A Corpus-Based Probe into Context Type, Social Power, and Speaker Status of Sympathy, Grief, and Condolence Collocational Patterns in American Spoken English Discourse
الموضوعات : Research in English Language PedagogyReza Bagheri Nevisi 1 , Sanaz Inanlou 2
1 - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Qom, Qom, Iran
2 - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Qom, Qom, Iran
الکلمات المفتاحية: sympathy, American Spoken English Discourse, Corpus-based study, Condolence, Collocational patterns,
ملخص المقالة :
The ability to express thoughts and emotions appropriately on different social occasions is considered an essential prerequisite to maintaining social relationships. This study sought to investigate the most frequent words and expressions pertaining to 'Condolence' and 'Sympathy' and also which words and expressions co-occurred with such expressions in spoken American English discourse in the different contexts to know how and when to use grief-related expressions. To this end, the data was collected from the spoken Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings revealed that the word 'Sympathy' occurred mostly in the equal social status and socio-cultural context whereas the word ' Grief ' was observed in the equal social status and transactional context in the same corpus. The study showed that the collocational words did not influence the function of such words and they were substituted based on the intended meaning of the speakers. The teachers and the learners will get insights into the more frequent collocations as well as the likely appropriate ways to apply them in the authentic context. The findings could be beneficial for four groups: First, the researcher can use the findings as a resource for cross-cultural comparison of condolences. Second, the EFL learners might get familiar with the expressions of condolences in the native forms. Besides, teachers may benefit from the results to instruct the learners on how to use condolence expressions properly. Finally, material developers and test designers can use the findings in designing materials and tests.
Adolphs, S. (2008). Corpus and context: Investigating pragmatic functions in spoken discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford University Press.
Behnam, B., Hamed, A. A. L., & Asli, F. G. (2013). An investigation of giving condolences in English and Persian via short messages. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 1679-1685. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.240
Bagheri Nevisi, R., & Miri, F. (2023). A corpus-based investigation of "would you like" and "would you mind" request expressions' collocational patterns in American Spoken English Discourse. Language Related Research, 14(1), 167-191.
Bernan, M. (2008). Condolence books: Language and meaning in the mourning for Hillsborogh and Diana. Death Studies, 32(2), 326-351.
Blum-Kulka, S. (1982). Learning how to say what you mean in a second language: A study of speech act performance of learners of Hebrew as a second language. Applied Linguistics, 3(1), 29-59.https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/III.1.29
Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1986). Too many words: Length of utterances and pragmatic failure. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8(2), 165-179. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ356847
Blum-Kulka, S. & House, J. (1989). Cross-cultural and situational variation in requestive behavior in five languages. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. (pp. 123-154). Ablex.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Goody, E. N. (ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interantion. (pp. 56-311). Cambridge University Press. http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-2BAD-6
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (2003). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Curl, T. S., & Drew, P. (2008). Contingency and action: A comparison of two forms of requesting. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 129-153. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351810802028613
Elwood, K. (2004). “I’m so sorry”: A cross-cultural analysis of expressions of condolence. The Cultural Review, Waseda Commerical Studies Association (Bulletin of Universities and Institutes), 24, 101-126. http://dspace.wul.waseda.ac.jp.
Emad Muhammed, S. (2013). Condolences in English. Journal of Kerbala University, 11(4). https://www.iasj.net/iasj/pdf/a8532fffea414ce8
Eslamirasekh, Z. (1993). A cross-cultural comparison of the requestives speech act realization patterns in Persian and American English. In L. Bouton & Y. Kachru (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning (pp. 85-103). Division of English as an international language. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED396552
Evert, S. (2007). Corpora and collocations (extended manuscript). In A. Ludeling and M. Kytö (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics. An International Handbook. (pp. 1212-1248). Mouton de Gruyter.
Faerch, C., & Kasper, G. (1989). Internal and external modification in interlanguage request realization. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics (pp. 221-247). Ablex.
Farnia, M., & Suleiman, R. R. R. (2009). An interlanguage pragmatic study of expressions of gratitude by Iranian EFL learners: A pilot study. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 5(1), 108-140. http://www.melta.org.my/
Fenton-Smith, B. (2007). Diplomatic condolences: Ideological positioning in the death of Yasser Arafat. Discourse & Society, 18(6), 697-718.
Holmes, J. (1992). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Longman.
House, J., & Kasper, G. (1987). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requesting in foreign language. In W. Loerscher & R. Schulze (Eds.), Perspectives on language in performance: Festschrift for Werner Huellen (pp. 1250-1288).
Kasper, G. (1989). Variation in interlanguage speech act realization. In S. Gass, C. Madden, D. Preston, & L. Selinker (Eds.), Variation in second language acquisition: Discourse and pragmatics (pp. 37-58). Multilingual Matters.
Kuang, C. (2015). Functions of Malaysian condolences written in text messages. Pertanika Journal Social Sciences & Humanities, 23(2), 479-493.
Moghaddam, M. (2012). Discourse structures of condolence speech act. Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 4(10), 105-125.
https://journals.tabrizu.ac.ir/article_609_aa66a136212714975ddd0e14df67171e.pdf
Muihaki, A. (2004). Meaning as use: A functional view of semantics and pragmatics. http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/9102/11_10_Mwihaki.pdf.
Olshtain, E., & Weinbach, L. (1987). Complaints: A study of speech act behavior among native and non-native speakers of Hebrew. In J. Verschueren & M. Bertucelli-Papi (Eds.), The pragmatic perspective (pp. 195-208). Benjamins.
Parkers, C. M., Laungani, P., & Young, B. (1997). Death and bereavement across cultures. Routledge.
Richards, J. C., & Schmidt, R. (2010). Longman dictionary of language teaching & applied linguistics. Pearson. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315833835
Samavarchi, L., & Allami, H. (2012). Giving condolences by Persian learners: A contrastive sociopragmatic study. International Journal of English Linguistics, 2(1), 71-78. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v2n1p71
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511609213
Searle, J. R., & Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge University Press. https://philpapers.org/rec/SEAFOI-2
Yahya, E. M. (2010). A study of condolences in Iraqi Arabic with reference to English. Adab Al-Rafidayn, 40(57), 47-70.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Zunin, L. M., & Zunin, H. S. (2007). The art of condolence. Harper Collins Publishers.
