.1.2.Acronymsandabbreviations Acronyms are words derived from the initials of several words. This process is widely usedinshorteningextremelylongwordsorwordgroupsinscience,technologyandother specialfields(Fromkin&Rodman,1998).
PalestinianPMRulesOutImmediateSharonTalks(29.11.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
Abbreviationisareducedversionofaword,phrase,orsentence.Itisalsocalledclipping (Crystal,1992).
JapanGovt.toNationalizeRegionalBank(30.11.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
3.2.2.2.Verbs Verb is an important lexical category, and one which is seemingly universal. In both English and Persian languages, verb is the part of speech which, carries markers of
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grammaticalcategoriessuchastense,aspect,person,numberandmoodandreferstoan actionorstate(Leech&Svartvik,1994NatelKhanlari,1979Trask,1993). Verb categories were analyzed in both English and Persian headlines to see differences andsimilaritiesacrossthetwolanguages.
3.2.2.2.1.Tenseandaspectforms "Tense" stands for the relationship between the from of the verb and the time of the actionorstateitdescribes.Everylanguageiscapableofexpressinglimitlessdistinctions of time. Traditionally, tense is classified into present, past, and future. (Crystal, 1992 Nobahar,1995Quirketal.,1985). OneoftheidiosyncraticfeaturesoftheEnglishheadlinesisthespecialusesitmakesof tenses, which are different from those of ordinary, nonheadline language. In general, thereisnotaonetoonecorrespondencebetweengrammaticalsensesandtherealtimeof occurrenceofanevent.TensesareusedinEnglishheadlinesasfollows(Baddock,1988 McLoughlin,2000Sanderson,1999): Thesimplepresentisoftenusedto refertoeventswhichhappenedinthepast. BushEndsSteelTariffs(4.12.2003) Thepasttenseissometimesusedtorefertoeventswhichhappenedinthepast. BushPlaneFlewUnderFalseCoveronIraqTrip(3.12.2003)
Theinfinitiveisusedtorefertofutureevents.
BookstoBrightentheJoyousSeason(4.12.2003)
The ing form of the verb, representing the present progressive, is used to refer to eventsthatarehappeningatthemoment,andalsotoeventswhichhappeninthefuture.
ActressGeenaDavisExpectingTwins(2.12.2003)
TenseformsareusedinPersianheadlinesasfollows: Thesimplepresentisusedtorefertoeventswhichhappenedinthepresent.
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Reisjomhorbeamricamirvd.(13.9.1382) (ThepresidentisgoingtotheUnitedStates.)
2.Thepasttenseisusedtorefertoeventswhichhappenedinthepast.
Zelzelehmazndranralrzand(12.9.1382) (EarthquakehitMazandaran.)
3.Thefuturetenseisusedtorefertoeventswhichhappenedinthefuture. FrdaShahedtzahoratmilyonimrdomkhahimbod.(10.9.1382) (Tomorrowwewillseethemassivedemonstrationofthousandsofpeople.)
Aspectisagrammaticalcategorywhichdealswithhowtheeventdescribedbya verbisviewed,suchaswhetheritisinprogress,habitual,repeated, momentary, etc.In bothEnglishandPersian,aspectmaybeindicatedbyprefixes,suffixesorotherchanges totheverb,orbyauxiliaryverbs(NatelKhanlari,1979Quirketal.,1985).
Happinessisnotchasingthebuck.(1.12.2003) (NoexamplefromthePersiancorpus)
Manyheadlinesareunmarkedfortense(Mrdh,1980).Theyhavenofiniteformofbein EnglishandstinPersian.Theyhavenoverbtoindicatetime.
JapaneseCompaniesMoreOptimistic(4.12.2003) Srtandovominamelmrgomirdrjhan(11.9.1382) (Cancerthesecondfactorofpeople'sdeathintheworld)
This study focused on the tense and aspect forms which were used in the English and Persianheadlinestoexaminetheirsimilaritiesanddifferencesintheserespects.
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3.2.2.2.2.Voice Voiceistheformoftheverbwhichshowstherelationbetweentheactionanditssubject. In English and Persian there are two voices: the active and the passive. If the subject performstheaction,thentheverbformisinthe activevoice.Ifthesubjectreceivesthe action,thentheverbformisinpassivevoice(Fallahi,1991Frank,1993Nobahar,1995).
SolichFiredAsNebraskaFootballCoach(30.11.2003) 7kargrxarejidrjaponrobodehshodnd(8.9.1382) (7foreignworkerswerekidnappedinJapan.)
Voice was considered in this study to examine the frequency of its occurrence in the headlinesofthetwolanguages.
3.2.2.2.3.Dynamicandstaticverbs Accordingtotheirlexicalmeanings,verbscanbedividedintodynamicandstaticverbs. Atypeofverbwhichtypicallyoccursintheprogressiveformandintheimperative,and whichexpressessuchmeaningasactivity,process,andbodilysensationisreferredtoasa dynamicverb(NatelKhanlari,1979Quirketal.,1985).
MotoristRegistersDuringTrafficStop(5.12.2003) Pirozi,sayparamqlobkrd(9.9.1382) (PirozidefeatedSaypa.)
A contrastisdrawn withstatic verbs(also calledstative orstate verbs),which do not usuallyoccurintheprogressivenorinthe imperative,andwhichexpressastateofaffairs ratherthananaction(NatelKhanlari,1979Quirketal.,1985).
DecisionIsHarmful(5.12.2003) Takestordrdrmansrtansinehmoserst(13.9.1382) (Takestoriseffectiveinthetreatmentofthebreastcancer.)
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3.2.2.3.Deletionsintheheadlines Omissionisoneofthemajorfeaturesofnewspaperheadlines(Baddock,1988Bell,1991 Reah, 1998 Tahririan, 1995). Turner (1972,p.72) says: "Determiners and the verb ''to be''arealmostuniversally omittedinheadlines".Forthesakeofbrevityandsavingspace, most closed wordsandsome open wordsinheadlinesare oftenomitted orreducedtoa minimuminheadlines.
Grocers,UnionTalksSettoResume(30.11.2003) Yzddovominshhrjhanznzrbafttarixi(8.9.1382) (Yazdthe2ndhistoricalcityintheworld.)
Ascanbeseenfromtheaboveexamples,theverb'are'intheEnglishheadlineand'st' inthePersianonewereomitted. Inthesampleheadlinesaninvestigationwasmadeinordertofindoutthefrequencyof omissionofwordsacrossandwithinthetwolanguages.
3.2.2.4.Wordsyllablesofheadlines Inheadlines,monosyllabicverbsandnounsareusedfrequentlyassubstitutesforlonger, more colloquial expressions. For example: win for victory, ex for former, job for appointment,o.k.foraccept.Theanalysisofnounsandverbsaccordingtotheirsyllables intheEnglishandPersiancorporawasdoneinordertoinvestigatetheirsimilaritiesand differencesinthetwolanguagesinthisrespect.
BushNamesBakerAsEnvoyonIraqiDebt(5.12.2003) SunSnubEclipse(4.12.2003)
Aqazsaxtnirogahbrqxorasan(10.9.1382) (ThebuildingoftheEnergydepartmentwasstartedinKhorasan.)
Irannaybqhremankoshtiasiyashod(10.9.1382) (Iranbecamethewrestlingchampionintheworld.)
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4.1.Dataanalysis Theanalysisofdatawasconductedintwostages.Inbothstages,adetaileddescriptionof the headlines at lexical and syntactic levels was done to see the similarities and differencesbetweenthetwolanguages.
4.1.1.Firstlevelofanalysis A corpus of 792 English and 725 Persian headlines were analyzed lexically and syntacticallyinordertoexaminethefeaturesoftheheadlinesinthesedomains. Thefirstlevelconsistedoftheanalysisofthesyntacticfeaturesoftheheadlinesacross and within the two languages. In the following sections, the results of the analysis are presented.
4.1.1.1.Syntacticfeatures As for the syntactic features, the following three major areas were studied in the headlines of the two languages: headline types, functional types, and complexity in the headlines.
4.1.1.1.1.Headlinetypes In order to get an overallpicture of the structures of headlines, the English and Persian headlinesweredividedintothreebasicgroups:verbal,nominal,andadverbialheadlines. ThefrequencyofthedifferenttypesofheadlinesisshowninTable4.1. Table4.1ObservedfrequencyofheadlinetypesintheEnglishandPersiancorpora Typeofheadline Verbal Nominal Adverbial Total English N % 752 94.82 36 4.67 4 0.51 792 100 Persian N 176 549 0 725
% 24.27 75.73 0 100
Table 4.1 shows that the proportion of verbal headlines was considerably higher in the Englishheadlines(94.82%)thaninthePersianones(24.27%).
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AscanbenoticedinTable4.1,therewereonly4adverbialheadlinesinthecorpus,all ofwhichoccurredintheEnglishheadlines.
4.1.1.1.1.1.Verbalheadlines Five main structural types of verbal headlines were distinguished in the English and PersiansampleheadlineswhichareshowninTable4.2.
Table4.2ThefrequencyoftheverbalheadlinetypesintheEnglishandPersiancorpora English Typeofverbalheadlines Finite Nonfinite Omittedauxiliary SCs SA Total N 559 14 148 13 18 752 % 74.34 1.87 19.68 1.72 2.39 100 N 143 6 0 21 6 176 % 81.25 3.41 0 11.93 3.41 100 Persian
AscanbenoticedinTable4.2,thelargemajorityofheadlineswerefiniteintheEnglish headlines(74.34%)andinthePersianones(81.25%).
4.1.1.1.1.2.Nominalheadlines ConsideringtheinformationpresentedinTable1,theEnglishandPersianheadlineswere significantly different in the case of nominal headlines. 75.73% of the headlines in Persianand4.67%ofthoseinEnglishwere nominalheadlines. NominalheadlinesintheEnglishandPersiansampleheadlineswereanalyzedinterms ofunmodification,premodification,postmodificationandpre[+]postmodification. The frequency of different types of nominal headlines in the sample headlines are showninTable4.3.
Unmodified Premodified Postmodified Typeofnominalheadlines
N % 12 21.42 27 48.21 16 28.58 English
N 2 14 1743 Persian
% 0.11 0.79 98.80
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Table 4.3 Pre[+]postmodified frequency Total
1 56
1.79 100
5 1764
0.28 100
Observed of
differenttypesofnominalheadlinesintheEnglishandPersiancorpora
Table4.3showsthat most nominal headlinesintheEnglishsample werepremodified (48.21%),whilepostmodification washighinthePersian corpus(98.80%).Unmodified nominal headlines were comparatively few. They were, however, more found in the Englishnominalheadlines(21.42%)thaninthoseofPersian(0.11%). The different types of premodifiers and postmodifiers and their distribution will be presentedinthefollowingsections.
4.1.1.1.1.2.1.Premodifiednominalheadlines TwotypesofitemsmayprecedetheheadintheEnglishpremodifiednominalheadlines: closed system and open class premodifiers. The closed system premodifiers can not be extended by the creation of additional members. The set of open class premodifiers is extendable,i.e.newitemsmaybeaddedtotheclass(Jucker1992Quirketal.,1985). Open class premodifiers preceded the head of the noun phrase in the English and PersiannominalheadlinesasTable4.4shows. Table Adjective Total Typeofopenclasspremodifier Commonnoun Propernoun Nounwithgenitives Nounwithplurals 14 25 56 100 14 14 100 100 4.4
English N % 11 44 0 1 1 0 4 4
Persian N % 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
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ObservedfrequencyofpremodifiersintheEnglishandPersiannominalheadlines
AsshowninTable4.4,adjectiveswerethe mostcommontype ofpremodifyingitems in both English (56%) and Persian (100%) headlines. The other items which were preceded the noun phrase head of the English headlines were common nouns (44%), nounswithgenitives(4%)andnounswithplurals(4%).
4.1.1.1.1.2.2.Postmodifiednominalheadlines AsindicatedbyTable4.3,thePersiancorpushadahigh number ofpostmodificationin nominalheadlines(98.80%)comparedwiththeEnglishones(28.58%). DifferentkindsofpostmodificationsinthenominalheadlinesofEnglisharepresentedin Table4.5. Table4.5ObservedfrequencyofpostmodificationintheEnglishnominalheadlines Typeofpostmodification Restrictiverelativeclause Prepositionalphrase Adverb Total English N % 2 12.5 12 75 2 12.5 16 100
As appears from Table 4.5, prepositional modification was by far the most frequent typeofpostmodificationintheEnglishnominalheadlines. InthefollowingTable,thefrequencyofdifferentkindsofpostmodifiersinthePersian headlinesisgiven.
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Table4.6ObservedfrequencyofpostmodifiersinthePersiannominalheadlines Typeofpostmodifiersin thePersianheadlines Commonnoun Propernoun Nounwithplurals Adjective Prepositionalphrase Adverb Total Persian N 847 124 138 297 138 199 1743
% 48.59 7.1263.63 7.92 17.03 7.92 11.42 100
Table4.6showsthedifferentkindsofpostmodifiersthatoccurredinthePersiannominal headlines such as adverbial phrases (11.42%), nouns (63.63%), prepositional phrases (7.92%)andadjectives(17.03%).
4.1.1.1.2.Headlinetypesbyfunction Headlinescanbedividedintofourfunctionaltypes:statements,questions,commandsand exclamations.ThedistributionofthefunctionalheadlinetypesisshowninTable4.7.
Table 4.7 Observed frequency of functional headline types in the English and Persian corpora
Functional headlinetypes Statements Questions Commands Exclamations Total
English N % 780 98.48 7 0.89 4 0.50 1 0.13 792 100
Persian N 722 0 3 0 725
% 99.58 0 0.42 0 100
As shown in Table 4.7, exclamations, commands and questions were rare in both samples,wheretheyconstitutedapartofonly1.5%intheEnglishsampleheadlinesand 0.42%inthePersianones.AsitcanbeseenfromtheaboveTable,statementswerethe largestinnumberofthe functionalheadlinetypes:nolessthan98.48%oftheheadlines inEnglishsampleheadlinesand99.58%ofthoseinPersiancorpus.
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4.1.1.1.3.Complexityinheadlines Headlines can be classified in terms of simple, complex and compound sentences. The frequencyoftheheadlinesintermsoftheirstructureisgiveninTable4.8.
Table4.8FrequencyofsentencesclassifiedbystructureinEnglishandPersiancorpora Headlinesclassifiedby structure Simple Complex Compound Total English N % 682 86.11 33 4.16 77 9.72 792 100 Persian N 714 0 11 725 % 98.48 0 1.5 100
According to Table 4.8, in the English and Persian corpora simple headlines outnumberedanyofthecompoundsandcomplexones.
4.1.1.1.3.1.Headlineswithmorethanonefreestructure In headlines with more than one free structure, verbal, nominal, or adverbial structures mayoccurtogether. The following Table (4.9) shows the occurrence of headlines with more than one free structureintheEnglishandPersiancorpora.
Table4.9 ObservedfrequencyoffreestructuresintheEnglishandPersiancorpora
Headlineswithmorethan onefreestructure Verbal+verbal Verbal+nominal Nominal+nominal Nominal+verbal Total
English N 0 12 2 45 59
% 0 20.34 3.39 76.27 100
Persian N % 0 0 0 0 3 27.28 8 72.72 11 100
Inbothsamples,ahighnumberofnominal+verbalstructurescanbeseen,76.27%in the English headlines and 72.72% in the Persian ones. The results obtained from the
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Table4.27indicatethatthePersian headlineshad27.28%nominal+nominal headlines andtheEnglishoneshad3.39%.
4.1.1.1.3.1.1.Editedanduneditedquotations Headlines with more than one free structure may be divided into two subtypes: edited quotationanduneditedquotationheadlines. The following Table shows the distribution of edited and unedited quotations in the EnglishandPersiancorpora. Table4.10 Frequencyofeditedand'unedited'quotations Typeoffreestructure headline Editedquotation 'Unedited'quotation Total English N % 20 33.89 39 66.11 59 100 Persian N 3 8 11
% 27.28 72.72 100
Table4.10revealsthatuneditedquotationheadlinesweremorefrequentinbothEnglish (66.11%)andPersianheadlines(72.72%).
4.1.1.1.4.Verbphrasesinheadlinestructures In terms of the structure of the verb phrase, headlines divided into finite clauses, non finite clauses, and verbless clauses. Table 4.11, shows the percentage of these three clausesintheEnglishandPersiancorpora.
Table4.11Frequencyofclausesclassifiedbystructure ofverbphraseinthecorpora Clausesclassifiedbystructureof verbphrase Finite Nonfinite Verbless Total English N % 549 69.31 172 21.72 71 8.97 792 100 Persian N 143 6 576 725 % 19.73 0.83 79.44 100
Table 4.11 shows that finite clauses were frequently used in the English headlines, numbering549andoccupying69.32%.Nonfiniteclausesandverblessclausesoccurred
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21.85%and8.83%respectivelyintheEnglishcorpus.InthePersianheadlines,theuseof verblessclauses(79.44%)wasfavoredmuchmorethantheothertwo.
4.1.1.1.5.Headlinelength Thelengthoftheheadlineswascalculatedintermsoftheaveragenumberofwordsper headlines. Table4.12 Averagelengthofaheadlineintermsofnumberofwords Lengthofwordsinheadlines Numberofthewholewords Numberofheadlines English N Mean 5231 729 7.17 Persian N Mean 4146 5.71 725
The figures obtained were about 7 and 5 words for the English and Persian headlines respectively.
4.1.2.Secondlevelofanalysis Thesecondleveloftheanalysisconsistedofthelexical featuresoftheheadlinesacross andwithinthetwolanguages. Adverb Adjective Article 41 541 63 0.80 4 10.59 604 1.25 34 0.09 14.34 0.80
4.1.2.1.Lexicalfeatures
Theanalysisoflexicalfeaturesofheadlineswascarriedoutinthreelevelswhoseresults arepresentedandtabulatedinthefollowingsections.
4.1.2.1.1.Partsofspeechinsampleheadlines Words are classified into ten parts of speech as follows: noun, verb, article, adjective, adverb,numeral,article,conjunction,pronoun,andpreposition. In order to have a clear picture of words used in headlines, the researcher made an investigation of the frequency of different parts of speech in the sample headlines the resultsofwhichareshowninTable4.13.
Numeral Conjunction Preposition Modal Pronoun Noun
118 1.64 82 83 2.30 111 569 1.15 1 58 11.15 480 41 2758 53.97 2740 0.80 8
2.62 1.93 11.40 0.02 0.19 65.12
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Verb Total
840 16.45 143 5112 100 4207
3.39 100
Table4.13FrequencyofdifferentpartsofspeechinEnglishandPersianheadlines Fromamongtheaforementionedpartsofspeechusedinheadlines,nounsand verbsare dealtwithinthefollowingsections.
4.1.2.1.1.1.Nouns Nouns are one of the most important parts of speech (Lock, 1996). This has been confirmedbytheinformationgiveninTable4.13. Asthetableindicates,thefrequencyof nounsprominentlyoutnumberedthatofanyotherpartsofspeech,53.97%intheEnglish sampleheadlinesand65.12%inthePersianones.Becauseoftheimportanceofnounsin headlines,ananalysiswasdonetoexaminesuchfeaturesascommonandpropernouns. InTable4.14,thefrequencyofdistinctfeaturesofnounsinthesampleheadlinesisgiven.
Table4.14FrequencyofnounsintheEnglishandPersiancorpora Nouns Abbreviation Acronym Propernoun Commonnoun Total English N 105 113 441 2099 2758 Persian N 0 0 647 2093 2740
% 3.82 4.09 15.99 76.10 100
% 0 0 23.62 76.38 100
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As can be 4.14, and acronyms more in the headlines,about 4.09% not in the
Tenseforms Present Past Unmarked(SCs+SAs) Future Presentprogressive Presentperfect Total English N % 519 79.61 30 4.61 31 4.75 50 7.66 22 3.37 0 0 652 100 Persian N % 50 29.42 91 53.53 27 15.89 1 0.58 0 0 1 0.58 170 100
seen in Table abbreviations seem to be
English sample 3.82% and
respectively but Persiancorpus.
4.1.2.1.1.2.Verbs Because of the importance of verbs in headlines, an investigation was done on the frequencyoftheoccurrenceofverbsintheEnglishandPersiancorpora. Table 4.16 shows that verbs occurred 16.45% and 3.39% in the English and Persian sampleheadlinesrespectively,whichwasthesecondbiggestgroupofwordsusedinthe English headlines.Sointhissection,the featuresofthe verbsusedin headlines willbe analyzed.
4.1.2.1.1.2.1.Dynamicandstaticverbs What follows are the observed frequencies (Table 4.15) of these two kinds of verbs in bothsampleheadlines.
Table4.15FrequencyofdynamicandstaticverbsintheEnglishandPersiansample headlines
FromtheTable4.15,itisclearthattherearemanymoredynamicverbsthanstaticverbs in both English and Persian sample headlines. In the sample headlines 95.35% in the
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Englishand67.83%inthePersiancorpusweredynamicverbswhilestaticverbsoccurred 4.65%and32.17%inthetwosamplesrespectively.
4.1.2.1.1.2.2.Tenseandaspectforms Differentkindsoftenseandaspectformswereinvestigatedinthecorpora.Whatfollows istheoutputofthisanalysis. Table4.16.ThedistributionoftenseandaspectformsintheEnglishandPersiancorpora
Comparing the English and Persian headlines as to the proportion of tense forms, the Englishheadlineshadahigherproportionofpresenttense(79.61%)thanthePersianones (29.42%) while past was more frequent in the Persian sample (53.53%) than in the English(4.61%). Besidestense,theaspectsusedintheheadlineswereanalyzed.Ascanbeseen,inboth sample headlines, the non English Persian Verbs progressive forms were far N % N % Dynamic 801 95.35 97 67.83 more frequent than the Static 39 4.65 46 32.17 progressive forms. Only 22 Total 840 100 143 100 instancesoftheprogressiveform3.37%oftheEnglishverbalheadlineswerefoundin thecorpus. Manyheadlinesareunmarkedfortense.AsTable4.16indicates,unmarkedtenseforms occurredinbothEnglish(4.75%)andPersian(15.89%)headlines
4.1.2.1.1.2.3.Voice The distribution of active and passive patterns in the English and Persian headlines is showninTable4.17. Table4.17 Frequencyofpassiveandactiveheadlinesinbothsamples Voice N English % N Persian %
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Active Passive Total
653 99 752
86.84 13.16 100
170 6 176
96.59 3.41 100
AsTable4.17shows,86.84%oftheverbalheadlinesintheEnglishsamplesand96.59% of those in the Persian ones were active constructions and about 13.16% and 3.41% in passivepatternsintheEnglishandPersian samplesrespectively.
3.1.2.1.4.Wordsyllablesofheadlines Whatfollowsistheoutputoftheanalysisofnouns(Table4.18)and verbs(Table4.19) accordingtotheirsyllablesintheEnglishandPersiancorpora. Table 4.18. Observed frequency of nouns with different syllables in the English and Persiancorpora Nounswithdifferent syllables Monosyllabicnoun Bisyllabicnoun Polysyllabicnoun Total English N % 1367 49.57 1013 36.73 378 13.70 2758 100 Persian N % 1987 72.51 753 27.48 0 0 2740 100
Table 4.19 Observed frequency of verbs with different syllables in the English and Persiancorpora Verbswithdifferentsyllables Monosyllabicverb Bisyllabicverb Polysyllabicverb Total 4.1.2.1.2.1.Omissionofverb''be'' Table4.20demonstratestheobservedfrequencyof''be''omissioninthesampleheadlines. Table4.20 Thefrequencyoftheomissionofverb'be'inthecorpora English N % 579 68.91 230 27.39 31 3.7 840 100 Persian N % 71 49.63 72 50.37 0 0 143 100
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Information givenin Table4.20indicatesthattheverb''be''asalinking verbandasan auxiliary verb was left out about 17.32% and 82.68% respectively in the English headlines. Omissionofverb'be' 'be'asalinkingverb 'be'asanauxiliaryverb Total English N % 31 17.32 148 82.68 179 100 Persian N st 27 0 0 27 % 100 0 100 The linking verbwhich was omitted in the Persian headlines was the word "st", which was left out completely of totalomissionsoftheverb"be." Asawhole,208differenttypesoftheverb"be"wereneededintheEnglishheadlines buttherewereonly29casesinwhichtheywereused.Itshowsthatabout86.05%ofthe verb"be"wasomitted.InthePersianheadlines,thetendency wastousetheverb"st" (63.02%).
Table4.21Thefrequencyofverb'be'intheEnglishheadlines verb'be' 'be' English Frequencyof Need appear omitted'be' ed 208 29 86.05 Frequencyof theusageof 'be' 13.95
Table4.22 Thefrequencyofverb'st'inthePersianheadlines verb'st' 'st' Persian Frequencyof Need appear omitted'st' ed 73 46 36.98 Frequencyof theusageof 'st' 63.02
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4.1.2.1.2.2.Omissionof''say'' The word "say" sometimes is omitted and replaced by colons in headlines (Baddock, 1988). Table4.23displaystheoccurrenceoftheword''say''andalsoitsomissioninbothsample headlines. Table4.23Observedfrequencyoftheusageandomissionof'say'inthecorpora Usageand omissionof "say" Usageof''say'' Useofcolon Useofdash Total English N % 19 24.35 55 70.52 4 5.13 78 100 Persian N 0 11 0 11
% 0 100 0 100
Table 4.23 demonstrates that the omission of the word ''say'' was preferred in both English(75.65%)andPersian(100%)headlines.
5.Conclusion Based on the results of the study, the most important quantitative similarities and differencesbetweentheEnglishandPersianheadlineswerededucedasfollows: Theheadlinesofthetwolanguagesweresimilarinthefollowingareas:
Dominant use of nouns:The use of nounsprominently outnumberedthat ofany other partsofspeechinbothEnglish(53.97%)andPersian(65.12%)headlines. Preference for dynamic verbs:Inthesample headlines95.35%ofverbsintheEnglish and67.83%ofthoseinthePersiandataweredynamicverbs. Preference for the use of active voice: 86.84% of the verbal headlines in the English sampleand96.59%ofthoseinthePersianonewereactiveconstructions. Frequent omission of words: The verb 'be' was omitted in both English (86.05%) and Persian(36.98%)headlinesandalsothe omissionofthe word'say' waspreferredinthe English(75.65%)andPersian(100%)corpora. Preference for short words: Mono syllabic nouns were used in both English (49.57%) andPersian(72.51%)headlines.
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Dominanceofdeclarativesentences:Theuseofstatementswasthelargestinnumberof thefunctionalheadlinetypesinbothEnglish(98.48%)andPersian(99.58%)headlines. Expansion of simple sentences: 86.11% of the headlines in the English sample and 98.48%ofthoseinthePersiancorpusweresimplesentences. Preference for the use of unedited quotations: Unedited quotation headlines were frequentinbothEnglish(66.11%)andPersianheadlines(72.72%). Preference for finite clauses: Finite clauses were frequently used in the English headlines(74.34%)andthePersianones(81.25%).
Theheadlinesofthetwolanguagesweredifferentinthefollowingareas: 1.Acronymsandabbreviationswere highly used intheEnglish headlinesbutnotinthe Persianones. 2. Tense in Persian headlines did not follow the English verb system. In general, the Persianheadlineswerenotdifferentfromthoseofordinary,nonheadlinelanguage. 3.ThereweremorepresenttenseformsintheEnglishheadlines:79.61%vs.29.42%in thePersianones,whereaspasttense formswere more commoninthePersianheadlines (55.48%)thanintheEnglishones(4.41%). 4. Frequent omissions of certain words such as omission of articles, and, people/person,pronounand"that"weremajorfeaturesofEnglishheadlines. 5. In the English corpus the use of monosyllabic verbs (68.93%) was preferred by the reporters,whereasinthePersiansampleheadlines,theuseofcompoundverbswasmore thanthesimpleones(50.37%and49.63%respectively). 6.VerbalheadlinesweremorefrequentlyusedintheEnglishsampleheadlines(94.82%) than in the Persian ones (23.44%). English and Persian headlines were significantly different in the case of nominal headlines (4.67% and 76.56% respectively). The placementofverbsbynominalizationwascharacteristicofthePersianheadlines. 7.InacomparisonbetweentheEnglishandPersiannewspaperheadlines,itappearsthat postmodified nominal headlines were almost four times more frequent in the Persian headlines (98.79%) than the English ones (28.58%), whereas premodified nominal headlinesweremorefoundintheEnglish(48.21%)thaninthePersianheadlines(0.80%).
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8. There were only 4 (0.51%) adverbial headlines in the English sample headlines but noneinPersianones. 9.Exclamationsandquestions(0.13%and0.89%respectively) occurredin headlinesof EnglishcorpusbutnotinthePersiansample.
Tosumup,itwasconcludedthattheheadlinesofEnglishandPersianlanguageswere similar in using dynamic verbs, active voice, short words, declarative sentences, finite clauses, and simple sentences and different in the use of tense forms, headline types, modification,andomissionofwords.
5.1.ImplicationsoftheEnglishandPersianheadlinescomparison The results of contrasting English and Persian headlines have pedagogical implications forteachingjournalisticEnglishandtranslation.
5.1.1.ImplicationsforteachingjournalisticEnglish TeacherscanbenefitfromthefindingsoftheanalysisofheadlinesinPersianandEnglish. Itcanassisttheteachertobeawareofthestructuralconflictsoftheheadlinesofthetwo languagesand,asaresult,helphisstudentsgetabetterunderstandingofthelanguageof headlines. AnEFLteacherofreadingjournalisticEnglishwithrelevantcontrastiveinformationcan be a better language teacher in a shorter period of time than a person without such information. Knowledgeofthesyntacticandlexicalfeaturesofheadlineshelpsteacherstousethem as a guide to their teaching. The teacher who is familiar with the similarities and differencesbetweenPersianandEnglishheadlineswillknowbetterwhatthereallearning problemsareandcanbetterprovideforteachingthem.
5.1.2.Implicationsforteachingtranslation
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Knowledge of the learners' language and its differences and similarities with the second/foreignoneisofpracticalteachingusein manyways,oneofwhichistranslation. InordertotranslatetheEnglishheadlines,EFLstudentsshouldhaveagoodcommand of headline features ofbothlanguages.AsLefevere (1992)says,"the firstrule for EFL translatorsistoknowbothlanguageswell"(p.121). Byrecognizingthelexicalandsyntacticalfeaturesoftheheadlinesandthedifferences of their distributions across Persian and English, the elements that may hinder the Iranians'headlinescomprehensioncanbedetermined.Forinstance,thisstudyilluminated that the omissions of certain words can create hurdle for comprehending the English headlines. Knowledge of these difficulties can aid the students in understanding the languageofheadlines. ContrastingEnglishandPersianheadlinescanhelplearnersbecomemoreconsciousof the features of headlines in the two languages and avoid problems in the use of either, especiallywhentheytranslate.
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Youwillcomewhen? 1 Thepragmaticsofcertain questionsinCameroonEnglish

