Yes, I don't understand: Yes, no and European-Polynesian miscommunication in New Zealand

Journal

of Pragmatics

20 (1993) 163-188

163

North-Holland

Yes, I don’t understand: Yes, no and European-Polynesian miscommunication New Zealand

in

Chris Lane Discussions by non-linguists of causes of miscommunication between New Zealanders of European and Polynesian origin have highlighted a number of apparent linguistic causes. The most frequently reiterated claims are that miscommunication arises from differences in the use of yes and no in response to questions of various kinds, especially questions containing negatives. These claims are evaluated with reference to conversational and courtroom data. The specific claims are not confirmed, although related phenomena are found to occur. Yes and no can be ambiguous following questions containing negatives, but the problematic question forms are negative declaratives and mixed-polarity complex forms. Such ambiguous yes’s and no’s are used by European native English speakers as well as Polynesian second-language speakers of English, and the problem is usually easily repaired. The main problem for Polynesian second-language speakers appearing in court was found to be a general one of difficulty comprehending the lawyers’ questions. The main problem with yes and no is that they disguise misinterpretations and failures of comprehension. Whether or not the ‘negative question problem’ is a major cause of miscommunication, it is widely accepted as such in New Zealand, and can be considered to be a stereotype about European-Polynesian communication. Possible reasons for the development of this stereotype are put forward. Consideration is given to the more general question of how instances of European-Polynesian miscommunication can be explained, and it is argued that explanations need to go beyond a focus on systematic differences between first languages or between varieties of English. It is necessary to take into account the social and cultural context of communication, second language acquisition phenomena, performance factors, and psycholinguistic processes, particularly comprehension.

1. Reported problems with yes and no

One of the commonest claims in the non-linguistic literature on EuropeanPolynesian communication in New Zealand is that problems arise because

Correspondence to: C. L. Lane, Departments of Linguistics Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.

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Elsevier Science Publishers

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C. L. Lane 1 Yes, I don’1 understand

Polynesians1 use yes and no differently from questions, particularly negative, tag, alternative 1.1. Requests for information

containing

Europeans* in responding and embedded questions.

to

negatives

The most frequently reported problem arises from the European asking a question containing a negative. The Polynesian is reported to respond with a yes or no in such a way that the European understands the opposite meaning to that intended. The statements of this problem vary in terms of the syntactic forms of the requests for information given as illustrative examples, and of the explanation given for the problem. The booklet Understanding Polynesians (Vocational Training Council 1975a) cites a negative interrogative as an example, effectively making a claim that language transfer is involved: “A considerable amount of misunderstanding, and perhaps even injustice, arises from the difference in meaning of the word ‘yes’ in Polynesian languages as compared with European languages. For example, if a Polynesian is asked the following question, ‘Did you not see Joe yesterday? and he replies ‘yes’, he means that he did nof see Joe yesterday. In other words, by saying ‘yes’ he agrees with what you have said.” (Vocational Training Council 1975a: 1I-12).

The anthropologists Metge and Kinloch (1978: 14-15) give examples involve negative declaratives with positive tags:

which

“Native speakers of English also have a habit of asking negative (and double negative) questions that require a fair bit of unravelling before answering: for instance, ‘You don’t want that, do you?; ‘You don’t want to lose your coat, do you?‘; ‘You don’t have a brother, do you?. To complicate matters, Pakeha ideas of whether to answer such questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are often the exact reverse of what comes naturally to Maoris or Samoans. A Pakeha would say: ‘No, I don’t want that’, ‘No, I don’t want to lose my coat’, and ‘Yes, I do have a brother’. where Maoris and Samoans would say: ‘Yes, I don’t want that’, ‘Yes, I don’t want to lose my coat’, and ‘No, I do have a brother’, giving assent or dissent to the whole proposition.“3

r This term is often used loosely in New Zealand as a synonym for ‘Pacific Islanders’, that is, immigrants to New Zealand from Pacific Island countries, and their descendents. These groups originate mainly from (in approximate descending order of population in New Zealand) Western Samoa, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue, Tokelau and Fiji. As a linguistic or anthropological term, ‘Polynesian’ includes New Zealand Maori(s) and excludes Fijian(s). According to the 198 I census, ‘Pacific Island Polynesians’ made up approximately 2% of New Zealand’s 3.2 million population. and about 5% of the population of the Auckland urban area, reaching 50% in some suburbs in Manukau (south Auckland). * The term ‘European’ is generally used in New Zealand for (descendents of) immigrants of European (mainly British) origin, who make up approximately 85% of the population. A synonym that is widely used is the Maori word ‘Pakeha’. In the context of relations between Europeans and Pacific Islanders, the Tongan/Samoan word ‘Palangi’ (in Tongan orthography. equivalently ‘Palagi’ in Samoan orthography) is often used. 3 There is disagreement about Maori usage: The Vocational Training Council (1975a: 12) in contrast to Metge and Kinloch, claims that it is the same as that of Pakehas.

C. L. Lane 1 Yes, I don’t understand

165

The publication A Handbook for Teachers of Pacljic Island Children (Pacific Islanders’ Educational Resource Centre 1977: 25) is more circumspect in its claims : “Negative questions should be avoided when you are seeking information. If you ask an island child, ‘Haven’t you done that? he may reply ‘Yes’, meaning that he has not done it as this is the normal way of answering in his language. In Polynesian languages the answers are the reverse of those in English, and in any case, the construction is not common. As a result when you get your answer you will not know whether he is following the Polynesian pattern or whether he has picked up the usual English pattern of answering. At a later point you may want to introduce this deliberately to teach the English pattern or to find out if the child has picked it up for himself.”

These reports agree in finding that problems are caused by Pakeha native English speakers using questions containing negatives and/or tags, but the examples given by different authors single out different syntactic classes of request for information and different modes of response, so that it is difficult to get the problem in clear focus. Vocational Training Council (1975a: 11-12; 1975b: 20), Marsack (1961: 119-120), and Edgeley and McDonald (1984: 23) agree that Pacific Islanders use yes to affirm the proposition queried in a polar interrogative inclusive of any negative. Metge and Kinloch (1978: 1415), State Services Commission (1981: 8), Edgeley and McDonald (1984: 23), and Tate (1970, Book 10, Lesson 41, p. 70) in regard to tag-questions, state that Polynesians use yes to affirm negative propositions, but Metge and Kinloch have them responding to the declarative clause, whereas State Services Commission and Edgeley and McDonald have them responding to the final tag, while Tate has them responding to either. The questions in Benton’s (1966: 30) examples are negative declaratives. 1.2. Alternative questions

Metge and Kinloch (1978: 15) also report containing or result in difficulties:

that requests for information

“Double-barrelled questions also cause trouble. To the question ‘Do you want an apple or an orange? the Pakeha teacher expects a specific answer: ‘An apple please.’ The Samoan child is more likely to answer simply ‘Yes’, meaning he wants one or the other, and wait for the teacher to elucidate which by a further question. The housing officer who asks ‘Do you want this house or that? and gets the answer ‘Yes’ is likely to assume that his client is indifferent to which of the two he is allocated, which may not in fact be the case.”

