A Comparative Study Of The Speech Act Of Correction Between American English And Chinese Among University Students

This study has investigated the realization pattern of the speech act of correction, as wellas the similarities and differences in the use of correction strategy between Mandarin Chineseand American English among university students.The data were collected through DCT (discourse completion tests).60respondentsparticipated in this study:30native speakers of Mandarin Chinese from Northeast NormalUniversity and30native speakers of American English from Southern Illinois University. Foreach group, the number of females equals that of males.It is found that there are similarities as well as differences of correction strategiesbetween two groups of speakers.1) The general semantic formulas of correction for bothgroups are composed of starters, head acts and supporters, with the head acts as a necessarypart.2) Both MCs (Mandarin Chinese speakers) and AEs (American English speakers, theabbreviations will be used below) prefer to use more indirect strategies than direct ones. ButAEs tend to use more indirect strategies. Both groups use a large number of strategies ofdoubt, reason/explanation, softener and hint.3) Socio-pragmatic factors such as socialdistance, power, imposition of weight and personal factors like gender and age all have greatimpact on choosing correction strategies. But the degree of influence is different. It turns outthat social distance, power have bigger influence on AEs while gender has more impact onMCs.Reasons underneath the findings are discussed. On the one hand, the different culturalnorms affect correction realization pattern; on the other hand, speech act is highlycontextualized and varies across time and culture.