Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio
Initiating, Sustaining, and Concluding Social Transactions: An Analysis of Roleplay Performance in the Oral Proficiency Interview
H. Lin Domizio Williams College, USA
Abstract
The Guidelines of the traditional Oral Proficiency Interview speaking test have long neglected the nature of negotiation in the roleplay session. The promoter, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has been severely criticized by the academia for the lack of empirical support for its claim. The roleplay session was merely used to confirm the rating established by the first three phases of the interview, in which the text type of a speaker’s speech utterances was the main concern by the evaluators. This study used both quantitative and textual analyses to examine whether or not the current use of the roleplay performance is consistent with the criteria of the Guidelines, in distinguishing speakers of the Intermediate-High from the Advanced. The data involved two groups of American learners of Chinese: 18 at the Advanced level and 27 at the Intermediate-High level. As a result, the researcher found that only the roleplay session provided the specific circumstances to assess the skills required for an advanced rating, those of initiating, sustaining, and concluding a complicated communicative task. Both quantitative and qualitative results suggest that the roleplay performance should have occupied a more central role in the overall rating process. The roleplay is particularly important at the “major border” separating the Advanced and Intermediate-High levels. In conclusion, the researcher suggests that the Guidelines should be amended to focus particular attention on a speaker’s ability to sustain negotiation during the roleplay session in the oral proficiency interview.
Introduction
One of the strongest criticisms concerning the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) is its use of the roleplay session exclusively to confirm the testers’ rating for an L2 speaker’s language performance (Bachman & Savignon, 1986, Bachman, 1988; Kramsch, 1986, 1987; Lantolf & Frawley, 1988; Raffaldini 1988). Raffaldini (1988) asserts that the
109 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio current model of the OPI only accomplished a partial measure of communicative ability, because the procedures [the first three-quarters of an OPI] in the interview format restrict the speakers to demonstrating the ability to respond to tester-initiated utterances. Interactional skills which demand negotiation, persuasion, socializing, or mitigation of one’s speech intent cannot be elicited during the first three phases. They can, however, be examined and determined during the roleplay phase of the OPI interview.
With that in mind, this study purposely did not look for further information about the ability of learners to exchange information and opinions and to engage in general activities, and to check the breadth of the vocabulary and grammar of the learners. Instead, it was designed to examine whether the OPI roleplay performance readily provided evidence to evaluate the social, interactional ability that the Guidelines prescribed. Through the comparative study between speakers at the Advanced (A) level and the Intermediate-High (IH) level, the current researcher explored what the roleplay portion of the OPI may promise to give within the present OPI model.
The OPI Guidelines skill-level generic descriptions for A and IH speakers are: “[1] Advanced speakers can initiate, sustain and conclude a social interaction or a conversation involving a transactional situation with a complication… Advanced speakers can handle with confidence, but not with facility, complicated tasks and social situations, such as elaborating, complaining, and apologizing. [2] Intermediate-High speakers can initiate, sustain, and close a general conversation with a number of strategies appropriate to a range of circumstances and topics, but errors are evident… Intermediate-High speakers are able to handle successfully most uncomplicated communicative tasks and social situations.” (ACTFL, 1989, pp. II-III) In light of previous studies, this study examined whether the OPI’s theoretical construct of this type of competence was consistent with the reality of IH and A speakers’ performance (Bachman, 1990; Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Blum-Kulka & House, 1989; Canale, 1983; Carroll, 1967; Clark & Clifford, 1988; Clark & Li, 1986; Liskin-Gasparro, 1993).
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Previous Studies
In the past 20 years, empirical studies on social interactions have been expanded from examining how utterances are integrated with speakers’ propositional intents to behavioral patterns of speech acts in real-life situations and specific social contexts, based on the Speech Act Theory proposed by Austin (1962) and augmented by Searle (1959, 1975, 1981). Some of these studies have focused on factors determining realization of requests with different relative distance, social class, choice of directness, politeness in cross-cultural communication. Others have targeted native speakers’ (NSs) individual cultural specificity, and non-native speakers’ (NNS) or second language (L2) speakers’ pragmatic competence (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1981, 1989; Brown & Levinson, 1978; Ervin-Tripp, 1976; Kasper & Zhang 1995; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Leech, 1983; Wolfson, 1989). From this point on in this paper the term sociopragmatic competence will be used in place of pragmatic competence, to remove the confusion between the way “pragmatic competence” is used by researchers (Kasper, Blum-Kulka and others) and the way it is used in the OPI Guidelines.
Sociopragmatic Knowledge, Politeness and Chinese Facework
Previous researchers (Searle, 1975; Leech, 1983; Brown & Levinson, 1987) argued that it most likely is politeness that activates indirect language use when one has an intended goal to achieve. For instance, the more indirect a request, the more polite it seems. Contextually, the impact of dominance factors— social distance, role, status, age, gender, and the language users’ sociocultural concerns — could affect the interactional outcome as well. In textual factors, for example, traditionally the use of an interrogative sentence with a modal (Could you + verb phrase) was recognized as a polite way to issue a request, and later “Can you + VP” has been also accepted as an alternative (Sadock, 1975; Blum-Kulka, 1989). Rather than speaker-oriented requests (e.g., I hope you can...), utterances embedded with hearer-based preparatory conditions (e.g., Would you be able to do....) were also recognized as polite request utterances. All of these polite ways of
111 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio making a request share at least one of these characteristics: that the requester is concerned with the hearer’s ability or willingness to fulfill the request, or the feasibility of its being fulfilled.