State Services Commission (1981: 8) also reports this problem. 1.3. Yes as acknowledgement

Kinloch (Metge and Kinloch

1978: 55-56) reports the use by at least one

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C.L. Lane 1 Yes, I don’t undersrand

Samoan speaker of yes as a way of acknowledging before proceeding to answer it:

a request

for information

“One form of verbal expression causing miscommunication is a positive response, ‘Yes’, to a question. The answer follows a pause. Miscommunication arises when the questioner fills the pause, taking ‘Yes’ to be the answer to the question. ‘Yes’. however, is no more than an acknowledgement that the question has been heard. For instance, 1 asked: ‘Will you keep on trying to have a child? To which Bessie replied: ‘Yeah (pause). No, 1’11stop after this because I want to fix up the house.’ 1 asked: ‘If your father becomes a marai it’s going to cost you a lot of money isn’t it? ‘Yes. (pause) I don’t know, I’ll have to wait and see when the time comes.“‘4

1.4. Embedded Marsack lems :

interrogatives

(1961: 120-121)

observes

that embedded

interrogatives

cause prob-

“Practising in Western Samoa shows up another habit of New Zealand lawyers in the examination of witnesses: that of the double-barrelled question. ‘Do you know if petitioner is separated from his wife? ‘Can you say if Siaosi is a schoolboy?’ Counsel in these instances requires to know if petitioner is living with his wife, or if Siaosi is still at school. The questions however are framed not in that way but in the way of asking the witness if he has knowledge of the subject; and it is in the latter sense that the Samoan witness answers the question, literally as put. If he knows the facts as to the cohabitation, or as to whether Siaosi is attending school, he will reply ‘yes’ in each case. But it may well be that, to the witness’s knowledge, the parties are living happily together. or Siaosi has long since left school to go and work for the Government. So Counsel is faced with the necessity of asking further questions to elicit the truth. Here is an actual example from a recent case before the High Court: Do you know if Paulo is related to the defendant? Yes. Do you mean that Paulo is related to him? - No. Then Paulo is not related to him? - Yes. Counsel, in desperation, at last asks the question he should have asked in the first place. Is Paulo related to the defendant? - No. The first answer means yes, I know. The second means no, I do not mean he is related. The third, on the yes-we-have-no-bananas principle, it is true that Paulo is not related to him. The fourth indicates the truth that could have been ascertained by means of the first question, if it had been properly put. Another actual example: Can you say if the work was finished? - Yes. You mean, you know whether the work was finished or not? - Yes. Was the work finished? - No.”

Note that the third question declarative.

in Marsack’s

High Court

example

is a negative

4 Gumperz et al. (1979: 12) similarly report the use of yes and no in an acknowledging function as a source of misunderstanding between Asian-English and English-English speakers: ‘In a conversation, an Asian-English speaker may say “yes” as an interjection simply to indicate “I’ve “No” is used in the same way. If these interjections are heard you.“; not to indicate agreement. interpreted as agreement or disagreement by an English-English speaker, there will be serious misunderstanding’.

C. L. Lane / Yes, I don? understand

1.5. Yes/no equivalents in Pa+

167

languages

Polynesian languages and Fijian clearly do differ from English in their use of affirmative and negative particles. For example, Churchward’s grammar of Tongan (Churchward 1985: 296) has: “ ‘IO. Yes. (It is as you say). . . . In answering a negative question, Tongans use ‘io where we say ‘no’. Na’e ‘ikai te ke ‘ah? Didn’t you go? ‘IO, na’e ‘ikai te u ‘ah. No, I didn’t go. Grasp the fact that ‘io really means ‘it is as you say’, and it will be seen that this is quite logical.”

Similar glosses are given for corresponding particles in Maori by Williams (1975: 1) and Biggs (1981: 127), in Samoan by Pratt (1878: 29) and in Fijian by Schiitz and Komaitai (197 1: 3 1). Note that in the languages referred to here, there are no constructions that clearly correspond to polar interrogatives or interrogative tags in English. Requests for information frequently differ from assertions only in intonation; or they may have an additional ‘interrogative’ particle, for instance, in Samoan, clause-initial pee/p0 ‘whether, or’, or clause-final ‘ea (Marsack 1962: 61-62); in Fijian, post-verbal beka ‘perhaps’; in Maori, predicate-final raanei.

This information on Pacific languages clearly lends considerable plausibility to the claims of authors referred to above (at least in relation to ‘negative questions’); but to evaluate these claims, it is necessary to investigate the use of yes and no by native English speakers. Wolfson (1982) points out the need for detailed research on native speaker discourse patterns, as a basis for the analysis of the discourse of second-language speakers, since intuitions and assumptions about native speaker usage are often incorrect. 5

2. Yes and no in English conversation The reports quoted in the previous section imply that yes and no are problematic for Polynesians, but not for Europeans, and that for native speakers of English, yes and no have clearcut roles in conversation, and clearly contrast with one another. In fact, the functions of yes and no are

d I prefer the term ‘second-language speaker’ to the more commonly used ‘non-native speaker’ or ‘second-language learner’, because ‘speaker’ emphasises the role of interactant, and ‘secondlanguage’ seems a more positive term than ‘non-native’, since it alludes to the individual’s (incipient) bilingualism. It also provides an abbreviation - SLS - which is more clearly distinguished from NS (for ‘native speaker’) than in NNS (for ‘non-native speaker’). ‘NS-SLS communication’ can then be used as a convenient abbreviation for ‘communication between native and second-language speakers’, as opposed to ‘NS-NS communication’ for ‘communication among native speakers’.

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C. L. Lane 1 Yes, I don’1 understand

multifarious, and their patterns of use are complex. Furthermore, their functions are often difficult to grasp, and in certain circumstances yes and no are practically interchangeable. A number of ‘discourse particles’ or ‘interjections’ have been studied in depth in recent years: there have been studies of well by Svartvik (1980) Owen (1981), Carlson (1984) and Schourup (1985); of you know by &tman (1981), Schourup (1985) and Holmes (1986); and of OKby Merritt (1980) and Condon (1986). These studies have indicated that these particles are primarily markers of discourse structure and/or sociolinguistic markers of such things as the degree of formality of the situation or the relationship between speaker and listeners, that each particle has a range of sociolinguistic and/or discourse functions, that the functions are not always clear, and that each particle has a number of intonational variants, which often have somewhat different meanings or functions. Yes and no also display these characteristics, as is evident from studies by Bald (1980), Coulthard and Brazil (1981), and Stubbs (1983: 1 l&120). These studies are all concerned with British English. They are also somewhat restricted, both in terms of the functions of yes and no considered, and in terms of the linguistic environments in which they occur. Thus it has been necessary to extend their observations by studying the use of yes and no in New Zealand English data.6 In order to do this, I have started with the hypothesis that yes and no broadly indicate a position or attitude with respect to preceding or possibly following speech, and that their functions include what we would ordinarily call giving an answer, or expressing agreement or disagreement. Fortunately, yes and no are very often contained in extended utterances, and by making the reasonable assumption that such yes’s and no’s are congruent with the accompanying speech, it is possible to narrow down their meanings. 2.1. Yes and no in response to assertions

and requests for information

Perhaps the most familiar use of yes or no is in an answer to a request information (‘question’) or in agreeing or disagreeing with an assertion.

