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A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students'

Complaining Strategies*

Article  in  Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics · January 2011

DOI: 10.1515/cjal.2011.008

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 2011 年 1 月 中国应用语言学（季刊） Jan. 2011
第 34 卷 第 1 期 Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics (Quarterly) Vol. 34 No. 1

A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese

University Students’ Complaining Strategies*

YUAN Zhoumin
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Abstract
This paper aims to make a contrastive study on complaining strategies between American
and Chinese university students, based on the descriptive study of the collected data, with
reference to the social variables of social status and social distance. It is found that Chinese
and American university students are significantly different in the choice of complaining
strategies produced to professors, intimates, friends and strangers. The Chinese show greater
respect to professors than Americans do. Generally, as to interlocutors with equal social status,
Americans’ complaining degree displays a gradually descending tendency along a social
distance continuum, while the Chinese have intimates and strangers at the both ends, with
friends in the middle. No significant difference has been revealed in the choice of complaining
strategies to parents, but Americans tend to be more polite than the Chinese. This challenges
Brown and Levinson’s formula, Wx = D (S, H) + P (H, S) +Rx, which implies the same weight
for each of these three factors. The study proves that in private conversations, the variable of
social distance carries more importance than the variable of social status.

Key words: complaining strategies; social status; social distance; complaining degree

1. Introduction
In the domain of cross-cultural pragmatics, the most influential research is the Cross-
Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) launched by Blum-Kulka, House and
Kasper (1989). The project makes a contrastive study of how the speech acts of request and

*  This research is supported by the Teaching Reform Grant from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
Grant No.:JG00910JX32, and also sponsored by Qing Lan Project of Education Department of Jiangsu Province.

ISSN 1005-538X Chinese J. of Appl. Ling. 34⫺1 (2011), pp. 111⫺124 DOI 10.1515/CJAL.2011.008 111
쑕 FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

apology are realized among eight languages and language varieties. Many other scholars
have also contributed greatly to the study of speech acts such as apologies, compliments,
greetings, invitations and refusals from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics and
speech act realization patterns, with politeness levels being contrastively illustrated (Blum-
Kulka & Olshtain, 1984; Liao, Chao-chi & Bresnahan, 1996; Olshtain & Cohen, 1983;
Wolfson, 1981). But few are leveled at complaints—a typical FTA which is not usually
employed for rapport inspiring, but instead for hostility-eliciting. This paper aims to
make a contrastive study on complaining strategies between American native speakers and
Chinese EFL learners based on the descriptive study of the collected data, with reference to
the social variables of social status and social distance.

2. Literature review
Complaints, in general, can be defined as a set of speech acts that are characterized
by dissatisfaction and unhappiness uttered by the speaker. The present paper borrows
the definition from Laforest (2002: 1596) who defines complaint as “an expression of
dissatisfaction addressed by an individual A to an individual B concerning behavior on the
part of B that A feels is unsatisfactory”. And this B is identified as the cause of the problem,
i.e., the individual responsible for the behavior that is deemed unsatisfactory. The research
focuses on the study of direct complaints in which interlocutors make face to face verbal
complaints.
Studies on complaints within China are at an initial stage. Within these, early studies
focused on the introduction and interpretation of some theoretical issues. Zhao (2003)
described in general the performing conditions, syntactic patterns and pragmatic strategies
of direct complaints; Later scholars conducted contrastive empirical studies. Li et al.
(2006) examined differences in the degrees of severity in expressing complaints between
EFL learners in China and native speakers from the United States, and between Chinese
sub-groups. Zhu (2008) explored how the three groups of students (American native
speakers, Chinese learners of English, non-English majors) complain, to find similarities
and dissimilarities in terms of their strategy, use and wording features. These studies
show a clear picture of the main features, pragmatic functions and cultural difference
of complaints. In more recent studies, Yuan (2007, 2009) carried out two empirical
studies based on discourse completion tests, with one aiming to find the difference of
semantic components, lexical and syntactical features and discourse organization patterns
between junior and senior English majors, and the other attempting to study the direct
complaints by Chinese, especially on complaining strategies, realizations, level of speech
act , distribution and typical linguistic expressions within complaining strategies. Up until
now, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there are few studies aiming at the empirical
contrastive study on complaints between Chinese and American participants.
Many studies abroad attempt to find the difference on the use of complaints between
or among different language systems. House and Kasper (1981) compared complaint
speech between English and German in terms of directness and modality markers,

