Dale April Koike

Text and Context: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Language Study

The papers in this volume, stemming from the Fourth Annual conference of the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, explore the relationships between form and meaning in language use.

Negation in Spanish and English suggestions and requests: Mitigating effects?

Abstract Negation in speech acts has been identified in past studies as an element that can be used to mitigate the effect of an utterance. The objective of this study is to examine the use of negation in requests and suggestions, principally using data from Spanish and English. It is shown that negation does not always serve to communicate politeness or mitigation in all speech acts, and in fact, may have the opposite effect. The notions of positive and negative politeness posited by Brown and Levinson (1987) do account for many uses of negation in suggestions, and in fact, shed light on the nature of interrogative suggestions in general. They do not apply as easily to requests, however, in that they do not account for differences in force created by the negative in both languages. The data are also examined in terms of what they reveal about the mitigation of suggestions and requests through implicature.

Functions of the adverbial ya in Spanish narrative discourse

Abstract The Spanish adverbial ya ‘already’, ‘finally’, ‘presently’, ‘now’, is, as its glosses denote, a time adverb that conveys a range of aspectual information. It is used very frequently in oral narrative discourse in Mexico and Central America. This study examines its functions in the narrative context; specifically, as a reflector of aspect as well as a discourse marker that can serve to transmit an emotional intensity about designated information and to create cohesion in the discourse. Because it is multi-functional, it is useful to the narrator to convey an emotional element and to organize the content of the narrative.

Spanish no, sí: Reactive moves to perceived face-threatening acts, Part II☆

This paper is the second installment of a two-part pragmatic analysis of a previously uninvestigated discourse particle in Spanish, no, si. In this paper, we examine the functions of this particle in conversational interaction and argue that it represents a pragmatic response to a perceived face-threatening act, whether intended as such or not. Our pragmatic analysis demonstrates that, as a conversational management strategy, no, si functions as an expression of an evaluative process in which the addressee interprets and reacts to the pragmatic value of the previous utterance. Following principles of politeness in Brown and Levinson (1987), no, si is a reaction to a perceived intent, and hedges the actual response it initiates, serving as an expression of footing to seek common ground or alignment with the participant. In the framework of conversation analysis (Schegloff, 1988), it is a marker of a dispreferred first and second part in an adjacency relationship.

Toward intercultural competence: from questions to perspectives and practices of the target culture

Teaching second-language (L2) culture is problematic due to the possibility of creating stereotypes and overgeneralizations about the target culture. Several researchers have proposed raising an awareness of first-language culture (C1) at the same time they raise that of the second language (C2), to promote a “relative” view of the C2. The objective is for learners to recognize themselves and others as “socially constructed”. We propose learning culture through activities based on surveys completed by native speakers (NS) that can lead learners to a deeper understanding of L2 cultural perspectives and practices. To illustrate this approach, target culture data (e.g., folk medicines used or the kinds of housing students live in) were obtained via a questionnaire completed by 154 native-speaker university students in Spain, Peru, Mexico and Argentina. These data were used to create activities asking L2 Spanish learners to (1) compare their own answers to those of the NS, (2) seek an understanding of why the...

Spanish no, si: reactive moves to perceived face-threatening acts, part I: discourse relations and cognitive states

This paper is the first installment of a two-part pragmatic analysis of a previously uninvestigated discourse particle in Spanish, no, si. In this paper we examine the distribution of the particle in conversational interaction, discussing discourse structure and the discourse relations involved in the use of the particle. Our data show that no, si is used in response to particular kinds of antecedent questions/utterances and also in an internal usage. The no, si responses are also examined in terms of the cognitive states of the interactants according to the functions of correction, acceptance, or rejection.