DanielNkemleke, TechnischeUniversittChemnitz,Germany BioData: DanielA.Nkemleke,Ph.D.,isseniorlecturerinEnglishLanguageandLinguisticsinthe DepartmentofEnglishinEcoleNormaleSuprieure(ENS)oftheUniversityofYaound I,Cameroon.Hehasover12yearsofexperienceinELTandhaspublishedinanumber ofrefereedjournalsincludingWorldEnglishes,EnglishWorldWide,NordicJournalfor AfricanStudiesandIndianJournalofAppliedLinguistics etc.Heteachesthe following courses in ENS: TEFL, academic writing and functional English syntax. His research interestincludestext(corpus)linguisticsandwritingandsince1992hehasbeeninvolved inaprojecttobuildawrittenandspokencorpusofCameroonianEnglish.Heispresently aguestresearcherintheDepartmentofEnglishoftheTechnischeUniversittChemnitz (Germany),havingbeenawardeda12month research fellowshipbytheAlexander von HumboldtFoundationtofurtherdevelophisCamerooniancorpus.
Abstract ThiscontributiondiscusseshowsomeCamerooniansperformthespeechactofasking in informal contexts. Data used for the study is derived from transcripts of taped conversations and recordings from personal encounters. In all, 160 examples of questions(ofthetypeyouwillcomewhen?)thatcouldnotfitanyofthecategories ofquestionsinnativeEnglishasoutlinedinQuirketal(1985)areanalyzed.Inacross linguisticperspective,Idemonstratethattheyouwillcomewhentypequestionsreflect similarities found in Cameroonian home languages of the Bantu origin, spoken by all interlocutors from whom the data was obtained. Furthermore, the paper contends that interplay ofthesyntaxofthesehomelanguagesandEnglishmayberesponsible forthe questions ofthetypestatedabove. Thepaper concludesthatspeechact research ofthis naturemayguideteacherstodesignteachingmaterialsthatspecificallyaddressthenature ofspokeninteractionininterpersonalcommunication. KeyWords:Pragmatics,questions,informalcontexts,CameroonEnglish,pedagogic relevance
Iamthankfultotheanonymousreviewerforusefulsuggestionsmadeonthefirstversionofthisarticle.I alsowishtoacknowledgetheencouragementofJohnAdamsonof TLJ. Thisstudywasconductedduringa researchstayinTUChemnitz,madepossiblebytheAlexandervonHumboldtFoundation(AvH).
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1.Introduction A lot of research has been done on the contextual coordinates of language organisation (cf. Levinson, 1983 Leech, 1983) and one such contextual coordinate is speech act theory (Austin, 1962 Searle, 1969). For example, research has shown that there are significantcrossculturaldifferencesinthewaythatsimilarspeechactsareperformed indifferentculturesandlanguages(seeCarrellandKonneker,1981CohenandOlshtain, 1981).ScholarssuchasSridhar(1986,1989a,1991),Kachru(1982,1983,1990),Smith (1983) and Dsouza (1987) have in various ways focused on the pragmatic aspects of variationinEnglishintheOuterCircle.Sridhar(1989a),forexample,examinedhowthe speech act of requesting is performed in Indian English. This current investigation followsthistradition andexamineshowsomeCamerooniansperformonespecifictypeof speechact,namelyaskingquestionsininformalcontexts.
2. Background The semantics and pragmatics of questions has long been the subject of linguistic exploration. There are several types of questions in English: yesno questions, wh questions, alternative questions, tag questions, declarative questions, exclamative questions and rhetorical questions (see Quirk et al,1985 Lisa LaiShen, 1997). Abrief discussionoftheseformsofquestionsisnecessaryhere. Yesno questions are usually formed by placing the operator before the subject and givingthesentencearisingintonation.Alsotheaddresseeisusuallyexpectedtosupplya truth value by specifying yes or no. Other possible answers indicating various degrees of certainty do exist (see Biber et al, 1999). The addressee may choose to say definitely, certainly etc. as an alternative to a yes response, for example. Again, s/he may supply additional information to a yes or no response. For example, in responsetoaquestion:Wouldyoucomefordinnerthisevening?apossibleanswercould be No I am too busy this evening. It is also important to note, however, that yesno questions are often used for purposes other than asking information (see Biber et al,
2 1999) . Yesno questions often use assertive or nonassertive forms. Questions which
Biberetal(1999)explainthattheinterrogativestructuresinthefollowingexamplesexpressan exclamation: Isnt thatlovely!Isntthat,thatterrible! (p.207).
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havepositiveorientationsaresaidtobeassertiveandthosethatemployanyandever are nonassertive. The difference between the two can be illustrated with the examples below. a.Did someonecallyesterday? b.Hasthetrainleftalready? c.Did anyonecalllastnight? d.Haveyoutakenyourvisayet? The first two questions (ab) have a positive orientation and are therefore assertive. According to Biber et al (1999), assertive questions have a bias towards an underlying positive proposition in which an assertive form such as somebody, someone or already would appear. The use of the assertive words (italicized) in ab above (rather than the nonassertive form yet as in d, for example), suggests that the speaker is already inclined to assume that the truth of the assertion is positive (i.e. anticipating a yesresponse).Thelasttwoquestions(cd) ontheotherhand,are nonassertivebecause theyleaveopenwhethertheanswerispositiveornegative.Infact,Quirketal(1985:808) observe that questions with nonassertive forms point to common ground between questionsandnegativestatements. The whquestions are usually marked by the presence of one or more of the interrogative words who, whom, which, whose, what, where, when, why, how, or their compoundsinever: whoever, whatever etc(see Huddleston,1988,p.366).Quirk etal (1985,p. 817ff)statetworulesthatgoverntherealisationofthistypeofquestions.Firstly, the Qelement (i.e. clause element containing the Qwords) generally comes first in the sentences.Secondly,theQworditselftakesfirstpositionintheQelement.Forexample, Onwhatdidyoubaseyourforecast?Whatdidyoubaseyourforecaston? Another type of question in native English is the alternative question. An alternative questionisonewhosereplyincludesoneoftwoormoreoptions(alternatives)presentin thequestion,astheexamplebelowillustrates. e.Wouldyoulikeoranges,mangoes,orbananas? Apossiblereplyherecouldbe:Iprefersomeoranges.Thistypeofalternativequestionis structurally similar to a yesno question (because it opens with an operator which is followedbythesubject),althoughitalsodiffersfromitintwoways.First,theresponse
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inanalternativequestioncannotbeyesorno(asinayesnoquestion),butratherone ofthechoicesprovidedinthequestion.Second,insteadofthefinalrisingtone(asitisthe casewithayesnoquestion),thealternativequestionmaycontainaseparatenucleusfor eachalternative:arise(representedby)occursoneachiteminthelist,exceptthelast, on which there is a fall (represented by ), indicating that the list is complete. According to Quirk et al (1985, p. 823), this difference of intonation between the alternative question and a yesno question is important, in that ignoring it can lead to misunderstanding as the contrast between the replies below indicates (examples from Quirketalp.823,withintonationsignsmodified): f.alternative: A:Shallwegoby busortrain?B:By Bus. g.yesno: A:Shallwegobybusortrain? B:No,letstakethecar.
Biberetal(1999,p.208)explainthatsomealternativequestionsarerelatedinfunction towhquestionsinthattheybothhaveinterrogativeclauseswhichaskforspecificationof anunknownelement.However,inthecaseofthealternativequestionthisspecificationof theunknownisrepresentedbylistedalternativesandinthecaseofthewhquestionitis representedbyawhword.Theexamplebelow(takenfromBiberetal,p.208)isusedto

