Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Yukiko Imashiro
In the field of interlanguage pragmatics, there has been much research on ‘complaints’.
However, in my view, we have no research to compare Japanese with French, or to deal
with French learners of Japanese. This paper addresses the characteristics of ‘complaints’
by French learners of Japanese, Japanese native speakers and French native speakers,
and the pragmatic transfer of learners. The data were obtained through written Discourse
Completion Tests which examine several situations with three variables: relative strength,
closeness, and seriousness of the situation, analyzed from viewpoints of semantic formulas
and expressional forms. The result of the research made clear the differences among these
three groups. It was found that Japanese native speakers discourse has lower face risk
than French native speakers in several situations, and learners showed pragmatic transfer,
in their use of semantic formulas of ‘blaming’ and ‘idiomatic expressions’, expressional
forms of ‘direct claims for improvement’ and use of combinational semantic formulas.
Few learners have been instructed properly about ways of making complaints and even
some proficient learners of Japanese have irrelevant understandings about Japanese ways
of making complaints.