for

6 Most of the data to be referred to in this section consist of audio tape recordings and transcripts of informal conversations and broadcast (radio and television) interviews, collected under the supervision of Frances Syder and Andrew Pawley in the early 1970’s. The Syder/Pawley corpus includes Australian and British English speakers as well as speakers of New Zealand English, but I have restricted my attention to those interactions involving New Zealand English speakers. The informal conversations were mostly recorded in flats shared by groups of university students. The sample of conversations and interviews I have used is approximately 25,000 words in length. I have supplemented this material with occasional fragments of radio interviews that 1 have unsystematically collected and transcribed. I have also used examples from the corpus of recordings and transcripts of courtroom interaction which is described later.

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C. L. Lane / Yes, I don’t understand

However, I want to distinguish also a use of ment of an assertion or request for information. of the initiation without clearly committing the to an answer, or to agreement or disagreement.

yes or no as an acknowledgeThis indicates an acceptance speaker one way or the other For example:’

(1) Radio Interview 1 positive interrogative request for information followed by yes ‘acknowledgement’ C: Governments’ activities - are tied to the state of the economy - do people care too much about the South - when - their own government is going through a period of recession - their taxes are high? + S: yes [low volume, low pitch, falling tone] - I think one of the great insights - of the last ten years - is that the developed countries who are of course incredibly wealthy - have come to understand that they need the countries of the South [. . .] A yes or yeah can even be used as an acknowledgement indicating disagreement, as in the following example:

before a no

(2) Conversation I T: the thing to do would be to roll about half a dozen you know and and stick them in a packet + J: yeah - no - I think you’d lose a lot of the pleasure then T: yeah These examples indicate that native English speakers use yes (at least occasionally) as an acknowledgement in just the way described by Kinloch, and so potential for the kind of misunderstanding predicted by Kinloch exists in interaction among native speakers. Pacific Islanders may be more likely to be misunderstood if their intonation (or other prosodic features) in saying yes, or the length of pause between yes and the rest of the response, are nonnative-like. However, I do not have sufficient tape-recorded data involving Pacific Island speakers to test this. Another type of response that I want to distinguish is an objection. The few examples I have involve no. This response, rather than being a direct disagreement, rejects an assumption in the initiation, or objects to the initiation as a misrepresentation of the responder’s point of view.

’ In the transcripts, - indicates utterance of particular interest.

a pause of less than a second,

and an arrow

indicates

a line or

170

2.2. Responses

C. L. Lane 1 Yes, I don’1 understand

to alternative

questions

In my data, responses to alternative following example is typical:

questions

often

begin

with

no. The

(3) Conversation 18 alternative question - no (eating snake) Bob: mm - did you try much or just a little bit? -+ Sue: no [stressed, vowel lengthened] ~ quite a bit ~ I mean I had a sort of whole meal of it 2.3. Yes and no in response to negative

initiations

The use of yes and no in responses to negative initiations is a complex area. Pope (1976: 11 l-l 12), using introspective data, notes in particular that a bare yes is ambiguous in response to a negative interrogative or negative declarative with positive tag. Crystal and Davy (1975: lOl), Bald (1980) and Coulthard and Brazil (1981) come to similar conclusions in regard to responses to declaratives, finding in particular that native speakers use both yes and no to agree to (or acknowledge) declaratives containing a negative, and in Bald’s case, that a bare yes is insufficient to disagree with a negative declarative. The following example contains a yes clearly used to agree with a negative proposition : 8 witness Q. S. (4) Trial 5. Defendant S. G. cross-examining negative declarative request for information followed by yes ‘answer’ Defendant: Would I be correct in saying that 100 passed you, not running. Witness : No. Defendant: You wouldn’t agree to that. + Witness : Yes I wouldn’t agree to that.

50

a In quoting from trial transcripts, all names of participants have been disguised. Witnesses and defendants have been given a pair of fictitious initials representing given and family names. Judges, prosecutors and defence counsel have been referred to as J, P and D respectively, plus a distinguishing lower case letter. All other details that might identify the trials and participants such as addresses and other locations, dates, makes of vehicle, etc. have been disguised. In (4), Q.S. appears to be a European native English speaker that is, there is no indication in the transcript that Q.S. is non-European or that he is a second-language speaker of English.

C.L. Lane 1 Yes, I don’t understand

171

I follow Crystal and Davy (1975: 100-101) and Pope (1976) in seeing two main patterns here. The more general one is one in which yes and no mark polarity, that is, they can be paraphrased as positive and negative versions, respectively, of the questioned or asserted proposition. Or if you prefer, yes and no convey the same kinds of response as if there were no negative in the initiation. Note that this pattern carries over to acknowledgements. We could call these ‘polar’ yes and no. The other pattern has yes marking agreement to or acknowledgement of a negative declarative, inclusive of the negative. I call this ‘non-polar’ yes. Clearly, following negative declaratives, yes and no are potentially ambiguous. There are two kinds of cues which may be used to tell which is which. Firstly, such a yes or no is often accompanied by an elaboration which makes the response explicit. Bald reports that when a yes is used to contradict a negative declarative, it is always accompanied by an elaboration, and my examples also follow that pattern. The other cue is intonation. Pitch height and movement seem often, but not always, to distinguish what I hear as acknowledgements from the other functions. The acknowledgements almost all have level or falling tone, and are uttered in the low to mid pitch range, and they are usually spoken softly. The other types of response have falling, rising, or falling-rising tone, with their peak in the mid to very high pitch range, and are spoken with normal volume, or stressed. Some yes’s and no’s still end up being ambiguous in context, and this is one way that yes and no can cause at least temporary confusion. (5) negative declarative contingent query followed by ambiguous yeah H: do you want the bathroom? C: no H: you don’t? --* C: yeah [mid pitch range, falling tone, meaning ‘I don’t’] H: [surprised] you do? C: no I don’t 2.4. The reference of yes and no Finally, I want to look at the question of what yes and no refer to. So far I have tried to choose examples in which a yes or no can be confidently related back to a single positive or negative clause. In practice however, yes and no often follow utterances containing a number of clauses, some of which may have positive polarity, and some of which may be negative. In some cases, it may be necessary to see a yes or no as referring to the sequence of clauses as a whole.

