School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
-
ItemOn some uses of the conversational token Mm( 1995)This thesis examines the conversational token Mm, using a core corpus of one hour each of seven Australian couples' conversation. Mm is a common conversational object in the Australian data set, with over 700 instances in the core corpus. Despite its frequent occurrence, it has been little studied in the past. It is a highly indexical, interactional token, as well as being one of the semantically most empty tokens of conversation. Mm belongs to what is probably a closed set of receipt tokens of various kinds in English, which are objects that claim some kind of attention from their producer, who is in a primarily listener role at the time of their utterance. Related tokens include Mm hm, Uh huh, Yeah, Oh, Okay, Right, and probably No. Mm was also found to be flexible and multifunctional, with seven uses found: as a lapse repair token, a degustatory token, a repair initiator, a hesitation marker, a 'quotatory' token, an answer token and a receipt token, the last with three subtypes: as an acknowledger, as a continuer, and as an assessment. The last two are intonational adaptations, from the more typical acknowledging function. By far the most frequent use found in the Australian data set was the acknowledging use, which is one of its uses as a receipt token. Mm in this role was found to be rare in American data examined, but common in British data. As a receipt token (as well as in its other uses), Mm was found to be distinctive from related tokens, most notably in its use as a retrospective, sequence closing item showing weak commitment to the talk to which it is oriented; in many instances it is a weaker version of Yeah. Most typically it is a free-standing token in second position in the sequence. It is quite often followed in the same turn by other brief response objects such as agreement tokens, assessments, collaborative completions, clarification sequences, or topic boundary marking objects. It typically says that its producer has nothing substantial to add to the topic of the talk to which it is oriented, most obviously when the Mm is followed by substantial same speaker talk. Such talk is almost invariably on a topic other than the topic of the talk to which the Mm that precedes it is oriented. The handful of cases where Mm is followed by same speaker on-topic talk show an illocutionary rather than the more usual topical distancing from the talk. Both topical and illocutionary distancing support the interpretation that Mm is a token indicating weak commitment to the talk to which it is oriented. The effect of intonational mappings on Mm is also shown in this thesis. Typically, the receipt token Mm has falling intonation, in which case it is a weak acknowledging or affirming object. If it takes a fall-rising contour, it becomes a continuer similar to Mm hm and Uh huh. If it takes a rise-falling contour, it becomes a relatively weak assessment token, showing heightened involvement in the talk. This thesis goes some way to positioning Mm as a member of a set of receipt tokens, including Mm hm and Yeah. Further work is required to show how these and other related tokens, notably Uh huh, Oh, Okay, and Right can be differentiated more thoroughly, and how they may constitute membership of an interactional, recipiency paradigm in conversation.
-
ItemHow do people respond when receiving compliments?: cross-cultural comparisons between Taiwanese, Taiwanese Australian and Australians( 1997)This study is to examine responses to compliments of Taiwanese, Taiwanese Australians and Australians. Three politeness principles: Brown & Levinson’s (1987) politeness theories, Leech’s (1983) and Gu’s (1990) politeness maxims were applied to explain data of three cultural groups. Chapter 1 is introduction. It outlines the general background of complimenting behaviours. The researcher claimed that different cultural values might turn a compliment into a insult. It is important and useful to study responses to compliments of different cultures. Past studies on Chinese compliment responses were conducted either in China or used Chinese from China as subjects. These findings could not be applied to Chinese in Taiwan entirely. The overall purpose of this study has two aspects. Firstly, to examine strategies used by three groups and compare them. Three politeness theories will also be used to discuss them in order to find out which theory was suitable for three groups. Secondly, interpersonal variables such as gender, distance and status will also be discussed. The definitions of politeness, compliments and responses to compliments are given. Chapter 2 is a literature review. First, it briefly outlines four major perspectives in the study of politeness: the social-norm view, the conversational-maxim view by Leech (1983), the face-saving view by Brown & Levinson (1987) and the conversational-contract view. Gu (1990) by adopting the conversational-maxim view, designed a Chinese politeness model which includes four maxims: the self-denigration, the address, the tact and the generosity maxims. Second, studies compliments and compliment responses within one cultural context are presented. Third, cross cultural comparisons on compliment responses are discussed, these included Gao’s (1984), Chen’s (1993) studies on Chinese. However, both studies used Chinese from China as subjects. The findings indicate that most Chinese preferred to reject compliments or used indirect strategies to avoid self-praise in order to show politeness. There are three cases of cross-cultural comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals. The most similar one to the present study is by Valdes & Pino (1981). They studied ethnographic compliment responses among bilingual Mexican American speakers, monolingual English-speaking Americans and monolingual Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Chapter 3 is methodology. This study used two methods to collect data. First, natural observations were used to collect real-life examples of compliment responses, about 1164 examples were collected. Second, discourse completion tasks were designed to elicit compliment responses. The discourse completion tasks were completed by 120 subjects. Each cultural group had 40 subjects, including 20 males and 20 females. Two