Brown and Levinson (1987) proposed a two-tiered politeness scheme: (1) negative politeness or verbal strategies used in such a way as not to be understood as an imposition (i.e., an intrusion on personal territory or concern), and (2) positive politeness or verbal strategies employed to emphasize in-group membership and an assumption of reciprocity. Thus when a speaker diminishes the hearer’s face, a face-threatening act (FTA) can take place in either one of these cases: (1) a speaker shows lack of social appreciation for the hearer or for what the hearer has done; (2) the speaker’s message goes against the hearer’s wishes (e.g., the speaker complains to the hearer). This speaker is considered to have exhibited a lack of politeness.
In light of Goffman’s Facework Theory (1967), the Chinese notion of face has been interpreted as a significant factor which impacts the level of politeness in two ways (Du, 1995; Mao, 1994; Zhang, 1995b): (1) enhancing an individual’s value — to attend to each other’s public self-image in achieving politeness and harmony (Gu, 1990; Zhang, 1995b), and (2) keeping social network relations intact, to reciprocate someone’s favor (Hwang, 1987). The latter, in Chinese, is termed as 關係 (/guanxi/). Goffman's facework theory argues that the maintenance of both self and face (public self-image) is a condition of interaction. Chinese sociopragmatic discourse analysts recognized that face can be enhanced through a social network involving these three elements: self (social identity), others (social relationships), and the specifics of the social events involved.
Sociopragmatic Ability by L2 Speakers
Kasper (1984) audiotaped 48 roleplay interactions between intermediate and advanced German learners of English (NNSs) and English native speakers (NSs) by examining their initiation of and response to various speech acts (requests, suggestions, acceptances,
112 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio promises, objections, rejections, apologies, and thanks). As a result, Kasper found that: (a) The NNSs were successful in realizing their intended communicative goals but mostly unsuccessful in the interpersonal aspect. (b) They exhibited certain politeness patterns which were "related to neither L1 nor L2" (p. 18), and (c) failed to mark the relational dimension and to mitigate face-saving acts, as NSs would use.
By putting together a variety of eight requests and eight apologies to solicit the responses through a discourse completion test (DCT), House, Blum-Kulka and Kasper et al. completed the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) that involved about 400 college student participants (1989). This project established a well-rounded taxonomy reflecting different levels of directness, and it delineated individual strategies as internal modifications and external modifications/supportive moves. Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1986) compared the speech act performance by NSs and NNSs of Hebrew at three proficiency levels (i.e., Intermediate-Low, Intermediate-High, and Advanced). The researchers found that the Intermediate-High speakers used wordier request realizations than the Intermediate-Low or Advanced NNSs and the NSs. The researchers concluded that the verbosity of Intermediate-High NNSs was a playing-it-safe strategy, that it violated the conversational maxim of quantity (Grice, 1975). Blum-Kulka and House (1989) believing cultural differences carry a relative weight in varied sociopragmatic behaviors, generated a list of universal truths. There were four factors. The more direct a request, the more illocutionarily (intentionally) transparent and the shorter the inferential path. The greater the speaker’s power position/dominance relative to the hearer, the lower the use of indirectness. The more difficult the request, the more indirect it will be. Rights and obligations do not always match.
Chinese-specific Sociopragmatic Knowledge and Competence
In light of the CCSARP, Hong (1993) carried out a cross-cultural contrastive study of Chinese and German requests with eight social situations and 116 questionnaires. The data showed that the Chinese speakers’ remarks, including insults, warnings and threats, made the requests ruder than necessary; on the other hand, Germans used neutral
113 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio expressions or polite greetings in their requests. Hong believed four conditions (urgency, familiarity, necessity, and power relation) were socially and culturally dependent and determined the speakers’ choice of directness, especially in Chinese requests. (Hong, 1993, p. 69)
Zhang (1995a, 1995b) applied them to a qualitative study to inspect how Chinese NSs demonstrated their requestive behaviors, using 30 questionnaires and two roleplays. Zhang found that conventional indirectness was used most, then directness and then nonconventional indirectness (59.2%, 26.4%, 9.5%). Chinese NSs preferred to use hearer-dominance than to use speaker-dominance strategies (40.6% vs. 14.4%). They rarely used syntactical and lexical downgraders, and mostly went straight to the point with a request without addressing the hearer rather than using terms of address. On the whole, their use of internal modifiers was rather socioculturally insignificant with respect to the frequency occurrence of external modifiers. On the latter, the Chinese NSs displayed high frequency in using supportive moves such as grounders, apologies, and sweeteners. Zhang’s findings confirmed those from previous researchers (e.g., Kirkpatrick, 1991; Scollon & Wong-Scollon, 1995) and claimed that the Chinese considered it an obligation to explain a situation or to justify with reasons before they asked someone to do something for them. Zhang’s qualitative study on the two roleplay conversational exchanges revealed that Chinese requesters embedded the request statements (e.g., conventional indirectness) somewhere in the middle of their conversation after the speakers had laid enough groundwork. Namely, Chinese indirectness is not issued without preceding external modifications. Adherence to such a sequence of moves is considered a polite act in Chinese social interactions, because it involves appropriation and attention to other’s face and negotiation of the relationship in the continuum of social networking.