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C. L. Lane / Yes, I don’t understand

In other cases yes and no appear to indicate polarity with respect to just one of the preceding clauses. This may be a main clause, or a subordinate clause following a main clause. Thus confusion can arise over which clause a yes or no refers back to, as in the following extract: (6) Trial 3. Defence councel DC. cross-examining witness A. Q. Counsel : I further put it to you that in fact you did not observe the Kingswood stop completely after the accident. No. [ = “I did not observe it stop” or “I disagree”?] + Witness: Counsel : The next thing you saw was the Kingswood going down F. Road. Witness : Yes, that is correct. Counsel : Just so that we have your evidence absolutely clear is it correct that you came to a stop, you made what investigation that was necessary to your vehicle and occupants, then you looked around and the Kingswood was still running down the hill and then you could not say on oath that the vehicle actually stopped at that point? No I would not like to say it actually came stationary. + Witness: Counsel : And I further put it to you that you could not say on oath that it reversed away from the back of your car? -+ Witness: Well, he may have been able to turn his wheels, yes. The first no is ambiguous because it might refer to either finite clause in the question. The second no that I have arrowed seems to be a response to the last two clauses of the question, i.e. “you could not say . ..“. even though they are strictly subordinate to “is it correct” back at the beginning. The final yes could refer back to the whole of the preceding question (probably the best way to look at it), or to either of the first two clauses, and could also be seen as including within its scope the preceding part of the response, which modifies the interpretation of the question.9 Thus the message conveyed by a yes or no is often not clearcut. It may be difficult to tell whether it is intended as an answer, agreement/disagreement, acknowledgement or objection. A yes following a negative declarative may be ambiguous as to whether it is ‘polar’ or ‘non-polar’. And it may be unclear

9 There is a close parallel here with number concord in English sentences (see Quirk et al. 1985: 757-765) where there is conflict in usage between making the finite verb agree with the head noun of the subject noun phrase (the ‘principle of notional concord’) and making the verb agree with the nearest preceding noun phrase (the ‘principle of proximity’). Yes and no may be governed by a kind of notional concord principle which requires the response to be relatable directly to the highest clause in the preceding sentence, in conflict with a kind of proximity principle, which allows the response to refer to the most recently uttered clause(s).

C. L. Lane / Yes. I don’t understand

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which clause or set of clauses, or even what unstated proposition, a yes or no refers to. These problems can often be glossed over in conversation among native English speakers, but occasionally they can cause noticeable confusion. Therefore considerable care needs to be taken to demonstrate clearly that misunderstandings in European-Polynesian interaction arise from differences between Europeans and Polynesians in rules for yes and no, rather than resulting from some of the inherent ambiguities and indeterminacies surrounding the use of these two particles by speakers of English. In fact, the data used in this study provide no evidence that ethnic differences in the use of yes and no lead to misunderstandings in interethnic interaction.

3. European-Polynesian miscommunication: The questioning of Pacific Island witnesses in Auckland courts 3.1. Data Data for comparing European-Polynesian interaction with interaction among Europeans consisted of transcripts and recordings of 24 trials in the District Court and the High Court at Auckland. The trials are numbered 1-21, because they arose from 21 sets of charges. For Trials l-10, which took place between 1970 and 1983, the only data consist of the official court stenographers’ transcripts. For Trials 11-21, which took place during a two-week period in 1983, the data consist of tape-recordings, observations and official transcripts. lo The judges were all Europeans, except for one of Indian ancestry. The prosecutors in Trials l-5 and 7-10 were not identified in any way (other than as ‘the prosecutor’). The prosecutors who could be identified were all Europeans. The defence counsel were all Europeans. The ethnic identity of many of the Pacific Island witnesses and defendants was clear because they were explicitly asked in court about their ethnicity, language or country of origin. For other witnesses and defendants a confident judgement of ethnicity could be made on the basis of their names, appearance and other identifying information. Pacific Islanders appeared as witnesses in 11 of the trials. For 9 of these 11 trials, only transcript data is available. There were 19 Pacific witnesses (13 of

lo I am grateful to the two lawyers who allowed me access to transcripts from their files (subject to a guarantee of anonymity). I am also grateful to Auckland Chief District Court judges Blackwood and Nicholson, and to the presiding judges in each trial, for giving me permission to observe and record in their courtrooms. I was greatly assisted in this fieldwork by the Auckland District Court Registrar’s staff, particularly Bog Kelly, Ika Tameifuna, and Cynthia Singh and her team of stenographers.

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Samoan origin, 3 Cook Islanders, 2 Tongans and I Niuean). There were 84 European witnesses, 4 Maori witnesses and two witnesses of unknown ethnicity. Of the Pacific Island witnesses, 12 showed evidence of non-native proficiency in English, in that their speech contained non-native-like features and/ or they were involved in misunderstandings with counsel or judges. 3.2. Misunderstandings

and miscommunication

This paper is concerned centrally with misunderstandings and miscommunication, and so it is appropriate to clarify the meanings of these terms. As I understand and use the term, a misunderstanding arises when a listener makes a definite interpretation of the meaning and/or pragmatic force of an utterance, and that interpretation is significantly different from the meaning or force intended by the speaker. Miscommunication, on the other hand, refers to any failure to communicate effectively, and it is difficult to set limits on the scope of the term. Misunderstandings are just one kind of miscommunication. More generally, if the message a speaker wishes to convey is not recognised by its intended recipient(s), then miscommunication has occurred, whether it results from misunderstanding or from failure to hear or from inability to comprehend. Significant disturbances to such aspects of discourse as turn-taking, cohesion and coherence can also be included under the rubric of ‘miscommunication’. For a detailed discussion of the notion of miscommunication see Coupland et al. (1991). 3.3. Repetitive

qustioning

It is common, at least in cross-examinations, for counsel to repeat a question, if not word-for-word, then in a rephrased form. It is also common for questioners to use contingent queries (Garvey 1977; 1979)ll following a witness’s response. I call such behaviour ‘repetitive questioning’, and I use ‘reinitiation’ as a cover term for a repeated or rephrased question or a contingent query. When repetitive questioning occurs, the resulting discourse contains ‘repetitive questioning sequences’ (RQSs), consisting of the questioner’s initiations and re-initiations and the witness’s responses. 1 have discussed repetitive questioning sequences at length elsewhere (in Lane 1988, 1990, 1992 and, as ‘question cycles’, in Lane 1985).

I1 This type of utterance is probably more commonly referred to as a ‘request for clarification’, but I prefer Garvey’s term because it makes fewer assumptions about the utterance‘s function. It allows, for instance, that the function may not be to request clarification, but rather to express interest, surprise, disbelief, disagreement, etc.

