Spanish request strategies: a cross-cultural analysis from an intercultural perspective

~)

Language Sciences. Vol. 18. Nos 3-4, pp. 651-670. 1996

Pergamon

Copyright © 1996 ElsevierScienceLtd Printed in Great Britain. All rightsreserved 0388-0001/96 $15.00 + 0.00

S0388-0001(96)00040-X SPANISH REQUEST STRATEGIES: A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS FROM AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Rob le Pair Department of Business Communication, University of Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, k. 5.16, 6525 HT Nijmegen, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Socio-cultural variables like authority, social distance, and situational setting are supposed to influence the appropriateness and effectiveness of politeness strategies used to realize directive speech acts such as requests. As the influence of these variables may differ from one culture to another, these variations are relevant factors for a person's intercultural communication competence, viewed as his capacity to communicate appropriately and effectively in a foreign language. Since deviations from native language use may have consequences for the intercultural interaction between Spanish and Dutch interlocutors, a cross-cultural research project on the use of request strategies in Spanish was carried out, in order to investigate the speech production of Spanish and Dutch speakers of Spanish. In this investigation, several differences between the two groups become manifest: it is shown that Spanish native speakers tend to use more direct strategies than Dutch nonnative speakers of Spanish. Furthermore, conventional indirectness, although the most frequently used politeness strategy by both groups of speakers, is realized in substantially different ways by Spanish speakers on the one hand, and Dutch speakers of Spanish on the other. Contrasting the results of the two parallel experiments of request production in similar situational settings, I will illustrate the types of variations that occur, and argue that some of them may have been caused by crosslinguistic differences between Spanish and Dutch.

KEYWORDS Cross-cultural pragmatics; interlanguage pragmatics; intercultural communication; politeness strategies; indirectness; requests; appropriateness; effectiveness; Spanish; Dutch.

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ROB LE PAIR INTRODUCTION A Spanish p i r o p o goes iVete pot" la sombrat..., que los b o m b o n e s p o r el sol se derriten. ~ From a pragmalinguistic point of view, the first part of the utterance is ambiguous: at first glance it seems to be a directive speech act, and within the category of directive speech acts, the most direct strategy - an imperative - has been chosen to communicate the intended meaning, giving the utterance the strong illocutionary force of an order. But at a second glance, and taking into account some socio-cultural context factors, the utterance becomes quite different. The necessary socio-cultural knowledge to interpret the utterance appropriately is the following: the addresser of a p i r o p o is generally a man and the addressee a woman; o~en, figurative language rich of metaphors is used ( b o m b o n e s ... se derriten); although the message has a rather intimate content, by which the speaker expresses being attracted by the physical aspects of the hearer, a p i r o p o is ot~en applauded in public, for example in the street. Then the utterance, far from being a directive speech act, will be interpreted appropriately by the hearer as an expressive speech act, as a compliment, flattering her physical state. Knowing these socio-cultural constraints, the addressee will not have any difficulty in taking the 'order' ivete p o r la sombrat, for granted, and walking on in the sun, and may be flattered by the metaphor in which she is compared to a sweet bonbon. In this contribution, I will complicate the question, by introducing both native speakers and nonnative speakers to the communication scene.

Int¢rcultural Communication Competence In every communication situation, especially in intercultural interaction, the interpersonal function of the language is of great importance. A speaker can indicate how he perceives the social relation between him and his interlocutor, or how he would like the relation to be perceived by the hearer. He can do this by usingthe appropriate vocabulary and conversational style, and by making certain strategic choices in realizing speech acts such as invitations, complaints, compliments, or requests. Most theorists seem to have accepted, either implicitly or explicitly, the importance of appropriateness and effectiveness in defining communication competence (Koester et al., 1993). Appropriate interaction avoids the violation of valued rules and expectancies for a given context, while effective interaction functions to produce relatively valued outcomes or objectives. (Lustig and Spitzberg, 1993:154). Intercultural communication competence, then, is based on the speaker's ability and skills to produce appropriate utterances in a foreign language that effectively communicate his intention, and on the hearer's ability to judge and interpret those utterances appropriately. If communication competence is defined in terms of appropriateness and effectiveness, then it is important for researchers of intercultural communication to find the salience of these criteria in the communicative behaviour of the populations observed. Furthermore, as criteria could be valued more in one culture than in another culture, any given communicative behaviour can be competent in one context and culture, and incompetent in another context and culture. Competence, therefore, cannot be inherent

1. A piropo is a flattering remark; although not exclusively Spanish, its fiequent use in Spain can be considered as a

'Spanish' custom, which might cause confusion in other situational contexts, as is further explained in the text. The literal translation is as follows: Walk in the shadow .... because bonbons are melted in the sun!

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEGIES IN SPANISH in the behaviour itself, but is instead a function of social evaluation and context. The above piropo example shows that intercultural communication competence involves two interrelated dimensions: pragmalinguistics (the linguistic interface of pragmatics), i.e 'the particular resources which a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions', and sociopragmatics (the sociological interface of pragmatics), 'the assessment of interlocutors' social distance and social power, rights and obligations and degree of imposition involved in different linguistic acts' (Leech, 1983; Kasper, 1992). Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence are underlying conditions for the appropriate and effective use of politeness strategies; indirectness appears to be an important means to achieve this communication goal.