3 illustratebothcontexts .
h.WhichoneshouldIuse,theblueorthepink? Since an alternative question by definition presupposes the truth of only one of the propositions, the whquestion (or component) of the example above is followed by elliptical alternative questions (...the blue? or ... the pink?), from which the addressee maychooseone. Declarativequestions(DQ),exclamatoryquestions(EQ),rhetoricalquestions(RQ)and tagquestions(TQ)constitutearelativelylessperceptiblecategoryofquestionsinEnglish. In fact,Quirk etal(1985,p.825)refertothemasminorquestions.Theirstatusisnot easily defined in terms of an auxiliary or whword as in the other categories just discussed above. The DQ is identical in form to a statement, except for the final rising questionintonation:Youvegotthetelephonecard?TheEQisaquestioninform,butis functionally like an exclamation. The most characteristic type is a negative yesno
3
Biberetal(1999,p.208)observethatanalternativequestionandawhquestionmaycombineinthesame context.Note,however,thattheexamplesforalternativequestionsprovidedbyBiberetalarenotmarked forintonation(cf.comparefandgabovefromQuirketal).
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questionwithafallinginsteadofarisingtone:Hasntshegrown!TheRQisonewhich functionsasaforcefulstatement.Moreprecisely,apositiverhetoricalquestionislikea strongnegativeassertion,whileanegativequestionislikeastrongpositive one:Isthat thereasonforhopelessness?(Surelythatisnot the reason),Isnoonegoingtoassist me? (Surely someone is going to assist me). TQ consists of an operator plus apronoun withorwithoutanegativeparticle.The choiceandtenseoftheoperatorare determined by the verb phrase in the superordinate clause (e.g. The plane hasnt left, has it? Peter recognizedyou,didnthe?). In the article, I concentrate on one peculiar type of question in Cameroon colloquial speech, which for lack of a better expression I would call youarecomingwhentype (youwh)question.Theyouwhquestionsaresimilartotheyesnoquestionsandwh questionsinthatthetype of responsesthatare expected foryesnoand whquestionsin English are also expected in the youwh type. However, the youwh type questions aredifferentinthatthewhwordisusuallyplacedatthefinalpositionandtheauxiliaryis somewhereinthe medialposition.InStandardEnglish(SE)the locusofinterrogation (HedbergandSosa2001) ofayesnoquestionisratherthefrontedauxiliary.Forexample: Q: Mama is in the house? (Cameroon English colloquial speech (= auxiliary at the clausemedialposition) Q: You are coming when? (Cameroon English colloquial speech (= whword at the clausefinalposition) StandardEnglishwouldphrasethesequestionsas: Q:Ismamainthehouse?(Frontedauxiliary) Q:Whenareyoucoming?(Frontedwhword)
3.Data Thedata used in this current investigation is derived from two sources. The first major source is a transcript of taped conversations from where the youwh type questions (comprising 123 examples) were taken. These conversations were recorded surreptitiously in the city of Yaound over a period of 18 months (September 2002 to
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March2004)bya groupofthreegraduatestudentsintheDepartment ofEnglishofthe UniversityofYaoundI.Thegroupwasequippedwithapockettaperecorder,andhad to tape the conversations of fellow students and other adults in and out of the university campusontopicseitherinitiatedbythemorinwhichtheywerewitnessesorparticipants. Theseinformantswereofdifferenteducationalandsocialbackground(students,teachers, businessmen,administrators),butallof themcanroughlybedescribedashavingattained at least high school education. More than 50per cent of them were university students. All the informants spoke at least one home language of the Bantu family plus Pidgin English. The majority of them could speak French also since most of the data was collected in the capital city Yaound, where French (one of Cameroons official languages)isthedominantlanguage. The followingplacesweretargeted:theuniversity restaurants, students residential quarters and other social gatherings such as students cultural meetings, community gatherings, etc. These taped conversations were later on transcribed.Theother(minor)sourceofdatawasmyownpersonalrecordingsbasedon personal daily encounters with students and nonstudents in and out of campus. I have markedtheserecordingsaspersonalobservationinthediscussion.Upto37examples were obtained in this way. In all, this study is based on a database of 160 youwh questiontypes.
4.Analysis The discussion here is in two parts. Firstly, I will discuss the youwh questions, with focusontworesponsetypes,namely(i)wherethesimpleaffirmative/negativeansweris required,and(ii)wheresomekindofinformationisrequired.Thesetworesponsetypes correspondtothoseoftheyesnoquestionsandwhquestions(alreadymentionedabove: cf. Quirk et al 1985) respectively. Secondly, I will show how the youwh pattern of askingisanalogoustoasimilarpatternofaskingquestionsinfourCameroonianhome languagesoftheBantuorigin.
Youarecomingwhentypequestions Asalreadymentioned,theyouwhtypesofquestionsdonothavethesamestructureas yesno and whquestions in English. To evaluate them as questions requires pragmatic
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knowledge of the context within which they are used. The examples (111) below illustratethesetypesofquestions.(NotethatSEstandsforStandardEnglish.)
(1)A:MyredpenIcannotsee.Pleaseyouhavemypen? B:Yes!Thisisthepen(TPE1.02). Context:inaclassroomsittingonthesamedesk. SE:Pleasedoyouhavemypen?
(2)Alo!Whosspeaking?OK!YouarecomingtoYaoundwhen?(TPE1.03) Context:atelephoneconversation. SE:WhenareyoucomingtoYaound?
(3)A:YouwaituntilyouseemebeforeyoustartpretendingtoWORK! B:NOMADAM(inachorus). A:Youhavefinishedthework?(TPE2.02) Context:anexchangebetweenateacherandherpupilsinalocalschooldowntown. SE:Haveyoufinished thework?
(4)A(Teacher):OkpleaseputupthechartontheboardEssam. B(Student):(Essammovestowardstheblackboardandashefixesthechart). A:Now!Seethefooditemsonthechart.Youeatinthemorningbeforecomingto class? B:Iatebreadandcheesethismorningbeforecoming. A:Thatsright,next(pointingatthedormantsectionoftheclassroom). (Personalobservation) Context:astudentteacheronpracticeteachinginaclassroominYaound. SE:Doyoueatinthemorningbeforecomingtoclass?
(5)A:PleasegivemeMartinspaper. B:What?Iwillkeepit!Heisyourbrother?(TPE2.04)
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Context: in a classroom when a teacher was giving back scripts of a previous assignment. SE:Isheyourbrother?
(6)A:TuesdayafternoonisagooddayyoucancometoourhousebecauseIdontwant Patobeinyousee.Hewillbeinchurch.. B:Themembersofyourfamilyaregoingtochurcheveryday?(TPE4.04) Context: a conversation between two friends. One is extending an invitation to the otheronacertainTuesdayheknowshisfatherissupposedtobeinchurch. SE:Domembersofyourfamilygotochurcheveryday? (7)Thenameofourliteratureteacheriswhat?(TPE3.03) Context:anewstudentinquiringtoknowthenameofanewteacherhehasnotmet before. SE:Whatisthenameofourliteratureteacher?
(8)Maryssituationwashowwhenyoutookhertothehospital?(TPE5.04) Context:aconversationamongstudentsinaresidentialarea. SE:HowwasMaryssituationwhenyoutookhertothehospital?
(9)Thenightwatchmanwaswherewhenthethiefcame?(TPE4:04) Context:agroupofonlookerswatchhowathiefbrokeintoalocalprovisionstoreand tookawayvaluablethings. SE:Wherewasthenightwatchmanwhenthethiefcame? (10)A:Yesterdayyouwerewhere? B:Iwasinthroughout. A:ButIcametoyourplaceanddidntseeyou!(TPE4.04) Context:aconversationbetweentwostudents. SE:Wherewereyouyesterday?
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(11)A:Thefoodistoosalty? B:No!MamaitisOK. Context:Amotheratlunchtablewithherhusbandandchildren. (Personalobservation) SE:Isthefoodtoosalty? Theseexamplesexemplifyatypicalquestioningpatternthatonefindsinmostinformal settings in Cameroon. The interrogative utterances marked by a question sign (?) all perform the same discoursepragmatic functionthat of asking for a simple response in eitheraffirmative/negative orprovidingsome kind ofinformation.Thisinterpretationis reached because of one basic consideration without which such a reading would be untenable.Thisconsiderationseemstorelatetothestructureoftheutterancesthemselves. Thatis,theyallreflecttheinterrogativestructureofhomelanguages(Bantuinthiscase) asIwillshowinthenextsection. To further assess the degree of recognition of these interrogative forms, I decided to crosscheck some of the transcribed utterances with a selected group of 23 people (8 secondary school teachers, 5 university teachers, 5 graduate students, 5 workers in governmentoffices).Theywererequiredtouseanadverboffrequencytorespondtothe question:HowoftendoyouhearpeopleaskquestionsofthetypeYouarecomingwhen? TheresultsofthisassessmentarepresentedinTable1below.
Table1:RecognitionratingofyouwhtypequestionsinCameroon Rangeof youwhtypequestions Assessmentof regularitybyinformants Often (%) Hesaidthatwhat?,Thatiswhat? Iswhat?,Iswho? Youwilleat? Youwantwhat? Youaregoingtowhere? Youarecallingforme? 23(100) 23(100) 23(100) 20(87) 17(74) 15(65) Sometimes Rarely (%) (%) 3(13) 6(26) 6(26) 2(9) Never (%)
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Thestudentsarewhere? Youarewhere? Youpreferwhichone? Thereiselectricityinyourvillage? Thebookiswhere? Thechildrenhavetakensupper? ThemanissufferingfromAIDS? Youarecomingtomyhouse? Therearepeopleinthehall?
14(51) 13(57) 12(53) 11(48) 10(43) 9(39) 9(39) 8(35) 8(35)
9(39) 7(30) 7(30) 4(17) 12(52) 8(35) 7(30) 8(35) 5(21)
3(13) 4(17) 8(35) 1(5) 4(17) 4(17) 5(21) 2(9)
2(9) 3(13) 2(9) 8(35)
AsTable1aboveshows,thereisahighdegreeofacceptanceratingoftheyouwhtype questionsbymyinformants.Mostofthemselectedtheadverbwiththehighestfrequency rating in the list (often) for their responses. We can therefore conclude that this approval rating is indicative of the general picture of what happens in most informal contextsinCameroon. Wecaneasilysituatetheprevalenceofthetypeofquestionsdiscussed abovewithinthe context of the spread of English into new territories and cultures, which have linguistically dependent communicative norms. Innovation and/or nativization of the native English whquestions and yesno questions formulation as evident above (111) maythereforebeseenasaconsequenceofthisexpansionofEnglish.Oneofthefelicity conditions for interpreting utterances of this nature as question denotation in discourse situationsisthefactthattheinterlocutorsshareacommonlinguisticorverbalrepertoire. AccordingtoKachru(1990,p.57)thetermslinguisticrepertoire,coderepertoireand verbal repertoireare used more or less identically to refer to the same range of codes which members of a speech community have available for their linguistic interaction. Because each code repertoire has what Scherer and Giles (1979, p. xxxiv) refer to as markers or clues (cf. Trudgill, 1984,p.14),the concept of linguistic repertoire may
4 alsorefertotherepertoireofstylesfromsubstratelanguages .Understandably,therefore,
Substrate(substratum)refers to alinguisticvarietyorsetofformswhichhasinfluencedthestructureoruseofamore dominant varietyor language withina community(see Trudgill 1984 Ch. 3). In the context of thisstudy, thehome languagesandtoacertainextentPidginEnglishandFrencharesubstrates.
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onewouldassumetheinterplaybetweenCameroonianhomelanguagesand,toacertain extent, other languages of wider communication (e.g. Pidgin English and French)5 in Cameroon as having influenced the realization of youwh type questions. The next section presents some examples of how interrogative questions are realized in four
6 CameroonianhomelanguagesofBantuorigin,spokenbymyinformants .Theexamples
were selected from a short text I asked these informants to translate from English into theirhomelanguages.
InterrogativeutterancesinsomeCameroonianhomelanguages As the examples (1224) below illustrate, the four Cameroonian home languages are similarinthewaythey forminterrogativequestions.First,thetranslatedquestioninthe home language is given, followed by a literal translation of it into English (in square brackets)andtheStandardEnglishversion(inparentheses),respectively.
Kenyang (12) Wrf? [Yougoingwhere?] (Whereareyougoingto?)
(13)Bbwn? [Youarecalledwhat?] (Whatisyourname?) (14)Mdiyir? [Childiscryingwhat?] (Whyisthechildcrying?) (15)Mmnaytchiyb? [Mymotherschildisinthehouse?] (Ismymotherschildinthehouse?)