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Passages in the transcripts which were identified intuitively as involving ‘trouble’, i.e. conflict or communication difficulty, were almost always RQSs. The longer the repetitive questioning sequence, the more severe the conflict or communication difficulty seems. Thus it is reasonable to take the occurrence of extended repetitive questioning sequences as an easily recognised clue to serious conflict or communication difficulty between questioner and witness. I make a somewhat arbitrary distinction between ‘long’ and ‘short’ repetitive questioning sequences, reserving the term ‘long repetitive questioning sequences’ for ones in which there are at least three re-initiations of the original question - in other words, a ‘long’ repetitive questioning sequence contains a minimum of four exchanges. The long repetitive questioning sequences that occur in the cross-examinations of native English speakers are of two types: those involving direct challenges, in which the cross-examining counsel persists with the ‘same’ question in spite of clear and consistent answers, and those involving hedged responses. In the latter type of repetitive questioning sequence, the witness gives a series of uncertain or hedged responses, that is, responses containing “I can’t remember”, “may”, “might”, “possibly”, “probably” or similar forms, while the counsel tries to pin the witness down to a definite answer. Tangential (i.e. ‘off-the point’) responses may also occur. Both hedged and tangential responses are susceptible to being interpreted as ‘evasive’. Given that repetitive questioning is a feature of examination, especially cross-examination, and repetitive questioning has also been noted as a feature of interaction between native speakers and second-language speakers of English by Hatch (1978, 1980, 1983) by Long (1983a, b) and by Carpenter (1983) then one would expect that repetitive questioning would be salient in the cross-examinations of SLS witnesses, and this indeed proves to be the case. There is a clear difference between the cross-examinations of native and second-language speaking witnesses in the occurrence of ‘long’ repetitive questioning sequences. In the data from Trials 1-4, long repetitive questioning sequences only occur in the cross-examinations of two of the nine native English speakers who were cross-examined, compared with eight of the nine second-language speakers who were cross-examined. Long repetitive questioning sequences occur more than twice as often in the cross-examinations of the second-language speakers as in those of the native speakers. Furthermore, all the long repetitive questioning sequences in the cross-examinations of the native English speakers finish with a reasonably clear and definite answer to the original question, while this is true for less than half of those in the crossexaminations of the second-language speakers of English. In the cross-examinations of the second language speakers of English, as well as a few long repetitive questioning sequences involving direct challenges, there are three types, which are of a different nature from those in the cross-

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examinations of the native speakers of English. These three types involve apparent self-corrections, tangential responses, and miscellaneous difficulties. In the commonest type of long repetitive questioning sequence in the testimony of second-language speakers, the witness appears to correct his or her earlier testimony. In almost all cases, it is likely that the witness has misunderstood one or more of the questions and so given an inappropriate response. Thus the occurrence of an apparent self-correction is a symptom of communication difficulties - usually the second-language speaker’s difficulty in understanding the native speaker. In cross-examinations, an apparent selfcorrection gives rise to further questioning on the same point, which can lead to more apparent self-corrections, resulting in long repetitive questioning sequences in which the witness appears to self-correct two or more times on the same point. I refer to such repetitive questioning sequences as ‘multiple apparent self-correction’ or ‘MASC’ sequences. The following example is the most complex in the data in terms of the number of times the witness appears to self-correct. I2 (7) Trial 2A. Defence counsel DC. cross-examining witness E. H. (of Samoan origin) (a) Counsel: After you let go of person you were holding, did you get back inside your car? (b) Witness: Yes. (c) Counsel: Start your car? (d) Witness: No, me was walking to my car. (e) Counsel: Who was walking to your car? (f) Witness: Me. (g) Counsel: You got in car? (h) Witness: No. I was at door, starting to get in door. (i) Counsel: Sure you didn’t get back in car and start it up again? (j) Witness: No. (k) Counsel: You say you were standing by door before getting in when you were injured, when you were attacked? (1) Witness: True. (m) Counsel: If evidence is given here you got in your car and started it, that would be incorrect? (n) Witness: No. (0) Counsel: It would not be incorrect? (p) Witness: No, I hadn’t been inside car, I was outside. (q) Counsel: If anybody say you did get in car and start it, that would be wrong? (r) Witness: Yes. I2 This transcript has been abbreviated (by the stenographer) determiners - presumably instances of the and your.

by the omission

of many

of the

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The witness appears to change his testimony in utterances (d), (j), (1) (n) and (p). Utterances (j), (1) and (n) are bare affirmative or negative responses, while (d) and (p) are sentences which spell out a clear consistent answer, namely that the witness did not get inside his car.

4. Yes and no in the questioning of Pacific Island witnesses 4.1. Alternative questions No problems of the kind reported by Metge and Kinloch as resulting from the use of alternative questions were noticeable in the testimony of Pacific Island witnesses. All witnesses (whether European or Polynesian) commonly used no as a preface to an extended answer, which usually specified one of the proffered alternatives. However, it was European native English speakers who produced instances of the problem reported by Metge and Kinloch, several European defendants responding to versions of the alternative question “Do you plead guilty or not guilty?” with a bare “Yes”. 4.2. Questions containing negatives

The second-language speakers appeared to have few problems in the use of yes and no following questions containing negatives, including those of negative declarative form. There is one possible instance of a Pacific Island witness using yes in response to a negative + positive tag-question, apparently to indicate agreement with the negative proposition in the main clause (i.e. this is a possible example of the ‘negative question’ problem) - but the problematic form of the witness’s response makes it difficult to be certain that this is in fact the case: (8) Trial 2B. Prosecutor PC. cross-examining defendant S. W. (of Samoan origin)

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

Pros.: Def.: Pros.: Def.: Pros.: Def.: Pros.: Def.: Pros.:

(j) Def.:

Why did you want to cut your jeans? Because my back is torn you know. They were torn? Yeah. Did they get torn in the fight? Yeah. Well, did you want to tear them some more? I want to take a piece off. Was there a loose bit just flapping round? A loose piece of your jeans? Yes.

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(k) (1) (m) (n)

Pros.: Def.: Pros.: Def.:

(0) Pros.: (p) Def.: (q) Pros.: (r) Def.: (s) Pros.: (t) Def.: (u) Pros.: (v) Def.:

And is that why you took the can opener? Yes. You didn’t explain that to the Police at any stage, did you? Yes, because I a[l]ready told you before that time I was nervous, you know. My mind was not quite alright. But you said that the written statement was the truth, didn’t you? .. Just now, didn’t you say that the written statement was the truth? Yeah. And there is no mention there of you using the can opener to cut your jeans? No. Did you read and sign this statement, this Samoan statement? Yeah.