Politeness and Indirectness Summarizing the notion of politeness as discussed by Lakoff (1973), Grice (1975), Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), and Leech (1983), politeness can be considered as a communication strategy the function of which is to maintain good relationships between interlocutors. According to Grice, the Cooperative Principle consists of a series of conversation maxims (be brief, say only what is relevant and nothing more, and avoid ambiguity) that govern the mechanism to achieve the most efficient and direct way for information transmission. Lakoff, trying to extend the rules of grammar, proposed two rules to account for the pragmatic appropriateness of utterances: ,,be clear,, and ,,be polite,,. Leech posits that the Politeness Principle is the necessary complement of Grice's Cooperative Principle and combines these principles in the concept of the Interpersonal Rhetoric, because the Cooperative Principle in itself cannot explain why people are often so indirect in expressing what they mean. Leech emphasizes the social function of politeness, stating that the Politeness Principle has a higher regulative role than the Cooperative Principle, since its function is 'to maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place' (Leech, 1983:82). Finally, the best known politeness theory is Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987) elaboration of the concept in the strategies of positive and negative politeness. The basic assumption in their theory is that certain speech acts, such as orders and requests, are 'intrinsically impolite', because by making a request, a speaker automatically threatens the hearer's freedom of action, his wish not to be imposed upon, which is called his 'negative face'. A hearer can interpret a request as an intrusive impingement on his freedom of action, or even as a show in the speaker's exercise of power. Politeness strategies are used to minimize the threat that is intrisically present in a request, because a speaker will generally feel the need to maintain good social relationships. The framework built up by Brown and Levinson has been an important contribution to the understanding of universal politeness phenomena, but the universality claimed by this framework could not stay free from criticism, formulated on the basis of a growing number of experimental investigations.

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ROB LE PAIR Previous research on requesting behaviour has shown that the relative importance played by estimates of power, social distance, situational setting, and degree of imposition may differ from culture to culture, and that the proportions in the choices between more direct and more indirect strategies are culture-specific (e.g. Blum-Kulka, 1989; Blum-Kulka and House, 1989; Fukushima, 1994). In conventional indirectness, cross-cultural differences may appear between conventions of means (what kinds of utterances are used as indirect requests) and conventions of form, which specify the exact wording used to realize the request (BlumKulka, 1989:41). With respect to the sometimes suggested link between politeness and indirectness, it should be noted that these concepts are not necessarily related in a linear fashion (Blum-Kulka, 1987), that indirectness is not per se a carrier of politeness, and that cultures may vary in the social meaning attached to similar linguistic choices (Blum-Kulka and House, 1989), and in preferences for positive and negative politeness (e.g. Fukushima, 1995; Wierzbicka, 1985). The concept of indirectness itself is also the focus of strong debates. The framework of the CCSARP for requests and apologies (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989), used in this investigation, consists of a scale of nine levels of increasing indirectness, distinguishing between three main levels (see below: method and data collection). Just as an example, the opposed view of Haverkate (1979, 1994) illustrates how different outcomes appear, depending on the criteria chosen to describe indirectness. The main criterion for both the CCSARP-scale and Haverkate's model is the length of the inferential path, needed to interpret the utterance as a request. In the CCSARP model, the length of this process is determined by linguistic indicators (such as the imperative mood), semantic content, and conventional and nonconventional usage. Thus, an utterance like £le importa apartar su coche? ('do you mind moving your car?') is considered to be a conventional indirect request, belonging to category 7, because asking for the previous condition of the hearer's willingness to carry out the requested act, makes that a speaker communicates a request indirectly, by means of a question. In this model the implicitness is supposed to lengthen the inferential path. According to Haverkate's point of view, however, utterances that contain a specification of the requested act and at the same time make an explicit reference to the interlocutor, like the utterance mentioned above, are the most direct requests (on a scale of four). Le importa apartar su coche and quiero que aparte su coche ('I want you to move your car'), and the imperative aparte su coche ('move your car'; categories 7, 5, and 1 respectively according to the CCSARP model) are therefore equally direct in Haverkate's model: 'wouM you move y o u r car?' cannot be considered less direct than, e.g., 'move your car' (Haverkate, 1979:101-102). In this view, the imperative mood in aparte su coche does not make the utterance more direct, but causes the utterance to be an order, and not a request. Following Haverkate, Muider (1993) analyses Spanish indirect speech acts, and argues for a point of view in which those utterances by which two different speech acts are realized at the same time are to be considered as indirect. Those utterances that are only literally an expression of one speech act, but that, conventionally, are interpreted as another, e.g. a request, should then be seen as direct speech acts. But questions such as how long the inferential distance to interpret an indirectly formulated request is, and what influence linguistic and contextual factors have in the measurement of this distance, remain unanswered.

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEG~S IN SPANISH From the above remarks it follows that the directness level of speech acts that are traditionally called indirect, depends on how conventionalised certain ways of speaking are, and that it is not only the speaker's perspective that determines whether or not a speech act is indirect. The interpretation of utterances by the hearer, and hence the communicative situation in which the speech act is realized, also has to be taken into account. This is where cultural variation - in linguistic form, in conventionalisation of interactional strategies, and in social meanings attached to these - influences both the notion of indirectness and its interpretation, and therefore raises problems for the generalizability and universality of politeness principles. In the light of these problems, related to politeness, indirectness, and the role played by the context, a new view on strategic and social politeness, suggested by Escandell-Vidal (1995) 2, one of politeness in a relevance-theoretic perspective, is a very interesting proposal to account for both universal principles and for culture-specific variation. She presents the guidelines for a cognitive approach to politeness, in which the notion of 'frame', as a constraint in the search of relevance, reveals itself as a useful complement for the theory. In the framework proposed, the key-notion is that of 'context', not seen as something external and given, but as something internal and selected at the time of interpretation. On the one hand, cultural differences concerning interactional styles can easily be accommodated in such a cognitive framework in terms of differences in the contents and the structure of specific knowledge. On the other hand, the interpretation of politeness phenomena fits in the same framework in a natural way, since this interpretation uses the same mechanisms and follows the same inferential steps as the interpretation of any other kind of utterance. In another cognitive approach, Bialystok (1993) focusses on the acquisition of pragmatic ability by second language learners, addressing the cognitive dimensions on which interlanguage competence evolves. As in Escandell-Vidars proposals, 'context' is again the key-notion: for pragmatic competence, 'selecting the appropriate form requires an ass'es-~'merit of contextual and social factors. 7bus the mapping is not between.form and meaning the usual problem in semantics - but between form and social context, with meaning hem constant across retentions within a socictlly defined situation' (Bialystok, 1993:51). Blum-Kulka et al. (1989:3) stress 'the strong need to complement theoretical studies of speech acts, based primarily on intuited data of isolated utterances, with empirical studies based on speech acts produced by native speakers #1 context'; furthermore, within the domain of Interlanguage Pragmatics, only a few languages have been studied as a second language, and the target language has principally been English (see e.g. Kasper and BlumKulka, 1993). These considerations, combined with the earlier remarks made about intercultural communication competence and politeness strategies in relation to directness and indirectness, are the basic starting points of this research project.

