The Comparative Study Of Directive Speech Acts Between Chinese And American Parents From Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Of Power Distance

Speech act theory is an important theory in the pragmatic study of language.Directive speech act, as a subcategory of speech acts, has been one of the hot topics inlinguistic research. Directive speech act refers to the utterance that represents theattempts on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something. Manyresearchers pay more attention to the study of the difference between direct andindirect directive speech acts, but few of them combine the study of directive speechact with inter-cultural communication theories. What’s more, many scholars usequalitative method to analyze directive speech acts and few use quantitative method.Language is closely related with culture. Human culture can be inherited anddeveloped based upon the production and development of language. Language is notonly the carrier of culture, but also the reflection of culture. Directive speech is verycommon in daily communications, especially in the area of family education. It can bedivided into direct and indirect directive speeches, and it also differs in its force.Different directive forces indicate different power controlling. This thesis makes acomparative study of the directive speech acts between Chinese and American parentsfrom the perspective of Hofstede’s cultural dimension of Power Distance. PowerDistance refers to the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions andorganizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.Directives of parents can be divided into strong and weak directives according to thedirective force. Strong directive is imperative and threatening, while weak directive issuggesting and requesting. Obviously, strong directives indicate that parents controlmore power. The children’s consequent response to directives can be divided intoobedience and disobedience. Obedience indicates that children accept that power isdistributed unequally, while disobedience indicates that children can’t accept thatpower is distributed unequally.This thesis focuses on the directive speech acts of Chinese and American parents and studies the difference of Power Distance between Chinese and American parents.The author draws19Chinese films and15American films at random to collect100directive speech acts of parents respectively which include50from fathers and50from mothers. The results of Chi-square test show that strong directives’ percent ofChinese parents is85%, while the strong directives’ percent of American parents is56%, and there is real difference between Chinese and American parents on the choiceof strong or weak directives, which indicates that Chinese parents own more powerthan American parents in family education. The results of Chi-square test also showthat the obedience’s percent of Chinese children is73%, while the obedience’s percentof American children is53%, and there is real difference between Chinese andAmerican children on the response to their parents’ directives, which indicates that theextent to which Chinese children accept the power distributed unequally is higherthan the extent to which American children accept the power distributed unequally.Then the result is concluded that Power Distance between Chinese parents andchildren is larger than the Power Distance between American parents and children,which is identical with Hofstede’s survey result. This thesis also explores the culturalorigins of Power Distance difference between China and America from three aspects:Agricultural Culture vs. Commercial Culture, Confucianism vs. Protestantism, andBureaucratic Culture vs. Civilian Culture.This thesis provides a new perspective to the study of directive speech act,furthers the understanding of Hofstede’s cultural dimension of Power Distance, andenriches the theoretical achievements of inter-cultural communication. In addition, itis conducive in establishing a good parent-child relationship and building aharmonious family.