Note that the prosecutor appears to take the yes in (n) to mean “Yes, I didn’t explain that to the Police at any stage”, since that interpretation seems to be presupposed in the prosecutor’s subsequent questions, so that even if (n) is anomalous, it appears not to be misunderstood, nor does it lead to a repetitive questioning sequence, although there are two short repetitive questioning sequences elsewhere in this extract. Note also that there are two more negative questions: (q) and (s). In the context of the defendant’s testimony, it makes sense to read his responses (r) and (t) as following native-speaker patterns; thus (r) almost certainly means “Yeah , I did say that the written statement was the truth” and (t), “No, there is no mention of me using the can opener to cut my jeans”. Thus even if(n) is a case of using yes in a non-native-like way, S. W. is apparently not consistent in doing this. This variation could reflect the typical variability of a secondlanguage learner’s interlanguage (Faerch 1979) - or the range of variability in native speakers’ use of yes and no ((n) could possibly count as a native-like usage, albeit a marginal one) - or both. The second-language speakers sometimes used a bare yes or yeah following a question of negative declarative form, as in the following example: (9) Trial 2B. Prosecutor PC. cross-examining dqfendant S. W. Pros.: And where were your brothers when you ran away? Could them? Def.: I can’t see them at the time. Pros.: So you didn’t know what they were doing? + Def.: Yeah.

you see

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In view of the first exchange, it is difficult to interpret this yeah as meaning other than “Yeah, I didn’t know what they were doing”, i.e. the yeah indicates agreement with the negative proposition which the prosecutor requests confirmation of. There is no sign in the prosecutor’s subsequent behaviour that he or she heard it as anything out of the ordinary - if the prosecutor had heard it as a disconfirming response, one would expect that to be a cause for further questioning, probably repetitive questioning. The second-language speakers used yes or yeah a number of other times following negative declarative questions, and these instances are also most plausibly read in context as indicating agreement with the negative proposition; in other words, these are instances of ‘non-polar’ yes/yeah. Native speakers do this quite often in conversation; however instances of such non-polar yes/yeah’s in the testimony of native English-speaking witnesses were rare. Example (4) above is unusual not only in this respect, but also in having an expanded answer following the yes. There appears to be stylistic variation in the native speakers’ use of nonpolar yes, such that it is relatively frequent in informal conversation, but infrequent in formal testimony. This would parallel the stylistic variation in the ‘conversational historic present’ noted by Wolfson (1979, 1982). It thus appears to be the case that the second-language speakers were not observing this stylistic variation (or at least, not to the same extent as the native speakers). It could be argued that there was an effect of language transfer here on the frequency with which the second-language speakers used non-polar yes, in other words, that the second-language speakers were favouring the usage which most closely resembled that of their first languages. However, the same phenomenon could be explained on the basis that the second-language speakers had learned to use non-polar yes in a native-like manner in conversation, but had not learned the informal-formal stylistic variation, so that the transfer involved was from informal to formal rather than from first to second language.13 Problems with yes and no do occur following questions containing negatives, but these are not of the kind mentioned in the reports quoted above. In the following sequence, the first yes is an ambiguous response (at least on paper, since it could be disambiguated intonationally - the witness’ intonation may have been non-native-like) : (10)

Trial 2B. Defence counsel DC. cross-examining witness E. H. (of Samoan origin) (a) Counsel: I put it to you Mr H. that when the accused came back to the scene, that the fight was not over at all?

I3 If this is so, it would show a similarity to the use by witnesses of what Erickson and O’Barr and Atkins (1980) call ‘powerless language’, which consists essentially conversational features used in a formal context.

et al. (1978) of informal

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(b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

Witness: Yes. Counsel : Do you say it was over? Witness : Say again? Counsel : I say to you that when the accused came back around the corner the fight was not over at all? Witness : It was over.

from

The yes in (b) can be read in three ways: firstly in response to the whole of (a) it could be paraphrased “I agree with your suggestion (that the fight was not over)“; or in response to the last clause only of (a), either “yes, the fight was not over”, or “yes, the fight wus over”, this last interpretation apparently being the one intended. It is likely that a native speaker would have given an extended answer rather than a bare yes in these circumstances, and that the yes would have had a high pitch (‘high key’ in Coulthard and Brazil’s (1981) terms). Thus the problems involving yes and no following questions containing negatives are ones of ambiguous responses, and (lob) is an example of an ambiguous yes or no following a syntactically complex mixed-polarity question. 4.3. Yes and no as masking

misunderstanding

Yes and no are problematic in another way: in fact, what is probably the most serious problem is that they can give the appearance of understanding when the second-language speaker has in fact misheard or misunderstood the question. l4 This is evident in the type of long repetitive questioning sequences referred to above as apparent self-correction sequences. Most of the responses that appear to be self-corrections (i.e. that contradict earlier answers) are bare yes’s or no’s. This observation is true for the whole set of apparent selfcorrection sequences. The fact that apparent self-correction sequences are the commonest and most spectacularly confused of the long repetitive questioning sequences in the second-language speakers’ testimonies justifies calling this the major problem with yes and no for second-language speaking witnesses. In a sense the problem is that yes and no have no specific content, but merely ‘reflect’ (some part of) the initiation which they are used in response to. Furthermore, apparent self-correction sequences are likely to be the tip of an iceberg of misunderstanding masked by apparently definite yes or no answers.

I4 A yes or no can thus be what Humphreys-Jones (1986: 121) calls an “indirect manifestation” of a misunderstanding: “that is, one which is an apparently appropriate response to an origin and which does not provide evidence that the misunderstanding has occurred”. She notes (1986: 125, n. 8) that a “clear example of an indirect manifestation is the response ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ without further comment to an origin utterance which is a polar question”.

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These comments might give the impression that second-language speaking witnesses over-used bare yes and no responses - but in fact there does not seem to be a significant difference between the native and second-language speakers in the frequencies of such minimal responses. 4.4. Non-con$rmation of the ‘negative question’ hypothesis The claims that ‘negative questions’ were a major source of European-Polynesian miscommunication were taken as initial hypotheses to be tested in this study, and I confidently expected to be able to verify them. Therefore it was something of a surprise not to find confirming evidence. There are two possible avenues of explanation for this: either the ‘negative question’ problem is a major one, and I have simply missed it; or the problem is not a major one. If ‘negative questions’ are a major problem, I may simply have missed finding examples through having insufficient data - after all, only a small number of individual Pacific Islanders are involved in the study, although they respond to a large number of negative questions, and many examples of miscommunication (apparently from other causes) do occur. Or it could be because the second-language speakers in the sample are relatively advanced learners, and that if I had data involving less proficient second-language speakers, the problem might have been evident in abundance; and this might very well be the case. If the problem is not in fact a major one, it is interesting to speculate on the reasons for the widespread belief that it is. This belief is a kind of modern stereotype - one thing that many New Zealanders ‘know’ about EuropeanPolynesian communication. In fact, it is close to being a ‘stereotype’ in the sociolinguistic sense - that is, a popular notion of the characteristic feature(s) of a linguistic variety - as used for instance by Labov (1972) in discussing perceptions of accents. He noted that people frequently characterise an accent in terms of one or a small number of phonological features, inaccurately portrayed. There are a number of reasons why such a stereotype should develop around the use of yes and no and ‘negative questions’, assuming that the results of this study are more generally representative of European-Polynesian communication. First of all, it is undoubtedly true that requests for information containing negatives, and yes and no, are involved, probably with some frequency, in instances of miscommunication betweeen native and second-language speakers. The problem for the stereotype is that the kinds of requests for information involved - negative declaratives and complex mixed-polarity constructions - are not those discussed in the reports of the problem. Furthermore, the same kinds of miscommunication can occur among native speakers, the problems being inherent in the functioning of the English