2. I am indebted to Victoria Escandell-Vidal, who gave me a draft version of her study, 'Politeness in Relevance Theory', not yet published, that was recently presented at the First International Conference in Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics, University of Brighton, 6 - 9 April 1995. 1 owe the description that lbllows Io this ch'aft version.

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ROB LE PAIR RESEARCH PROJECT 3 The main topic of the larger research project is (a) to investigate whether and to what extent the choice of politeness strategies underlying the realization of requests in Spanish by Spanish native speakers, differs from the strategies chosen by Dutch speakers using Spanish as a foreign language; or, in other words, wether we can detect differences between the requestive behaviour in NS-use of Spanish and the interlanguage of requesting by Dutch NNS. (b) to investigate how NS of Spanish judge NNS utterances and what the consequences are in terms of appropriateness and effectiveness, estimated by NS; in other words, what are the social meanings attached by the NS adressees to specific NNS requestive behaviour?

Research Questions of the Present Study Within the limitations of the present stage of the research project, we will only be concerned with the first research question (a). Furthermore, in this investigation, requests will be analysed at the level of their head act, leaving aside for the time being the complicated role of internal and external modifiers (see ..analysis of requests, below). Narrowing the scope in this way, the present study addresses the following questions: (1) can we detect differences between NS of Spanish and Dutch NNS in the choice of the main strategy types with regards to the directness levels of the request utterances? (2) what are the kinds of differences in the use of indirectness, distinguishing between the above mentioned conventions of means and conventions of form? The language studied here consists of contextualized oral utterances made in controlled contexts.

Method and Data Collection Two groups of respondents were distinguished: nonnative speakers of Spanish (NNS), who had taken almost 3 years of Spanish courses and native speakers of Spanish (NS). The former are Business Communication students at the University of Nijmegen (Holland), the latter students of English at the university of Valencia. Apart from nationality, the background of both groups was highly similar: both groups consisted of university language students whose age ranged from 20 to 25, the majority (aproximately 75%) female. The contextualization of the requests to be produced was similar in both groups: in the two experiments, the subjects were confronted with the same descriptions of situations to which an oral response was elicited. There was one difference between the two groups with respect to the number of items: 22 NNS participated in the experiment, responding to 22 DCT (Discourse Completion Test) items each, while 36 NS responded to 12 descriptions each. In both groups, a number of distractor items elicitating speech acts others than requests, were placed at random among the request situations. The total number of requests produced was 3. I am grateful to Berna Hendriks and Brigitte Planken, colleagues fi'omtile Department of Business Cotrmaunication of the University of Nijmegen, realizing related research projects concerning English requests and negotiations in English, and to Maria Oud-de Glas, project supervisor; I discussed with them many of the issues raised in this investigation.

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440 for the NNS and 426 for the NS. The respondents' reactions were recorded on audiotape, transcribed literally and coded in a database for further analysis. The data collection method is an adaptation of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) used in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP, Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). A DCT consists of scripted situations, which represenent socially differentiated contexts the relative power of speaker and hearer, their social distance or grade of intimacy, and the situational setting in which the communication takes place, are varied across these situations The twelve settings are represented in table 1 The description is followed by the task to be carried out by the subjects, providing the speech act aimed at. As the two examples show, in this version of the DCT, contrary to the CCSARP version, no hearer response is provided; furthermore, the fact that the subjects' reactions are oral is another difference with the CCSARP version. Table 1. Contextualizationof requests in 12 DCT situations Power / Authority

Social Distance

Situation / Context

Type nr.

,

PI P(s)
P2 P(s)=P(h)

P3 P(s)>P(h)

Sl SD-

C 1 every day

$2 SD+

C 1 every day

Sl SD-

C 1 every day

$2 SD+

C 1 every day

SI SD-

C 1 every day

$2 SD+

C2 institutional

C2 institutional

2 .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

example 1 .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

4 .

.

C2 institutional

C2 institutional example 2 .... 9

C2 institutional

10

C I every day

11

C2 institutional 12 P(s) / P(h) = relative authority of speaker vis/I vis hearer; SD- / SD+ = low vs. high social distance or grade of intimacy; C = situational setting. Example 1 (PI-S2-C2) La sala de correos: Eres el nuevo empleado en la sala de correos. A la hora de comer, te das cuenta de que f a l t a n todavia tres paquetes que tienes que preparar. Si tu jefa, Cristina Miranda, a quien has conocido hoy, te ayudara, podrias i r a comer con los demdts. g Qud le dices a tu jefa? The mailroom" You have just started your new job in the mailroom. It is nearly time for lunch and you have just realised you need to pack 3 more parcels before you can go to the canteen If your boss, Cristina Miranda, would help you, you could go down to the canteen with the others. W h a t do you say to your boss?

