A Comparative Study On The Speech Act Of Complaint In Chinese And English

The study of speech act has long been regarded as one of the central concerns ofpragmatics, especially cross-cultural pragmatics. Complaint is a face-threateningspeech act which threatens the face of the hearer in the human communicationactivities. People from different cultural backgrounds are influenced by differentsocial variables, and thus adopt different expression patterns.This thesis makes a comparative study of complaint between English andChinese. Therefore, the study is designed to answer the following two researchquestions:1. Are there any similarities and differences between Chinese and English? If any,what are they?2. What are the influencing factors of the choice of complaint types and strategiesin Chinese and English?Using a questionaire as the main instrument to collect data and taking90studentsfrom Chinese and American as the subjects,the thesis makes both a quantitative andqualitative analysis of the contrast between English and Chinese complaints。Data analysis shows both similarities and differences exsit in Chinese andEnglish complaints.The major findings are concluded as follows:1. There are two main similarities:(1) Most Chinese and Americans begin their complaints with apology first;(2) When facing an unhappy situation,both the Chinese and Americans tend tocomplain directly to express their feeling.2. The differences mainly consist in two aspects:(1) When selecting complaint types,the Chinese students tend to choose indirectcomplaints or option out;on the contrasy,the American students are inclinedto choose direct complaints.(2) When choosing complaint strategies,the Chinese students show a higherfrequency of suggestion and hint complaints;in comtrast,American studentsappear to have a stronger preference for explicit and annoyance complaints. Social and cultural factors will influence the choice of complaints betweenChinese and English.In the Chinese society and culture,it’s characterized with itspreference for implication.Therefore,the Chinese students prefer to use indirectcomplaints.In English society and culture,people tend to pay more attention topersonal interests and treat others with equality.As a matter of course,more directstrategies and types occur in the American students’complaints.The study will be of benefit to English learning,.It will help the Chinese Englishlearners to appropriately choose the complaint strategies and types and how to dealwith the cultrual differences in cross-cultural communications between English andChinese.