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language. The major problem for second-language speakers with yes and no that they mask misunderstanding - has nothing in particular to do with ‘negative questions’. Secondly, there is undoubtedly a marked difference between English and Polynesian (and other Pacific) languages in the way affirmative and negative responses (yes/no equivalents) are used following negative requests for information, although not quite as marked as has been assumed. This difference must be striking to English-speakers learning Polynesian languages, and Polynesians learning English. In fact, Pacific Islanders learning English in school and using the Tate syllabus (Tate 1970) as a great many do, will have been taught explicitly, at least about yes and no in response to negative + positive tag-questions. Given this salience, and the assumption that Polynesians learning English will necessarily transfer their rules for using affirmative and negative responses from their first to their second language, this difference becomes a prime candidate as an explanation for misunderstandings that do occur. Given also that when misunderstandings do occur, it is difficult to remember the precise words and syntax used, then the ‘negative question problem’ can become an available explanation for events that are otherwise mysterious and inexplicable. This is a problem with using anecdotal data as a basis for generalisations about interethnic/interlanguage communication. Publications such as State Services Commission (1981) and Edgeley and McDonald (1984) recommend that in interacting with Polynesians, Europeans should avoid particular grammatical forms such as negative and tag questions. I would argue that such advice is of dubious value on a number of counts. Firstly, even allowing that negative and alternative questions (etc.) might be major sources of difficulties, there are a large number of other grammatical constructions that appear to cause difficulties in native speaker/second-language speaker interaction, and so this advice would be unlikely to have a significant impact on the occurrence of miscommunication. Secondly, such advice would require that native speakers consistently monitor the grammatical forms of their utterances, which would involve considerable conscious effort and/or sustained practice, and is unlikely to be achieved. Thirdly, in any case, different grammatical forms have different sociolinguistic and pragmatic properties, and hence one form cannot always be readily substituted by another. If a speaker feels a need to use a negative declarative or a tag-question, a positive interrogative will often simply not do, since it may give an opposite impression of the speaker’s beliefs and expectations.

5. Causes of miscommunication A wide range transcripts.

of phenomena

seemed

to trigger

repetitive

questioning

in the

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If looked at in terms of linguistic ‘levels’, apparent causes can be found at the levels of lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse. Lexical problems included the choice of ‘beat’ or ‘kill’ as alternative translations of Samoan fusi. Problems in hearing the correct phonological forms of questions appeared likely in several repetitive questioning sequences, and in (10) above, problems may have arisen from the witness’s intonation of yes. Difficulties at the levels of morphology and syntax, involving problems in the witness’s production and comprehension of when and verb aspect, appeared to be significant in a number of repetitive questioning sequences, as did problems in pragmatic and discourse interpretation, including problems for the witness in identifying the discourse topic. Lane (1985, 1988, 1992) provides examples of repetitive questioning sequences arising from these problems. Shorter repetitive questioning sequences may arise from single causes, but the more prominent long repetitive questioning sequences involve multiple causes at different linguistic levels, and these causes can interact, reinforcing each other to produce communication breakdown. It should also be evident that it is not sufficient to classify the apparent ‘causes’ of miscommunication solely in terms of linguistic levels, since in most cases, one is identifying a problem in processing at some linguistic level(s), that is, in the second-language speaker’s production or comprehension, or occasionally in the process of translation. And in fact in many cases, no specific linguistic problem can be identified, apart from a processing problem. It is thus of interest to consider what kind of processing problem is most evident in instances of miscommunication, and the evidence of the trial transcripts points clearly towards problems in the second-language speakers’ comprehension being of greater significance than problems in their production. Comprehension problems seemed to be involved in the longest, most confused repetitive questioning sequences - the multiple apparent self-correction (MASC) sequences and tangential response sequences, whereas problems in production seemed to be more easily rectifiable - responses of problematic form are generally repeated in an understandable form in the next response slot, and tend to occur in short, not long, repetitive questioning sequences. As mentioned above, the problematic apparent self-corrections in MASC sequences are most often simple yes or no responses, and this cannot be put down to a production problem, except possibly an inability to produce an extended rather than a minimal response (though all the second-language speakers could produce extended responses at times, and it was not inappropriate to give minimal responses to the particular questions involved). In second language acquisition research, comprehension skills are generally found to be in advance of production skills (as for instance in vocabulary knowledge, and phoneme discrimination). Thus it seems rather surprising that there should be more problems in the second-language speakers’ comprehension than in their production. However, it can be rendered less surprising by

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taking into account that these psycholinguistic interaction in a particular social context (namely the following considerations apply:

processes take place in an cross-examination) in which

(1) It is not in fact a simple question of the second-language speakers’ production vs. their comprehension, since the native speakers are involved in NS-SLS interaction as well, and what is in fact being compared is the combination of NS production and SLS comprehension (i.e. processing in the NS + SLS direction) against the combination of SLS production and NS comprehension (i.e. processing in the SLS --+ NS direction). (2) Even if the second-language speakers’ ability to comprehend English is better than their productive ability, the gap between the native speakers’ production and the second-language speakers’ comprehension may be wider than the gap between the second-language speakers’ production and the native speakers’ comprehension; in other words, the NSs’ utterances may place greater burdens on the SLSs’ comprehension than the SLSs’ (sometimes non-native-like) utterances place on the NSs’ comprehension. (3) In cross-examination, the questions tend to be long and the responses short, so the witness simply spends more time listening than speaking, and therefore there is more chance for problems to arise in the witness’s comprehension of the questioner than vice versa. (4) Not only does the witness spend more time listening to questions than responding to them, but questions are often syntactically complex (at times courtroom questions are difficult for native speakers to comprehend) and the questioner does not appear to make ‘simplifying’ adjustments to aid the second-language speaker (as happens at least to some extent in other situations - cf. Long 1983b, Hatch 1983: ch. 9). (5) Correspondingly, witnesses’ production problems are eased - they can give short responses out of a restricted range of possibilities; often a choice of yes or no will suffice. This easing of production difficulties is in a sense earned at the cost of the increased comprehension difficulties mentioned in (4). (6) The questioners (counsel and judge) set the topic of the examination ~ they ‘know what’s coming next’. Counsel endeavour to ask questions to which they know the likely response. The question thus provides a frame for interpreting the witness’s response (which is likely to come from a restricted set of options, as mentioned in (5)), and this helps the questioner to interpret the response, in spite of any non-native-like forms. (7) If the native speaker cannot make sense of a response, he or she can use a contingent query or re-initiation to attempt to get a repair of the response _ usually successfully. On the other hand, the SLS witnesses did not seem to use contingent queries very frequently. This may be due to avoidance of clarification requests to persons of higher status, as reported by Ochs