I~C 1813-4---D

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ROB LE PAIR Example 2 (P3-S l-C 1) Una familia. Hay una fiesta en tu casa. Tu eres ia madre, y estas hablando con una amiga que no has visto desde hace mucho tiempo. Un vaso de vino tinto se cae. Tu hija Carmen estdt a tu lado. g Qud le dices a tu hija?

The living room. There is a party going on at your house. You are the mother, and you are talking to a friend you haven't seen for years; at one point, someone knocks over a glass of red wine. Your daughter Carmen is standing next to you. W h a t do you say to your daughter? In table 2, nine request strategies are represented on a scale of increasing indirectness. This means that increasingly the inferential process needed for identifying and interpreting the utterance as a request becomes longer. The directness level could therefore be regarded as a measure for the 'relative requestive transparency' of an utterance. This does not mean that the scale increases equally according to the degree of politeness: strategy 4 could be, but is not necessarily more polite than 3, and 8 is not necessarily more polite than 7. In the righthand column of the table, we have represented the means by which the illocutionary force is attributed to the utterance, indicating the type of the interpretative process. Although languages may differ in the exact relative position of a strategy type on the scale, a distinction of three main levels of directness is valid: 1 direct strategies (1-5): the illocutionary force is directly derivable from linguistic indicators (1-3) or from the semantic content of the utterances (4-5); 2 conventional indirect strategies (6-7): the interpretation as a request relies on conventional usage (see e.g. Blum-Kulka, 1989); 3 non-conventional indirect strategies (8-9): locutions that contain illocutionary ambiguity: the utterance may or may not be interpreted as a request; the interpretation as a request is strongly aided by the specific context and situation (see e.g. Weizman, 1989, 1993).

Analysis of Reouests The unit of analysis for the request is the utterance supplied by the respondents. The request utterances, however, are oiten embedded in sequences of utterances that may include: alerters like oye/oiga ('hey, ...'), first name or surname, pronouns (tt~), the politeness marker p o t f a v o r ('please'), and combinations of the above; supportive moves: a whole range of utterances that may serve to justify the making of the request (Estoy muy ocupado con ... - ' I ' m very busy with ...'), to obtain a precommitment (gQuiere Ud. hacerme un favor? - ' W i l l you do me a favour?'), to apologize for making the request (Perd6name, pero podrias ... - ' I ' m sorry, but could you ...'), to minimize the imposition of the request (... ayudarme un ratito / u n p o c o - . to help me for a while / a little bit'), or to promise a reward (la semana que viene te ayudard a ti -'next week I'll help you').

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEGIES IN SPANISH Table 2.

Request strategies, according to the criteria described in CCSARP, BlumKulka et al. ( 198917-18, 278-281) . .

strategy, examples 1 imperative

illocutionary force derivable from grammatical mood

Limpia el escritorio - Clean up the desk

2

explicit performative Te pido que limpies el escritorio - I'm

illocutionary intent to make a request is explicitly named by a relevant verb

asking you to clean up the desk 3

hedged performative Tengo que / voy a / quiero pedirte que limpies el escritorio - I have to / am going

cf. 2" the illocutionary verb is modified by some modal verb

to / want to ask you to clean up the desk 4

obligation statement Tienes que / d e b e s limpiar el escritorio -

derivable from the semantic meaning of the locution: obligation

You have to / should clean up the desk 5

want statement Quisiera que limpiaras el escritorio-

I would like you to clean up the desk suggestory formula A v e r si limpias el escritorio / gPor qu(~ no limpias ... ? - How about cleaning up ... ? /

derivable from the semantic meaning of the locution: speaker's desire that the requested act be carried out illocutionary intent is phrased as a suggestion by means of a conventionalized routine formula (conventionally indirect)

Why don't you clean up... ? query preparatory g Te i m p o r t a / p o d r i a s limpiar el escritorio? Would you mind / could you

clean up ...? strong hint Tu escritorio parece una papelera - Your

desk is a bit of a mess

reference to preparatory conditions for the feasibility of the request: hearer's ability, willingness or possibility (conventionally indirect) the locution refers (partially) to relevant elements of the request nonconventionally indirect

mild hint

locution contains no immediately relevant reference to the request; locution is interpretable as a request by specific context / situation haven't you'? / I like your desk nonconventionally indirect Note: For purposes of clarity, the propositional content of the request is held constant in this table (to clean the desk), and the utterances don't stem from real data. Parece que has estado muy ocupado / M e gusta tu escritorio - You've been quite busy,

At this stage, I mainly focussed on the 'head act' o f the request, which is the request proper, the minimal unit in the sequence by which the request can be realized. In the following example ( N S - t y p e l 0 ) alerters and supportive moves are identified, and the head act is isolated:

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ROB LE PAIR Oye Juan,

alerter

Hey, Juan,

a vet" s i t e quedas unas p o c a s horas m6s p a r a cambiar un poco las transparencias,

head act, (strat. type 6: suggestoly formula) with internal modifiers: pocas (a few), un poco (a little bit)

how about staying a IEw hours more, in order to change a little bit the overhead sheets,

que hay un p r o b l e m a con elias,

justificati(m

because there is a problem

gvale ?

increase or maintain hamlony

o.k.?

