GIVING DIRECTIONS AS A SPEECH EVENT: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF ENGLISH AND EMIRATI ARABIC ' « MMMstw vto /I By U.J: ;1 08Y r o I — ’>^1 CARRIE ANNE TAYLOR-HAMILTON A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2002 Copyright 2002 by Carrie Anne Taylor-Hamilton To Alexandra, whom I love more than linguistics ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Few doctoral students are fortunate enough to have a committee that is as helpful, knowledgeable, and congenial as mine has been. Dr. Diana Boxer has been everything I could ever have wanted in a chair and a mentor. Her encouragement and good advice kept me going even while I was overseas and prospects of finishing seemed remote. I have greatly benefited from working with her and learning from her, and I cannot thank her enough for the time she has spent with me. I have the deepest professional and personal admiration for her. Dr. Aida Bamia was of invaluable help with the Arabic part of this dissertation, going far beyond the call of duty in her help with the transliteration and interpretation of the Arabic language data (although I take all responsibility for any incorrect information). I have also appreciated her friendship and our many wonderful conversations on Arab culture. I would like to give her my thanks for being so patient with my lack of knowledge of the Arabic language. I would like to thank Dr. Joaquim Camps for his help with the statistical part of this research. I very much appreciated his guidance in this area. Dr. Allan Bums gave me a great deal of advice and feedback on how to go about conducting ethnographic research. I am very grateful for his insight and expertise. Dr. Anne Wyatt-Brown has provided me with valuable feedback on my writing and on many of the ideas within this dissertation. She and her husband, Dr. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, were also of great help in allowing me to stay in their home when I returned in the summer from the UAE. I would also like to thank Dr. J.C. Casagrande for sitting in on my dissertation in Dr. Wyatt-Brown’s absence. There are many people in the UAE whose help I need to acknowledge. First and foremost, I would like to thank Robin Stark and Mike Davies for being incredibly supportive of my research while I was working at ADMC. Stephen Munns was a great help while I was at ADWC, and he was especially understanding when it was time for me to come home and finish this. Mouna A1 Kousi, Dine Lahcen, and Abdulkarim Arikat were of invaluable help in gathering the Arabic data, and my debt to them is enormous. My colleagues at both ADMC and ADWC were wonderful about giving directions into my little tape recorder, and I certainly benefited from discussions of my research with them. Thanks also go to Ahmed Kendil, who did the original transliteration of the Arabic data, and to Wafaa Kendil, who helped me to understand direction giving in Arabic. I would also like to express my deep appreciation to all of the wonderful HCT students who participated cheerfully in this study. Special heartfelt thanks go to the four students IV who helped me with the ethnographic interviews. These four took hours of their own time to give me an inside glimpse of their world, and I deeply appreciate their kindness. They showed me true Arab hospitality that I will never forget. I also want to thank my parents, Anne and Jim Taylor, for giving me a love of learning and for telling me all my life that I could accomplish anything I wanted to do. My brother, Mark Taylor, has been a constant source of support and love throughout these years of work. My late brother. Dale Taylor, always believed that I knew more than I actually do, and I wish he could be with us to see this finished. A few other people deserve a word of thanks. I am grateful to Tandy Bailey and Chan Philips for inviting my child over every weekend while I worked on my research; to Lynda Aupouri for moral support while I was gathering the data; to Steve Flocks and Karen Eberly for their help when I was back in Gainesville preparing for my quals; to my dear friend Shrimatee Ojah-Marahaj for her support during my trips back to the US; and to Dr. Jodi Nelms, for years of advice, help, and friendship. I don’t quite know how to thank my husband, Bruce Hamilton and my daughter, Alexandra, for their love and support throughout the writing of this dissertation. This dissertation belongs to them also, because they have had to give up so much to see it get finished. They have had to see far too many Disney movies just to get out of the house so I could work. Bruce has known all along how much this meant to me, but I am sure it must have been especially difficult for Allie to understand why her mom had to spend so much time working. The two of you mean more than anything in the