Reflections
The lesson on Speech Acts helped me understand how compliments and replies are categorized within the confines of language studies. However, what piqued my interest was the fact that the stereotypes about Asian culture with regards to our replies wasn't proven in the short experiment done. Perhaps it may due to the fact that we were all trying to write down what it seems politically correct to reply and not what we really would have said. For example, had an old acquaintance come up to me and started a conversation, I would be trying hard to locate my memories about the individual much less carrying on in much conversation.
Towards the last part of the lesson, I thought about how the replies and compliments paid would be representative of the cultural context of the individuals. One thought that occurred to me was that this could be totally irrelevant in the modern day context.
Firstly, with rapid globalisation, our compliments and replies have transformed into a generic object whereby despite the different cultures, speech acts are similar to each other as most try to adhere to international norms in the business world. This is due to the fact that most Asian economies make a great emphasis on attracting many Western investments and MNCs and thus compelling them to even adhere to Western norms in conversation in order to win over the business/es.
This leads to the second thought, if international speech norms are already established, compliments and replies become vestigial words that contain in itself the value of greetings and nothing more can be deduced from the speech act itself. If the compliments and replies are established as presumed, the words spoken and the manner in which it was spoken cannot be used to infer any cultural norm/s of the speakers concerned. As such, these words become just a mere whiff of warm air and do not function in any ways other than to bring a formal acquaintance into existence.
Lastly, the last part of the lesson regarding different types of scenario in which to observe speech acts had me thinkin. If the individuals know they are being observed, the experiment result would be skewed or bias. Field observation would seem like the best choice for observing people. However, the problem I identified was not the fact that the variables are too much to be controlled. Rather, would it be ethical to eavesdrop on a conversation even for a scientific experiment? Where do we draw the line? With that I leave you to think.
Semper Fidelis
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It's true that there's the observer's paradox when we note down and tape record other people's behaviour. So we need to minimize the effect by, for example, collecting a large sample. You're also right that eavesdropping on a conversation may not be ethical. So instead of eavesdropping on a conversation between strangers, you may want to note down speech act sequences in a conversation where you're one of the participants and then ask for consent for the use of a sample. That probably can solve your problem?
ReplyDeleteComing to the internationalization of language practices, I think the globalization will surely have an effect on cultural practices in language use. But I would also argue that some practices die hard and may not change so easily.