P o r supuesto te vamos a p a g a r las horas extra,

promise of reward with intensifier: pot" supuesto (of course)

of course, we will pay you tbr the extra hours

As pointed out above, the directness level of the head act does not necessarily reflect the degree of politeness of the whole request utterance. As can be seen in the above example, the role played by internal and external modifiers and their interaction with the strategy type of the head act, and of course variation in intonation and prosody, will influence the heater's judgement about politeness, appropriateness and effectiveness of the request. Issues of interpretation and judgements of request utterances, however, are beyond the scope of this investigation, and will form a part of the larger research project.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION In this section, the findings of the investigation will be discussed. First there will be some general remarks about the overall distribution of strategies used by NS and NNS, followed by a more detailed analysis of conventional indirect strategies. For the interpretation of some of the findings, a few cross-cultural comparisons between Spanish and Dutch will be given to explain some salient differences. Finally, I will demonstrate a relation between the choice of directness level and the situational setting in which the request was formulated.

Overall Distribution of Strategies We expected request strategies chosen by both groups to appear at the three main levels of directness (direct strategies 1-5, conventional indirect strategies 6-7, and nonconventional indirect strategies 8-9). In table 3, one striking result is the absence (<1%) of nonconventional strategies (hints) in the NS requests. A possible explanation could be the nature of the data collection. Respondents could feel a general 'obligation' to produce a request, while a hint is per definition ambiguous: even with strong contextual constraints, a hint might or might not be interpreted as a request. The presence of a considerable number of hints in the NNS data only partially contradict this reasoning, because it appears from these data that learners sometimes did not interpret some specific situations in the way that a request was to be produced, and the vagueness of these responses made us code them as hints (see e.g. Weizman, 1989 for a detailed discussion of the illocutionary and propositional opacity of hints). Nevertheless, the findings confirm what could be expected from previous research, namely that the conventional indirect strategies (7) is by far the most frequently main strategy type. In the great majority of request realisations, both NS and NNS respondents choose a strategy

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by which reference is made to a preparatory condition: hearer's possibility, ability, or willingness to carry out the requested act. As will be shown, however, the degree of similarity between both groups of the particular manifestations of this category is very relative. The salient difference in the use of strategy 6 will be considered when discussing the indirect strategies. Table 3.

Distribution of main strategies used by non-native speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS) of Spanish STRATEGY

1

4

5

TYPE 6

7

8

hnperative Obligation Want Direct strategies Suggesto13, Query Strong hint statement statement tbrmula preparatoly total NNS (%) (n=441)

2,7

2,3

4,1

10,3

NS (%) 7,5 3,1 8,5 (n=426) Note: frequencies < !% are not represented

20,2

77,1 8,9

12,7

70,9

Direct Strategies The total number of relatively direct strategies reveals that this type of strategies is almost twice as frequent in NS responses as in NNS'. The tendency for more direct reactions by NS is even stronger, taking into account that they used an imperative, the most direct of all strategies, almost three times more often as the NNS. A brief cross-linguistic analysis could at least partially explain the difference. Dutch has several particles to mitigate the impositive force that is inherently present in an imperative. Thus, a Dutch speaker can formulate a request like 'give me your pen', in the following ways: • • • • •

Geef Geef Geef Geef Geef

me je pen me even je pen me je pen eens me je pen maar me maar eens even je pen

(baldly) (+particle 'even', literally: for a moment) (+particle 'eens', literally: one time) (+particle 'maar', literally: 'just') (+combination of the above particles)

Since in Spanish these particles simply do not exist, the use of the imperative in Spanish could be perceived by Dutch speakers as rather impolite. The utterances D a m e tu boligrafo 'Give me your pen', or P o n t e a h i - 'Put yourself over there' can be used as direct strategies for a request in Spanish, while Dutch speakers could well perceive these utterances as too impolite orders. One might be tempted to conclude that Spanish people are less polite than Dutch. However, it makes more sense to conclude that the Spanish imperative seems to possess a different pragmatic force than the Dutch equivalent. In this view, it is not surprising that Dutch learners of Spanish might feel inhibited about using the imperative in Spanish frequently.

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ROB LE PAIR Convcntioni~l Indirect Strategies v

As indicated above, both NNS and N S respondents choose a strategy coded as 7 on the scale of increasing indirectness in the great majority of request realisations. This finding confirms the results of previous research, e.g. the CCSARP data, where this strategy type, disregarding the distributions in specific situations, was the most frequently used strategy in four languages. Since the categories 6 and 7 together form the conventional indirect strategies, and because of the great variety of strategies revealed in the data of the two experiments, I reexamined the corpus of utterances of these strategy types in order to establish a more detailed classification, that accounts for similarities and differences of both conventions of means (conventions of semantic devices such as concerning ability, possibility, and willingness), and conventions of form (the actual linguistic form used). This classification is represented in tables 4 (cat. 6) and 5 (cat. 7). Table 4.

Conventional indirectness - frequencies of substrategies within strategy 6 .. (su~estory formula) NNS

NS(%) (n-302)

Examples

9,3

a ver si me a y u d a s ... a v e r si v as t~ ...

Ask for the reason why not

how about reading my report? how about helping me ... ? how about going you ... ?

a ver si lee el infor m e,

a v e r si ...