5
APidginEnglishrenditionoftheSEquestionWhenareyoucomingtoYaound?(ex.2above)wouldbe:Youde come Yaound when? Equally, most Cameroonians would use the French version: Tu viens Yaound quand? ratherthan QuandvenezvousYaound? 6 th These informants were my 4 year students of the 2003/2004 academic year in the School of Education of the UniversityofYaoundeI.
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Itkom (16)Wnduw? [Yougowhere?] (Whereareyougoingto?) (17)jiniznt nd? [Nameyouiswho?] (Whatisyourname?) (18)Wjnntndzt? [Childiscryingwhat?] (Whyisthechildcrying?]
nw (19)Nnwatsendyk? [Childiscryingwhat?] (Whyisthechildcrying?) (20)Lelenlolk? [Yournameiswhat?] (Whatisyourname?) (21)Ndgndia? [Brotheryouisinthehouse?] (Isyourbrotherinthehouse?)
Mbetta (22)khl? [Yougoingwhere?] (Whereareyougoingto?) (23)Diloglbhzh? [Younameiswhat?] (Whatisyourname?) (24)Mehshizh?
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[Childiscryingwhat?] (Whyisthechildcrying?)
Astheexamplesaboveshow,therealizationofinterrogativequestionsinCameroonian homelanguagesisquitedifferentfromtheirrealizationinStandardEnglish.Whereasin Englishthelocusofinterrogationofawhquestionisthefrontedwhword(e.g.1213), andthelocusofinterrogationofayesnoquestionisthefrontedauxiliary(asin15and 21), in Cameroonian languages it is not the case. It is obvious that home language interrogative structure is responsible for the realization of the youwh questions presented above. These influences have been frequently found in students writing in
7 Cameroon .
5.Concludingremarks This current contribution is an interesting discovery of the subtle innovative ways in whichthespeechact of askingisperformedbysomepeopleininformalsituationsin Cameroon. The investigation is relevant in two respects. Firstly, it adds to the existing body of literature on creative usage in Cameroon English (see also Nkemleke, 2004, 2006a). Secondly, it further reemphasises the point (already made in several other studies, e.g. Sridhar, 1989b1991) that speech act research in L2 contexts may provide useful insights into the bilinguals speech patterns and the range and depth of the contextualization of English in these areas. This may have implications for other disciplines, namely literacy planning, issues of intelligibility and intercultural communicationandmoreimportantly,formallanguageinstruction. Languageisnotnecessarilyacollectionofcorrectsentences(goodasthatis),butrather itisaformofpracticeandofdoingthings.Whileweprobablyinsiston studentsspeaking and writing in a certain manner (Standard) for purposes of crosscultural communication, it is also important that practising teachers in bilingual /multilingual settings should try to enrich the English language teaching and learning game by incorporating pragmatic questions into their curricula. The questions are, for example,
Nkemleke(2006b:35)citesexmplessuchas big book, bigschool (literally studyingintheuniversity) and whenIcameuniversity etc.,from studentsessays,whicharedirecttranslationfromhomelanguages.
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whydopeoplespeak/writethewaytheydo?Whatdotheyimplywhentheyspeak/write in certain ways? What is it that they have not mastered? These questions may address topics related to performance phenomena in conversational English and the constructional principle of conversational grammar (see Biber et al, 1999, Ch. 14). Hence,theviewoflanguageasactionandinteraction,andonthisbasisotherissuessuch as formality and informality of context, semantic and pragmatic correctness could be introducedintotheclassroom.
References Austin,J.L.(1962).Howtodothingswithwords.London:OxfordUniversityPress. Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad, & E. Finegan (1999). The Longman grammarofspokenandwrittenEnglish.London:Longman Carrell, P. L., & B. H. Konneker (1981). Politeness: Comparing native and nonnative judgements.LanguageLearning31(1), 1730. Cohen,A.D.,&E.Olshtain(1981).Developingameaningofsocioculturalcompetence: Thecaseofapology.LanguageLearning,31(1), 11334 Dsouza,J.(1987).SouthAsiaasasociolinguisticarea.PhDDissertation,Departmentof Linguistics,UniversityofIllinois,Urbana. Hedberg,N.&Sosa,J.(2001).Theprosodicstructureoftopicandfocusinspontaneous English dialogue.PaperpresentedattheLinguisticSociety of AmericaWorkshopon TopicandFocus,UniversityofCaliforniaatSantaBarbara,July2001. Huddleston,R.(1988).IntroductiontothegrammarofEnglish.Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress. Kachru,B.B.(1982).Theothertongue:Englishacrosscultures. Urbana:University of IllinoisPress. Kachru,B. B.(1983).TheIndianizationofEnglish:TheEnglishlanguageinIndia.Delhi: OxfordUniversityPress. Kachru,B.B.(1990).ThealchemyofEnglish:Thespread,functions,andmodelsofnon nativeEnglishes.UrbanaandChicago:UniversityofIllinoisPress. LaiShen,L.(1997).Onthe typologyofWHquestions.NewYork:GarlandPress. Leech,G.N. (1983).Principlesofpragmatics.London:Longman.
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Levinson,S. C. (1983). Pragmatics.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress. Nkemleke,D.(2006a).Nativizationofdissertationacknowledgementsandprivateletters inCameroon.NordicJournalforAfricanStudies, 15(2), 166184. Nkemleke,D.(2006b).SomecharacteristicsofexpositorywritinginCameroonEnglish. EnglishWorldWide:AJournalofVarietiesofEnglish,27(1),2544. Nkemleke, D. (2004). Job applications and students complaint letters in Cameroon. WorldEnglishes,23(4), 60111. Quirk,R.,GreenbaumS.,G.LeechandJ.Svartvik(1985).Acomprehensivegrammarof theEnglishlanguage.London:Longman. Scherer, K. & H. Giles (eds.). (1979). Social markers in speech. London: Cambridge UniversityPress. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech act: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress. Smith, L. E., (ed.). (1983). Readings in English as an international language. Oxford: Pergamon. Sridhar, K. K. (1991). Speech acts inthe indigenized variety: Sociocultural values and languagevariation.InJennyCheshire(Ed.),Englisharoundtheworld:Sociolinguistic perspectives(pp. 30818).Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,. Sridhar, K. K.(1989a). Pragmatic differences between native and indigenized varieties: Requesting in Indian English. In J. Walsh (Ed.), Synchronic and diachronic approaches to linguistic variation and change (pp. 32641). Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics 1988. Washington D.C: Georgetown UniversityPress. Sridhar,K.K. (1989b). EnglishinIndianbilingualism.Delhi:Manohar. Sridhar,K.K.(1986).ThepragmaticsofSouthAsianEnglish.InR.Baumgardner(Ed.), SouthAsianEnglish:Structure,Use,andUsage,(pp.141157).UrbanaandChicago: UniversityofIllinoisPress.
nd Trudgill,P.(1984).Sociolinguistics:AnIntroduction: 2 ed.London:
Penguin.
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DoesExposureto SecondSpoken Language FacilitateWordReadingAbility?