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(1984) for Samoans - in general, the counsel and the judge are (arguably) of higher status than the witness. Scarcella (1983) also suggests that second-language speakers tend to avoid making clarification requests in formal situations, and that factor may also be operative here. (8) A question puts constraints on the content of a following response, but the witness’s response sets few constraints on the next question - the witness is thus not in a good position to predict ‘what’s coming next’, that is, the witness lacks a ‘frame’ or ‘schema’ for interpreting the questions. (9) The second-language speakers’ production problems are more obvious than their comprehension problems, l5 and therefore more likely to be attended to; and since production problems tended to be rectifiable, comprehension problems may have gone unnoticed as such. The specific social situation and roles of native speaker (counsel, judge) and second-language speaker (witness) are invoked in these explanations, but the phenomenon of comprehension being the major problem for second-language speakers may be more general, on the basis of Hatch’s (1978, 1983: ch. 9) observations that even in informal conversation native speakers take on a ‘questioner’ role and tend to use repetitive questioning - in this case the factors other than (4) and (7) in the above list would still apply. To say that the main problems occur in the second-language speaker’s processing (comprehension) of the native speaker’s utterances raises the question of what is involved in comprehension. I would suggest that a wide range of factors contribute to the comprehension process, including the listener’s knowledge of the lexicon, ‘ear’ for phonetics and phonology, skill in grammatical parsing of utterances and interpretation of pragmatic function and discourse structure, background cultural knowledge, familiarity with the situation, ability to cope with ‘noise’ in the visual and auditory input, psychological factors such as anxiety (which may result from a sense of being in a culturally alien situation), memory for the preceding discourse, and so on. I see problems of comprehension as arising from a combination of such factors rather than purely from lack of knowledge of specific linguistic features. Thus even when there is an apparently simple case of (say) a mishearing of word, a much wider range of factors is likely to be involved in that mishearing than just the processes of phonetic, phonological and lexical analysis, and one cannot really ‘pin down’ the problem to just those processes. It is thus rather misleading to isolate a single linguistic item which has been misconstrued and call it ‘the cause’ of the misunderstanding. I5 This is a general observation, which also shows up in the fact that almost all work in ‘error analysis’ (see e.g. Richards 1974, Robinett and Schachter 1983) is concerned with SLSs’ production rather than comprehension errors.

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Previous studies of native speaker/second-language speaker interaction (as opposed to cross-cultural or interethnic communication) have been in the context of co-operative, non-conflict situations. The results of this study suggest that in a situation where there is conflict between native speaker and second-language speaker, and the native speaker is in a controlling position with greater power and status than the second-language speaker, the conflict can exacerbate the miscommunication that arises from language difficulties, to the detriment of the second-language speaker. The situation of immigrants who are second-language speakers of English, in ‘English-speaking’ countries, is typically one where the immigrants face considerable prejudice and discriminatory behaviour from the native English speaking host population. It may be that antagonism or distrust arising from prejudice would also lead to situations in which miscommunication is exacerbated rather than repaired.

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Garvey, Catherine, 1979. Contingent queries and their relations in discourse. In: E. Gchs and B.B. Schieffelin, eds., Developmental pragmatic% 363-372. New York: Academic Press. Greenbaum, Sidney, Geoffrey N. Leech and Jan Svartvik, eds., 1980. Studies in English linguistics for Randolph Quirk. London/New York: Longman. Gumperz, John J., T.C. Jupp and Celia Roberts, 1979. Crosstalk: A study of cross-cultural communication. Southall, Middx. : The National Centre for Industrial Language Training. Hatch, Evelyn M., 1978. Discourse analysis and second language acquisition. In: E.M. Hatch, ed., Second language acquisition: A book of readings, 401435. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Hatch, Evelyn M., 1980. Conversational analysis: An alternative methodology for second language acquisition research. In: R.W. Shuy and A. Shnukal, eds., 182-196. Hatch, Evelyn M., 1983. Psycholinguistics: A second language perspective. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Holmes, Janet, 1986. Functions of you know in women’s and men’s speech. Language in Society 15: l-22. Humphreys-Jones, Claire, 1986. Make, make do and mend: The role of the hearer in misunderstandings. In: G. MacGregor, ed., Language for hearers, 105-126. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Labov, William, 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lane, Christopher L., 1985. Mis-communication in cross-examinations. In: J.B. Pride, ed., Crosscultural encounters: Communication and mis-communication, 196-211. Melbourne: River Seine Publications. Lane, Christopher L., 1988. Language on trial: Questioning strategies and European-Polynesian mis-communication in New Zealand courtrooms. Ph.D. thesis, University of Auckland. Lane, Chris, 1990. The sociolinguistics of questioning in district court trials. In: A. Bell and J. Holmes, eds., New Zealand ways of speaking English, 221-251. Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. Lane, Chris, 1992. Repetitive questioning in courtroom interaction and interlanguage communication. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics 5: l-16. Long, Michael H., 1983a. Native speaker/non-native speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input, Applied Linguistics 4: 126141. Long, Michael H., 1983b. Linguistic and conversational adjustments to non-native speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 5: 177-193. Marsack, Charles C., 1961. Samoan medley. London: Robert Hale. Marsack, Charles C., 1962. Teach yourself Samoan. London: Teach Yourself Books. Merritt, Marilyn, 1980. On the use of OK in service encounters. In: R.W. Shuy and A. Shnukal, eds., 162-172. Metge, Joan and Patricia Kinloch, 1978. Talking past each other: Problems of cross-cultural communication. Wellington: Victoria University Press/Price Milburn. O’Barr, William M. and Bowman K. Atkins, 1980. ‘Women’s language’ or ‘powerless language’? In: S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker and N. Furman, eds., Women and language in literature and society, 93-110. New York: Praeger. Ochs, Elinor, 1984. Clarification and culture. In: D. Schiffrin, ed., Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1984, 325-341. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. &tman, Jan-Ola, 198 1. ‘You know’: A discourse-functional approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Owen, Marion, 1981. Conversational units and the use of ‘Well . ..‘. In: Paul Werth, ed., Conversation and discourse, 99-l 16. London: Croom Helm. Pacific Islanders’ Educational Resource Centre, 1977. A handbook for teachers of Pacific Island children. Auckland: PIERC. Pope, Emily Norwood, 1976. Questions and answers in English. The Hague: Mouton. Pratt, George (Reverend), 1878. A grammar and dictionary of the Samoan language. Second Edition, edited by Rev. S. J. Whitmee. London: Tribner and Co.

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C.L. Lane / Yes. I don’t understand

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