Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction

Writing ‘bad news’ messages in English constitute a skill critical to interpersonal effectiveness in today’s global marketplace. This study investigates the rejection (or refusal) strategies that native and non-native speakers use naturally, i.e. without the help of explicit pragmatic competence ins...

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Main Author:	Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM 2014
Online Access:	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/1/4112-14273-1-PB.pdf

id	ukm-7068
recordtype	eprints
spelling	ukm-70682016-12-14T06:43:01Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/ Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker Writing ‘bad news’ messages in English constitute a skill critical to interpersonal effectiveness in today’s global marketplace. This study investigates the rejection (or refusal) strategies that native and non-native speakers use naturally, i.e. without the help of explicit pragmatic competence instruction. The data consist of the letters of rejection written by higher education students in response to a business proposal. These letters were analyzed in terms of four dimensions: meaning components, organizational approach and indirectness (using a framework derived from Félix-Brasdefer 2006) and the speech acts of apologizing and thanking (Wannaruk 2008). Results show that the student rejections display more variation, and even randomness, than predicted by the literature. Additionally, national culture and language appear to be much less of an explanatory factor than the students’ shared subcultural identity and exposure to similar models of communication. Overall, the data allow us to conclude that not only non-native but also native student writers would benefit from pedagogical interventions aimed at raising genre awareness and improving their intercultural pragmatic competence. Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM 2014 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/1/4112-14273-1-PB.pdf Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker (2014) Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction. 3L; Language,Linguistics and Literature,The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 20 (1). pp. 87-100. ISSN 0128-5157 http://ejournals.ukm.my/3l/index
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
building	UKM Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English
description	Writing ‘bad news’ messages in English constitute a skill critical to interpersonal effectiveness in today’s global marketplace. This study investigates the rejection (or refusal) strategies that native and non-native speakers use naturally, i.e. without the help of explicit pragmatic competence instruction. The data consist of the letters of rejection written by higher education students in response to a business proposal. These letters were analyzed in terms of four dimensions: meaning components, organizational approach and indirectness (using a framework derived from Félix-Brasdefer 2006) and the speech acts of apologizing and thanking (Wannaruk 2008). Results show that the student rejections display more variation, and even randomness, than predicted by the literature. Additionally, national culture and language appear to be much less of an explanatory factor than the students’ shared subcultural identity and exposure to similar models of communication. Overall, the data allow us to conclude that not only non-native but also native student writers would benefit from pedagogical interventions aimed at raising genre awareness and improving their intercultural pragmatic competence.
format	Article
author	Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker
spellingShingle	Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
author_facet	Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker
author_sort	Antoon, Gewijde Herwig De Rycker
title	Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
title_short	Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
title_full	Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
title_fullStr	Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
title_full_unstemmed	Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
title_sort	mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction
publisher	Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM
publishDate	2014
url	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/7068/1/4112-14273-1-PB.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T19:48:40Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T19:48:40Z
_version_	1777406071411834880

Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: the case for pragmatic competence instruction

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