Kasper and Zhang (1995) also undertook an interlanguage sociopragmatic study through 21 NNSs’ retrospective interviews of college and graduate students who had been in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Mainland China between four months to 6 years. Based on their
114 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio first-hand personal experience and observations, these subjects reported that: (1) “When making a request in Chinese, it is important to be self-effacing and act in a calculated way to get what you want by acknowledging the trouble others are taking even if it’s their duty.” (2) When there is an obvious age distance, kinship terms are often used by requesters to create an illusive but inclusive social networking effect to help intentional goal. (3) Although NNSs of Chinese were initially uncomfortable, as soon as they employed small talk topics according to Chinese conventions (i.e., talk about age, marital status, salary, family members and their children, personal background), their probability of realizing their requests increased. “You cannot go beyond your face but having ways of talking makes social relationships go smoothly.” (Kasper & Zhang, 1995, pp. 13-14). By experiencing actual encounters and being attentive to observing customs in real-life environments, NNSs acquired more L2-based sociopragmatic knowledge and thus became more proficient and competent in their social interactions with the Chinese NSs.
In recent years, in the field of teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language in the U.S., more and more researchers have explored an array of topics. These included the articulation of goals and curricula designs, traditional versus technology-enhanced training of the four basic skills. Some researchers investigated aspect of reading material or accuracy in a proficiency-oriented program, outcome of in-situ foreign study abroad programs, and the effects on reaching superior-level Chinese language proficiency (Chi, 1996, 2001; Chu 2001; Cui, 1993; Dew, 1994; Domizio, 1998; Ke, 1995; Ke & Everson, 2001; Kubler, 1987, 1997, 2002; Ling, 1994; Ma, 1977, 1985; McGinnis & Ke, 1996; Yao, 1988, 1995). The current study designed to respond to the call for more empirical results to examine the validity of the OPI in L2 competency assessment.
Research Design
A total of 45 data, the audiotaped corpus for this research originated from 77 original, full oral proficiency interviews (OPIs) which were collected in the total immersion Chinese program at the Middlebury College in summer 1996. With the permission and support of
115 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio the Director of the Chinese School, two Chinese-contextualized roleplay situations were adopted from previous studies and incorporated in the OPI process. The students’ identities were fully covered.
Situation 1 (dealing with a police officer, more complicated and formal):
It is a summer afternoon, and you have parked your bicycle right in front of a grocery store in Xidan shopping center, Beijing. You come out after forty minutes of shopping and find that your bicycle has been taken away because it was blocking traffic. Try to convince the police officer to return your bicycle.
Situation 2 (dealing with a waiter/waitress, less complicated, informal):
After you finish your final exam at Peking University, Beijing, you try to relax a bit and walk into a restaurant near the campus to have a good meal. When you finish the meal and a bottle of the best Chinese beer, you realize that you didn't bring money with you. Try to convince the waiter or the waitress to make some arrangements to pay the bill.
After collection of the data from the OPI tests (entrance test and exit test), the researcher first undertook a series of careful selections and reliability checks. Then the researcher further confirmed the selected data with two ACTFL-certified testers who served as the second raters to ensure high validity. Consequently, 18 OPIs rated at the level of IH and 25 rated at the level of A were chosen. The researcher transcribed all 45 roleplay performances of social interactions, identified each individual linguistic element and every instance of sociopragmatic strategies (SPSs) used. The researcher adopted the CCSARP scheme of classification and further modified it with a total of 14 adjustments to meet the Chinese-specific needs. These adjustments were further divided into a three- tiered scheme which helped codify and categorize L2 speakers’ use of sociopragmatic strategies (i.e., level of directness displayed in request head acts, the use of internal modifications, and the use of external modifications) (see Appendix A).
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Here are some samples of adjustments in classification: (1) Based on Li and Thompson (1981), Chinese-specific sentence-final particles that involve sociopragmatic functions are carefully examined. For instance, 了/啦 (currently relevant state), 呢 (responding to expectation), 吧/嘛/啦 (soliciting agreement), 噢/唔 (friendly warning), 啊/呀 (reduce forcefulness), 嗎 (question marker). These could be strategies used by a L2 speaker as lexical downgraders. (2) The study used external modifications to evaluate how a speaker mitigates or aggravates an encounter to help carry out request speech acts. A total of 16 sociopragmatic strategies were adopted and divided into a three-stage structure: (1) Courtesy Stage (Initiation Stage)- using apologizing, self-criticizing, and/or thanking as courtesy gestures to start the conversation. (2) Grounding Stage (Sustaining Stage)- using a preparatory, getting a pre-commitment, providing grounders, providing sweeteners, and/or strategy of seeking advice to justify one’s motive so as to increase the hearer’s willingness to help realize the request. (3) Negotiation Stage (Sustaining Stage and Concluding Stage) were further divided into two phases, stage one (assuming a responsibility, promising an improvement and offering help) and stage two (promising a reward, a direct appeal, threatening, reprimanding, and moralizing). Stage one involved frequent and commonly seen sociopragmatic strategies, and stage two presented those strategies that were used in complicated and/or desperate situations.
