A comparative study of the sociocultural competence of the Asian ESL University students : politeness strategies /
This research is a comparative study of the sociocultural competence of Asian university students with specific reference to their competency in employing politeness strategies. The following expressions, "Hi, you seem prosperous. Last time, you were not so fat one. Still single?" may s...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Kuala Lumpur :
International Islamic University Malaysia,
1998
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://studentrepo.iium.edu.my/handle/123456789/6704 |
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| Summary: | This research is a comparative study of the sociocultural competence of Asian university students with specific reference to their competency in employing politeness strategies. The following expressions, "Hi, you seem prosperous. Last time, you were not so fat one. Still single?" may server as intimate greetings among Asians. Yet it may be perceived as strangle, cold, irksome or rude buy native speakers. The author in this research presents some contemporary empirical studies conducted on sociocultural competence of ESL students through different speech acts. The methodology of research is based on collection of data from discourse completion and inerviews with the respondents. There follows a presentation, analysis and discussion of data collected from various strategies such as apologies, compliments and request strategies from the data collected. To probe in more depth, nonverbal gestures across different cultures were compared and their implications on learning English were investigated as well. Culture is considered like an iceberg, where language, food and appearance ar on its top, while communication styles, beliefs, values and perception are on the other part. Indeed, to know another's language without knowing his culture is a very gool way of making a fluent fool of one's self is the discovery of this research. The overall findings discovered that Asian speakers were more sensitive to sociolinguistic distinctions, and they were more polite in their expressions. The results yielded were totally different from the results of other Western researchers where nonnative speakers were found to be less polite. Another major discovery of this research showed that speech act utterances were influenced by the norms and culture of each ethnic group. In conclusion, the author presents some recommendations and applications for the ESL clalssroom which may open new horizons for Asian ESL students. |
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| Item Description: | Abstracts in English and Arabic. "A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Master of Human Science in English as a Second Language."--On title page. |
| Physical Description: | xiv, 153 leaves ; 30 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references [leaves 150-153]. |