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suggesting that German speakers select higher levels of directness and use fewer down-
graders than English speakers do. However, they finally explained that this difference did
not mean that German speakers are not intrinsically less polite than English speakers and
that it appeared that they were unfairly compared to an English norm. They adopted four
criteria to determine directness levels, from which many other studies seek inspiration.
The first criterion takes account of implicit or explicit mention of the offense. The second
concerns whether or not the speaker’s negative evaluation of the act is expressed explicitly,
the third whether or not the addressee’s agentive involvement is implicitly or explicitly
expressed, and the fourth whether or not the negative evaluation of the addressee’s action
and the addressee himself are implicitly or explicitly expressed. Laforest (2002: 1617-1618)
holds the view that

Complaints have preferential realization strategies that can be linked in part to the intimacy
of the relationship between the interactants and the entry into the argument is negotiated in
the speech turns that follow the complaint response sequences. And the argument only breaks
out if the complainer questions the value of the complainee’s response.

As she has said, the purpose of her study is to “characterize the complaint/complaint-
response sequence in everyday conversations between people who are on intimate terms”
(ibid.: 1595). Thus she does not make the contrastive study between languages and no
effort is made to investigate how social variables give different impacts on the choice of
complaining strategies produced by different language speakers. Other similar studies
include Olshtain and Weinbach (1993), Boxer (1993), Trosborg (1995), Murphy and Neu
(1996) and Tatsuki (2000) which shed little light on complaining strategies of Chinese
participants, still less is the consideration of social variables such as social status and social
distance.
To sum up, previous studies on direct complaints proceed from the theoretical
introductions and interpretations to the more detailed empirical studies in which two
approaches are identified. One is to find the difference between two languages on the use
of complaints, from the perspective of politeness and directness, the other is to conduct in-
depth study in terms of its realization patterns, such as lexical and syntactical expressions.
So far, few studies focus on the contrastive research of the complaining strategies between
American and Chinese university students, especially with reference to the social variables
of social distance and social status. The present study attempts to fill in the gaps in this
field, aiming to make a contrastive quantitative study of complaining strategies between
American and Chinese university students. The measure of interpersonal relationship
between interlocutors involves two key terms in the study of contrastive pragmatics and
sociolinguistics, namely, social distance and social status.

Social distance is one of the foremost factors that determine the way in which interlocutors
converse precisely, because it is an important determinant of the degree of comfort or
politeness/deference in a verbal exchange. This in turn determines the constraints felt and the
liberties taken in speech exchanges (Boxer, 1993: 103).

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

Social status is considered primarily as a social ladder of higher or lower status with
regard to speakers’ occupation or level of power on the basis of social stratification. These
two terms work as ostensive social variables having the potential of interacting and/or
overriding each other, depending on the context of the interaction.
In addition, the contrastive study between Chinese EFL learners and American native
speakers is of great significance to foreign language teaching and learning. In the absence
of proper pragmatic instruction, non-native speakers may frequently transfer their
native-language pragmatic rules while communicating in L2 (Chen, 2009), which partly
accounts for the “occurrence of frequent pragmatic failures in speech act productions of
Chinese EFL learners” (Chen & Li, 2006). The contrastive study of complaining strategies
between American and Chinese participants can reveal pragmatic rules of each language
system in producing the speech act of complaining. Therefore, the result is both useful for
Americans communicating in Chinese and Chinese communicating in American English,
facilitating L2 students pragmatic competence by maximally promoting their positive
pragmatic transfer while minimally being trapped in negative pragmatic transfer. This
study will thus assist heterogeneous communicators to predict the other culture reactions
under similar situations(Liao & Bresnahan, 1996: 726).

