Abstract
This study is part of a larger research project aiming to gather and compare last-minute cancellations in different languages. The corpus, collected through an online DCT, is being annotated with NVivo software according to a set of pragmatic categories. These are derived from previous cross-cultural studies (Blum-Kulka et al. in Cross-cultural pragmatics: requests and apologies, Ablex, Norwood, 1989; Beebe et al. in Developing communicative competence in a second language, Newbury House, New York, 1990) and integrated with new ones identified in the corpus, following a data-driven approach. Declining an invitation poses a threat to the invitee’s positive face, because it shows noncompliance with the inviter’s desire to share time and friendship with the invitee. A last-minute cancellation is potentially threatening for negative face, as it interferes with the inviter’s plans, but it may save positive face because the invitee attributes her/his absence to an unforeseen and unavoidable circumstance. Little research has been devoted to both Italian and Colombian Spanish from a cross-cultural pragmatic perspective, whereas other varieties of Spanish have received more attention in this regard (see García and Placencia 2007). The present study aims to fill this gap by exploring the pragmalinguistic strategies Italians and Colombians consider appropriate to use when canceling last minute. Frequency and distribution of speech act components and internal modifiers were compared between Colombian and Italian native speakers’ last-minute cancellations (n = 753). The significance of the observed differences was assessed by Chi squared test. Results show interesting differences at the pragmalinguistic level, suggesting that Italians prefer more complex and mitigated last-minute cancellations in comparison to Colombians.
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Notes
The two languages object of this study were chosen, because both authors investigate in the field of Italian as a second language, and one of them is a bilingual of these two languages.
For the present study only a part of the Italian data used in Cortés Velásquez (2017) was selected, so that the datasets of the two populations are more comparable in terms of total amount and geographical distribution of the informants.
The DCT has been slightly modified for the new data collection in progress (cf. Sec. 5), so that respondents are asked to write what they think they would say in a text message, instead of imagining they are in a phone call with the inviter.
A specialized software for qualitative data analysis.
For further examples of the categories the reader is referred to Cortés Velásquez and Nuzzo (Forthcoming).
The examples taken from the corpus are reported exactly as typed by the respondents. English translations were kept as literal as possible.
In the Colombian variety of Spanish this expression has the illocutionary force of an apology, whereas in other varieties it is used with the meaning of ‘it’s a sin’.
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Nuzzo, E., Cortés Velásquez, D. Canceling Last Minute in Italian and Colombian Spanish: A Cross-Cultural Account of Pragmalinguistic Strategies. Corpus Pragmatics 4, 333–358 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-020-00084-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-020-00084-y