versions of the questionnaire were designed, one in Chinese and one in English. Both Taiwanese and Taiwanese Australian speakers used the Chinese version while Australians used the English version. The responses were categorized into 20 strategies and three types: accept, reject and indirect. The results of the questionnaire data were analysed by using statistics. Chapter 4 is results. This includes the results of ethnographic and questionnaire data. The ethnographic data showed that both Taiwanese and Taiwanese Australians preferred indirect strategy types, though the favourite strategy might be different while Australians preferred accept strategy type. There were differences in responding to compliments according to the three variables of gender, status and distance. However, some of the differences were not obvious. The questionnaire data showed there were significant cultural differences in responding to compliments. The percentages of strategy types of three groups were similar. The gender effect was not significant but distance and status variables were. Further statistical analysis indicated these were due to the combinational effects of gender x distance and gender x status. For different kinds of compliments, subjects also preferred different kinds of strategies. Chapter 5 is discussion and conclusions. The first part is comparisons between ethnographic and questionnaire data. Both data yield similar findings thought more strategies were elicited from questionnaire data. The second part is comparisons between three groups. The findings indicated that three cultural groups were different. Taiwanese Australians adopted both two cultures and created their own politeness principles. They seemed to use indirect strategies, modest denial rejections (similar to Taiwanese) and accept strategies (similar to Australians). Taiwanese subjects also used accept strategies though not as much as the other cultural groups, the percentage was higher than any of past findings of Chinese samples. By applying three politeness theories, it was found that only Leech’s (1983) conversational maxims were adoptable by three groups. While Brown & Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory could not explain the indirect and modest denial strategies used by Taiwanese, Gu’s (1990) Chinese politeness principles also failed to explain commonly used accept strategies by three cultural groups. There were several limitations of this study. First the ethnographic data did not include a wider range. Second, only compliment responses were examined. Further studies should examine compliment-compliment responses pairs. This study concluded with suggestions of future studies of Taiwanese politeness in compliment-complimenting responses pairs. Since most Taiwanese speakers spoke Mandarin and Southern Min (Taiwanese), in order to find insightful details, Southern Min (Taiwanese) should be studied.
-
ItemAssessing the second language proficiency of health professionals( 1990)This thesis reports on the development of an Australian Government English as a Second Language test for health professionals, the Occupational English Test (OET) , and its validation using Rasch Item Response Theory models. The test contains sub-tests of the four macroskills, each based on workplace communication tasks. The thesis reports on the creation of test specifications, the trial ling of test materials and the analysis of data from full test sessions. The main research issues dealt with are as follows: 1. The nature of the constructs involved in communicative language testing. The term proficiency is analysed, and its relationship to a number of models of communicative competence examined. The difficulty of incorporating into these models factors underlying test performance is identified. 2. The nature of performance tests. A distinction is introduced between strong and weak senses of the term performance test, and related to the discussion in 1 above. 3. The content validity of the OET. This is established on the basis of a questionnaire survey, interviews, examination of relevant literature, workplace observation and test data. 4. The role of classical and Rasch IRT analysis in establishing the qualities of the test. Classical and Rasch IRT analyses are used to establish the basic reliability of the OET sub-tests. The Writing sub-test is shown to be somewhat problematic for raters because of the nature of the writing task involved. Analysis of data from the Reading subtest demonstrates the superiority of the Rasch analysis in the creation of short tests with a specific screening function. 5. The role of Rasch IRT analysis in investigating the construct and content validity of the test and hence of communicatively-oriented tests in general. Rasch analysis reveals that the sub-tests are satisfactory operationalizations of the constructs 'ESL listening/ speaking/ reading/ writing ability in health professional contexts. For the Speaking and Writing sub-tests, the analysis reveals that responses of raters in categories associated with perceptions of grammatical accuracy have a more important role in the determination of the candidate's total score than was anticipated in the design of the test. This finding has implications for the validity of communicatively oriented tests in general, and illustrates the potential of IRT analysis for the investigation of the construct validity of tests. 6. The appropriateness of the use of Rasch IRT in the analysis of language tests. The nature of the debate about 'unidimensionality' in Rasch analysis is reviewed. It is argued that the issue has been substantialy misunderstood. Data from the two parts of the Listening sub-test are analysed, and statistical tests are used to confirm the unidimensionality of the data set. It is concluded that Rasch analysis is appropriate for a language test of this type. 7. The behaviour of raters in the rating of oral and written production in a second language. The findings reported in 5 above suggest that the behaviour of raters is crucial to understanding what is being measured in a communicative test of the productive language skills. The research demonstrates the value of Rasch IRT analysis in the empirical validation of communicatively oriented language tests, and the potential of large-scale test development projects for theoretical work on language testing.