Ideas for Research Projects

Anggit Budi Luhur | 0203520061

Introduction
In this chapter, exemplary studies in areas of interest take a primary place to
illustrate possible small, even doctoral dissertation research projects in the
field of sociopragmatics.
Four areas are discussed
in the following sections:

Pragmatic glitches
01 Question 03 and misfires

Requests
02 and Refusal 04 Political discourse.
 01

Questions
Question
Questions are so ubiquitous in everyday life that little attention is paid to
them unless personal experience leads to the awareness that they are
not without problems, particularly in cross-cultural contexts.

Learners of a target language may lack complete control regarding the

grammatical formation of interrogatives as well as concerning the
degrees of directness and indirectness in question use.
Question
There are prototype questions that function in two ways:

01 to get information

to communicate indirectness when asking for a

02
favor or making a suggestion.

An issue that remains problematic in interactional discourse, particularly across

cultures and languages, is how listeners know whether a speaker is asking type 1 or
type 2.
01 “question substitutes”

Kasper (2004) studied “question substitutes” in the context of

oral proficiency interviews (OPIs), a form of test to assess
a nonnative speaker’s proficiency in a target language.

It is a gate-keeping, interactional site where what appears

syntactically to be requests are question substitutes.
“question substitutes”
Here is an edited excerpt (Kasper 2004: 128) from an oral proficiency
interview to highlight the role of questions in this instance:

Line 1 illustrates the question substitute, while line 2 suggests that C was
unclear about how to interpret I’s request in line 1.

The interviewer essentially repeats the question for information in line 1,

with a direct request, indeed in command form.
“question substitutes”

The C’s question, presumably designed to elicit an extended period of talk

so that the tester can evaluate C’s proficiency in English, may lead to
confusion and C then may not do her best on the OPI (oral proficiency
interviews).
02 “challenge questions.”
Questions may also function as a means to challenge another person in a
situation where the speaker seeks to convey a negative assessment of the
person who is addressed.

Koshik (2003) labels these “challenge questions.” Koshik used a conversation

analysis approach to study the occurrence of these challenges in sequences of
talk, typically in the context of disagreement, argument, and accusation.

She argues that the targeted questions could only be interpreted as challenges
due to the existence of prior claims or actions in the talk.
“challenge questions.”
Further, the addressee of the challenge orients or reacts to the speaker’s talk
as a challenge. Here is an example from Koshik’s research (2003: 70):

In this excerpt, three participants are discussing a piece of work that Kathy had
made.
“challenge questions.”

In this excerpt, three participants are discussing a piece of work that Kathy had
made.

Rubin does not necessarily imply a strong negative assertion about Kathy’s
work, but rather seeks to clarify the phrasing of her talk in line 1.

A researchable topic related to Koshik’s study is the underlying purposes of

using Wh-questions to make challenges.
03 “The Pope Question”
Bouton (1988) reports that what he called “The Pope Question” can certainly
require more processing time in order to understand the question’s inference.
Here is an example:

B responds positively to A’s question: “Of course, I’ll go downtown to get some
ice cream – you know I love ice cream.” The question response is likely
designed to be humorous in addition.

This style of indirectness, an example of irony, seems to be common in the

U.K. as well as the U.S. and may not be easily understood by nonnative
speakers from different sociocultural backgrounds.
The use of questions to avoid direct disapproval of a speaker’s talk appeared
in a study by Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1991).

There were instances in the collected data illustrating how a student showed
disagreement with a recommendation by an advisor (1991: 47):

In the subsequent exchanges of talk, the student avoided any direct indication
of disagreement by asking information questions.
“ In sum, questions are a rich area for study for both small and more
elaborated projects. In particular, more knowledge would be
valuable about cross-cultural differences and the processes of both
comprehending and producing language in use regarding the
indirectness of questions.

“
 02

Requests and Refusal

Apologies and Refusals in Latin American Spanish

Carrying out studies of speech acts in context can be very useful for
preparing for a language-teaching career.

Not only does a study in an environment where native speakers use

the language in multiple everyday interactions provide linguistic
information, but also contextual features often not found in textbooks
for teaching the language.
Kaiser’s research

Kaiser (forthcoming) collected data for a study on refusals and apologies in

Uruguayan Spanish. One of her main goals was to study the linguistic
strategies that these speakers use to manage uncomfortable or offensive
situations.

Kaiser focused on apologies and refusals in quotidian interactions from the

perspective of Uruguayan women, from both lower and middle
socioeconomic sectors of the city of Rosario, Uruguay.
Kaiser’s study
Using equipment to collect recorded speech, and field notes
as she observed many of the interactions, Kaiser asked
twelve Rosarian women to wear a lapel microphone as they
went about their everyday lives, engaging family, friends,
work peers and others in talk.

A speaker of American English could very acceptably

employ a variant of “I am sorry” for both situations, the
Spanish speakers clearly display a preference for “ lo siento
” as a condolence and a form of “perdonar” for
apologies.
The situation involves a wake and Moqui, 35, arrives alone and greets a
series of people, both family members and friends of the deceased, most
many years her senior. Without her mother present, the people she greets
have trouble recognizing her
In this data excerpt, the two speech acts,
expressing condolences and apologies, are
performed by the participants. The Spanish
speakers use different verbs to show respect for
the family and to apologize for not recognizing
Moqui, Juliana’s daughter and an intimate
member of the community, as evidenced in the
family members’ use of perdonar with her.

They are embarrassed that they do not recognize

her without her mother. What is one speech act
where one phrase can be used for both situations
in English, i.e. “I’m sorry,” is rendered by different
verbs in Spanish.
Kaiser’s study goal
The goal of Kaiser’s study was to learn about not only how speakers in this
community made apologies, but also how they negotiated situations in which
they felt they must refuse, for instance, a suggestion, request, or invitation.

