Speech Acts Bibliography:
Correction of Factual Error
Takahashi, T. & Beebe, L. M. (1993). Cross-linguistic influence in the speech act of correction. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 138-152). NY: Oxford University Press.
Looks at American and Japanese performance on the speech act of correction in status unequal (professor-student: low to high, high to low) situations where one knows the other has made a factual error. The study had 55 subjects -- 15 Americans, 15 Japanese responding in English, and 25 Japanese responding in Japanese (in Tokyo) -- fill out a 12-situation discourse completion task. The average age of respondents was 32-33. It found that positive remarks are an important adjunct to face threatening acts in English -- "I agree with you, but..." 64% of Americans did this while only 13% of the Japanese in Japanese did so (AE>JE>JJ). All groups used softeners, "I believe," "I think," questions, "Did you say...?" and expressions to lighten the gravity of the mistake or defend the interlocutor, "You made one small error in the date." Japanese also used softeners but not as frequently in ESL (50% of time vs. 71% of time for E1 group). Both groups used verbal indications of correction in English more than in Japanese (only 26%) (professor to student: AE>JE>JJ, student to professor: JJ>JE>AE). The reason was that in Japanese paralinguistic means such as facial expressions, tone of voice, sighs, hesitating serve that function. Japanese are more overt in their consciousness of status and in not covering it up in their use of language. Americans harbor a polite fiction that you and I are equals.