American English, Turkish and interlanguage refusals: a cross-cultural communication and interlanguage pragmatics study

Download

index.pdf

Date

2011

Author

Şahin, Sevgi

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

248
views

129
downloads

This study investigates the refusal realizations of native speakers of American English (AE), Turkish (TUR) and Turkish learners of English with advanced level of proficiency (TRE). It aims to uncover the refusal strategies of young AE, TUR and TRE in conversations between equals and also to uncover if the learners display pragmatic transfer in their refusal strategies. In addition to this, the extent to which the social variables of level of closeness and refusal eliciting acts affect the refusal productions of each group is pursued. The thesis also aimed to provide an explanation for the rapport management orientations of the three examined groups when refusing equal-status interlocutors. To this end, the data are collected from three different groups using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which is developed out of the situations in a TV Serial. The analysis of data is done manually and each refusal is coded. CLAN CHILDES is utilized in order to see the typical combinations of refusal semantic formulae used by three groups. Later, PASW is used to run descriptive statistics and calculate the frequency and percentages of refusal strategies/semantic formulae. The results of the study show that refusals and rapport management orientations while refusing status equal interlocutors are culture and situation specific and they differ both cross-culturally and intra-culturally. Research findings also reveal that TRE often produce pragmatically appropriate refusals because refusal strategies they use correspond to those of AE. However, there are some cases in which the evidence of pragmatic transfer are observed with respect to the frequency of certain semantic formula usages.

Subject Keywords

English language teaching, Intercultural communication

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613510/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/20977

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The use of prepositions in second language acquisition process Çabuk, Sakine; Hatipoğlu, Çiler; Department of English Language Teaching (2009) This thesis investigates the use of three most frequent prepositions by Turkish learners of English at intermediate level of proficiency. The aim of the present study is to find out which differences between prepositions and their corresponding postpositions or case suffixes constitute difficulty on the part of second language learners. This study also examines the possible reasons of the errors/ mistakes pertaining to ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘at’ by native speakers of Turkish with intermediate level of proficiency in ...
The development of pragmatic competence: a study on requests Yumun, Elif; Zeyrek Bozşahin, Deniz; Department of English Literature (2008) The purpose of the study was to investigate the pragmatic competence of Turkish learners of English in requests at two levels of English proficiency. Another aspect of the study was to identify the overall and situational proficiency of the learners in performing the speech act of requests and to figure out development and transfer factors. Additionally, the extent to which the changing social variables of power and distance in each of the situations and through the situations affect the learners’ request b...
Common pronunciation errors of seventh grade EFL learners : a case from Turkey Aktuğ, Besime; Savaş, Perihan; Department of English Language Teaching (2015) This thesis analyses the common English pronunciation errors of the seventh grade Turkish students. Since the vocabulary of subjects are limited due to their age and curriculum, a specific rubric compatible with the official curriculum was designed to test the different qualities of the non-native pronunciation such as vowel, consonant and word stress. More than 2400 sentences uttered by more than 80 seventh grade students were digitally recorded and two non-native professional evaluators and a native evalu...
EFL student and instructor perceptions of pair and group work speaking activities: a case study at a state university in Turkey İlkyaz Akın, İnci Nur; Savaş, Perihan; Department of English Literature (2018) The aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions of English preparatory school students and their language instructors of the implication of pair and group work speaking activities in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes. The study was conducted as a case study with 496 English as a foreign language (EFL) students and nine instructors of English language in the preparatory school of a state university in Ankara, Turkey. The data for this study were collected through a questionnaire administer...
EFL instructors’ cognitions and actions in relation to foreign language learning and teaching processes Öztürk, Mustafa; Yıldırım, Ali; Department of Educational Sciences (2014) The purpose of this study is to investigate EFL instructors’ language learning cognitions regarding linguistic aptitude, priorities in language learning, and good language learners; and language teaching actions with respect to pedagogical inclinations, instructional planning, error correction, learner-centeredness, and personal and professional development. The study also aims to describe the patterns of the relationships existing among those variables and examine the sources contributing to teachers’ cogn...

Citation Formats

S. Şahin, “American English, Turkish and interlanguage refusals: a cross-cultural communication and interlanguage pragmatics study,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2011.