world to me, and I thank you for showing your love for me by making it possible for me to complete this doctorate. v TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT ix CHAPTER 1 PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND OF STUDY 1 Research Questions 5 Outline of the Study 7 Review of the Literature Related to Interlanguage Pragmatics, Giving Directions, Spatial Description 8 Interlanguage Pragmatics Research: the Basis of the Research Paradigm 9 Speech Act Theory: Defining Direction-Giving as a Speech Event 21 Clark and Searle: the Speech Act of Referring 23 Grice and the Cooperative Principle: A Tool for Analysis 25 Schegloff: Formulating Place 28 Spatial Description in Anthropology 30 Place Names 33 Route Description and Wayfinding Studies in Cognitive Science and Cognitive Psychology 35 Conclusion 39 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 40 Previous Work on Methodologies ; 40 Research Methods: Advantages and Disadvantages 42 Judgment Tasks 42 Oral Interviews/Ethnographic Interviews 44 The Discourse Completion Task (DCT) 46 Role-plays 52 Data Collected From Field Notes 53 Tape-Recorded and Videotaped Data 54 Written Text 56 The Central Controversy: Intuitive Data or Naturally Occurring Data? 57 Competence/Performance 57 Methodology in this Study 60 vi 5 Background to Data Collection 61 Data Collection Procedures 64 Data for this Study: Natural or Elicited? 69 Difference from Naturally-Occurring Data 70 Conclusion 71 3 QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF DIRECTION-GIVING DATA 73 Purpose of Chapter 73 Direction-Giving Strategies 75 Success in Direction-Giving Sequences 80 Social Variables 84 Conclusion 96 4 DISCUSSION OF STRATEGIES, SUCCESS RATE, AND VARIABLES 98 Introduction 98 Discussion of Strategies 98 Discussion of Success Rate 1 1 Social Variables 121 Conclusion 125 5 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF DATA 128 Introduction 128 Canonical Form of Directions 128 Direction Sequences from the LI English Data 133 Direction Sequences from LI Arabic Data 146 Direction Sequences from the L2 English Data 154 Relational Directions: More L2 Examples 161 Verb Form in L2 English Data 165 Conclusion 168 6 ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES ON SPACE AND DIRECTIONS 170 Purpose of Ethnographic Interviews 170 Setting up the Interviews 171 An Emirati View of Place: the Landmarks 173 Tribal Organization of Neighborhoods 180 Talking about Giving Directions and Using Landmarks 182 Talking about Street Names. .. 186 Direction Giving in Historical Perspective 189 Conclusion 192 Vll 7 PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 194 Results and Discussion 194 Implications for Theories of Transfer in ILP Research and the Role of Social Choice 196 Pedagogical Implications 206 Implications for Study of Culture and Spatial Description 210 Implications for Cognitive Studies 213 Limitations of Study 214 Final Remarks 214 APPENDICES A 220 B 227 REFERENCES 234 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 242 vm Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy GIVING DIRECTIONS AS A SPEECH EVENT: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF ENGLISH AND EMIRATI ARABIC By Carrie Anne Taylor-Hamilton May 2002 Chair: Diana Boxer Major Department: Linguistics Recent studies in spatial description have shown that all cultures do not perceive and talk about space in the same way. This study examines the speech event of giving directions and is based on 1 18 samples of audiotaped second-language second language (L2) English direction giving gathered from male native speakers of Gulf Arabic in the United Arab Emirates. Additional information was collected on six social variables that may influence the ability of L2 speakers to successfully give directions. The study compares these data to baseline data in first-language (LI) Arabic and LI English, collected in a similar fashion from 46 male native speakers of Emirati Gulf Arabic and 50 male and female native speakers of UK/British Isles English. The data are supplemented by ethnographic interviews with Emirati nationals, which examine the social, cultural, and historical contexts of direction giving in Abu Dhabi. Analysis of the data reveals that when giving directions in L2 English to a native speaker of English, Arabic speakers tend to overuse relational directions and underutilize landmarks and street names as direction giving strategies. Analysis of IX some of the baseline data in English and in Arabic reveals a much greater use of landmarks and less reliance on relational directions. It is argued that the infrequent use of landmarks in the sequences prohibits the “accumulation of common ground” that Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs claim to be necessary for discourse to proceed in an orderly manner.