A Study of Complaint Speech Acts in Turkish Learners of English

Abstract

The current study investigates whether or how Turkish learners of English (TLEs) transfer pragmatic knowledge from their native language into English when performing the speech act of complaining. A total of 3000 written responses collected from TLEs and native speakers of both English (ENSs) and Turkish (TNSs) via a ten-item discourse completion task were analyzed. The study points to diverse results: it reveals that (1) requests, hints, and annoyance are the most commonly-used strategies by all three groups. (2) TLEs use the strategies hints, ill consequences, direct accusation, and threats/warnings at frequencies that are closer to the ENSs’ frequencies, (3) the TLEs, ENSs and TNSs are statistically indistinguishable in their use of annoyance, blame (behavior), and blame (person), and finally (4) the TLEs use modified blame at an intermediate level with respect to the ENSs and the TNSs, reflecting weak negative pragmatic transfer.