درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The study of compliment speech act has been under investigation on many occasions in recent years. In this study, an attempt is made to explore appraisals performed by native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners to find out how these two groups diverge or converge from each other with regard to complimenting patterns and norms. The participants of the study were 60 advanced Iranian EFL learners who were speaking Persian as their first language and 60 native English speakers. Through a written Discourse Completion Task comprised of eight different scenarios, compliments were analyzed with regard to topics (performance, personality, possession, and skill), functions (explicit, implicit, and opt-out), gender differences and the common positive adjectives used by two groups of native and nonnative participants. The findings suggested that native English speakers praised individuals more implicitly in comparison with Iranian EFL learners and native speakers provided opt-outs more frequently than Iranian EFL learners did. The analysis of data by Chi-square showed that gender and macro functions are independent of each other among Iranian EFL learners’ compliments while for native speakers, gender played a significant role in the distribution of appraisals. Iranian EFL learners’ complimenting patterns converge more towards those of native English speakers. Moreover, both groups favored explicit compliments. However, Iranian EFL learners were more inclined to provide explicit compliments. It can be concluded that there were more similarities rather than differences between Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers regarding compliment speech act. The results of this study can benefit researchers, teachers, material developers, and EFL learners.

از دیدگاه زبان­شناختی، شمال دور کامرون، خود یک آفریقای کوچک بشمار می­آید. سه خانواده از چهار خانواده بزرگ زبانی تایید شده در آفریقا، در آنجا حضور دارند. علاوه بر زبان انگلیسی و فرانسه که زبان­های رسمی بشمار می­آیند، بیش از پنجاه زبان بومی در آنجا صحبت می­شود. ارتباط میان این زبان­های ملی و زبان­های رسمی غنای زیادی در این منطقه ایجاد کردهاست (بولا 148:2003). ارتباط زبان­شناختی که موید گفتمان بینافرهنگی است، از مجموعه­ای از وام­واژه­ها حاصل می­شود. در این مقاله، نه تنها روابطی که زبان­های بومی در میان خود برقرا می­کنند، بلکه روابط میان زبان فرانسه و این زبان­ها ی بومی، بویژه توپوری، فول­فولد، مِسا، موندانگ و کرا نیز مورد بررسی و مطالعه قرار می­گیرد.