3. Methodology
3.1 Research questions
The purpose of this study is to characterize contrastively the complaining strategies of
everyday conversations of American and Chinese university students with reference to the
variables of social distance and social status. Specifically, it aims to answer the following
two questions:
1. Are there any differences between American and Chinese university students in
the choice of complaining strategies to persons of high social status？If so, what are
they?
2. Are there any differences between American and Chinese university students in
the choice of complaining strategies along a social distance continuum? If so, what are
they?

3.2 Group interviews as a basis for questionnaire design

The main framework of the paper is largely constructed from the quantitative study
of the collected data from questionnaires, in which respondents might choose their
own preferred strategies through the comparison with other alternatives presented in
the questionnaire. In order to learn the common complaining contents and strategies
between American and Chinese participants, the researcher first conducted a group
interview to investigate the most usual complaining contents and complaining strategies
that are culturally treatable for both American and Chinese university students. Twelve
native speakers of Chinese university students and five American university students
were interviewed regarding their perceptions of complaints in order to tap the norms

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of each speech community for the purpose of the questionnaire design; a colleague of
the researcher’s helped take ethnographic notes of the students’ speech. After the group
interview, the researcher gains first-hand, material of complaining contents and usual
complaining strategies, which are displayed as follows:

Common complains among university students:

1. Strangers’ bumping
2. Queue jumping
3. Teachers’ prolonged unpunctuality in their commitment
4. Roommates’ noise making
5. Parents’ unfavorable gift
6. Unintentional breaking
7. Postponed book returning
8. Petty stealing
9. Dissatisfying logistic service

Common Complaining strategies:

1. Be ignorant of complaint
2. Implied mentioning
3. Explicit expression of the offensive act
4. Request change in the on-going behavior
5. Requiring compensation
6. Questioning criticism
7. Threat and physical attack

3.3 Questionnaire description

On the basis of the group interview and the analysis of the results, the content and
form of the questionnaire (see Appendix) were designed. The students were asked to
choose the natural complaining strategy that they would address directly to the speaker.
Five situations were arranged from one situation of complaining to a high social status
professor, to one situation of complaining to parents, to three situations of complaining
about peers. Specifically, Situation 1 involved high power and 3, 4, 5 equal power; Situation
3 involved the intimate social distance, 4 friends and 5 strangers.
Complaining strategy is conceptualized as the way speakers convey their direct
complaints. It is classified based on the severity of the complaining force. The possible
complaining strategies follow a continuum from the most polite to the least, forming a
seven point scale. This continuum is a modified model of Olshtain and Weinbach (1993:
111) and Laforest (2002: 1601) on the basis of the group interview. The seven strategies
corresponding to the seven point scale are described as follows:
Type A: Ignoring and making no complaint. The speaker feels it unnecessary to make
a complaint, thus ignoring the past or on-going offensive act.
Type B: Allusion to the offensive act: below the level of reproach. The speaker does
not speak something directly related with the offensive act; she/he gives the person

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

responsible for the act a hint that the offensive act has made him or her feel unsatisfactory.
For instance, one of your friends forgot your birthday at your reminding again; you say, “My
birthday is on 12th November.”
Type C: Expression of annoyance or disapproval. This encompasses various
realizations that are vague and indirect. It does not explicitly mention either the socially
unacceptable act or the hearer, but does express general annoyance at the violation. The
distinction between this type and Type B is that the speaker in the latter delivers his/her
own dissatisfaction. For instance, following the preceding example, you say, “Such lack of
consideration.”
Type D: Explicit complaint. It refers to realizations where the speaker has made the
decision to use an open face-threatening act toward the hearer, but instigate no sanctions.
For instance, you could say, “You should not forget it” or “How can you forget it in a
minute?”
Type E: Accusation and warning. This is more severe and sharper than Type D in
that it not only involves an open face-threatening act, but also imposes potential sanctions
against the hearer. You may say, “I won’t show up at your birthday party” in the same
example.
Type F: Immediate threat. This is an open attack. It can also consist of curses and
direct results. For example, “You are an idiot.”
Type G: Physical expression. This means fight and physical attack.

