Masters Degrees (General Linguistics)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (General Linguistics) by browse.metadata.advisor "Du Plessis, Menan"

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    Speech act realisation strategies and possible effects of transference by speakers of Khoekhoegowab into English when acquired as a second language.
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch Univesity, 2017-12) Uises, Yolanda Hermien; Du Plessis, Menan; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study focused on requestive behaviour of speakers of Khoekhoegowab (KKG) in their mother tongue and in English as a second language (ESL), to uncover strategies mother tongue speakers of KKG employ in performance of requests in both KKG and English. A cross- sectional survey design, utilizing quantitative research methods for data collection and analysis was used. Two questionnaires (one in KKG and one in English) were used in the form of Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) to collect data from participants. A total of 170 (85 in Khoekhoegowab and English respectively) requests by mother tongue speakers of Khoekhoegowab were obtained from 17 participants. The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) coding scheme was used to analyse data. Although the study mainly focused on directness levels, request perspective, internal and external modification devices and alerters were examined in relation to frequency of strategy use. Data analysis showed that speakers of KKG as mother tongue used a wide variety of strategies for request performance, with the most preferred strategy being the mood derivable followed by the query preparatory and explicit performative. Moreover, direct strategies were the most preferred across multiple situations characterised by both equal and unequal status relationships regardless of degree of familiarity. The interrogative and the marker toxoba “please” were preferred for internal modification, while grounders were most preferred for external modification. In relation to alerters, endearment terms were the most preferred. For ESL requests, the query preparatory was preferred, while the hedged performative and the mood derivable were least preferred. The query preparatory was also a preferred strategy for requests in standard British English (BE) (Memarian, 2012; Mahani, 2012). Thus, there was no evidence of transference of rules from KKG to ESL. In addition, direct strategies were used almost as frequently as conventionally indirect strategies in ESL, but less frequently in BE compared to conventionally indirect strategies (Konakahara, 2011). Thus, there is insufficient evidence of transfer of rules from KKG to ESL. The researcher was unable to determine the influence of KKG rules of request performance in ESL requests due to lack of consensus between Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) and Ogiermann (2009) regarding the preferred perspective by speakers of BE, including limited research in relation to request perspective in general and in BE in particular. The interrogative and the marker please were preferred internal modification devices in ESL requests. However, these modification devices were least preferred in BE (Konakahara, 2011). Although there were similarities in choice of external modification devices in English (ESL and BE) and KKG, there was lack of evidence to attribute the similarities to the effect of transference from KKG to ESL. Moreover, lack of sufficient information regarding alerters prevented judgements about possible effects of KKG on ESL request performance, although attention getters were preferred in ESL and BE requests.