RaphiqIbrahim UniversityofHaifaandCognitiveNeurologyUnit RambamMedicalCenter, Haifa BioData: Dr.RaphiqIbrahimisacognitiveandneuropsychologistinterestedinvisualandauditory word perception, language and bilingualism and hemispheric specialization for higher cognitive function. He lives in the Galilee region in Israel and works in research and teaching. He is a lecturer at the Learning Disabilities Department of Haifa University and, in addition, works as a Neuropsychologist in the Cognitive Neurology Unit at Ramba Medical Center in Haifa. Among the courses he teaches are: Integrative Introduction to Language Acquisition, Spoken Language, an Introduction to Developmental Neuropsychology, Psychological and Neuropsychological Assessment, andVerbalInformationprocessinginArabic:ProcessesandDisabilities.
Abstract This study examines the relationship of reading skills to previous exposure to a second language. Its purpose is to provide direct evidence of a causal role for bilingualism in reading acquisition. Single word reading, connected text measures, and vocabulary measures are compared among three groups of first graders of monolingual Hebrew speakers,bilingual RussianHebrew speakers and monolingual Arab speakers. Oneway ANOVA and correlations between the measure of reading speed and errors of text and measures of vocabulary are compared in Hebrew and Arabic groups. The results reveal that language experience affects reading, as RussianHebrew bilinguals are faster and moreaccurateinreadingtextthanmonolingualHebrewchildren,andbotharebetterthan Arabicchildren.Itwasconcludedthatexposuretoasecondlanguageinearlychildhood positively affects reading skills at the firstgrade level. This finding concurs with other reportsshowingthatbilingualismisapowerfulpredictorofthespeedandeffieciencyof readingacquisition(DaFontouraandSiegel,1995). Key words: Single word reading, connected text measures, vocabulary measure, RussianHebrewbilinguals,Hebrewmonolinguals,Arabspeakers
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Introduction Focusingonreadingperformanceandthevariablesthatinfluenceithaverevealedstrong correlativerelationswithlanguageexperience.Themajorityofpreviousinvestigationsof therelationshipbetweenbilingualismandreadingabilitywereconductedinEnglishand otherIndoEuropeanlanguages.Thegeneralpatternoftheeffectsofbilingualismisthat bilinguals achieve higher scores than monolinguals on tests of arbitrariness (BenZev, 1977 Edwards & Christofersen, 1988) and phonological awareness (Dash & Mishra, 1992), and lower scores than monolinguals on tests of vocabulary size (Doyle, Champagne & Segalowitz, 1978). Concerning phonological awareness, many studies havedemonstratedthatchildrensperformancesinvariousphonologicalawarenesstasks are stronglyrelatedtotheacquisitionofreadingskillsinEnglish(Bradly&Bryant,1985 Tunmer&Nesdale,1986),Italian(Cossu,Shankweiler,Liberman,Katz,&Tola,1988), French(Bertlson,Morais,Alegria,&Content,1985),Spanish(de Manrique&Gramigna, 1984) and Hebrew (Share, Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews,1984).As for the focus of this study,thatis thevocabularysize,anumber of researchers have foundthat monolingual childrenhavealargervocabularythanbilingualchildreninthe dominantlanguage(e.g. Abudarham, 1997 Doyle et al.,1978). The fact that bilinguals achieve lower scores in vocabulary when compared to monolinguals is due to the fact that they use their languages in different contexts and therefore develop only the necessary vocabulary in these contexts. With the necessity of sharing their language experiences between two languages,bilingualshavefeweropportunitiestoexperiencethevocabularyofeither,and consequentlyachievelowerscoresincomparisontomonolingualsinboththeirfirstand secondlanguages.ThisiscompatiblewithGrosjeans(1989)claimthatabilingualisnot two monolinguals in one person and the two language systemsin terms of linguistic processing as well as linguistic representations cannot be identical in all respects (see alsoGrosjean,1998).Thisinterpretation,however,doesnotmeanthatbilingualsalways arelacking vocabulary knowledge.Grosjeanexplainedthatinabilingual mode,oncea baselanguagehasbeenchosen,bilingualscanbringintheotherlanguage(the"guest"or "embedded"language)byshiftingcompletelytotheotherlanguageforaword,aphrase orasentence.Theotherwayistoborrowawordorshortexpressionfromthatlanguage andtoadaptitmorphologically(andoftenphonologically)intothebaselanguage.Thus,
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unlikecodeswitching,borrowingistheintegrationofonelanguageintoanother.Inthis typeofprocessing,thebilingualextendsthemeaningofawordtocorrespondtothatofa wordinthe otherlanguageandthuscreates anew meaning.Thisbecomepart ofanew languageanddifferentvocabulary.WhatIdosuggestisthatthesecomparisonsbetween bilinguals and monolinguals are important but of limited usefulness for the purposes of thisstudy. Inaformerstudy,EviatarandIbrahim(Eviatar&Ibrahim,2001)examinedtheeffects of the relationshipbetween a bilingual's languages and the emergence of metalinguistic skills in childhood. They used the following logic: given that bilingual children reveal heightened metalinguisticabilitiesasaresultof acquiringtworatherthan onelinguistic systems, do preliterate and newly literate Arab children evince this effect before they have been exposed to any other language? They tested samples of monolinguals (Hebrew), bilinguals (Hebrew and Russian) and Arabic speaking kindergarten and first grade children. The Arabic speakers first language was spoken Arabic and they were exposed to Literary Arabic via childrens books, television, and formal instruction in kindergartenandfirstgrade.TheRussianHebrewbilingualchildrencamefromRussian speaking homes and studied in Hebrew at school. They showed higher performance levels in metalinguistic tests compared to monolinguals, and it was concluded that ArabicspeakingchildrenwhoareexposedtoLiteraryArabicbehaveasbilinguals.
CharacteristicsofArabicandHebrew InHebrewandArabic,bothofwhichareSemiticlanguages,allverbsandmostnounsare writtenprimarilyasconsonantalrootsthataredifferently affixedandvoweledtoformthe words of the lexicon (Berman, 1978). Despite this similarity, there are interesting differences between Arabic and Hebrew. Formally, Arabic has two forms: Literary Arabic and Spoken Arabic, but there is a need for clarity in describing these different varietiesofArabic,especiallywhendiscussingskills.LiteraryArabicisuniversallyused intheArabworldforformalcommunicationandisknownaswrittenArabic.Since this phrase adds the element of culture (literature) to the picture and is not relevant to this psycholinguisticstudy,thewellknownphrase"ModernStandardArabic"(MSA)ismore appropriate. The predominant form of Spoken Arabic, on the other hand, is one of a
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numberoflocalcolloquialdialectsbutalsoincludes,incertaincontextswhichvaryfrom one Arabicspeaking region to another, spoken MSA. The statement Arabic has two forms is controversial. Many modern linguists (Badawi, 1996) have pointed out that absolute categories do not describe the languagesituation in Arabic with sufficient accuracy. While there may be two poles at either end of a linguistic spectrum, Arabs useamultitudeofdifferentlevelsofArabicBadawihimselfidentifiessixmajorlevels of language in common use in the Arab world, very contextually determined (and very differentfromoneregiontoanother).HealsoarguedthecasethatspokenArabichasno written form claimingthattherearelarge numbersofplays (anda few novels) written partly or entirely in colloquial dialect. However, he admitted that the dialects are languages of daytoday communication and are not generally used in written form. Furthermore, popular preachers and political leaders regularly use colloquial dialect in theirspeeches,whilesuchlanguageuseisconsideredtotallyinappropriateinotherparts of the Arabicspeaking region. Although sharing a limited subgroup of words, the two forms of Arabic are phonologically, morphologically, and syntactically somewhat different. For example, certainvowels (such as eando) exist in Spoken Arabic,but not in Literary Arabic in Spoken Arabic, words may begin with two consecutive consonants or with a consonant and a schwa, while this is not permitted in Literary Arabicthetwoformsutilizedifferentinflections(suchaspluralmarkings)anddifferent insertion rules for function words also, the two forms have different word order constraintsinsentencestructure.AsSpokenArabichasnowrittenform,LiteraryArabic becomespartofeverydaylife.Itisthelanguageinwhichnewsisreported(bothwritten andorally)andthelanguageofprayerandofpublicoccasions.Thisaddedcomplexityis found in several characteristics that occur in both orthographies, but to a much larger extentinArabicthaninHebrew.Thefirsthastodowithdiacriticsanddots.InHebrew, dotsoccuronlyasdiacriticstomarkvowelsandasastressmarkingdevice(dagesh).In the case of three letters, this stressmarking device (which does not appear in unvowelized scripts) changes the phonemic representation of the letters from fricatives (v,x,f)tostops(b,k,pforthelettersrespectively).Intheunvowelizedformofthe script, these letters can be disambiguated by their place in the word, as only word or syllableinitialplacementindicatestheconsonantstop.InArabic,theuseofdotsismore
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extensive: many letters have a similar or even identical structure and are distinguished only on the basis of the existence, location and number of dots (e.g., the Arabic letters representing/t/and/n( )becomethegraphemesrepresenting/th/and/b/(
)byaddingorchangingthenumberorlocationofdots. Thesecond characteristic ofthetwoorthographiesisthatsomelettersarerepresented by differentshapes,depending ontheirplacementinthe word. Again,thisismuchless extensive in Hebrew than in Arabic. In Hebrew there are five letters that change shape whentheyarewordfinal:( .) , , , , InArabic,22ofthe28lettersinthe alphabet have four shapes each (for example, the phoneme /h/ is represented as: ).Thus,thegraphemephonemerelationsarequitecomplex
in Arabic, with similar graphemes representing quite different phonemes, and different graphemes representing the same phoneme. Ibrahim, Eviatar, & AharonPerez (2002) have shown that adolescent native ArabicHebrew bilinguals process Hebrew letters fasterandmoreaccuratelythanArabicletters. The otherimportantissueiswrittenvowel materials.InArabicandHebrew,thereare fourletterswhichalsospecifylongvowels,inadditiontotheirroleinsignifyingspecific consonants. However, in some cases it is difficult for the reader to determine whether thesedualfunctionlettersrepresentavoweloraconsonant.Whenvowelsdoappear(in poetry, children's books and liturgical texts), they are signified by diacritical marks above, below or within the body of the word. Inclusion of these marks specifies the phonological form ofthe orthographicstring, makingit completelytransparentinterms of orthography/phonology relations. As the majority of written materials do not include thediacriticalmarks,asingleprintedwordisoftennotonlyambiguousbetweendifferent lexical items (this ambiguity is normally solved by semantic and syntactic processes in textcomprehension),butalsodoesnotspecifythephonologicalformoftheletterstring. Thusintheirunpointedform,HebrewandArabicorthographiescontainalimitedamount ofvowelinformationandincludealargenumberofhomographs.In theirunpointedform, Hebrew and Arabic orthographies contain a limited amount of vowel information and includealargenumberofhomographs.Asthehomographphenomenonisverycommon, severalstudieshavetestedtheroleofvowelsandtheirinfluenceonreading.Frost(1994) showedthatpresentationof voweledwordsfacilitatesnamingof evennonhomographic
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wordsinHebrewinskilledreaders.AbuRabiaandSiegel(1995)foundthatpoorreaders inArabicrelyoncontextforwordrecognitionmorethanskilledreaders(asinEnglish). One of the questions that was discussed in recent studies is what good readers do to distinguish themselves from poor readers. Kintsch (1998) claimed that readers apply priorknowledgewhentheyread,inordertobuildanoverallmeaningstructureofthetext. Indoingso,eachtext elementisprocessedandthe newpropositionisaddedtothetext andintegrated.Kintschassertsthattheintegrationthattakesplaceatsentenceboundaries islikelytofilltheworkingmemoryandinthenextsentenceitmustbeclearedtomake placeforit.Whathasbeenconstructedistransferredlatertolongtermmemoryexceptto those propositions that are retained due to their relevance for further processing. Anderson(1995),claimedthatbothskilledandpoorreadersseemedtousethesamekind ofstrategiesduringreading.Thisseemstoindicatethatstrategicreadingisnota matter of knowing what strategy to use, but of how to use the strategy successfully and orchestrateitsusewithotherstrategies.AccordingtoAnderson,poorerreadersareaware of the right kinds of strategies to use but may not know how to determine if they are successfulinapplyingthestrategies.Also,beginnerlearnersmayknowwhatstrategiesto usebut,duetoalackofvocabulary,maynothaveastrongenoughlanguagefoundation tobuildon.
ThePresentStudy ThepresentstudyfocusesonfirstgradechildrenfromtheJewish(Hebrewmonolinguals andRussianHebrewbilinguals)andArabpopulationsinIsrael,presentingthemwithtwo types of reading tasks: text reading measured by reading rate and accuracy, and single word and nonword reading measured by errors because of the difficulty of measuring reading time. It is important to note that the monolingual groups were tested in their native languages. The RussianHebrew bilinguals did the reading tests in their second language. This came about because the RussianHebrew bilinguals do not learn how to read Russian. I hypothesize that the relative weight of language experience may affect bothgroupsdifferently. All the participants completed a test of vocabulary size. Given that bilinguals tend to have smaller vocabularies than monolinguals (in both their languages) (Abudarham,
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1997Doyle,Champagne&Segalowitz,1978),Itestedwhethertherelationshipbetween vocabulary and reading skills would be affected by language experience. The second group of Arabic speakers were members of the Druze minority and called Arabic speakers. Although socioeconomic data on our participants were not collected specifically, the overall socioeconomic status of the Jewish and Druze villages from whichoursamplesweretakenwassimilar(accordingtotheCentralStatisticalOfficein Israel).
Method Participants Theparticipantswere59childrensampled fromthreepopulation groupsinthe northern region of Israel. These populations differ in native language and in their language experience: 20 monolingual native Hebrew speakers (10 males),19 children of Russian immigrants(9males),wherethelanguagespokenathomeisRussianandthechildrenare bilingual in Russian and Hebrew, and 20 native ArabicDruzespeakers (10 males). All thechildrenfromeachpopulationwereinthefirstgrade.Onlychildrenagedbetween6 years10monthsand7years3monthswereincludedinthestudy.Alltheparticipantslive in villages. The Hebrewspeakers and RussianHebrew bilinguals live in the same large village(population=10,000),andattendthevillagestateschools.Thelifestyle,language, and social norms of Israeli Hebrewspeakers are similar to those of RussianHebrew bilinguals who were born in Israel. In that regard, the proficiency of RussianHebrew speakersinHebrewisthesameasthatofmonolingualHebrewspeakerssincetheyhave undergone the same time period of exposure to Hebrew. The fact that the parents of Russian children are immigrants has no effect on their attitudes toward Hebrew or on theiralliancewithnativeJewssincetheyhaveasimilarideologyofbeingIsraelicitizens, having been successfully integrated into Israeli society. Russian immigrants have close contact to each other and to Israeli Jewish society. Despite some normal adjustment problems,the overallsocioeconomicstatusoftheRussianJewish childrenissimilarto nativeJewishchildrenandthey attendamixedHebrewschool.Boththemonolingualand bilingual Hebrew speakers are taught in Hebrew and were tested in Hebrew. The Arab childrenattendedArabandaretaughtinArabictheyarenotexposedtoHebrew.Forthis
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reasontheyweretestedinArabic.Noneofthechildrensufferfromknownneurological, emotionalorattention disorders.Only children withoutaknownreading disabilitywere tested.
Materials VocabularyTest The vocabulary subtest from the translated versions of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale forChildrenRevised(WISCR)(Wechsler,1974)toHebrewandtoArabicwasused(see Appendicesa,b).Thevocabularysubtestisconsideredthebestsingleverbalmeasureof vocabulary tests appeared in the literature and of general intelligence on the WISCR (Searls,1985).Thevocabulary wasassessedwithopenendedquestionswherethe child waspresentedwithawordandaskedtoexplainwhatitmeansinhis/herownwords.Raw scores were used, where easy items receive scores of either 0 or 1, and more difficult items receivescoresbetween0and2.The maximumscoreis36.Thereare22itemsin thetest.
ReadingTests TextReading Thetextswereconstructedincollaborationwiththeteachersofthefirstgradeclassesin therespectiveschoolsandweredesignedtoreflecttheexpectedlevelofreadingateach testing time. The text was unknown but taken from the reading book. The text in both ArabicandHebrewconsistedof47pointedwords.Thetextdidnotcontainanyunlearned letters or vowel marks. The child was told, You are going to see a new text that you have notseenbefore,butitisno moredifficultthan what youareusedtoreading.You shouldreaditasquicklyaspossiblebuttrynottomakeerrors.Thereadingsessionfor eachsubjectwasrecordedforlatercodingofreadingtimeanderrors.
SingleWordandNonwordReading Separatewordandnonwordreadingtestswerecompiled.Forbothwordsandnonwords, twosubtestswerecreated,oneincluding12singlesyllablestimuliandonewith12two syllablestimuli.Thechildrenwerepresentedwitheachlistandaskedtoreadthewords.
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The words were presented in unpointed form, and all forms of the homographs were acceptedascorrectreadings.Thechildrenweretoldthatsomeofthestimuliwouldnotbe realwords.Allthesessionswererecordedforlatercoding.
Procedure Allthechildrenweretestedindividuallyinarelativelyquietroomatschool.Eachsession was 40 minutes long and the tests were given in a fixed order in each session: final phoneme identification, initial phoneme identification, phoneme/syllable deletion, vocabularytestandreadingtests. Each test was preceded by practice trials to verify that the child understood the task. Duringthepracticetrials,thechildrenweregivenfeedbackand,whennecessary,thetask wasexplainedagainandfurtherexamplesweregiven.Nofeedbackwasgivenduringthe experimentaltrials.Allthesessionswererecordedforlatertranscriptionandcoding.The RussianHebrewbilingualsperformedthereadingtestsintheirsecondlanguagewhilethe monolingualsreadintheirfirstlanguage.
Results TextreadingtimesandnumberoferrorsareillustratedinthemiddlepanelsofFigure1. The analysis for reading time (RT) of thetext revealed a significant effect of language experience, F (2,56)=7.65,p<0.005, with RussianHebrew bilinguals showing the faster RT(M=112sec.),Arabchildren havingtheslowestRT(M=191sec.),and monolingual Hebrew children between (M=127 sec). Planned comparisons revealed that the reading times of the Hebrew monolinguals and RussianHebrew bilinguals did not differ from each other(p>0.48)andthatthereadingtimesofboth differsignificantly fromthoseof Arabicreaders(Arabicreadersvs.Hebrewmonolinguals:F(1,56)=9.0,p<0.005Arabic readersvs.RussianHebrewbilinguals,F(1,56)=13.41,p<0.001). Thesamestatisticalanalysisforthenumberoferrorsintextreadingrevealedasimilar pattern. The language experience effect was found to be significant, F (2,56)=5.29, p<0.01,withtheRussianHebrewbilingualsmakingthesmallestmeannumberoferrors (M=3), Arabic readers making the highest mean number of errors (M=8.6), and monolingual Hebrew speakers between (M=5.6). Planned comparison revealed that the
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Hebrew monolinguals and RussianHebrew bilinguals did not differ from each other (p>0.14) and that both differ from the Arabic readers (RussianHebrew bilinguals vs. Arabic readers: F (1,56)=10.52, p<0.005 Hebrew monolinguals vs. Arabic readers: F(1,56)=3.22,p=0.08). Figure1:Toppanels:Scoreofthethreegroupsinthetestsofvocabulary.Errorbarsare standarddeviations.Middlepanels:Readingtextmeasures.Errorbarsarestandard deviations.BottomPanel:Numberoferrorsinsingleitemreading.Errorbarsare standarddeviations.
Vocabulary
35 30 #correct 25 20 15 10 5 0 Hebrew monolinguals Russian Hebrew bilinguals
languagegroup
Arabic speakers
TextReadingSpeed
16
ErrorsinTextReading
300 250
#errors
14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
Hebrew monolinguals Russian Hebrew bilinguals Arabic speakers
200 RT 150 100 50 0
Hebrew monolinguals
Russian Hebrew bilinguals
Arabic speakers
Hebrew monolinguals Arabicspeakers 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
RussianHebrew bilinguals
#errors
1syllable 2syllable 1syllable LinguisticsJournalVolume2Issue1 nonw ords
2syllable
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w ords
The measure of Vocabulary Test for the sample in this study is illustrated in the top panel of Figure 1. The Vocabulary Test revealed a significant main effect of language experience, F(2,56)=10.97, p<0.0001. Here the Hebrew monolingual group achieved significantly higher scores than both the RussianHebrew bilinguals (F(1,56)=16.78, p<0.0001) and the Arabic speakers (F(1,56)=15.98, p<0.0001), while these groups did not differ from each other (p>0.8). This result shows that exposure to the Russian languageinearlychildhoodnegativelyaffectsHebrewvocabularyskills. Correlation between the measure of reading speed and errors in the text and the measure of vocabulary were computed.As canbeseeninTable1,vocabulary extentis not related to text reading speed accuracy for RussianHebrew bilinguals, but is significantly related to both speed and accuracy for monolinguals and to text reading speedforArabicreaders. Table1:Correlationsbetweenmeasureofvocabularyandmeantextreadingtime(RT) anderrors(ER).Onlysignificantcorrelationsareshown(p<0.05).
Hebrewmonolinguals N=20 Textreading Mean SD Vocabulary RT 127sec 69.2 0.55 ERR 5.6 6.4 0.52
RussianHebrewbilinguals N19 RT 112sec 55.7 NS ERR 3.1 4.1 NS
Arabicreaders N=20 RT 190sec 74.1 0.54 ERR 8.6 5.0 NS
Separateonewayanalysesofvarianceforeachofthesingleoneandtwosyllableword and nonword lists were computed, with number of errors as the dependent variable and language experience as the independent variable. These means are illustrated in the bottompanelofFigure1.Languageexperienceapproachedsignificanceonlyforthelist oftwosyllablewords,F(2,56)=2.91,p=0.06,wheretheArabicreadersmadethesmallest mean number of errors while RussianHebrew bilinguals and monolingual Hebrew speakersmade more meanerrors.Ingeneral,the trendwasthat childrenreadingArabic made fewer errors than children reading Hebrew. Correlations between vocabulary and single word and nonword reading are listed in Table 2. It can be seen that vocabulary
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extent is related to single word and nonword reading only for the monolingual Hebrew readers.
Table2:Correlationsbetweenmeasureofvocabularyandnumberoferrorsinsingle wordandnonwordreading.Onlysignificantcorrelationsareshown(p<0.05). RussianHebrew Hebrewmonolinguals N=20 Singleitems words nonwords words Bilinguals N=19 nonwords words Arabicreaders N=20 nonwords
Vocabulary
1syllableitems 2syllableitems
NS 0.45
0.44 NS
NS NS
NS NS
NS NS
NS NS
Inordertoexaminemorecloselythecontributionofvocabularytoreading,regression analyses for each of the reading measures were computed. The most salient aspect of these data is that the vocabulary measure predictive of text reading ability and the regression model of vocabulary measure showing the percentage of variance explained thesituationtoagreaterdegreeforthemonolinguals,toasignificantlysmallerdegreefor theArabicspeakers,andnotatallfortheRussianHebrewbilinguals.Theresultsofthe sametypeofregressionanalysesforsinglewordandnonwordreadingareshowninthe rightsectionofTable3.Hereitcanbeseenthatvocabularymeasurespredictthevariance inwordreadingforallthegroups,andinnonwordstoalesserextent. The resultssuggestthatthere maybea dissociationbetweenthetype of readingtask, text or single stimuli, and language experience. Therefore, correlations between the performance of the children on the text reading tasks and on the single stimuli reading taskswere computed.ThesearepresentedinTable3.Hereitcanbeseenthatthereare largepositivecorrelationsbetweenthetwotypesof readingtasksforthemonolingualand bilingualHebrewreaders,andonlyone,muchsmallercorrelationbetweenthetwotypes oftasksfortheArabicreaders.
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Table3:Correlationcoefficientsbetweenmeasuresoftextreading(RTanderrors)and numberof errorsinsinglewordandnonwordreading.Onlysignificantcorrelationsare shown(p<0.05). TextRT Single Items Texterrors
Monoling Bilingu Arabic Monoling Bilingu Arabic ual al ual al

Hebrew readers Hebrew readers readers Hebrew readers Hebrew readers readers
words
1 syllable 2 syllable 0.82 0.68 NS 0.89 0.67 NS 0.72 0.53 NS 0.86 0.58 0.49
nonwords 1 syllable 2 syllable 0.76 0.62 NS 0.77 0.77 NS Ns 0.53 NS 0.44 0.56 NS
Discussion The present study explores the relationship between language experience and reading skills in first grade. To elaborate on this issue, I asked if there is an advantage in bilinguals over monolinguals that carries over to reading performance. As expected, I foundthattherearelargepositiverelationshipsbetweenlanguageexperienceasmeasured byourtestsandreadingperformance.Thisfindingjoinsthelistofstudiesmentionedin theIntroductionthathaveobservedsuchrelationships. Ilookedforspecificeffectsoflanguagecharacteristicsandthelinguistichistoryofour participants on the reading measures themselves and on the relations between these measuresandthevocabularymeasure.Fortextreading,Ifoundthatthegroupsthatwere reading Hebrew performed significantly better than the group that was reading Arabic, whileatrendintheoppositedirectionwasfoundforreadingsinglewordsandnonwords. Mostimportantly,thesetwotypesoftasksalsogaverisetoaninterestingdissociationin their relationship to vocabulary measure. Further analysis showed that the Russian
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Hebrew bilinguals achieved higher scores on the syllable deletion test than the monolinguals,whiletheirreadingscoreswereequivalenttothoseofthemonolinguals.In addition,thedatainTable3revealthatvocabularysizeaccountsforalmost30%ofthe variance in text reading for monolinguals, but not at all for bilinguals. Thus, it may be that there are other variables that allow the RussianHebrew bilingual children to compensate for their smaller vocabularies. These finding are consistent with the observation of Da Fontoura and Siegel (1995) in PortugueseEnglish bilingual children andChiappeandSiegel(1999)inPunjabiCanadianbilingualchildren. AninterestingresultconcerninglanguagegroupresultswasthattheArabchildrenhad lowerscoresthanHebrewmonolingualsonthetestsofvocabulary,andtheirperformance on the text reading measures was significantly poorer. In addition, there were strong correlations between single item reading measures and text reading measures for the childrenreadinginHebrew,butnotforthechildrenreadinginArabic.Althoughthiswas not measured directly, I interpret both findings as reflecting differential attentional requirements in the two languages. Thus, in addition to the childrens linguistic history variable,thecharactersiticsofthelanguagethatthechildrenlearnedtoreadconstitutean importantvariablehowever,thisfallsbeyondthescopeofthisstudyandafurtherstudy is needed to explore this issue. This supports the hypothesis that the bilingual children readingHebrew werepaying moreattentiontothetask,asthey made fewer errorsthan themonolingualchildrenreadingHebrew.However,whenthechildrenwerereadingthe text,alargeattentionaldemandmadebyaRussianHebrewspeakerintheletterandword identification stage resulted in less attentional resources available for the higher processing of syntax and comprehension. This hypothesis is further supported by examination of the types of errors made by the bilingual children reading the text in Hebew,whichweremostlyinaccuraciesrelatedtousingfalseaffixes(diacriticsorletters) thatgenerally representthesyntacticrolesinthesentenceand notfalseidentificationof theworditself. In conclusion, this study provides additional evidence that exposure to a second language in early childhood affects reading skills in children in the first grade (Da FontouraandSiegel,1995ChiappeandSiegel,1999)andthatbilingualismisapowerful predictor of the speed and effieciency of reading acquisition. In that regard, this study
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addsanimportantcontributiontoourunderstandingoftherelationbetweenbilingualism andliteracydevelopmentinlanguagesthathavesomeuniquefeaturesandhavenotbeen extensivelyinvestigated.