For statistical results, linguistic elements were identified and coded four times with results verified by two additional independent researchers during the period of classification for this project between 1996 and 1997. A high degree of inter-rated reliability was obtained. The entire corpus contained a total of 1,157 identifiable utterances (443 utterances from the A speakers and 714 utterances from the IH speakers). These utterances were tabulated and calculated and compared between the A speakers and the IH speakers within the three-tiered categories (choice of directness, internal modification and external modification). The differences between the L2 speakers who were rated at the A and IH levels were presented using comparisons of frequency distribution. For qualitative results, the study focused on microanalysis of textual difference between the A and the IH Speakers in the end.
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Results and Discussion
The conclusions of the research were drawn in October, 1998. The findings were yielded based on these crucial questions: How well did the two groups of L2 speakers execute choice of directness, internal and external modifications? The result of the analysis, below, was completed in August 1998, and that showed significant evidence for discerning these two groups of L2 speakers’ sociopragmatic knowledge and skills.
Choice of Directness
(1) More direct requests employed by the IH speakers (Table 1): The IH speakers’ total use of direct requestive statements was significantly higher than that of the A speakers in both situations. In the police-civilian status unequal situation, while it should have been more, the IH speakers failed to take the likelihood of the hearers’ compliance and the social distance between the interlocutors, the status-unequal, hearer-in-power social reality into consideration. This indicated (a) that the IH speakers were less experienced in dealing with complicated social transactions then the A speakers; and (b) that the IH speakers’ performance of inferential tasks was less successful. Their requests were more illocutionarily transparent. The results also revealed that both A and IH speakers preferred Conventional Indirectness (CID) as a most favorable strategies for requests which is consistent with previous studies (Blum-Kulka, & House, 1989; Zhang, 1995b).
(2) More tactics within Conventional Indirectness by the A speakers: Table 2 showed that the A speakers have more facility with and are more sensitive to contextual changes than the IH speakers by means of using more if-clauses, more hearer-dominance request statements to reflect more politeness, indirectness, and willingness to check the hearer’s willingness to comply. They appeared to have better sociopragmatic knowledge and were better able to demonstrate the skills to meet different social, interactional demands.
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Internal Modification
(1) Variation of downgraders versus contextual change (Table 3): The A speakers used the full range of strategies under downgraders and a shift of at least three strategies in frequency occurrence between the two social contexts (politeness marker, understater and honorific). The use of honorific, however, did not occur in either context in IH speakers’ speech samples and the only big shift the IH speakers had is the use of politeness marker (from 56.2% to 39%). This suggested that, the A speaker had at least activated more strategies (i.e., using honorific term) to attend to the hearer’s face as a polite strategy.
(2) Variation of upgrader strategies versus contextual changes (Table 4): The A speakers demonstrated more variation and a higher frequency occurrence of all strategies in the upgrader category than the IH speakers. Surprisingly, the A speakers used rudeness as one of the upgrader strategies in police/status- unequal situation (27.2%), whereas the IH speakers used none. This suggested that the A speakers have more linguistic means and repertoires, and they have perhaps more courage and confidence than the IH speakers to express personal emotion. Obviously, using a rudeness strategy would allow a face- threatening act (FTA) to develop. A forceful and pushy manner toward a person in power (e.g., a policeman) may or may not work, since it requires knowledge of potential consequences through observations or personal experience (Hong, 1993; Kasper & Zhang, 1995).
External Modification
As Kasper and Zhang (1995) asserted that Chinese manifested their sociopragmatic ability and especially indirectness in the use of external modifications in speech acts, the findings (Table 5) below therefore suggest the speakers’ ability to cope in Chinese social interaction.
(1) Initiation in courtesy stage: The A speakers varied the frequency according to context
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(from 15.6% in police situation to 30.5% in waiter/waitress), while the IH speakers remained about the same.
(2) Sustaining a task in grounding stage: In the supporting stage, the A speakers appeared to have the higher frequency in using providing grounders (34.2% by the A speakers versus 26.9% by the IH). Both groups’ use of the providing grounders strategy dropped in frequency in the less complicated situation to a comparable level (15.2% by the A speakers and 14.6% by the IH speakers). The implication one can draw is that people in a powerless position (e.g., a civilian to a policeman) are inclined to provide more than sufficient grounders than those in a not so powerless position.