These two speech acts are often linked, with apologies commonly figuring as
part of the refusal sequence. A refusal tends to be a dispreferred response and
thus more problematic for the speaker to negotiate so as not to threaten the
face of the requester.
 03
Pragmatic glitches
and misfires
Pragmatic glitches and misfires
The chapter on cross-cultural pragmatics discussed the notion of
pragmatic failure and the recent challenges to the view that
nonnative speakers’ pragmatic competence is insufficient to avoid
miscommunication with native speakers of the target language.

In the real world of everyday talk, with the great diversity of speakers as
nonnative users of the local language that is found in urban
environments in particular, it is still commonplace for what are called
misfires to occur.
A typical example arises when a nonnative speaker of French mistakenly
says “ Je suis plein ,” thinking it is a polite phrase to use to refuse any more
food at the dinner table. In fact, the transfer from English, “I am full,” is
not the translation equivalent as the French phrase means “I am pregnant.”
A project was assigned to students in an undergraduate second language
acquisition course to work with a conversational partner who did not speak
English as a first or primary language (they could also work with a
nonstandard speaker of English).

Many international students on the campus, even if they are enrolled in

graduate-level programs, are happy to work with a native speaker of English
not only to get help with particular linguistic needs, but also to have
someone they can talk, socialize, and study with outside of their own
specializations. So a conversational partner provides benefits to them.
The following are examples of some misfires that have been edited (LoCastro
2010b: 12–15):

A simple “thank you” would be preferred in American English, rather than a

response that implies gift-giving requires something be presented in return.
The following are examples of some misfires that have been edited (LoCastro
2010b: 12–15):

In the U.S., a dictionary may be passed around amongst students readily. It

is likely that in his country of origin, Ivan apparently has a different attitude,
possibly due to the economic situation where a dictionary may be worth a
considerable sum of money. A response like “not at all,” would be preferred.
The following are examples of some misfires that have been edited (LoCastro
2010b: 12–15):

Gestures and other nonverbal forms of communication can also lead to misfires,
as in this case. A stereotype of Americans’ friendliness may suggest that hugging
is a norm, even for greeting a new person. A more appropriate return greeting
for the young woman would have been to offer her right hand to shake and to
say “It’s nice to meet you.”

Even though some Americans may seem to greetanyone with a hug, in fact it is
rare among strangers to do so and, as a nonnative to the culture, it is safer to use
a more neutral response.
Conversational partners provide an opportunity for both participants to
exchange language lessons and learn about each others’ cultural beliefs and
practices.

A joint project could develop so that both participants benefit from working
together and developing their language and interactional skills.
 04

Political discourse
Political discourse

Studies of language use in African countries have become more and more
of interest for several reasons.

A primary impetus for those interested in sociopragmatics is the fact that

African cities are increasingly plurilingual, with rural populations migrating
within countries and across borders in pursuit of jobs, better educational
opportunities, and modernity, with access to technology and IT.
Political discourse

Urban areas in Africa are sites of great diversity on several levels, in

particular the mixing of languages, and the sociopragmatic norms of
discourse experience implicit pressures to converge to take in new
expectations and diverge to signal nationalism and new local identities.
Bwenge study
Bwenge (2010) studied one local situation in
his native Tanzania: the national legislative
body, or parliament, is called the Bunge in
Swahili.

In the 1960s, when Tanzania had gained

independence from Great Britain, it adopted
one national language, Swahili, and then
both Swahili and English as official
languages.
Bwenge study
Swahili is an African language that serves
as the primary lingua franca of East Africa,
and the former colonial power’s language
was adopted as a language of liberation and
representative of the new country, with its
eyes on the future of international contacts
and opportunities. Consequently, it is not
surprising that the code switching or mixing
of those two languages would become a
norm in some contexts.
Bwenge study
Bwenge focused on the parliament, where elite, ,
highly educated members of Tanzanian society are
elected to that body and use what Bwenge has
labeled ES (Elite Swahili), that is, the Swahili–English
mixed code of this socioeconomic class.

His study documents how this “communicative

innovation” and symbol of “the society’s linguistic
culture” comprises not only a distinct code, but also
how this particular language choice is “pragmatically
and symbolically motivated” (2010: ii). Bwenge
looked into the use of this mixed code by members of
parliament, by the government, and in society.
Bwenge study
Here is an example from a parliamentary debate (Bwenge 2010: 48):

Bwenge explains that the phrase “ ku -invest” is linguistically and semantically

the core of the question during the Q and A session, and it signals the
speaker’s motivation to use the mixed code, i.e. ES, to self-identify as an
educated, cosmopolitan Tanzanian.
Bwenge study
Information about when standard Swahili (SS) and ES are used in the
Parliament gives a synopsis of when the mixed code is used (Bwenge 2010: 49):

This picture of when ES is used, i.e. three times out of five, suggests that it is the
more dominant choice and that is most likely to be the choice when
spontaneous, spoken language is the norm.
Bwenge study

Bwenge’s study is a good example of how combining microanalysis of language

use in a targeted environment and macroanalysis of sociocultural influences and
constraints in the same environment provides information on the sociopragmatic
rules of speaking.
Conclusion
This chapter has aimed to provide a sample of studies as examples of topics
that have been pursued and have resulted in publications and doctoral
dissertations.

Readers of this book who need to do projects for course credit in the space of
one fifteen-week semester can read these examples for ideas and to spark
lateral thinking.

The hope is that this chapter encourages the readers to get into brainstorming,
testing out ideas by doing the opposite of what seems to be expected, and
generally putting on a new pair of glasses to become an astute observer of
people and our behaviors to come up with topics for projects.
Thank You