1
Thelifestyle,language,andsocialnormsoftheDruzearesimilartotheArabnatives. Althoughbothgroupsarecharacterizedbystrongnativelanguagecohesion,theydifferin theiridentification withthemajority(Jewish)group.Basedonahistoricalalliancewith theJewishpeople,IsraeliDruzehaveclosecontactwithIsraelisocietyontheonehand, andclosetiesandidentificationwithArabcultureandlanguageontheotherhand(Abu Rabia, 1996Seginer&HalabiKheir,1998)
References Abudarham,S.(1997).Thetenabilityofcomparingthereceptivelexicalproficiencyof duallanguagechildrenwithstandardizedmonoglotnorms.EducationalStudies,23(1), 127143. AbuRabia,S. (1996).DruzeminoritystudentslearningHebrewinIsrael:The relationshipofattitudes,culturalbackground,andinterestingnessofmaterialwith readingcomprehensioninasecondlanguage.TheJournalofMultilingualand MulticulturalDevelopment,17(6),415426. AbuRabia,S.,&Siegel,L.S.(1995).Differentorthographies,differentcontexteffects: TheeffectsofArabicsentencecontextonskilledandpoorreaders,Reading Psychology,16,119. Anderson,D.K.(1995).Hypertext/Hypermedia:DonaldH.Jonassen.EnglewoodCliffs, NJ:EducationalTechnologyPublications.ComputersinHumanBehavior,11(34), 667668. Badawi,E.(1996).EssaysinContemporaryArabicLinguistics:TheAmerican UniversityinCairoPress(1991)s.4967. BenZeev,S.(1977).Theinfluenceofbilingualismoncognitivestrategyandcognitive development.ChildDevelopment,48, 10091018. Berman,R.A.(1978). ModernHebrewstructure.TelAviv,Israel:UniversityPublishing. Bertelson,P.,Morais,J.,Alegria,J.,&Content,A.(1985).Phoneticanalysiscapacity andlearningtoread. Nature,313,7374.
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Bradley,L.,&Bryant,P.E.(1985). Rhymeandreasoninreadingandspelling.Ann Arbor:UniversityofMichiganPress. Chiappe,P.,&Siegel,L.S.(1999).Phonologicalawarenessandreadingacquisitionin EnglishandPunjabispeakingCanadianchildren.JournalofEducational Psychology,91,2028. Cossu,G.,Shankweiler,D.,Liberman,I.Y.,Katz,L.,&Tola,G.(1988).Awarenessof phonologicalsegmentsandreadingabilityinItalianChildren.Applied Psycolinguistics,9,116. DaFontoura,H.L.,&SiegelL.S.(1995).Reading,syntactic,andworkingmemoryskills ofbilingualPortugueseEnglishCanadianchildren.ReadingandWriting:An InterdisciplinaryJournal,7,139153. Dash,U.N.,&Mishra,H.C.(1992).Bilingualismandmetalinguisticdevelopment: EvidencefromKondtribalculture.PsychologicalStudies,37(2/3),8187. deManrique,A.M.B.,&Gramigna,S.(1984).Lasegmentacinfonolgicay silbica enniosdepreescolaryprimergrado. LecturayVida,5(1),414. Doyle,A.,Champagne,M.,&Segalowitz,N.(1978).Someissuesontheassessment oflinguisticconsequencesofearlybilingualism.InM.Paradis(Ed.) Aspectsof bilingualism(pp. 1320). Colombia,SC:HornbeamPress. Edwards,D.,&Christophersen,H.(1988).Bilingualism,literacyandmetalinguistic awarenessinpreschoolchildren.BritishJournalofDevelopmentalPsychology, 6(3), 235244. Eviatar,Z.,&Ibrahim,R.(2001).Bilingualisasbilingualdoes:Metalinguisticabilities ofArabicspeakingchildren.AppliedPsycholinguistics,21(4), 451471. Eviatar,Z.,&Zaidel,E.(1992).Lettermatchinginthehemispheres:Speedaccuracy tradeoffs.Neuropsychologia,30,699710. Frost,R.(1994).Prelexicalandpostlexicalstrategiesinreading:Evidencefromadeep andashalloworthography.JournalofExperimentalPsychology:Learning, Memory,andCognition, 20,116129. Grosjean,Franois(1989).Neurolinguists,beware!Thebilingualisnottwo monolingualsinoneperson.BrainandLanguage, 36, 315.
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Grosjean,Franois(1998).Studyingbilinguals:Methodologicalandconceptualissues. Bilingualism:LanguageandCognition,1, 131149. Ibrahim,R.,Eviatar,Z.,&AharonPerez,J.(2002).DothecharacteristicsofArabic orthographyslowitscognitiveprocessing?Neuropsychology,16(3), 322326. Kintsch,W.(1998).Comprehension:AParadigmforCognition.NewYork:Cambridge UniversityPress. Searls,E.F.(1985).HowtouseWISCRscoresinreading/learningdisabilitydiagnosis. Newark,Delaware:InternationalReadingAssociation. Seginer,R.,&HalabiKheir,H.(1998).Adolescentpassagetoadulthood:Future orientation inthecontextofculture,age,andgender.InternationalJournalof InterculturalRelations, 22,309328. Share,D.,Jorm,A.,Maclean,R.,&Matthews,R.(1984).Sourcesofindividual differencesinreadingacquisition.JournalofEducationalPsychology,76,13091324. WechslerIntelligenceScaleforChildrenRevised(WISCR).DavidWechsler (1974). Tunmer,W.E.,&Nesdale.A.R.(1986).Phonemicsegmentationskillandbeginning reading.JournalofEducationalPsychology,77,417427.
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:Appendix A ,, : " ... ? ",: ? "" "...? ? ? " .,:" """. . , ...." :" :8. : : . 71 . 81 . 91 . 02 . 12 . 22 . 9 . 01 . 11 . . 21 31 . . 41 . 51 . 61 . 1 . 2 3 . 4 . 5 . . 6 . 7 . 8
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:Appendix B
. : " : ..... , ". .... ..... .... . . , .... . . ," "" " . :8. :
: . 71 . 81 . 91 02 . . 12 . 22 . 9 . 01 . 11 . 21 . 31 . 41 . 51 . 61 . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8
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AFunctionalStudyoftheFinalParticlemonoin JapaneseConversationalDiscourse
YanWang BioData: In 2004, after obtaining her MA degree in Japanese linguistics, Yan Wang embarked upon her Ph.D degree at the department of East Asian Languages and Literature in UniversityofWisconsinMadison,USA.Themajorfociofherresearchareondiscourse analysis and pragmatics, and she has presented papers on Japanese sentencefinal particlesandfillersonseverallinguisticconferencesintheUnitedStates.Thepresent study onthesentencefinalparticle monoisbased onher MAthesis.Sheiscurrently workingonherPh.D.dissertation,whichisacomparativestudyofJapaneseandChinese questionforms. Abstract This study aims at investigatingthe discourse and pragmatic functions of the sentence final particle (FP)mono in Japanese conversations.By employing discourse analysis as methodology, and upon analyzing the structure patterns of monoutterances in natural conversations,IexaminedhowtheFPmonocontributestothecohesionofongoingtalks by organizing the sequences, and how it shows speakers attitudes towards both propositionsandaddressees.Inparticular,theFPmonoisdividedintotwotypes:1)The selfjustification mono, which serves to justify the speakers position that has been explicitlyorimplicitlychallengedand2)Theotherjustificationmono,whichsupports the position of others, primarily of the prior speaker, who tends to challenge a third party outside the conversation. By marking the logic as an inevitable and natural consequence, mono qualifies speakers reasoning as generally accepted knowledge located within common grounds. Hence, rather than neutrally providing supplementary information, mono conveys speakers subjectivity and thereby functions as a modality markerinconversationaldiscourse.
Keywords:sentencefinalparticle,causallogic,commonground,justification,challenge
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1.Introduction Mono, a regular noun in Japanese (e.g. Example (1)), has experienced a process of grammaticalizationandisfrequentlyusedasasentencefinalparticle(FP)(e.g.Example (2))indailyconversations(cf.Tanabe,1998). (1) Konna mono gaaru.
thiskindthingNOMthereis There isthiskindofthing.