2,6

g P o r qu~ n o vas ttJ ... ? Why don't you go ...? g P o r qu~2 n o me a y u d a s un p o c o ? Why don't you

help

me a little bit? The remarkable difference between NNS and NS in the use of strategy 6, in the absence versus presence of two conventionalised fixed forms, can be explained by a cross-cultural difference between Spanish and Dutch. The first one, the a v e r si ... ('how about ...') formula has no equivalent in Dutch, at least not as a request, so there is no cross-cultural convention of means. The other, the one by which the reason for not doing the requested act ( g p o r q u ~ n o . . . ) is asked, might be used as a request in Dutch, sharing conventions of means and form with Spanish. However it often carries an implication of irritation and displeasure, and could be interpreted as a complaint instead. A reaction to a g p o r q u ~ n o ... ? question in Spanish will in the types of situations under study normally be something like v a l e . . . . (o.k...), or, in the case of a refusal uo, e s q u e ... (no, you see, ...). An answer in which 'the reason why not' is given could thus be inappropriate, as is clearly shown by the following example, which occured in a conversation lesson of a first year course of Spanish [A] g P o r q u ~ n o te q u e d a s y c e n a m o s j u n t o s ? Why don't you stay and have dinner with me? [B] P o r q u e ... n o sd, ... p o r q u e c r e o q u e r o y a c a s a . Because, ... I don't know .... because I think I'm going home. [B] interpreted [A]'s utterance literally, and understood that she was asked for the reason for not staying. Although she gave a grammatically completely correct answer, she simply missed the intended meaning, a request or an invitation, uttered by a suggestory formula. The result in this case was that the two friends did not have dinner together, while both of them would have liked to, and that [A] saw herself faced with [B]'s refusal of a gentle invitation. T h e miscommunication occurred not because of a purely linguistic failure by [B], it was just

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEGIES IN SPANISH that she was not pragmatically competent enough to interpret the utterance as it was meant. It could even be argued that [B] did indeed understand that she was not really asked for the reason why she did not stay, but that she got confused, supposing that [A] was showing irritation and displeasure, for no apparent reasons. This may have made her doubt about the appropriateness of that interpretation, and for lack of other interpretations, made her resort to the literal one. Table 5. Coventionai indirectness - frequencies of substrate~ies within strategy 7 NNS (%) (n=340)

NS (%) (n=302)

Examples

85,6

45,4

Utterances concerning hearer's ability/possibility to ...

poder -

49,1

12,9

¢;Puedes ayudarme? Can you help me'?

poder + condicional

11,3

30,8

gPodrias ayudarme ? Could you help me?

poder impersonal

22,0

-

3,2

1,7

Total

tener tiempo

~Es posible que me ayuden? Is it possible to help me'? g TJene Ud. tiempo para ayudarme ?

Do you have time to help me? Total

12,5

querer -

8,3

querer + subjuntivo / condicional / imperfecto

2,7

38,3

gQuiere Ud. ayudarme? Do you want to help me9

0,3

e:Quisiera Ud. ayudarme ?

Would you want m help me'?

importar -

5,6

importar + condicional

28,1

estar dispuesto -

Utterances concerning hearer's willingness to ...

gLe importa ayudarme? Do you mind helping me? /,Le importaria ayudarme ? Would you mind

0,6

helping me? dL2~'ttisdispuesto a ayudarme ?

Are you willing to help me'? gEstaria di~ffuesto a ayudarme?

estar dispuesto + condicional

0,3

0,3

Would you be willing to help me'?

molestar

0,6

0,7

g Te molesta ayudarme? Do you mind helping me?

3,3

gSeria tan amable de ... ? Would you be so kind to ...?

ser tan amable

Others Prediction hearer's (future) act

/,Me ayudas / ayudardts ?

1,8

6

Do you help me? / Will you help me?

Whereas strategy 6 comprises (in the NS data) two strategies that are impossible or very rare in Dutch, strategy 7 shows a great variety of conventionalised forms, and conventions of means shared by Dutch and Spanish and manifested by both groups (table 5). But apart from these apparent similarities between both groups, there are some differences that should be noted. Firstly, although both NNS and NS clearly show the conventions of means, asking for the

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664

ROB LE PAIR hearer's ability/possibility (P) and for his willingness (W) to carry out the request, the quantitative differences are remarkable. NNS tend to use almost twice as many P-strategies as NS. Note that the total of P-strategies used by NS, is still less than the first of NNS' P-strategies alone (poder-). Consequently, NNS' W-strategy constitutes less than a third part of the NS' number of W-strategy choices. Secondly, both within the P-strategy and within the W-strategy, the conventions of form are not similar: whereas for NNS poder-, the unmodified form, is by far the preferred form, and impersonalization the second, NS used poder in the conditional tense in almost two of every 3 cases. With respect to the W-strategies, there are not only quantitative differences in the use of the various strategies, but a substantial difference concerning the choice of the verb is also manifested: querer, with or without modification is by far the preferred W-strategy verb for NNS, while NS choose (in 88% of all the W-strategies) the verb molestar, preferably modified by the conditional. The last substrategy mentioned in table 5, the prediction of hearer's act, can be analyzed from a cross-cultural perspective: in Spanish, asking for something, either for objects or for actions to be carried out, can be realized by questions like: gme d~,~jas tu boligrafo? -'do you give me your pencil?', ~me &ls fuego? -'do you give me a light?', ~me cobras? -'do you make the bill?', and gme hates unfavor? -'do you do me a favour?' This type of question can only have the illocutionary force of a request in English when the future tense is used. If, however, the future tense is used, one then asks at the same time for the heater's willingness: 'will you do me a favour'. This dimension of willingness seems to be lacking from the Spanish construction. I included this construction as a substrategy of category 7, despite the apparent absence of reference to a preparatory condition. But there is a reference to a preparatory condition, that of non-obviousness, also found in Haverkate's analysis of this type of illocutions (1994:173-175), and in the studies of Mulder (1993:193) and Blum-Kulka (1989:55). 4 Apart from ability and willingness, Haverkate distinguishes two other preparatory conditions for requests: non-obviousness and reasonableness. Non-obviousness finds its expression in interrogative utterances by which the speaker verifies whether or not the desired situation is or will be a reality. In Dutch, this type of question is very rare as a request, both in the present and in the future tense. This cross-cultural difference could explain the difference of frequencies of the 'predicting heater's act' strategy in our data.

