| Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs
OFFICE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMS
Home > English
Language Programs > Teaching
Pragmatics > "Actually, the Deadline..."
"Actually, the Deadline was Friday of Last Week, Not This Week..."
Polite Ways of Correcting or Contradicting our
Conversation Partner's Assumptions
Olga Barsony
University of Debrecen, Hungary
Level: Intermediate and upwards
Time: 50 minutes (an additional 50 minutes for more advanced discussion)
Resources:
a) First lines of conversations to be finished by teacher, second lines
to be provided by teacher with or without "actually"
b) Beginnings of conversations to be finished by students themselves
Goals:
a) To raise learners' pragmatic awareness towards an important conversational
function; to learn to be aware of the negative impression brought about
by the non-use of "actually"
b) To learn to produce corrections or contradictions prefaced by "actually"
Description of the activity
The teacher presents the learners with the opening (first) lines of
conversations. The second line carries the pragmatic function of correction
or contradiction of the first speaker's statement. In one set, the teacher's
corrections or contradictions do not carry the pragmatic marker "actually."
In the second set, however, the corrections are introduced by "actually."
The learners are asked to observe the exchanges. They will have to listen
for clues in order to be able to answer the questions:
1. How do the two conversations strike you?
(Teacher makes the statements sound helpful, cooperative, nice, and
polite when "actually" introduces them; alternatively, (s)he
makes them sound abrupt, non-cooperative, unhelpful, and impolite when
the statements are not prefaced by "actually.")
2. How would you feel if somebody gave you either of those two
different answers or reactions?
3. What seems to account for the difference in the overall impression
that the second type of statement produces? (Should learners fail to
identify the function of the marker the teacher may point it out through
use of guided questions.)
4. (At an optional, later stage, a comparison of learners' native tongue
and the English language realization of the correction may take place.)
Theoretically, students themselves could act out these conversations,
but teachers can also use their voices or certain sound patterns which
are likely to accompany the pragmatic marker to greater advantage in
creating the more favorable outcome, a smoother, more polite response.
After the preliminary stage the learners can be provided with similar
exchanges and allowed to practice in pairs or in groups.
Procedure
1. Students initiate exchange.
2. Teacher responds with correction or contradiction, not using "actually"
in the response.
3. Students again initiate exchange.
4. Teacher's response contains the pragmatic marker "actually".
5. Discussion of results of learner observation. Relying on learners'
impressions and observations, teacher sums up the conclusion: an interpretation
of the pragmatic marker's function.
6. Students practice with open-ended conversations.
Rationale
Correcting or contradicting someone in English is a rather difficult task
for any learner of English. These communicative acts carry risk because
they are "face threatening acts" (FTAs) (Brown and Levinson,
1987). They threaten the hearer's positive face in that they indicate
the speaker does not care about the hearer's feelings or desires by, for
example, expressing disagreement (correction or contradiction). These
acts make the hearer appear to be "wrong or misguided or unreasonable
about some important issue, such wrongness being associated with disapproval"
(Brown and Levinson, 1987). It is exactly because of these threats to
hearer's positive face that speaker has to find mitigating devices that
could minimize such threats. This is one of the most compelling reasons
why polite ways of disagreeing with someone or correcting or contradicting
a person's opinions (background assumptions) should be taught to learners
in the formal setting of a language class. It is not difficult to imagine
the adverse effects an exchange lacking "actually" in it can
have on a conversation partner and, consequently, on someone's chance
of holding on to a conversation, with its advantage of providing authentic
language input. As Thomas (1983) said,
If a non-native speaker appears to speak fluently, (i.e., is grammatically
competent), a native speaker is likely to attribute his/her apparent
impoliteness or unfriendliness, not to any linguistic deficiency, but
to boorishness or ill-will. While grammatical error may reveal a speaker
to be a less than proficient language-user, pragmatic failure reflects
badly on him/her as a person....Pragmatic failure, then, is an important
source of cross-cultural communication breakdown .
It is generally true that learners do not find it easy to acquire the
pragmatics of the target language on their own. "Actually" does
not appear to be immediately salient to our learners. It is necessary
then to help learners identify the function(s) of this pragmatic marker
and how it is used in the native English-speaking culture.
Teacher's Resources
A relatively easy approach has teachers using short, authentic dialogues
for this exercise. Exchanges of the following type can be found in various
sources:
- A: Today is Wednesday, and we're done. We finished this project early!
B: Actually, the deadline was Friday of last week, not this week.
- A: Steve looks like he's good at sport.
B: Actually, he's not.
- A: Do you mind if I smoke?
B: Actually, I'd rather you didn't.
- A: Where in the United States do you come from?
B: We're not Americans, actually; we're Canadians.
- A: Did you enjoy the film last night?
B: Actually, I didn't go to the cinema.
- A: So, you're going to the local music conservatory?
B: Actually, there's no music conservatory in this town.
For a more advanced level, recordings (of native speakers, from TV, film
clips, etc.) can be shown to the students. The importance of context cannot
be overemphasized as these corrections react to a speaker's expressed
(or unexpressed) assumptions.
Alternatives and Caveats
It is possible to find easier language input in which correction or contradiction
could refer to simpler things such as likes and dislikes, colors, age,
etc., making the lesson suitable for lower levels. However, the very nature
of the process of examining, modifying, or correcting another person's
opinions or assumptions makes this kind of exercise better suited to higher
levels.
On a more advanced level, careful observation and discussion could reveal
other, not entirely unrelated, functions of "actually' in which the
word 1) acts as a filler (by giving the speaker a moment to think about
the correction); 2) effectively sets off the most important words; 3)
marks a shift in the topic; or 4) allows the speaker to go on record with
the FTA, marking out the contrast or contradiction as such.
References
Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen. (1987). Politeness: Some universals
in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hickey, Leo. (1991). Surprise, surprise, but do so politely. Journal
of Pragmatics, 15, 367- 362.
Thomas, Jenny. (1983). Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure. Applied
Linguistics, 4, 91-112.
Back to the top
| 