4 (2)M: Mendoomirunotaihen nandayo:: Oremoosonnahimanai mon::
troubleseeNMLhardCOPNMLCOPSFPIalreadysuchleisureNEG Itishardtotakecare (ofher).Idonthavesuchfreetimeanymoremono. Yet,thepreviousstudiesof monohavebeenfocusedonitsusageasaconnectiveparticle (e.g.monono,monoo)oranauxiliaryvery(e.g.monoda)(e.g.Teramura,1978Sadake, 1984 Shinozaki,1984),whiletheFPmonohasreceivedlittleattention. According to Maynard (1991:382), FPs in Japanese typically convey "the speaker's subjective,emotionalandpsychologicalattitudetowardthespeechactitselfortowardthe interlocutor".Traditionally,theFP monoisseenasaselfjustification markeroccurring in conversations between participants with an intimate relationship in an informal situation (cf. Sakuma, 1952). Recent studies (Takashi, 1994 Hashimoto, 1998, 2000) haveidentifiedmonoasamodalityindicator. In the present study, I investigated the usages/functions of the FP mono in actual interactions with the methodology of discourse analysis and argue that 1) in different contexts,theFPmonocanbeusednotonlyforjustifyingthespeakersownposition,but also for supporting the addressees opinion or assertion 2) it not only serves as an expressive marker showing the speakers emotions or attitudes, but also functions in discourse forthespeakerto organizethesequenceofspeechactssuchasdemonstrating support or justification. I further propose that the various functions of the FP mono in discourseandinteractionarerootedinitssemanticsourcethatis,acausallogic,whichis anaturalandinevitableantecedentconsequencerelationshiplocatedwithinthecommon groundoftheconversationalists. The database of this study draws from two sources. The first source includes 12 two
5 partyfacetofaceconversationsarrangedbetweenyoungnativeJapanesespeakers. The
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participants include 8 males and 16 females with ages ranging between 20s and 30s. Mostofthespeakerswereintimatefriendsexceptforonepairwhowereyoungcouples. All the speakers speak socalled hyoojungo standard language or kyootsuugo common language most of the time. The conversations were arranged in informal/casualsettings wheretheparticipantswereaskedto make free conversations without specific topics or tasks assigned. Each of the conversation lasts about 1030 minutes andalltheconversationswerevideotaped.Among each conversation,about5 10 minutes of segments were transcribed for investigation. The second source is the conversational data book Shufu No Isshuukan No Danwa Shiryoo Oneweek Conversational Materials of Housewives (Ide, 1984), which provides rough transcripts of conversations among the members of one Japanese family and between housewives whoseageswere30sto50s.Bothsourcesinvolvenaturalinteractions.Intotal,72cases of FPmonowereobtainedandinvestigated.6
2.Previousstudies Most of the dictionaries (e.g. Gendaigo no joshi/jodooshi yoohoo to jitsurei, Daijirin) statethattheFPmonoisusedforthespeakertoexplainthereasonwithemotionssuchas fuman dissatisfaction, fuhei discontent, urami hatred, amae dependency. Sakuma (1952) emphasizes the function of uttae appealing in the usages of the FP mono, that is, mono is used to express the speakers attitude or emotion toward the addressee.Lateron,thefunctionof appealingwasinterpretedintermsof modality byTakashi(1994)andHashimoto(1998).Thequestionis:whydoesmonocancarrythe speakerssuchemotionorattitudetowardtheaddressee? Tsubone (1996) attempts to give a coherent interpretation of the usage of mono by employingtheconceptsof ippanseenormalityand seitookaproperness. (3) Watashiwasuguayamaruwa.Kenkanankashitakunai ITOPimmediately apologizeFP quarrelFI dowantNEG Iapologizeimmediately.Idontwanttodothingslikequarrelmono. AccordingtoTusbone(1996),Example(3)canbeinterpretedasitisnormalorproper toapologizeif(you)dontwanttoquarrel.Itimpliesthatthereisacommonlyaccepted logicindicatedbytheFPmono.Unfortunately,Tsuboneoverlooksthelogicandfailsto mono.
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figureouthowitworksforthevarioususagesoftheFPmono.Also,asHashimoto(1998) criticizesthattheconceptsofnormalityandpropernessareunabletoaccountforall thecasesoftheFPmono. Incontrast,Takashi(1994)claimsthatthere existsacausalrelationshipbetweenS1 andS2S1istheconditionandS2isthe naturalconsequence of whatisdescribedin S1,whichissyntacticallyembeddedinalltheusesofgrammaticalized mono(1994,p.6). Using Takashis notion of causal relationship, Example (3) can be analyzed as BecauseIdont wanttodothingslikequarrel,Iapologizeimmediately.Furthermore, Takashi points out that the causal relationship is the core meaning (contextfree meaning)ofmono,fromwhichthediverseextendedmeanings(contextboundmeanings) arederived.Regardingtheextendedmeanings,theFPmonoisidentifiedasadiscourse modalityindicator,conveyingthesubjectiveattitudesofthespeakersuchasinevitability and amaedependency (Takashi1994,p.6).7 Similarly, Hashimoto (1998) also proposes a socalled hanashite no ronri the speakerslogictoexplainthefunctionoftheFPmono.Shehypothesizesthatthecausal logic used by the speaker of the FP mono for explanation is the speakers personal or subjective logic, in that the speaker believes that his/her reasoning or explanation is naturalandrightful,eventhoughitmightbecontrarytothefactsorcommonknowledge. Both Takashi (1994) and Hashimoto (1998,2000) suggest that the modality marker FP mono shows the speakers emotions or attitude such as dependence, and helplessness, whicharebasedonthepresumptionoftheaddresseeskindnessandwillingnesstoaccept thespeakersexplanationorlogic.However,neitherTakahashinorHashimotoattemptsa systematic analysis to answer the questions such as: Why can the FP mono carry such positive as well as negative emotions? How are those emotions expressed by mono relatedtothecausalrelationshipindifferentcontexts?Inaddition,itseemsthatnoneof the previous studies provides a systematic classification of different types of FP mono, andnoneofthemhasgivenacloseexaminationoftheiractualtextualstructuresaswell astheinteractionalfunctionsinvariouscontexts.Inthissense,thequestionsconcerning in what texts and contexts the FP mono occurs and how it contributes to organize the sequenceofthespeakersargumentstillremainunclear.
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Another problem with those previous studies is their data source. All the previous studiescollecttheirdata from eitherdictionariesorconversationsin fictiontexts,which tendtochoosethemosttypicalandnormalusageofcertainlinguisticformsorstructures. Onlythroughexaminingauthenticdatacanwefullyunderstandhowpeopleactuallyuse language.Bydoingso,thepresentstudyintendstoprovideamorecompleteanddetailed discussionoftheusesandfunctionsoftheFPmono.
3.Thesemanticmeaningsof mono This section clarifies the basic semantic meanings and implications of the FP mono, whichunderlie itsvarioususagesand pragmaticfunctions. Asthepreviousstudieshavedemonstrated,theFPmonomarksacausallogicindicating an antecedentconsequence relationshipbetween S1 and S2.To avoid confusion, in this studythelogicalsymbols[p]and[q]areemployedtosignalthelogicalrelationship.[p] signals the antecedent, and [q] refers to the consequence. As mentioned previously, the FPmonoisattachedto[p]ratherthan[q]. First,letusreconsiderExample(2),whichshowsatypicalcaseofthecausallogic. (2)M: Mendoomirunotaihen nandayo::Ore moosonnahimanai mon:: troubleseeNMLhardCOPNMLCOPSFPIalreadysuchleisureNEG Itishardtotakecare(ofher).Idonthavesuchfreetimeanymoremono. In this example, the speaker M is complaining to F about his own girlfriend, who is hardtoplease.Here both [p]and[q]appearinMssingle turnasthestructure [q. p mono]. In Ms assumption, [p]: Ore moo sonna hima nai I dont have such free timeanymoreprovidesareasonablereason/causefor[q]:Mendoomirunotaihennan daItishardtotakecareofherand [q]isanaturalconsequenceof[p].Inotherwords, M believes that if a person does not have enough time (to please a spoiled girlfriend), certainlyhewillhaveahardtime takingcareof her. However,in mostcases,[p]and[q]occuracrossturnsratherthaninsingleturns.For instance, in the following example, M told A that in Japanese private school English is treated as one of the yonkyooka Four subjects which are the subjects that are less stressedinthe collegeentrance exams.FacingAspassiveresponse,Mfurther explains whyEnglishisnottakenseriously.
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(4) 1 M: De, watashinoitteitashiritsukookoo SoI NMLwassayingprivatehighschool 2 sonoyonkyookaatsukai= that foursubject treatment IntheprivateschoolthatIhadmentioned,English wastreatedasyonkyooka. 3 A: =E::?Yonkyookanihaitchauno? USOO::::?(Laugh) foursubject toenterQ lie noeegotteiuno wa(.) NOMEnglishQMNMLTOP
Eh?Itiscountedasyonkyooka?Thatsalie! 4M:Dattekankeenai mon(.) syuusyokuni ButrelationNEG jobhunting to
Butithasnothingtodowithjobhunting mono. 5A:A,sokka. ThatQ Oh,Isee.
Here,[p]:Dattekankee naimon(.) syuusyokuni(Line4)appearinginMsextended turnisseparatedfromherpriorturn[q]:watashinoitteitashiritsukookoonoeigotteiu nowa,sonoyonkyookaatsukai(Line1,2)byAsturn.Thecausalrelationshipbetween [p] and [q] is explicit: because English is not related to jobhunting, it is put into the accountofyonkyooka.[p]providesareasonexplanationforthegivenassertion[q]. Also, [p] and [q] can appear in different speakers turns, in which [q] is usually not overtly stated by the speaker of the monoutterance, but is embedded in the prior speakerstalk.Example(5)issuchanexample,inwhichthehusbandHblamesthewife WforfailingtokeepthehousecleanandWmakesanexcuse. (5)H:Sugokukitanaine ExtremelydirtyFP Itisverydirty,isntit? W:Datte isogashiinda mon. ButbusyNMLCOP ButIambusy mono.
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Inthiscase,theconsequenceorresult[q]:SugokukitanaiItisverydirtyiscontained inthepriorspeakerHsturninstead ofWsownturn.Wprovidesa causal explanation towardthe situation criticized byher husband, that is, Because I am busy, the room is dirty (since I dont have time to clean up). The logic underlying the FP mono implies that it is a natural and inevitable consequence for the room to become dirty under the conditionthatapersonisbusywithotherthings. Despite [p] and [q] appearing in one speakers single turn or across turns, in one speakersturnoracrosstwospeakersturns,thelogicisembeddedinthetextorimplied in the context. The general structure involving the occurrence of the FP mono can be illustratedinthefollowingdiagram,inwhichtheantecedent[p],markedbytheFPmono, provides explanation or elaboration for the consequence [q], which can be identified in thepriortextorcontext.
Figure2The generalstructureoftheFPmonousage
()
mono
However, in some cases, the logic marked by the FP mono seems illogical or unreasonable to normal way of thinking. Example (6) provides such an example involving illogical logic. Prior to this sequence, G told Y that one of her male classmateshasinvitedhertodinnerandshehopedthattheywouldnotbecomeacouple. Ygivesherownopiniononthisissueand providesherownpersonalexperiencetojustify herpredictionaboutthedevelopmentofGandherclassmatesrelationship. (6) 1 Y: A:: demo,koibitoninarutoomou [yo? ButboyfriendtobecomeQMthinkFP But,Ithinkhewillbecomeyourboyfriend. 2 G: [Ma:ne:::shiyooganaiyone. Well FPmethodNOMNEGFP Well,thereisnothingIcando. 3 Y: Un:::
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4 G: Nat
temone:=
BecomeevenifFP Evenifwebecomecouples 5 Y: =Watashidatte(.)soreninatta mon (.)Atashi
I eventhat tobecameI Ihavebecomeso mono.Ihave. Byclaiming things like since my experience was so, the same thing will happen to you, the speaker Y tries to show her belief that the supplementary information she provides definitely will lead to the consequence described in her previous assertion. Althoughthelogicsoundssubjectiveorunreasonable,Yassumesthatitisanaturaland inevitableconsequencebecauseofthesimilaritybetweenGsandherownsituations. Overall, the crucial point about the FP mono is that, no matter how subjective or emotional the logic is, the speaker seems to imply that the consequence is normal, naturalandinevitable,andthelogiciscommonlyacceptedbyeveryoneintheworld. Inother words,theantecedentconsequence relationshipbetween [p]and[q]underlying theusageoftheFPmonodisplaysstrongnuancesofinevitability,regularity(Takashi, 1994,p. 10),or ippanseenormality(Tusbone,1996).HereI arguethatsuchnormality orinevitabilityiscloselyrelatedtotheconceptofcommonground. Typically,commongroundisdefinedasasetofpropositionsrepresentingwhatthe participantstaketobemutuallybelievedoratleastmutuallyassumedforthepurposeof discourse (Gunlogson, 2003, p. 27). Agreeing with such a traditional interpretation, Hashimoto(2000) suggeststhattheFPmonoindexesthesocalledcommongroundfor thereasonthatitmarkssharedinformationorcommonknowledge. Asamatterof fact,inaconsiderablenumberof cases (e.g.(4)and(5))inthepresent database, the FP mono can be interpreted as a device marking information that is obviously or reasonably shared between the conversationalists. Nevertheless, in many other cases such as (2) and (6), the FP mono also marks information that clearly is not knownorbelievedtobeknownbythepartner. Letusconsideranothertypicalexample, in which the monoutterance involves unshared information. In the context preceding example(7),WtoldMaboutherrecentchangeinsleepinghabitsthatis,shenowsleeps
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alot,andgetsupverylate.Inthissequence,Wdefendsherselfsinceshewascriticized byherparentsforleadinganundisciplinedlife. (7) 1W:Kedone:::okorarechatta(0.2)konomae. Anta::saikinhirutoyoruga ButFP wasgotangrythisbeforeyourecentlydayandnightNOM gyakutenshitenrunoyo:: reversed doingFPFP But,Igotangrywithmyparents,lasttime. (Theysaid,)Yourdayandnightare reversedrecently! 2 M: Gyakutenshiteruno?= reverseddoingQ? Areyoureversed? 3 W:=Sonnakotonaiyonee::Datte(.)jyuunijidamon::Jyuunijinineru SuchthingNEGFPFPBecause12oclockCOP12oclockatsleep Nanteiu(.)sugokufutsuudayone::: QM verynormalCOPFP
Thereisnosuchthing.Isleepat12am mono.Sleepingat12amisverynormal, right?! 4 M: Futsuudewanainokamo. Shinnaikedosaa:: normalCOPNEGNMLmaybeknowNEGbutFP Maybeitisnotnormal.Idontknow. Notice that the speaker W uses [p]: she sleeps at twelve oclock to support her own preceding claim[q]: Thereisnosuchthing.(i.e.,Herdayand nightare not reversed). Obviously,thespecificpersonalinformationaboutWsnewsleepingscheduleisbeyond Msterritory ofinformation(Kamio,1997)thatis,thepieceofinformationfallsinto W rather than Ms territory. However, by using mono, W shows her strong belief or assumption that M must share the same obvious and normal logic and thereby must be abletoinferthe consequent fromtheantecedent. In other words,WexpectsMto draw theinferencethatitiscertainlynotanundisciplinedlifestyleatallifapersongoestobed attwelveoclockatnight.
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Therefore,Isuggestthatevenincasesnotinvolvingsharedknowledgeorinformation between the conversationalists, the common ground between the speaker and the addressee is still indexed by the FP mono. In such contexts, instead of marking shared information, mono marks the implication of the causal logic as a common ground. In fact, even in the examples where the information contained in the monoutterance is actuallyorpossiblyshared,theFPmonoisnotmeantsomuchtosignalthatthespeaker believes the recipient knows the fact, but rather that the speaker believes the recipient knowstheimplicationofthelogic.ThroughtheemploymentoftheFPmono,thespeaker signals to the recipient his/her assumption or belief that you certainly share the same logicwithme,becauseitissoobviousandinevitable. The normality or inevitability indexed in the causal logic, which marks the speakersreasoningasakindof common groundknowledgesharedbytheaddressee, qualifies the FP monoas a selfjustification marker as well as an otherjustification markerandformsthebasisofitsmultiplepragmaticfunctions.
4.ThediscoursefunctionsoftheFP mono Wehavediscussedthatonthesemanticlevel,theFPmonoexpressesthespeakersview ofakindofnaturalcausalrelationshipexistinginacourseofeventsinapossibleworld. This section investigates how the FP mono contributes to the organization of the sequenceswherethespeakersmanagetojustifytheirownoranothersopinion,actionor situationininteraction. Basedontheanalysisofthe72casesinthedatabase,theusagesofFPmonoaredivided intotwotypes:thefirsttypeisselfjustificationwhichservestosupportthepositionof the speaker him/herself and the second type is otherjustification which functions to support the position of others, primarily the prior speaker or the addressee. While the selfjustificationtypeoccursinthecontextwherethegivenorimpliedpositionisactually or potentially challenged, the otherjustification type does not necessarily involve challenge or disagreement except that it often occurs in the context where the prior
8 speakerchallengesathirdpartyoutsidetheconversationorthecircumstance .
In the 72 tokens of data, the selfjustification type dominates the data occupying 48 tokens(67%),whiletheotherjustificationtypeoccupies24tokens(33%).
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4.1Selfjustification Accordingtothe dataanalysis,the selfjustificationmonotendstooccurintwokinds ofsequentialstructuresinconversations. First, the FP mono provides support or justification for the speakers own prior statement,asshowninthefollowingmodel. Model <1> ofSelfjustification SpeakerA:STATEMENT [q] SpeakerB:CHALLENGE (disagreement/clarificationquestionsetc.) SpeakerA:ELABORATION/ACCOUNT [p] mono
Whenaspeakerpresentsanopinionorassertion,he/sheexpectstherecipienttoshow agreement, which is one kind of preferred response. However, in the contexts where the recipient shows disagreement, raises clarification questions such as what do you mean? or partially repeats the prior talk with a rising intonation, the initial speakers statementischallenged.Allthesepracticesindicatetherecipientslackofagreementto thepriorstatementandmayforeshadowanupcomingdisagreementlaterinthesequence (cf. Mori, 1999). If we call explicit disagreement actual challenge, those clarification questions and repetitive questions can be called suggested challenge or potential challenge (Maynard: 1992, 1993). In the contexts where the speakers position is challenged, the speaker is capable of being aware of the explicit or potential problems with the uptake of his/her prior statement and thus tends to add elaborations, clarificationsorjustificationto supportthepriorstatement. Thepreviouslydiscussedexample(4)providesatypicalcaseofModel<1>. (4) 1 M: De, watashinoitteitashiritsukookoo noeegotteiunowa(.)
SoI NMLwassayingprivatehighschoolNOMEnglishQMNMLTOP sonoyonkyookaatsukai= that foursubject treatment IntheprivateschoolthatIhadmentioned,Englishwastreatedasyonkyooka.
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2 A: =E::?Yonkyookanihaitchauno? USOO::::?(Laugh) foursubject toenterQ lie
Eh?Itiscountedasyonkyooka?Thatsalie! 3M:Dattekankeenai mon(.) syuusyokuni Butrelation NEGjobhuntingwith Butithasnothingtodowithjobhunting mono. 4A: A sokka. ThatQ Oh,Isee. InthedispreferredresponsetoMsinitialstatement,Ainitiatesherdisagreementbya clarificationbackchannelEe?(eh),whichisfollowedbyrepetitionoftheproblematic point with a rising tone and a strong disagreement expression uso lie. Facing As challenge, in the extended turn, M qualifies her prior assertion by explaining the reason/cause why English receives less attention. Furthermore, as discussed in the prior section, the attachment ofmono grants the speakers reasoning a sense of normality thatis,ifasubjectdoesnotplayaroleinjobhunting,itisnormalandnaturaltotreatit asaminorsubject,socalled yonkyooka.TheFPmonoconveysthespeakersinternal voicessuchasThereasonissoobvious,isntit?! However,explicitdisagreementisrelativelylimitedinthecommunicationsofJapanese people.Thecaseslike(8)are more common,inwhichthe recipientSshowsattitudeof doubttowardthepriorspeakerKsinformationwithaseriesofquestions. (8) 1K: Kyoosakkisa::,[nankatomodachini,(0.3)keetaidenwano mo= Today rightnowFPFIfriendtocellphoneNMLtoo TodayIjustcalledmyfriendscellphonerightnow. 2S: [un
3K:=Nihonno[tomodachi?Denwashitano. JapanNMLfriendphonedoPSTFP IcalledmyfriendinJapan. 4S:[unun.
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Keetaidenwakakerarenno? Cellphone callcanQ Canyoucallcellphone?
6K: Kakerareru,kakerareru. Callcancallcan Ican.Ican. 7S: E?Amerikakarakeetaidenwanikakerare[runo? AmericafromcellphonetocallcanQ Eh?Canyoucalltocellphonefrom America? 8K: [Kakerarerukakerareru callcancallcan Ican.Ican. 9 Kaketerumondatetama:ni(.) hotondokakenaikedo. CallingbecausesometimesalmostcallNEGbut BecauseIcallssometimesmono.Irarelycall,though. 10S: Uso::: Lie Thatisalie. SscontinuousconformationalquestionsinLine3,5,7indicatethatshedoesnotfully believethatKsinformationaboutcallingcellphoneinJapanistrue.Giventhelackofa straightforwarduptakeofhisstatement,Kfurtherjustifieshimselfbyprovidingapiece of evidence in Line 9 he does call cell phones in Japan occasionally. The FP mono occursinsuchanextensionalturn servingfor selfjustification. In addition to justify the speakers prior statement which has been challenged by the recipient, the utterances ending with mono can also serve to defend the speakers personalactionorsituation,whichisimplicitlyembeddedinthecontext.Insuchcases, the FP mono appears in the second pair part of an adjacency pair, (c.f. Schegloff, 1984) whilethechallengefromtheconversationalistoccursinthefirstpair part,taking theformofanegativecomment/evaluationofthemonospeakersaction/situationorasa command. In addition, a questionanswer adjacency pair is frequently observed, in
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whichtheinquiree takesthequestionfromtheinquirerasakindofcriticismorchallenge andtherebyusesamonoutterancetodefendhis/herown position intheresponse.
ThestructureofthoseadjacencypairscanbeillustratedinModel<2>. Model <2> ofselfjustification SpeakerB:CHALLENGE (Negativeevaluation/criticalinterrogation/command) SpeakerA:(DISPREFERREDRESPONSE)+ACCOUNT mono
The following is one of the examples9 matching Model <2>, which presents an illustration of the adjacency pair where the mother M criticizes the daughter for always makingthesamemistakeinpianopracticeandthedaughterDselfjustifiesherposition. (9) M:Anatasokoittsumoyurerukirerukara,sokodakekiotsukenasaiyo. YoutherealwaysshakebreakbecausethereonlybecarefulIMPFP Youalwaysshakeandbreakthere,sojustpayattention there. D:Iya.Mookiotsuketemomoodame Noalready payattention nanda mon
evenif already useless COP NMLCOP
No.BecauseevenifIhavealready paidattention,itisuselessatall mono.
In the second part of this adjacency pair, D responds to Ms criticism and command withastrongemotionalrefusalexpression iyano,whichisimmediatelyfollowedbyan account.Sincerefusalisatypeofdispreferredresponse,the monoutteranceinDsturn tendstobeseenasacaseofaccountsfordispreferredresponses.Althoughapparently themonoutteranceaccounts for Ds decline of Ms demand, essentially, it functions to justify ordefendDschallengedsituation/action.Forthepurpose ofselfjustification,D prefacesapiece of causalexplanation: EvenifIpayattention,Istillcannotdoitwell. SoIdonotwanttotryanymore.Despitetheemotionalityembeddedinthereasoning, by using mono, D implies that it is natural for people to stop further effort under the condition that no matter how careful they are, they still cannot avoid making the same mistakes. Therefore, the FP mono shows Ds attitude of lack of responsibility for the
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uncontrollable mistake, and indicates her assumption that M would understand her helplesssituationandforgiveherrefusal. Sofar Ihaveexaminedthetwotypicalmodelsobservedinthecasesofselfjustification mono,inwhichtheFPmonoischaracterizedasadeviceforjustifyingoraccountingfor thespeakersownpositioninthecontextofbeingexplicitlyorimplicitlychallenged by another conversationalist. The data analysis further suggests that the speakers emotionalattitudesuchas helplessnessordependencyisgenerallyindexedinmostof the cases of selfjustification. Also, in some cases, both positive and negative attitudes can be simultaneously conveyed bymono. The FP mono, on one hand, carries positive nuances such as I know you will accept my excuse on the other hand, it may sound likeblamingtherecipientthatYoushouldhaveknownthatitisnotmyfault!orWhy dont you understand me?! The present study hypothesizes that the various complex emotionsandattitudesindicatedbytheFPmonoareallderivedfromthenormalityand inevitabilityofthecausallogicandtheimplicationofthecommonground,whichare embeddedinthesemanticmeaningsoftheFPmono.
4.2Otherjustification Both traditional views and previous studies treat the FP mono merely as a device for
10 managingselfjustification. However,inthepresentdatabase, many casesofmonoare
foundin nonchallengingcontextswheretherecipient deliversagreementwiththeprior speaker. On such occasions, the sentence ended bymono serves to justify or to support theopinionsorevaluationsprofferedbythepriorspeaker. Consider one of the examples which do not have any involvement of challenges: the conversationparticipantscooperatewitheachotherbyprovidingsupportiveassertionsor information.In(10),S,YandCarehousewivesinacookingclass,whoaretalkingabout thedishthatoneoftheirfriends,Nakagawasanmightbefondof.
(10) 1 S: Nakagawasansukisoone.Kooiumono. likelikelyFPthissaystuff Nakagawasanmightlike,thiskindofstuff(food).
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2 Y:kooiunoga
daisukinandesu,karashino.
ThissayNMLNOMverylikeNMLCOPspicyNML Helikesthiskindverymuch,thespicyone. 3 CDatte,osakesukidamon. becausealcohollikeCOP Helikesalcoholmono. 4Y:Soodesune. rightCOPFP Thatisright. 5 SOsakesukinakatawakooiumonosukine alcohol likepersonTOPthissaystufflikeFP. Thepeoplewholikealcohollikethiskindofthing. Initially,YshowssupportofSsassertionbyclaimingthatNakagawasanmaylikethis dish since he likes spicy food (Line 2). In orderto justify Ys statement, the speaker C further provides apiece of additional information that Nakagawasan likes alcohol with an ending of the FP mono (Line 3). As the speaker S summarizes at the end of this sequence(Line5),the causallogicunderlyingCs monoutteranceisthateveryone who likesalcoholcertainlylikesspicyfood,andtherebylikesthiskindofdish.Itisinteresting toseehowtheinterlocutorscooperatewithandsupporteachotherinthisdata.TheFP mono helps to establish such a cooperative rapport conversation. Meanwhile, by using mono, the speaker attempts to show an attitude of solidarity with the other conversational participants by indicating the sharedness of both the information (e.g. Nakagawasanlikesalcohol)andthecausallogicamongthem. Similarly,inthefollowingexample,nosignofactualorpotentialchallengeamongthe participantsoftheconversationisobserved.Wiscomplainingaboutthetopicofthefinal paper suggested by their professor. The classmate T agrees with W and provides supplementaryinformationaboutthedifficultyindatacollectiontojustifyWsopinion. (11) W:Sore chottomurijanai? thatalittleunreasonableTAG
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Thatislikeunreasonable,isn'tit? T: So::.Datte(.)zenzentsukawanaimon:: rightbecausecompletelyuseNEG Right.Because(we)don'tuseitatallmono.
Inthiscase,theFPmonoservesto demonstrate recipient Tsagreement withW.Ts response is a typical structure of Agreementpluselaboration (Mori, 1999), in which she first claims her agreement with W and then qualifies Ws statement by a piece of supplementalevidencedisplayedinthemonoutterance.Notethatinthemonoutterance, T joins Ws critique of the professors suggestion. Specifically, by using mono, T prefacesherassumptionthatWnotonlysharestheknowledgeaboutthelogic(i.e.,itis impossibleto writeapaperif nativespeakersdo notusethe expression frequently),but alsosharesthefeelingofdissatisfactionwiththeprofessorssuggestion.Inthissense,the FP mono serves as a solidarity creator or positive politeness strategy (Brown & Levinson, 1987) to show Ts alignment with W against the professor, who is a third partyoutsideoftheconversation,andtherebytoelicitWsfeelingasapeer. Inshort,asdiscussedabove,inthecasesofotherjustification,[q]isnotembeddedin thespeakerofthemonoutterance'sownpriorturnrather,itmustbesoughtintheother conversationalist'sutterance.Insuchcontexts,theFPmonofunctionstoshowthepresent speakersagreementwithorsupporttothepriorspeakersposition.Inaddition,theother justificationmonooftenoccursinthecontextswherethespeakerintendstoshowmiuchi ishikisolidaritybyreinforcingthesharedstanceofchallengingsomeoneorsomething else.
5.Conclusions This study has examined the various uses of the FP mono and has attempted to demonstratethattheunderlyingcausallogicformsthebasisofitsmultiplediscoursaland interactionalfunctions.Itsuggeststhatthelogicbetween[p]and[q]ismarkedbytheFP mono as an inevitable and natural consequence, which is presented as normal knowledge located in the common ground between conversational participants. Therefore,theFPmonoimpliesthattheconsequenceisbeyondthespeakerscontroland
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the speakers reasoning should be obviously acceptable and understandable to everyone includingtheaddressee.Withthecontributionofthisimplication,thespeakerintendsto justifyhis/herownpositionorsupportthepriorspeakersassertion. AssummarizedinTable1,twotypesofmonoarediscussedintermsofthe discourse structure in which the FP mono occurs. First, as a selfjustification marker, mono is employed to justify the speakers own position, which has been explicitlyor implicitly challenged. Second, as an otherjustification marker, the monoutterance serves to support the prior speakers position, which, in many cases, tends to challenge a third partyorthegivensocial/physicalcircumstance.Inthecasesof eitherselfjustificationor otherjustification, rather than neutrally providing supplementary or elaboration information,theFPmonodisplaysthespeakerssubjectivityandshowshis/hercomplex attitude/emotion,whichvaryindifferentcontexts.Ingeneral,selfjustificationmonocan reveal the speakers internal voices such as The reasoning is so obvious and natural, isntit?!YoucertainlywillacceptmyexplanationorWhydoyoublamemeforsuch anissuebeyondmycontrol?!Otherjustification,ontheotherhand,tendstoconveythe speakers attitude of alignment or solidarity with the addressee in a stronger affective toneandtherebytoelicittheaddresseesfeelingofbeingapeer.
Table1 Thesummaryofthedifferencesbetweenselfjustification monoand otherjustification mono selfjustificationmono Otherjustification mono
48token s67 %24tokens33%