Culture-soecificitv and NNS-characteristics When we try to explain and interpret the findings for strategies 1-5, 6 and 7, we cannot attribute all the differences to cross-cultural differences between Spanish and Dutch. It is also important to bear in mind some possible learner-specific characteristics in the use of facethreatening acts. Either because of a more limited access to the whole range of appropriate utterances, or because of doubts about the appropriateness of certain constructions, learners

4. Blum-Kulka (1989:49), apart fi'om the subcategory 'utterances concerning H's willingness to do X' establishes also a subcategory of 'utterances concerning nonobviousness of compliance'. She includes in this category Spanish utterances like iserian tan amables de acercarme hasta casa? ('would you be kind enough ...'). In my view however, rather than rel~r to nonobviousness, 'H's willingness to do X' is questioned. In the present analysis therefore, this type of utterances is to be Ibund in the subcategol.yof'willingness'.

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEGI-ESIN SPANISH tend to avoid relatively straightforward face-threatening interactions at all costs; this tendency is clearly manifested in the speech act of complaining (which, like requests, are inherently face-threatening) by NNS vs. NS of Hebrew (Olshtain and Weinbach, 1993). Since questions about ability are 'the example par excellence of conventional indirectness' (BlumKulka, 1989), because they maintain a balance between the literal and the intended meaning, they can be considered as the safest strategy for requests. Questions about willingness manifest the same balance, but the face-saving optionality is less, given that it is less comfortable for the addressee to deny willingness than to deny ability or possibility. The 'prediction hearer's act' strategy seems the less indirect of the strategies of category 7, because this strategy can only be interpreted as a request. %

100 NNS III NS ..................................................................85,6 80

60

38,3

40

20 12,

10,7

6

7 PFA

Substrategies:

.....

7W

7P

> indirectness

Fig. 1. Distribution (%) of strategies 6 (suggestory fonnula) and 7 (n=338). 7PFA= predicting hearer's future act; 7W= reference to hearer's willingness; 7P= reference to hearer's ability/possibility. Consequently, it could be argued that within the total of substrategies comprised in categories 6 and 7, the levels of increasing indirectness, coinciding with increasing safeness, are as represented in fig. 1. This would reinforce the assumption that learners tend to use more face-saving strategies than native speakers. Further investigation is required to find out to what extent learner-specific effects on the one hand, and cross-cultural differences on the other, are responsible for the observed differences. Even if there is a linear relation between the degree of indirectness and the amount of negative politeness (which seems to be doubtful), we cannot conclude that the Dutch NNS used proportionally more politeness in their conventional indirect requests than NS, since it could

665

666

ROB LE PAIR be argued that within the W-strategies, the NS used more face-saving utterances than the NNS: g& importa ...? / gle importaria ...? (do you mind ...? / would you mind ...?) might be perceived as more polite than gquiere(s)...? (do you want to ...?). It appears that within the similarities in conventions of means there are differences in conventions of form; these differences constitute important nuances when interpreting the comparisons between NNS data and NS data. A same kind of reasoning is valid with respect to the P-strategies: as pointed out above, asking for ability/possibility is in general a more face-saving strategy than asking for willingness, but again we should be cautious in concluding that the NNS would use twice as much face-saving strategies than the NS, since within this P-subcategory, we can assume that the NS proportion of 30,8% poder + condicional represents, at least partially, a 'compensation' for the NNS proportion of 49,1% poder-. In terms of face-saving politeness, therefore, the overall difference in this subcategory (NNS: 85,6% vs. NS: 45,4%) should be relativised.

Situational Setting and Choice of Strategy One of the starting points of this research was to investigate the relative importance of the socio-cultural variables in the choice of particular strategies. Since we are interested in both intracultural variation and cross-cultural variation, and in intercultural consequences, we will intend to answer the following questions in the larger research project (cfr. RESEARCH PROJECT, (1), above): 1.

2. 3.

are there any differences in levels of directness across situations, and if so, does this hold for the production of both NS Dutch and NS Spanish? (Dutch and Spanish situational variation); are there differences across the two cultures (NS Dutch and NS Spanish) within the same type of situations? (cross-cultural variation); to what extent can these findings explain the NNS Spanish request realization by Dutch speakers of Spanish?

Data from Dutch requests produced by NS of Dutch are needed to answer questions 2. and 3., and part of question 1. Within the scope of this investigation, however, there is also some situational variation within the Spanish NS data. Although further statistical analysis is needed to investigate the influence of individual variables and the interaction of the three variables, it appears that the Spanish speakers were rather sensitive to at least one sociocultural factor, i.e. social distance. Table 6 and fig. 2 illustrate that more direct strategies have been chosen in Sl-situations (characterized by a low social distance), while in S2-situations (higher social distance) more indirect strategies are manifested. Category 7 has been divided into two groups: one considered to be relatively direct (7A), and one assumed to be the most indirect (7B). The criterion for this distinction has been whether a conditional tense or subjunctive was used to inquire about the preparatory condition (podria(,s), quisiera(s), le/te molestaria, seria tan amable .... etc.). If a conditional or subjunctive was used, the head act was coded as 7B. The remaining constructions were coded as 7A.

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEGIES IN SPANISH

667

Frequencies of strategies used by NS ordered according to the social distance (SD; S l=low SD, S l=hil~h SD, n=426)

Table 6.

Conventional indirect

1

2

3

4

5

Direct total 1-5

SI

25

1

3

10

16

55

26

41

92

S2

7

0

1

3

20

31

12

33

136

Direct

7A

7B

136

140

$1

1B

$2 ....-e.....