(3) Concluding a task through on-going negotiations: The findings suggested that the A speakers were better able to handle complicated tasks, with a longer period in sustaining a negotiation before concluding the transaction. In the police situation, the A speakers demonstrated a 9.9% frequency at the first and 24.1% frequency at the second negotiation stage; whereas the IH speakers showed 15.2% frequency at the first and only 1.9% at the second stage of negotiation. This means that the IH speakers were only able to activate half of the number that the A speakers used for negotiation/sustaining in a more complicated communicative task (17.1% versus 34%). On a scrutiny, the researcher discovered that the most frequently occurred SPSs (about 7%) was Assuming a Responsibility by the IH speakers in 1st negotiation stage; the A speakers’ most frequently occurred SPSs were three types among the five at the 2nd negotiation stage: Promise of a Reward, Direct Appeal, Threatening, Reprimanding, Moralizing (Appendix C). In the Waiter/waitress situation, the performances by the A speakers and the IH speakers were about the same. That is indicated that the IH speakers’ performance during the negotiation stage was as strong as that of the A speakers’ in the less complicated social context. All these findings lend support to what the ACTFL’s skill-level description prescribed: that the A speakers can initiate, sustain and conclude a social interaction involving a transactional situation with a complication; whereas the IH speakers can initiate, sustain, and close a general conversation with a number of strategies appropriate
120 Journal of Language and Linguistics Vol. 3 No. 1 2004 ISSN 1475 - 8989 H. Lin Domizio to a range of circumstances and topics. Obviously, based on the result of the analysis, the IH speakers showed their ability to handle successfully most uncomplicated communicative tasks and social transactions (ACTFL, 1989).
Qualitative Difference between the A and the IH Speakers
The speech samples in Appendix section (B, D, E) demonstrated and suggested the significant differences of the two groups. For instance,
(1) The IH speaker displayed obvious errors within appropriate strategies: In Appendix B, both the A speaker and the IH speaker triggered four external modification called Sweetners in the initial small talk during the very first move to open up a social, interactional conversation. The A speaker’s speech sample displayed content-appropriate accuracy in both word choice and grammatical structure. Unlike the A speaker who used 27 words, the IH speaker’s speech was wordier: as it was a playing-it-safe strategy, but it violated the conversational maxim of quantity (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1986; Grice, 1975). The IH speaker used 58 words exhibiting evidence of his/her groping for words, halting, repetition, and erroneous use of subject and grammatical expression (i.e., missing post-verb /de/ in his utterance to mean 玩得很痛快).
(2) The A speaker seemed confident but not facile in the complicated situation: In Appendix D and E, the A speaker showed a high degree of confidence in negotiating a favorable result in one shot. The A speaker activated 10 sociopragmatic strategies all within one single turn (i.e., one Direct Appeal, two Providing Grounder, three Promise of Improvement, and four Conventional Indirect Requests), whereas the IH speaker realized his/her request in 6 turns with 11 sociopragmatic strategies (i.e., one Direct Request and one Thank, two Promise of Improvement, three Apologizing, and four Providing Grounder). The A speaker appeared to be totally an active participant, whereas the IH speaker a less active conversational partner.
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On text type, unlike the IH speaker, the A speaker used discourse connectors (“可是”, “ 因 為 ” , “ 所 以 ” ; “but”, “because”, “therefore”) which provided evidence of cohesion in utterance and coherence in thought, which created the feel of a paragraph than a simple string of discrete sentences. On accuracy, the A speaker’s utterance displayed two erroneous expressions, while the IH speaker also used an incorrect verb ( 放 ﹐ to put) twice. The A speaker’s extemporaneous expressions, however, actually helped to elaborate the reasons in his/her mind that justified a favorable reward. In turn, no evidence of elaboration may have been the reason the IH speaker took so long to carry out his/her request.
Throughout the social interaction with a police officer, in choice of directness in request and face-saving acts, the IH speaker made one transparently direct request at the very first move with an uneventful result, whereas the A speaker achieved the intended goal by activating sociopragmatic strategies of four indirect requests and peppering with expressions of sincerity, human emotion (e.g., direct appeal to fish for the hearer’s sympathy), honesty, and then a hope-for-the-best attitude. The speech sample showed that the IH speaker attempted to explain and to justify himself, yet he showed less willingness to negotiate a way out or a way through by active cooperation. Actually, the response of the IH speaker’s “many Chinese often can speak yet cannot read either” could be considered as a mildly face-threatening act. The A speaker’s speech demonstrated the effort to acknowledge the police officer’s effort to clear the traffic was a positive action, and thus it is a face-saving act. As what the previous studies indicated, the A speaker’s level of sociopragmatic competence was higher than the IH speaker’s (Kasper, 1984).
In sum, this study demonstrated and confirmed, as outlined in the skill-level description of the ACTFL Guidelines, that A speakers can handle with confidence but not with facility complicated tasks and social situations, such as elaborating, complaining, and apologizing.
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Conclusion
To what extent do the L2 speakers of Chinese at the IH and the A levels demonstrate their sociopragmatic competence in a request roleplay during the OPI? The basic conclusion of this study, drawn from only 45 performances demonstrated during roleplays, is that both the IH and the A speakers can handle uncomplicated situations though the IH speakers’ errors are obvious. The IH speakers cannot perform as well in more complicated social interactions. The A speakers demonstrated their stronger sociopragmatic knowledge and skills. The A speakers can handle complicated transactions with sensitivity to sociocultural concerns. Thus the current study found that the OPI’s theoretical construct of L2 speakers’ sociopragmatic competence is consistent with the reality of IH and A speaker’s performance during the roleplays. These features, not reliably demonstrated during the first three phases of the OPI, are of critical importance in the determination of an Advanced rating. As the format of the first three phases of the interview specifically prohibit give-and-take negotiation situations, it is impossible for them to elicit the kinds of responses required for the determination of sociopragmatic competence. Should these findings be confirmed by additional studies, they would suggest that the ACTFL Guidelines be amended to stress the importance of the roleplay performances, particularly when higher-level speakers are being evaluated. An additional recommendation would be that the Guidelines make its use of “pragmatic competence” more consistent with its use among the research community.
