T1 112010085 Full text

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The current study aims at investigating Indonesian EFL learners‟ strategies in expressing disagreement using English. In attempt to achieve the goal, 100 English Department students of Satya Wacana Christian University were invited to participate in this study. The participants were given a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) modified from studies by Takahashi and Beebe (1993) and Guodong and Jing (2005). The data obtained through this test were analyzed based on taxonomy of disagreement strategies by Muntigl (1995). The data was described in quantitatively. This study is important because disagreement is perceived as a face-threatening act (FTA). The findings revealed the tendency of IEFL learners to mitigate FTA by using

counterclaim as the most employed disagreement strategy by Indonesian EFL (IEFL) learners. Based on the findings of this study, a course about pragmatic understanding is suggested to offer in English Department in attempt to create more awareness of the students in speech acts realization, especially disagreement. Hopefully the findings of this study would provide additional information about strategies employed by IEFL learners in expressing disagreement.

Key words: Disagreement, Strategies in Disagreeing.

INTRODUCTION

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terms of politeness If people cannot understand well how to speak to others, the relationship between the interlocutors may be threatened.

The speech act of disagreement is a face-threatening act (FTA) when the speaker ignores the social values of the speaking and this can cause a communication breakdown (Niroomand, 2011, p. 205). Expressing disagreement, which is unavoidable in everyday interaction, may threaten the relationship between the interlocutors and this threat to the face of interlocutor can be softened by the use of politeness strategies (Locher, 2004). Several studies revealed that in expressing disagreement, people used different strategies to deal with the situation. Kreutel (2007, as cited in Niroomand, 2011, p. 205) in his article I'm not agree with you, analyzed the devices used by learners of English as a second language in order to perform the speech act of disagreement in their L2. Kreutel (2007) found that NNSs tend to use politeness strategies in expressing disagreement to mitigate FTA. It was found that NNSs use mitigation devices, which are devices to mitigate FTA, such as hedges or explanations less frequently than native speakers, but often resort to undesirable features such as the blunt opposite or message abandonment which means rude or impolite disagreement.

Nguyen (2009), in her paper, Politeness Strategies in Showing Disagreement in Group Work compared and contrasted Vietnamese and American undergraduate students‟ performances. It was found that both of the two groups of respondents prefer

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non-threatening way with the assumption that if they show their disagreement aggressively, the group‟s relationship will be broken.

The study by Guodong and Jing (2005) is a contrastive study on disagreement strategies for politeness between American English and Mandarin Chinese. Five scenarios for disagreement were devised for college students in USA and Chinese mainland to fill in what they would say when they disagree with the higher-status, peers, and the lower-status. The findings reveal that, when disagreeing with the superior, Chinese students employ more politeness strategies and address forms than the American students do. In the case of peers, with the increase of social distance, both the American and Chinese students apply less politeness strategies. Positive correlation was found between the rates of disagreement and the change of the social distance for the Chinese students while negative correlation for the American students.

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to IEFL learners on how they perform disagreement so that they can consider appropriate strategy to be used in certain context for the sake of avoiding communication breakdown.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Disagreement is generally perceived as a face-threatening act (FTA). FTA is inevitable in terms of conversations in social interaction. Within Brown and Levinson's (1987) framework, disagreement poses a threat to the addressee's positive face since it indicates that the speaker does not share the addressee's wants or beliefs. The act of disagreement may also pose a threat to the speaker's positive face if the speaker cannot support or defend his position. Brown and Levinson (1987) defined positive face in two ways: as "the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others executors", or alternately, "the positive consistent self-image or 'personality' (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants". There are four disagreement strategies according to Muntigl (1995). They are irrelevancy claim, challenge, contradiction, and counterclaim.

Irrelevancy claim is meta-dispute-act that comments on the conversational interactions (Muntigl, 1995, p. 39). It shows that a previous claim is not relevant to the discussion of the topic at hand. It is marked by discourse markers such as so or by phrases such as It doesn’t matter, You’re straying off the topic, and It is nothing to do with it. In uttering them, speakers seem to be questioning or undermining their interlocutors‟ previous claims by stating that their claims are not relevant to the topic

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Challenge refers to any negative thought, attitude, or action that a speaker attributes to an addressee (Labov and Fanshel 1977, as cited in Muntigl 1995).

Challenge has typically the syntactic form of interrogative with question particles such as when, what, who, why, where, and how. This type does not make a specific claim (e.g. using Why? or Like who?). The use of no specific claim implicates that the addressee cannot provide evidence for his or her claim. By posing a threat to the positive face of the interlocutor, challenge might be considered as impolite.