120

/ /

100 i

80i

/

60 -55

40-3~ Q°°'"°°-..,,,,

20 0

6

~

i

:

92

/

/ 4:,

°°,,°°°°°°°°°°°--

.................12 .............. 1

J .......................

.L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1-5

6

7A

direct < . . . . . .

Strategy type . . . . . .

_1__

7B > indirect

Fig. 2. Distribution of strategies (n=426) used by NS in situational

contexts in which SD is low (S l) vs. high ($2).

The fact that in the contextual distribution of strategies of Dutch NNS this tendency was not detected, may have been due to the general tendency in this group for the 'safest' conventional indirect strategy, by which hearer's possibility to carry out the act is referred to. Again, the data for Dutch might show whether and to what extent there are shared characteristics or culture-specific variation.

668

ROB LE PAIR CONCLUSION AND FINAL OBSERVATIONS

The starting point of this study was intercultural communication competence in Spanish, focussing on the use of politeness strategies in requests, as one aspect of appropriate and effective language use. Since two interrelated dimensions have to be distinguished - crosscultural differences in NS language use between Spanish and Dutch, and interlanguage pragmatic competence of Dutch NNS of S p a n i s h - , the final objectives could only partially be reached, because the data concerning request production in Dutch by N S of Dutch are not yet available. Despite this limitation, some interesting conclusions could be drawn from the comparison of learners' and native speakers' requests in Spanish. Our data show that Spanish NS are more direct in their requesting, using about two times more direct strategies than Dutch NNS, manifested by higher frequencies of the imperative, obligation statement, and want statement. The findings also show that Dutch learners of Spanish have considerable access to conventional strategies used by NS. This supports the assumption that to a certain extent, conventional indirectness is a kind of strategy that is shared by both cultures. But the data call for a relativistic position to be adopted in this respect: as soon as a distinction is made between conventions of means (the kind of conventional strategy used), and conventions of forms (the specific forms chosen for particular utterances), several differences between the two groups of speakers become manifest. With respect to the conventions of means, there would seem to be conventions shared by the two cultures mainly in the extensive use of utterances questioning preparatory conditions such as the ability and willingness of the addressee to carry out the requested act. Suggestory formulae are not similar in both cultures, and Dutch NNS show only a limited access to this strategy type. The same tendency has been found for utterances concerning the preparatory condition of nonobviousness (predicting hearer's future act). Similar conventions of forms appear less frequently: NNS question hearer's ability much more frequently than NS, and hearer's willingness less frequently than NS. Furthermore, the forms used within the willingness strategy differ to such an extent that we should argue for culture-specificity rather than universality. The findings exhibit interesting differences in learner's interlanguage in comparison with NS' behaviour. Such differences seem to focus on the fact that learners attempt to sound less offensive, because their overall choice of realisation patterns is closer to the less face-threatening and safer end of the scale. Finally, to summarize the findings on the contextual distribution of request strategies, at this stage, social distance is one of the socio-cultural factors to which Spanish NS seemed rather sensitive, using more face-saving strategies in situations of a relatively high social distance. The comparison with Dutch NS production of the same requests will specify to what extent there are shared characteristics or culture-specific variation between the two groups.

NS" AND NNS" REQUEST STRATEGIES IN SPANISH As has been pointed out, the role of culture-specificity and that of learner-specific effects has only partially been accounted for. A more exact analysis of these factors was beyond the scope of this investigation. The same goes for the evaluation by NS of Spanish of the communicative effect that differences and deviations have. In the larger investigation, I will take these aspects into account, distinguishing two types of rating tasks: one that concerns the estimates of the socio-cultural variables as they appear in the descriptions of the DCT (relative authority, social distance, speaker's right in making the request, hearer's degree of obligation to carry out the request, etc.); another task will account for NS' evaluative judgements about the appropriateness and effectiveness of the request utterances in Spanish made by Dutch NNS. At a more theoretical level, cognitive approaches to interlanguage pragmatic competence could constitute an inspiring complementation for this line of applied research. Intercultural communication competence appears to be a very complex matter, but after all, would it not be nice also for a NNS of Spanish to be able to use or interpret appropriately and effectively a piropo like ivete por la sombra/ ... que los bombones por el sol se derriten, without danger of miscommunication, or face-threat?

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ROB LE PAIR Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer. Second Lcmguage Research, 8, 3,203-223. Kasper, G. and S. Blum-Kulka (1993). Interlanguage Pragmatics: An Introduction. In: Interlanguage Pragmatics (G. Kasper and S. Blum-Kulka, Eds.), pp. 3-17. Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford. Koester, J., R.L. Wiseman and J.A. Sanders (1993). Multiple perspectives of intercultural communication competence. In: h~tercultural Communication Competence - htternational and Intercultural Commuuication Annual (R.L. Wiseman and J. Koester, Eds.), XVII, pp. 3-15. Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness; or, minding your p's and q's. In: Papers from the 9th Regioual Meeting of the Chicago Liu~dstic Society, pp. 292-305. Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago. Leech, G. (1983). Principles ofPragmatics. Longman, Essex. Lustig, M.W. and B.H. Spitzberg (1993). Methodological issues in the study of intercultural communication competence. In: httercullural Communicatiou Competence - htteruational and hltercultural Commuuication Anuual (R.L. Wiseman and J. Koester, Eds.), XVII, pp. 153-167. Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Mulder, G. (1993). '/,Por que no coges el telefono?': acerca de los actos de habla indirectos. In: Dialogos Hi,sp6nicos, I_Z2 Xproximacioues t'ragmaliug#isticas al E,spahol (H. Haverkate, K. Hengeveld and G. Mulder, Eds.), pp. 181-207. Rodopi, Amsterdam Atlanta.

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