About the Author H. Lin Domizio is Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Professor Jianhua Bai, Richard Chi, Michael Everson, Stephen Fleming, David Hiple, Chunren Ke, Cornelius Kubler, Scott McGinnis, Richard Schmidt, Weina Zhao for their helpful comments, support and assistance in making this paper and empirical study possible. Any errors are, of course, my own.
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model for other less commonly taught languages [Grant No. G008402258] [ED 278 264]. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Cohen, A. D., & Olshtain, E. (1994). Researching the production of second-language speech acts. In E. E. Tarone, S. M. Gass, & A. D. Cohen (Eds.), Research methodology in second-language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cui, S. R. (1993). Conceptualizing language proficiency. JCLTA, 28(2), 1-23. Domizio, H. L. (1998). Sociopragmatic performance on the oral proficiency interview: A study of American Learners of Chinese. Doctoral Dissertation, Applied Linguistics, Teachers College, Columbia University. Freed, B. F. (1989). Perspectives on the future of proficiency-based teaching and testing. ADFL Bulletin, 20(2), 52-57. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Anchor Books. Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 237-258. Higgs, T. V., & Clifford, R. (1982). The push toward communication. In T. V. Higgs (Ed.), Curriculum competence, and the foreign language teacher. (ACTFL Foreign Language Education Series) Skokie, IL: National Textbook Company. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 3, Speech acts (pp. 41-58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Hong, W. (1993). A crosscultural study of requests in Chinese and German. Unpublished Dissertation, Purdue University. Kasper, G., & Zhang, Y. (1995). “It’s good to be a bit Chinese”: Foreign students experience of Chinese pragmatics. In G. Kasper (Ed.), Pragmatics of Chinese and target language (pp. 1-22). Honolulu: Univeristy of Hawaii, Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center. Ke, C. (1995). Aspects of accuracy in a proficiency-oriented program. ADFL Bulletin, 26(2), 28-35.
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Kubler, C. (2002). Learning Chinese in China. In B. L. Leaver and B. Shekhtman (Eds.),Developing professional-level language proficiency (pp. 96-118). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, A. (1991). Information sequencing in Mandarin in letters of request. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(2), 183-203. Kramsch, C. (1986). From language proficiency to interactional competence. Modern Language Journal, 70, 366-72. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press. Liskin-Gasparro, J. (1993). Talking about the past: An analysis of the discourse of intermediate high and advanced level speakers of Spanish. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin. Mao, L. (1994). Beyond politeness theory: “Face” revisited and renewed. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 1-5. Raffaldini, T. (1988). The use of situation tests as measures of communicative ability. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 10, 197-216. Sadock, J. (1975). The soft interpretive underbelly of generative semantics.In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (pp. 383-396). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Scollon, R., & Wong-Scollon, S. (1995). Intercultural communication. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Searle. J. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 3, Speech Acts (pp. 59-82). New York, NY: Academic Press. Zhang, Y. (1995a). Strategies in Chinese requesting. In G. Kasper (Ed.), Pragmatics of Chinese as native and target language (pp. 25-68). Zhang, Y. (1995b). Indirectness in Chinese requesting. In G. Kasper (Ed.), Pragmatics of Chinese as native and target language (pp. 72-118).
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Table 1: CHOICE OF DIRECTNESS BY GROUP AND SITUATION (%)
POLICE WAITER/WAITRESS
CHOICE OF A1 IH1 A2 IH2 DIRECTNESS (n = 8) (n = 8) (n = 10) (n = 19)
Directness (D) 8.0 23 2.5 17.3
Conventional Indirectness (CID) 44.0 42.3 62.5 58.2
Nonconventional Indirectness (NCID) 40 30.7 27.5 18.8
Missing data 4.0 3.8 7.5 2.3
Opt-out 4.0 0 0 3.1
Total 100 100 100 100
