Comparison Of Metapragmatic Assessments By Subjects Of Different Ages And Nationalities

Different from pragmatics which concerns what speakers say and how they say it toachieve a certain goal under a given context, metapragmatics focuses on a deeper levelof language, revealing why speakers choose certain linguistic forms to fulfill thepragmatic function and what sociocultural rules, beliefs and values they draw on in thecommunication. In cross-cultural pragmatic researches, the comparison always focuseson speakers’ final performance of speech acts, but their perception on social variableslike rank of imposition, social status and familiarity, or in other words themetapragmatic knowledge is usually assumed to be similar. This assumption has beenproved to be wrong in some studies, but researches in this regard are still few and thecauses of disparity on perception are seldom investigated. This study, therefore, isexpected to make more explorations in this area.The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether there is any difference onthe perception of social variables between Chinese students and overseas students andbetween young Chinese and their elderly counterparts. Besides, the underlying causesof the disparity, if there is any, are expected to be discovered. To achieve this goal, ametapragmatic assessment was conducted on three groups of subjects, followed by aseries of in-depth semi-structured interviews. Participants in this study include30Chinese students,61overseas students and17elderly Chinese, among whom overseasstudents were further divided into three subgroups, namely, the ROK and Japan group,the Southeast Asia group and the central Asia group. To ensure the reliability andvalidity of the study, the metapragmatic assessment questionnaire was designed andcarried out through several steps including scenario selection, likelihood investigation,pilot study and the questionnaire modification.The results on quantitative data show that significant differences exist incomparisons of all three groups and foreign students from diverse cultural contextsperformed differently in the assessment. Several reasons were found in the following interviews. For foreign students, cultural factors account for most of the disparity. Theirviews on variables like social status and distance varied due to the influence of thespeech community they come from. Besides, individual difference on factors likepersonality and overseas experiences also exerts impact on students’ values. For thedisparity between the young and the elderly, there are external and internal causes.Transformation of the society entails two generations’ different attitudes toward“collectivism” and “tolerance” and “respect” and meanwhile richer life experienceenables the elderly to hold a more peaceful mind in dealing with various people orevents.This study again proves that metapragmatic assessment is of high necessity toguarantee subjects’ similar perception on social variables and the teaching of culturalknowledge carried by a language, or more specifically, the emphasis on certainsociocultural norms in targeted speech community is important. Also, to makesuccessful cross-cultural communication and avoid pragmatic failure, one should notonly try to make his words grammatically correct but also appropriate which needs theconsideration of social variables in certain contexts and a good understanding of theconventions and values held by the hearer.