3.4 Participants
All the participants were selected from sophomores and juniors who were familiar to
the researcher and who were not stereotyped in attitudes about campus life. The English
participants were randomly chosen at the University of Massachusetts. Altogether 96
undergraduates were sampled, 91 of them Chinese participants chosen randomly from
Anhui University and Anhui Agricultural University. The Chinese students were learning
English as their foreign language but did not major in language since language majors are
acknowledged to be more sensitive to language perception and production.

3.5 Data analysis

SPSS 13.0 (Statistical Package for Social Science) was adopted to analyze the collected data. A
cross-tabulation table for each situation with the significant p-value is displayed. The statistical
method used in the study was the non-parametric method of the Chi-square independent test,
employed to determine whether the occurrence of one variable affected the probability of the
occurrence of the other variable. To use the Chi-square test, the following two conditions must
be satisfied: the observed frequencies must be obtained in a random sample; each expected
frequency must be greater than or equal to five (Larson & Farber, 2004: 506). As to this study,
the former requirement was met. When the latter requirement was breached, Fisher’s Exact
Test was applied instead.

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4. Results
4.1 Complaining to one of high status (Situation 1)

Table 1. American participants and Chinese participants in their complaining strategies in

Situation 1
Nation Situation 1 Total

Str1 Str2 Str3 Str4 Str5 Str6

38 16 34 4 2 2 96
American
39.6% 16.7% 35.4% 4.2% 2.1% 2.1% 100%

42 35 8 6 0 0 91
Chinese
46.2% 38.5% 8.8% 6.6% 00 0 100%
Fisher’s Exact Test value = 27.719; p-value = .000

Situation 1 aims to find the difference in the choice of complaining strategies between
Chinese and American university students when they make complaints to a person of
high social status. The American participants were more liable to choose Strategies 1 and
3 while the Chinese participants were more likely to use Strategies 1 and 2. The percentage
of using Strategy 3 was respectively 35.4% of the American participants and 8.8% of the
Chinese. Another striking difference was that no Chinese participants choose Strategy 6 to
complain to one of high social status whereas 2.1% of the American participants preferred
it. The Fisher’s Exact Test shows p-value is 0.000 (less than 0.05), which indicates that a
significant difference exists in the choice of strategies in complaining to one of high social
status between American and Chinese university students (see Table 1).

4.2 Complaining to parents

Table 2. American participants and Chinese participants in their complaining strategies in

Situation 2
Nation Situation 2 Total

Str1 Str2 Str3 Str4 Str7

60 22 10 2 2 96
American
62.5% 22.9% 10.4% 2.1% 2.1% 100%

44 29 14 4 0 91
Chinese
48.4% 31.9% 15.4% 4.4% 0 100%
Fisher’s Exact Test value = 6.224; p-value = .154

The strategies chosen in complaining to parents by the American and Chinese participants
showed no significant differences as indicated by Fisher’s Exact Test (p-value = 0.154), but
differences could be found according to the collected data. Table 2 shows that Strategy 1
was the Americans’ frequent choice, the percentage of which was much higher than that of

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

the Chinese. The percentages of choosing Strategies 2 and 3 by the Americans was much
lower than those by the Chinese. This indicates that the American participants tended to
be a bit more polite than the Chinese participants did. But when the severity of complaint
slides to the end of the right side, Chinese people are not encouraged to choose more
severe complaining strategies. A general hypothesis may be drawn: Chinese youngsters are
making efforts to set themselves free from the traditional family model in which children
are viewed as parental accessories. Though this conclusion needs to be further verified, it
definitely serves as a heuristic source for the social science and pedagogy to motivate and
launch new discoveries.