(CID+ NCID) 84.0 73.0 90.0 77.0
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Table 2: REQUEST PERSPECTIVE IN CID REQUESTS
SPS POLICE OFFICER WAITER/WAITRESS
A1 IH1 A2 IH2 (n = 8) (n = 8) (n = 10) (n = 19) Number of if-Clause Used in CID Statement 11 0 3 6
Hearer-Dominance (%) 50.0 36.3 16.6 39.1
Speaker-Dominance (%) 40.9 27.2 79.1 51.3
Speaker-Hearer Inclusive (%) 0 0 0 0
Agentless (%) 9.0 36.3 4.1 9.4
Table 3: LEXICAL AND PHRASAL DOWNGRADER (%)
SPS POLICE OFFICER WAITER/WAITRESS
A1 IH1 A2 IH2 (n = 8) (n = 8) (n = 10) (n = 19)
Politeness Marker 20.0 56.2 9.0 39
Understater 8.0 6.2 36.3 12.5
Subjectivizer 8.0 6.2 9.0 7.8
Downtoner 48.0 25.0 40.9 28.1
Honorific 8.0 0 0 0
Missing Data 0 0 0 3.1
None 4.0 6.2 4.5 6.2
Opt-out 4.0 0 0 3.1
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Table 4: DISTRIBUTION OF UPGRADERS (%)
POLICE OFFICER WAITER/WAITRESS
A1 IH1 A2 IH2 (n = 8) (n = 8) (n = 10) (n = 19)
Modal Intensifier 4.5 20.0 0 11.6
Rudeness 27.2 0 6.6 2.3
Time Intensifier 40.9 40 66.6 58.1
Missing data 4.5 0 0 9.3
None 18.1 40.0 26.6 9.3
Opt-out 4.5 0 0 9.3
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Table 5 EXTERNAL MODIFICATION STRATEGIES (%)
POLICE OFFICER WAITER/WAITRESS
SPS A1 IH1 A2 IH2 (n = 8) (n = 8) (n = 10) (n = 19)
COURTESY: INITIATING STAGE Apologizing 10.0 19.2 16.4 12.1 Self-criticism 1.4 0 1.1 2.5 Thanking 4.2 9.6 12.9 12.1 Total 15.6 28.8 30.5 26.7
GROUNDING: SUSTAINING STAGE A Preparatory Action 7.1 1.9 7.0 12.1 Getting Pre-commitment 0 7.6 2.3 5.7 Providing Grounders 34.2 26.9 15.2 14.6 Providing Sweeteners 0 0 2.3 3.1 Seeking Advice 1.4 5.7 5.9 4.4 Total 42.7 42.1 32.7 39.9
1ST NEGOTIATION: SUSTAINING+CONCLUDING Assuming Responsibility 4.2 7.6 10.5 12.7 Promising Improvement 5.7 5.7 0 0 Offering Help 0 1.9 12.9 12.1 Total 9.9 15.2 23.4 24.8
2ND NEGOTIATION: SUSTAINING+CONCLUDING Promising a Reward 7.1 1.9 1.1 1.9 Direct Appeal 7.1 0 1.1 1.2 Threatening 1.4 0 0 0 Reprimanding 7.1 0 0 0.6 Moralizing 1.4 0 5.8 1.9 Total 24.1 1.9 8 5.6
First + Second Negotiation 34.0 17.1 31.4 30.4 Missing data 1.4 0 1.1 0 None 4.2 11.5 3.5 1.2 Opt-out 1.4 0 0 1.2
Total Use of Modification 99.3 99.5 99.3 99.4
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APPENDIX A CLASSIFICATION FOR SOCIOPRAGMATIC STRATEGIES (SPSs) CHOICES OF INTERNAL MODIFICATION EXTERNAL MODIFICATION DIRECTNESS
DIRECTNESS (D) REQUEST PERSPECTIVE (I-RP) COURTESY (E-C): 1. Mood Derivable 1. Hearer Dominance INITIATING STAGE 2. Explicit Performance 2. Speaker Dominance 1. Apologizing 3. Obligation 3. Speaker and Hearer 2. Self-criticizing Statement Dominance 3. Thanking 4. Hedged 4. Agentless/Implicit Performative 5. Hope Statement ALERTERS/TERMS OF GROUNDING (E-G): ADDRESS (I-AT) SUSTAINING STAGE 5. Title/Role 4. A Preparatory Action 6. Full Name 5. Getting a Precommitment (Last Name +First Name) 6. Providing Grounders CONVENTIONAL 7. Surname + Title/Role 7. Providing Sweeteners INDIRECTNESS (CID) 8. Familiar/Casual Terms 8. Seeking Advice 6. Suggestory 9. Attention Getter Formula 10. Combination NEGOTIATION (E-N): 7. Query Preparatory SUSTAINING+ CONCLUDING LEXICAL AND PHRASAL 1ST Negotiation- DOWNGRADERS (I-LD) 9. Assuming a 11. Politeness marker Responsibility 12. Understater 10. Promising an NON- 13. Subjectivizer Improvement CONVENTIONAL 14. Downtoner 11. Offering Help INDIRECTNESS 15. Honorific (NCID) 2ND Negotiation- 8. Strong Hint UPGRADERS (I-UP) 12. Promising a Reward 9. Mild Hint 16. Intensifiers 13. A Direct Appeal 17. Rudeness 14. Threatening 18. Time Intensifier 15. Reprimanding 16. Moralizing
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APPENDIX B: AN INITIATION/COURTESY BY A411, IH321 CHINESE ENGLISH (Transliterated) SPS ANALYSIS 1. 你的菜非常好吃, Your food is so tasty, Sweetener 酒好喝﹐ the beer is good to drink, Sweetener 你的飯館不錯﹐ 好像是…海邊 your restaurant is pretty good, Sweetener looks like… the best restaurant on Sweetener 最好的飯館。 the coast. (A411) 2. uh…夥計…夥計… uh…waiter...waiter..., A Preparator Action 請你來…來…我想 please come over here, I would 跟你談一談﹐ like to talk with you for a second. Our meal is tasty, Sweetener 我們的飯很好吃﹐ the beer is very good, and we all Sweetener 啤酒也很好﹐我們都玩兒很痛 enjoy the fun here… Sweetener 快…, 我們非常喜歡你的飯館… We truly like your restaurant…. Sweetener 可是…現在…我想…我忘了我的 but…now…I think…I have Non-conventional 皮包。 forgotten my wallet. (IH321) Indirect Request