Contradiction is the most conspicuous type of disagreement. In contradiction, a speaker contradicts by uttering the negated proposition expressed by the previous claim. It is often marked by negative markers like no or not. If speaker A utters X, then speaker B will utter –X. It indicates that the contradiction of A‟s claim is true.

Pragmatically, contradiction directly repudiates someone‟s claim. As Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 66) assert in their seminal paper, these acts make the hearer appear to be wrong or misguided or unreasonable about some issue, such wrongness being associated with disapproval. Sometimes instead of having negative contradiction

markers, contradiction will have positive contradiction markers, like yes or yeah

which in contrast to the negated claim, but those state positive statements. If speaker A utters –X, then speaker B will utter X. B‟s claim asserts the affirmative in contrast to a negated A‟s claim.

Counterclaim does not have simple structure. Therefore it is more difficult to identify and describe. With counterclaim, speakers propose an alternative claim that does not directly contradict or challenge others‟ claim. Further negotiation of the

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and mitigating devices (e.g. maybe your right, but). The strategies of avoiding explicit disagreement such as using positive markers, prefaced partial agreement, or hedges can indicate indirectness and being polite in the speech act of disagreement.

However, conversations consist not only of what is said but what is not said – the cold silence, the disapproving silence, the appreciative silence, the reverent silence, the baffled silence (Schmitz 1994, as cited in Jasim and Aziz 2010, p. 1). Disagreement is commonly mentioned as one of speech acts which tend to be performed through silence in Japanese (Nakane, 2007). Silence is one FTA technique utilized by the Japanese because there is always a threat to an individual's positive or negative face through the verbal interaction between an addressee and a speaker. Consequently, social discretion through silence is an example of a no FTA strategy, one of five politeness strategies defined by Brown and Levinson (1987). According to Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness strategies, remaining silent is the most polite manifestation since the speaker avoids the FTAs altogether. This strategy involves maintaining the positive face of the addressee through the speaker's avoidance of disagreement with the addressee. The speaker hides their misgivings and disagreements from the hearer in polite and socially acceptable silence.

THE STUDY

Context of Study

This research was conducted in English Department, Satya Wacana Christian University. It is located in Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. This setting was chosen because it suits with the aim of this study which is to investigate IEFL learners‟

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University are Indonesian. English is a foreign language for Indonesian. In Satya Wacana Christian University, especially in English Department, students usually used English for communication with friends or teachers, either inside or outside the class. In addition, there were some students that usually used English for daily communication. The interaction varied in contexts, including disagreement. The way students expressing disagreement was analyzed to achieve the aim of the study.

Participants

The participants were 100 English major college students of Satya Wacana Christian University. This study used purposive sampling or criterion-based selection

(Blackledge 2001, as cited in Zacharias 2013, p. 8) in choosing the participants. In this sampling, the writer selected the participants purposefully; means the writer select the participants that can meet certain criteria. The reasons why this study used

purposive sampling were to make sure that all participants were IEFL learners and to get participants in relatively same language proficiency by giving certain criteria. In this study, the criteria for the participants were English Department students of Satya Wacana Christian University who never stayed in English-speaking countries, passed all speaking courses (Interpersonal Speaking, Transactional Speaking, and Public Speaking) in English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University, and English was not their first language, filled in the Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The participants‟ age ranged from 21 to 25.

Method of Research

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question (Zacharias, 2012, p. 125). The questions were in the form of Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The occurrences from the responses in the DCT were classified based on five types of disagreement. Then it was described as the application of politeness strategies. The aim of the present study was to describe some politeness strategies used by IEFL learners in order to deal with disagreement.

Instrument and Data Collection

To investigate Indonesian EFL learners‟ politeness strategies when expressing the speech act of disagreement, Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used. Discourse Completion Test (DCT) had been popularly and effectively used in pragmatic studies, especially about politeness in speech acts. Although Beebe (1985, as cited in Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper 1989) admitted the weaknesses of DCT, they strongly support the use of DCT in pragmatic research. According to Beebe (1985, as cited in Blum-Kulka et al. 1989, p. 11), the limitations of DCT are reflected in the differences she found between the data from DCT and those from spontaneous speech:

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However, the naturalness was only one of many criteria for good data. It could not be ignored that DCT provided several important strengths. Beebe (1985, as cited in Blum-Kulka et al. 1989, p. 10) found that:

Discourse Completion Tests are effective means of: (1) gathering a large amount of data quickly, (2) creating an initial classification of semantic formulas and strategies that will occur in natural speech, (3) studying the stereotypical perceived requirements for a socially appropriate (though not always polite) response, (4) gaining insight into social and psychological factors that are likely to affect speech and performance, and (5) ascertaining the canonical shape of refusal, apologies, partings, etc. in the minds of the speakers of that language.