4.3 Complaining to peers (Situation 3: Equal power and intimates)

Table 3. American and Chinese participants in their complaining strategies in Situation 3

Nation Situation 3 Total
Str1 Str2 Str3 Str4 Str5
2 10 48 26 10 96
American
2.1% 10.4% 50.0% 27.1% 10.4% 100%
12 24 33 14 8 91
Chinese
13.2% 26.4% 36.3% 15.4% 8.8% 100%
Fisher’s Exact Test value = 19.388; p-value = .001

In Situation 3, the interlocutors are of equal power. They hold long-standing and
intimate friendship between each other. This social context is characterized by rich
shared knowledge and casual conversational styles. Its members acquire and retain this
membership and personhood by the particular in-group language variety such as slang,
gammons and patters. The complaining strategies they choose to deliver their anger and
unhappiness would be loaded with these characteristics. Their choices must be closer
to the severe and harsh right side along the continuum. As is indicated by Table 3, the
significant differences can be found between the American and Chinese participants.
Fisher’s Exact Test indicates they were significantly different in that the Americans were
more willing to choose Strategies 3 and 4 and were less willing to choose Strategies 1 and
2. This difference indicates that more American participants than Chinese prefer to choose
direct complaining strategies.

4.4 Complaining to peers (Situation 4: Equal power and friends)

As to Situation 4, significant differences were found between the American and Chinese
participants in that the Americans were more willing to choose Strategies 2 and 3 than the
Chinese. Strategies 2 and 3 are more direct and harsher than Strategy 1, which the Chinese
participants preferred. The Chinese preference to maintain long-standing interpersonal
relationship and reluctance to unbalance group harmony provide a good account for this
difference, while Americans are individual-oriented and are not hesitant to give vent to
their inner thoughts.

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Table 4. American and Chinese participants in their complaining strategies in Situation 4

Nation Situation 4 Total
Str1 Str2 Str3 Str4 Str5 Str7
32 28 28 2 2 4 96
American
33.3% 29.2% 29.2% 2.1% 2.1% 4.2% 100%
55 22 10 2 0 2 91
Chinese
60.4% 24.2% 11.0% 2.2% 0 2.2 100%
Fisher’s Exact Test value = 17.873; p-value = .003

4.5 Complaining to peers (Situation 5: Equal power and strangers)

Table 5 shows that with the decline of the degree of familiarity between interlocutors,
both the Americans and Chinese were inclined to choose more indirect and more polite
complaining strategies, but the American participants were more willing to use Strategy 1
(62.5%)

Table 5. American and Chinese participants in their complaining strategies in Situation 5

Nation Situation 5 Total
Str1 Str2 Str3 Str4 Str5 Str6 Str7
60 18 12 0 2 0 4 96
American
62.5% 18.8% 12.5% 0% 2.1% 0% 4.2% 100%
35 36 8 6 4 2 0 91
Chinese
38.5% 39.6% 8.8% 6.6% 4.4% 2.2% 0 100%
Fisher’s Exact Test value = 25.328; p-value = .000

Table 5 shows that with the decline of the degree of familiarity between interlocutors,
both the Americans and Chinese were inclined to choose more indirect and more polite
complaining strategies, but the American participants were more willing to use Strategy 1
(62.5%).

5. Discussions
Significant differences have been revealed except in Situation 2, in which the complaint
was made to parents and the American participants chose a more polite strategy type to
complain than the Chinese.
Situation 1 involves the complaining to a professor; here American and Chinese
students are significantly different. This difference shows that politeness is what people
in both cultures are concerned about, but the Chinese are more sensitive to the politeness
applying to a high social status professor. They adopt a more reserved and modest
complaining strategy than Americans do.
When Situation 1 is compared with Situation 2, it is found that American students
are more polite to their parents than to professors in that they are more willing to choose
Strategy 1 (62.5%).