APPENDIX C: NEGOTIATION BY A403, A408
CHINESE ENGLISH (Transliterated) SPS 1. 怎么沒看到 ? 啊呀 ! 好啦, 1. How could you not see it? Ah ya! Reprimanding 1 你要十塊吧? OK, You want 10 Kuai, don’t you? 你告訴我, 我給你十塊. 我看 Tell me, [and] I will give you 10 kuai.. I take a look at how much I Offering a Reward/bribe 我有多少… have... My friend he said [that] he 我的朋友他說他看 saw you took away my bike*. (A403) Grounding 你拿我的自行車走了*。 2. 我的中文不好, 怎么可以 2. My Chinese is not that good, how Grounding;
問人吧*2﹐... can I ask people BA*2… Direct Appeal 請你還給我啦 ! Please return [my bike] to me LA! 好, 我去買一些“煎餅 All right, I’ll go and buy some “Chinese pancake” for you to eat, Offering a reward/bribe 果子”給你吃, 好吧? OK? (A403) 3. 如果你不還給我…我就會 3. If you don’t return it to me, …I Threatening 找很多人, 我認識很多人… then…will find many people…I
3 3 他* 會寫信. know many people… He* will write a letter [reporting you]. (A408)
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4. 如果, 我 不必 *4 寫信, 你 4. If, I don’t have to*4 write the letter Offering a Reward 能把我的車子還我嗎? [to report your course of action], can you return me my bike? (A408)
1. When there were more than 2 stems occurred in one segment, some are underlined. 2. Final particulars were capitalized in English translation here. BA is considered to be incorrect here. NE should have been used. 3. The aster * indicates certain degree of error occurred. 4. An error.
APPENDIX D: LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF SPSs USED BY SPEAKER IH305
CHINSE ENGLISH (Transliterated) SPS IH IH 唔, 我麻煩你, Uh, [may I ] trouble 305 305 請你給我我的自車。 you, please return [me] my bike. NSDi 不可 以, 因為 Not possible, because you violated rect 你違反了規定, 車, 你不能 the traffic rule, car, you are not allowed to park there. Requ 把車停在那儿。 est IH 噢, 我不懂, Oh, I don’t understand, sorry, I, Providing grounder 305 對不起, 我, 下次, 我一定 next time, I definitely will not put* Apologizing 不 放* [ 停]在那個 地方。 [park] over there. Promising an improvement
NS 你看, 上面寫了這個地方 See, on the sign indicated no 不能放自行車。 parking is allowed here.
IH 好, 好, 現在我懂了, 我說 All right, all right, now I 305 對不起, 請你在…, understand. I apologize. Please Apologizing 我, 下次我一定不放* [停] at…, next time I definitely will not Promising an put* [park] over here. improvement …. 這個地方。
NS 那上面寫: “不可以停車, There is a sign indicating ” “PARKING IS NOT ALLOWED” 你為什么把車放在這儿? Why you parked here?
IH 噢… 我看不懂啊。 Uh..., I did not understand AH. Providing 305 grounder
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NS 哦 你看不懂? 你說中文, Oh, you didn’t understand? You 為什么不會看呢? spoke Chinese, couldn’t you read?
IH 你不懂? 我...很 多中國人 You don’t understand? I... Many Providing 305 常常可以說中文也看不 Chinese often can speak Chinese grounder 懂啊! but yet cannot read AH!
NS 好, 這是你第一次, 下次不 All right, this is your first time, 可 以放在這儿, 好嗎? next time, you may not park here, all right?
IH 好, 謝謝, 謝謝。 OK, thank you, thank you. Thanking 305 * An error.
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APPENDIX E: LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF SPSs USED BY SPEAKER A405
CHINESE ENGLISH (Transliterated) SPS NS 你違規停車, 就得罰款。 You violated traffic rules, certainly must be fined.
A 可 是, 可 不可 以 這一次不要 But, couldn’t this time be exempted? Request 405 罰?
好, 好, 可以這一次不付 啊? OK, OK, is it possible that this time Request not pay AH?
就…下一次不能 Just that... next time cannot [will not] Promising an 這樣做啊*。 do this AH*. improvement
因為, 現在知道這是 不 可 能 Because, now I know [that] this is Providing 的*1。 not possible*. grounder
所 以… 我將來就…… 不會 So….I in the future will……. not Promising an 這樣子做啊。 do it this way AH. improvement
我這是 從心裏來說這 This is from my heart tell you this*2 Direct Appeal
樣子 的*2
我將來不會 這樣子 做*, I, in the future, will not do things like Promising of this. improvement
所 以…, 就這一次不付 啊…. So…, just this time not to pay AH…, Request 就這樣子 ! 哦? this way, uh… [all right]?
嘸...我現在懂... Uh… I now understand, … Providing 我現在什么都懂, I now understand every thing, grounder
可以嗎? is that all right? Request
NS 好吧, 好吧, 這一次放了你, All right, all right. I let you go this 把你的車還給你。 time, let me get your bike and let you have it.
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1. 不可能 (not possible)*- This is an error. Correct one here should be 不可以 (not permissible). 2. Though the expression seemed erroneous, this is considered as a direct appeal as if one says: “what I said is sincere/honest (我是 誠心 的).”
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