Functions:supportingthespeakersownpositionsupportingthepriorspeakersposition Contexts:beingchallengedbytheaddresseechallengingathirdparty Attitudes: dependence,helplessness,faultlessness solidarity,alignment
In the present database, selfjustification predominates, occupying twothirds of the total cases. The predominance of this type explains why traditional views exclusively
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treat the FP mono merely as a selfjustification marker, while ignoring its usage in collaborationwithothers. From the case study of the FP mono, we can see the speakers attempt and effort to regulate communicationwith othersthatis,toorganizethesequence of his/hertalk for the purpose of conducting certain speech acts, and to show his/her subjective attitude/emotion so as to elicit the addressees understanding/empathy or feeling of solidarity. Therefore, rather than examining grammatical structures or forms as entities independent of their actual production in real conversations, the study of grammar in contextualizedinteractionshouldbeconsideredasoneofthebiggesttasksthatlinguists face. Also, the study of the FP mono has valuable implications for those acquiring Japaneseasasecondlanguage. TherichnessofsentencefinalelementsofJapaneseisan important and difficult part for learners. Learning how to manipulate FPs to express feelingsortoshowattitudesinconversationadvancesJapaneselearnerscomprehension aswellascommunicationskills.
Notes: (1)TheFPmonooftentakesreducedphonologicalformof monincolloquial conversations. Theprocessofthisderivationremainsunclearinthecurrentrelevant studies. (2)The12transcriptsweresharedataseminar calledStudiesofJapaneselinguisticsat theUniversityofXXXX. (3)Amongthe72tokens,14tokensarecombinedwiththeothersentencefinalparticle ne,takingtheformof monone.Thesubtledifferencebetween monoand mononeis oneofthetopicsthatIwillexploreinthefuture. (4)TheconceptamaedependencyisregardedasthebaseofJapaneseprototypical socialrelationshipsandcommunicativestyle.Ithascomplexmeaningsand implications.AsClancy (1986) definesit,to amaeruistodependuponorpresume uponanothersbenevolence. (5)Thelabelsof position,supportand challengeareborrowedfromSchiffrin(1987)In particular,positionisdefinedbroadlytoincludeassertionsoropinions,situationsand actionsofthegivenindividualssupportisrealizedbyexplanation,justification,and
180
defenseofapositionthatcanbedisputedand challengeisdefinedastheexistenceof problemswiththeacceptanceofthegiven positionbyotherpeople.Inotherwords, whenonesstatement,actionorsituationhasdifficultiesinbeingunderstoodor agreeduponbyothers,whoshowdoubts,confusion,disagreementorcriticisminthe interaction,thegiven positionischallenged. (6)Since(9),(10)are examplestakenfrom SyufunoissyuukannodanwashiryooOne weekConversationalMaterialsofHousewives(Ide,1984),thedetailed transcriptionsincludingprosodicfeaturesarenotavailable. (7)Hashimoto(1998)mentionstheusageof monotojustifytheaddresseesprior statement,andnamesitkatagawaribenmeepeerjustification.Nevertheless,she failstoprovidefurtheranalysisonthisissue.
181
References Brown,P.&Levinson,S.(1987).Politeness:Someuniversalsinlanguage usage. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press. Clancy,P.(1986).TheacquisitionofcommunicativestyleinJapanese.InB.Schieffelin andE.Ochs(Eds.),Languagesocializationacrosscultures(pp.21350).Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress. Gendaigonojoshi/jodooshiyoohootojitsurei(ContemporaryPostpositional Particle/AuxiliaryverbUsagesandExamples) Kokuritsukokugokenkyuujo (NationalJapaneseResearchInstitute) Hashimoto,Y.(1998).Syuujoshimonohanashitenoronriniyorusetsumee (Thesentencefinalparticlemonotheexplanationbasedonthelogicofthespeaker) CollectedArticlesontheJapaneseLanguage,35(2),124129. Hashimoto,Y.(2000). ShuujoshimononopositivepolitenessPresentedin Shakai GengoKagakukaiDairokkaiKenkyuuHappiaoDaikai(theSixSocial Linguistic Conference).RetrievedDec.2005from http://homepage1.nifty.com/jiamei/nihongo/monoshagengo.htm Ide,S.(1984).Syufunoissyuukannodanwashiryoo(OneweekConversational MaterialsofHousewives).TheJapaneseWomensUniversity Kamio,A.(1997).TerritoryofInformation.Amsterdam:JohnBenjamins Maynard,S.K.(1991).Pragmaticsofdiscoursemodality:AcaseoftheJapanese emotionaladverbdoose.Pragmatics,1(3),37192 Maynard,S.K.(1992).Speechactdeclarationinconversation:functionsofthe Japaneseconnective datte. StudiesinLanguage,16(1),6389 Mori,J. (1999).NegotiatingAgreementinJapanese:ConnectiveExpressionsandTurn Construction.Amsterdam/Philadelphia:JohnBenjamins. Sadake,K.(1984).monode/monono/ monoo, in Nihongogaku,3(10).MeijiSyoin Shinozaki,I.(1984).mononoimi (Themeaningof mono),in Sophialinguistica, No.17. Teramura,H.(1978).mono tokoto(mono and koto).In Kokugogakuronsyuu, DaisyuukanSyoten Sakuma,A.(1952). Gendainihongohounokenkyuu(TheStudyofContemporary JapaneseGrammar).KouseisyaKouseiKaku
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Schegloff,E.A.(1984).Onquestionsandambiguitiesinconversation.In J.M.Atkinson, &JohnHeritage(Eds.),Structuresofsocialaction.(pp.28101) Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress. Shriffrin,D.(1987).Discoursemarkers.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress Takashi,K.(1994).Astudyofthespeaker'sindividualisticspiritreflectedinJapanese:A caseoftheJapanesediscoursemodalmono,JournalofAsianPacificCommunication, 5(1&2),518 Tanabe,K.(1998).Keeshikimeeshimononiokerubunpootoshitenobunmyakukato syukanka(Thetextualandsubjectiveaspectsofgrammaticalizationofthepseudonoun mono).CollectedArticlesontheJapaneseLanguage,35(2),507513. TsuboneY.(1996). Syuujoshi,setsuzokujoshitoshitenomononoimi mono mononaramononomonoo(Themeaningofmonoassentencefinalparticles andconnectiveparticles)JapaneseEducation91.
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TheLinguisticsJournal

Editors:Paul Robertson andJohnAdamson

LinguisticsJournalPress ADivisionofTimeTaylorInternationalLtd TrustnetChambers P.O.Box3444 RoadTown,Tortola BritishVirginIslands http://www.linguisticsjournal.com LinguisticsJournalPress2007

Editor:Dr.PaulRobertson SeniorAssociateEditor:Dr.JohnAdamson AssociateEditor:DarrenLingley

2842 4368 6990

JohnAdamson,Ed.D. SeniorAssociateEditor TheLinguisticsJournal

BeliefsaboutLanguageLearning: AComparisonbetweenNoviceandIntermediateLevelStudents LearningRussian ataMalaysianUniversity

3.89 3.48 4.05

0.98 0.92 0.96

3.33 3.00 3.46

1.06 1.03 1.05

2.93 3.06 2.87

0.91 0.92 0.99

2.06 2.19 2.00

0.86 0.65 0.92

Table2:DifficultyofLanguageLearning(Items58) Item 12345

2.49 2.55 2.46

0.73 0.72 0.73

1.08 0.92 1.13

1820699 3.72 0312151 3.45 158548 3.84 2.373**

0.76 0.72 0.75

8. I think that Russian grammar is difficult. Overall Beginners Intermediate tvalue

07185626 3.14 057136 3.65 02 114320 4.07 2.156*

0.82 0.98 0.71

0.96 0.94 0.97

1.02 1.02 1.03

0.90 0.71 0.97

1.00 1.10 0.96

Table4:LearningandCommunicationStrategies(Items1316) Item 13.ItisimportanttospeaktheRussian languagewithexcellentpronunciation. Overall Beginners Intermediate tvalue 12345

010324916 017176 09253210 2.020*

3.66 3.90 3.57

0.84 0.74 0.86

0.91 0.96 0.89

0.93 0.94 0.92

0.97 1.02 0.94

3.87 3.87 3.87

0.94 1.05 0.90

4.23 4.19 4.25

0.79 0.94 0.71

4.38 4.26 4.43

0.65 0.81 0.57

215243432 244138 011202124 0.364

3.74 3.68 3.76

1.09 1.19 1.05

Morerecently,teachingoftheArabicandMandarinlanguagesatschoolshasbeen promoted.Also,someresidentialschoolsoffertheJapaneseandGermanlanguage courses.

Among others such ethnic groups as bajau,bajaudusun, sinokadazan, sino dusun,bidayuh,ibanwerelisted.

MandarinbeingalinguafrancafortheChinesecommunitycannotbeconsideredasa foreignlanguageinMalaysia,sinceethnicChineserepresentabout24%ofthe countryspopulation.

use of learning strategies: A study of college students of English in Taiwan. Unpublisheddoctoraldissertation,TheUniversityofTexas,Austin.

Keywords: pragmatictransfer,complimentresponses,raisingculturalawarenessinthe EFL/ESLclassroom.

Ihateit. Itsalright,butLensisnicer. (silence)

2. Interviews: Thistoolwasusedtoaccountforthereasonsoftheparticipantsresponsesandminimize theresearchersbiaswheninterpretingthedata.

Scenario 6: Yourewearinganewshirtandacolleaguelooksatyouandsays:Thisshirtlooksgreat onyou!Blueisagreatcolorforyou.Youanswer:___________________

Chen,R.(1993).Respondingtocompliments:Acontrastivestudyofpolitenessstrategies betweenAmericanEnglishandChinesespeakers. JournalofPragmatics,(20),4975. ElSamaty,M.(2005).Helpingforeignlanguagelearnersbecomepragmatically

260 245.76 249.21

230 220.18 216.86

200 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3 Strategy4 ConversationalStrategy

250 MeanRank 191.6

Low Mid High

0 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3 Strategy4 ConversationalStrategy

300 236.35 235.75 235.49 240.08 233.75

0 Strategy1 Strategy2 Strategy3 Strategy4 Conve rsationalStrategy

300 235.06 231.27 232.42 233.76

strategy3() strategy4 strategy1 strategy3

Holdingthefloor a)Reorientingtheconversationtoa solution a)byspeakingfluently b)Closingtheconversation b)byaddingutterances c)bycontrollingcomplainttopic