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

In order to draw a detailed graph for the relationship between social distance and the
severity of complaining strategies, the measure method adopted here is to calculate the
average score of each situation. The participant choosing Strategy 1 is scored 1; Strategy 2
scored 2; and so on. The index of complaining degree (abbreviated as ICD) is calculated
as:
ICD = total score/the total number of participants investigated
As to Situations 1 and 2, social status between interlocutors is clearly marked as
HP; that is to say, the complainee imposes absolute high power upon the complainer. In
these two situations presented in this study, the absolute ranking (R) of impositions in
the particular culture is also stable and shows no difference. But the ICD, referring to Wx,
which is the numerical value that measures the weightiness of the FTAx, turned out to
be different in Situations 1 and 2 when the American participants are compared with the
Chinese. As to professors and parents, Americans’ ICD is respectively 2.190 and 1.631.

Table 6. Nationality ICD differences in complaints made to a professor

Nationality ICD for professors ICD for parents

Americans 2.190 1.631

Brown and Levinson based their formula on western context and presented their formula
of calculating Wx (Brown & Levinson, 2003: 581). They think that the following factors
would influence the assessment of the seriousness of an FTA:
1. The social distance (D) of S and H (a symmetric relation)
2. The relative power (P) of S and H (an asymmetric relation)
3. The absolute ranking (R) of impositions in the particular culture
Thus Wx = D (S, H) + P (H, S) + Rx
However, the applicability of this formula remains open to question, because the
importance of the three variables are not proportionally sequenced. According to the
situations stated above, D (S, H), P (H, S) and Rx do not necessarily play an equally
significant role in a particular social context. It is assumed that the weightiness of the FTAx
is not a simple combination of the three variables.
The three situations of equal power, ranging from intimates to strangers, elicit
strategies of complaint to students with different social distances. When these three
situations are compared lengthways, it is noteworthy that, with social distance skewing
toward that of strangers, Americans’ degree of complaining falls down, while the Chinese
display a different tendency. The result is summarized in Table 7.

Table 7. Nationality ICD differences in the complaints uttered to intimates, friends and
strangers
Nationality ICD for intimates ICD for friends ICD for strangers

American 3.33 2.27 1.77

Chinese 2.80 1.66 2.06

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This relationship could be viewed graphically, with social distance continuum being
the X-axis and the degree of complaining being the Y-axis. The complaining degree
of American students gradually falls with social distance sliding to strangers along the
scale continuum while for Chinese students, intuitively, intimates and strangers are both
revealed at the rising ends, with friends at the bottom.
Y
— American
4 ⋯ Chinese

X
Intimates Friends Strangers

Figure 1. The relationship between the complaining degree and social distance
(American and Chinese peers)

6. Conclusion
The complaining strategies analyzed here illustrate that Chinese and American are
significantly different in their choice of strategies when they complain to professors,
intimates, friends and strangers. The Chinese show greater respect for professors than
Americans do. No significant difference has been revealed when they complain to parents,
although Americans are more polite than Chinese in this regard. This shows that in
private conversations, the variable of social distance enjoys more importance than the
variable of social status. The general strategy in peer conversations presented in this paper
is: Americans’ complaining degree displays a gradually descending tendency along a social
distance continuum, while the Chinese’s complaining degree has intimates and strangers
at the both ends with friends in the middle.
The study suggests that the politeness systems between the two nations are different.
A certain act which is taken to be impolite by Chinese may be polite or not so offensive
in Americans’ minds. It should be assessed in its own politeness system. Any contrast of
the linguistic form on politeness between languages regardless of its position in its own
politeness system of that language is not advisable.
The study also provides insights for both foreign language teaching and second
language acquisition. The systematic differences could serve as a guide for improving non-
native speakers’ transitional competence. Native speakers’ perceptions about non-native
speakers’ productions provide support for researchers’ intuitions about appropriateness
and acceptability. Where there is a disjuncture between what is salient in one language
and what is not in another, the non-native speaker either “hears” a difference that does

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

not exist in the target language or does not “hear” a difference that native speakers do
hear (Murphy & Neu, 1996: 211). Awareness of the differences would improve non-native
speakers’ perceptions. For teachers of English as a second or foreign language, they should
teach and clarify these pragmatic differences between language systems. Students should
know what to say and how to claim their rights in social or academic settings without
imposing threat or censure upon hearers.
For intercultural communication, this study sheds light on how to eradicate
misunderstanding and censure when communicators are involved in verbal confrontations.
Before starting conversation, interlocutors must bear in mind that they are talking with
people from another culture that endows its people with distinctive conversational
models and politeness systems. Knowing these differences can assist them in adjusting
and improving their models and patterns to balance the conflictive forces for the ease and
smoothness of ongoing exchanges. From the perspective of cultural transmission, skewing
toward any culture is unnecessary and dangerous. Losing cultural heterogeneity, one
would be assimilated into the target language culture and treated like a native speaker who
can enjoy the shared knowledge, thus, relapsing into passiveness in communication.
Despite its findings and theoretical implications stated above, this study, nevertheless,
shows its own limitations.
It focuses on the questionnaire production of complaining strategies of five daily
university situations by a small number of participants in universities. Though we are
convinced that the questionnaire based on group interviews urges student participants to
elicit their true and natural choices, ideally, a large range of participants and a long time
observation and investigation would ensure the experiment is carried out in a natural and
spontaneous setting. This study is also limited to the study of complaining strategies. A set
of complaints should include openers, complaining and follow-ups that need to be further
studied.

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Appendix
Imagine you are involved in the following situations, and choose the natural and true response
you would address directly to the related person in each situation, which is followed by the same
question. Please fill in the blank by choosing your response number of each question.

Question: What kind of method you will be likely to choose to express your complaints?
1. Ignoring and making no complaint
2. Allusion to the offensive act: below the level of reproach

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 A Contrastive Study of American and Chinese University Students’ Complaining Strategies

3. Expression of annoyance or disapproval

4. Explicit complaint
5. Accusation and warning
6. Immediate threat
7. Others (Physical expression)

Situations:
1. Professor Smith came about 30 minutes late and made no apologies for the appointment he had
made with you.
You would like to respond
2. Your parents bought you a shirt, but you didn’t like the color.
You would like to respond
3. Your roommate played the tape recorder in a loud voice and you couldn’t sleep.
You would like to respond
4. Your friend rushed into the line before you while you were queuing to register for a training
course.
You would like to respond
5. You were walking down the stairs when your schoolmate (who was a stranger to you) slightly
bumped into you.
You would like to respond

(Copy editing: Ian Hunter)

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 2011 年 1 月 中国应用语言学（季刊） Jan. 2011
第 34 卷 第 1 期 Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics (Quarterly) Vol. 34 No. 1

IJCALLT Call for Papers

The Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and
Teaching (IJCALLT) would like to invite you to consider submitting a manuscript for inclusion in
this scholarly journal. The following describes the mission, coverage, and guidelines for submission
to IJCALLT.

Mission
The mission of the International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching
(IJCALLT) is to publish research that addresses the impact of information communication technologies
in advancing foreign/second language learning and teaching. This journal expands on the principles,
theories, design, and implementation of computer-assisted language learning programs. In addition to
original research papers, this journal welcomes CALL-related book reviews and case studies.

Coverage
Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited to) the following:
• CALL and second language acquisition
• Computer games in language learning and teaching
• Corpora
• Courseware design
• Distance language education
• Evaluation of CALL program
• Intelligence in CALL
• Language testing in CALL environments
• Mobile learning and teaching
• Monitoring and assessment in online collaborative learning
• Multimedia language learning and teaching
• Research methodology in CALL
• Social networking in language learning and teaching
• Software programs for language learning and teaching
• Teacher education
• Teaching approaches in the CALL context

Submission
Prospective authors should note that only original and previously unpublished articles will be
considered. Interested authors must consult the journal’s guidelines for manuscript submissions
at http://www.igi-global.com/development/author_info/guide.asp prior to submission. All article
submissions will be forwarded to at least 3 members of the Editorial Review Board of the journal
for double-blind, peer review. Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based
on the reviews received from the reviewers. All submissions must be forwarded electronically.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

Bin Zou
Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching
Email: bin.zou@xjtlu.edu.cn

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