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The participants were requested to write their natural responses to five scenarios modified from studies by Takahashi and Beebe (1993) and Guodong and Jing (2005). The original scenarios from studies by Takahasi and Beebe (1993) and Guodong and Jing (2005) consist of five disagreement scenarios with superior, peer, and subordinate. Yet because some scenarios are not relevant to college students, which are scenarios to disagree with employer, some scenarios were modified. The DCT was in a form of questionnaire describing some natural situations to which the respondents are expected to react, making disagreement. The DCT used was actually with situation description followed by an incomplete dialogue. The subject for the study was asked to fill an utterance that preceding the given utterance. In this case, the DCT consisted of five scenarios in which the subjects were expected to disagree with two higher status, two peers, and a lower status.

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Data Analysis

The participants‟ responses were analyzed in two steps. First, invalid data of

120 DCTs filled by the participants were eliminated and 100 valid data was determined to be analyzed to the next steps. Invalid data was measured through the participants‟ demographic information written in DCT. If the participants did not meet the criteria, the DCT became invalid and could not be used in this study. The second step was identifying the responses based on the taxonomy of Muntigl (1995), which recognizes four types of disagreement: irrelevancy claim, challenge, contradiction,

and counterclaim. The taxonomy of Muntigl (1995) is used because this theory has simple classification of disagreement strategies with clear nature of each strategy. However, there was a high possibility that the participants tended to be silent with various reasons. As a result, in the second step, the responses were identified based on five categories instead of four categories. They were irrelevancy claim, challenge, contradiction, counterclaim, and silence.

FINDINGS

In this part, the data collected from DCT is presented and discussed. The data is in a form of responses in expressing disagreement. According to Muntigl and Turnbull (1995), there are four strategies of disagreement: irrelevancy claim, challenge, contradiction, and counterclaim. Yet conversations consist not only of what is said but what is not said - the cold silence, the disapproving silence, the

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disagreement that will be analyzed in this research; irrelevancy claim, challenge, contradiction, counterclaim, and silence.

To make the data easier to recognize, participant will be abbreviated with P, followed by number to differentiate the participants, and the interlocutor is abbreviated with several classifications; Sup for superior, Peer for peer, and Sub for subordinate. This study was analyzed quantitatively. Later on there will be independent examination of each response for the five conditions. Frequency of occurrence of these components as used by IEFL learners is presented in pie charts for each situation.

Condition 1:

Your supervisor questions the originality of the paper you submit. S/he says to you, "I don't think these ideas are yours." However, they are yours.

In response, you will: (please answer either number 1 or 2)

1. Say to your supervisor, “...………...……….…”

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In response to this situation, in which the speaker is disagreeing to his or her supervisor, who questions the originality of the term paper s/he submits, contains certain kind of formality, a power inconsistency exists between interlocutors. The person, who the speaker is disagreeing with, is in a higher power and position than the speaker. As illustrated in Figure 1, 42% IEFL learners employ counterclaim to disagree with the superior. It is the biggest amount compared with the other strategies.

Sup : I don’t think these ideas are yours.

P41 : I made it by myself.

With counterclaim, they propose an alternative claim that do not directly contradict or challenge the supervisor‟s claim about the originality of the paper. In using counterclaim, usually there is partial agreement

Irrelevancy Claim

2%

Challenge 15%

Contradiction 37% Counterclaim

42% Silence

4%

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P11 : I’m sorry it might look quite similar, but it is really mine.

The partial agreement is used to soften the disagreement since the interaction includes lecturer or superior. Then it is followed by the word but with explanation. The second most used strategy is contradiction with 37% occurrence. In this condition,

contradiction is marked by negative markers like no or not.

P25 : I’m sure, I didn’t do such plagiarism.

or

P34 : No, this is my idea.

Besides, the participants also use contradiction by uttering the negated proposition expressed by the previous claim.

Sup : I don't think these ideas are yours.

P7 : I think these ideas are originally mine.

Condition 2:

Your lecturer asks you and your classmates to submit the assignment today. You do not make the assignment yet because you believe s/he said that the deadline is next week.

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2. Keep silent because………...………….…………..

In this condition, the participant is in an awkward position because in one side s/he believes s/he do not have to submit the work that day because it is not the due date. In other hand, the lecturer asks him or her to do so. This might be misunderstanding between the lecturer and the participant. The same with the previous result, most IEFL learners employ counterclaim to straighten out this condition with frequency more than a half which is 52% as shown in Figure 2.

Sup : (asking you and your classmates to submit the assignment today)

P54 : But you saidthat the deadline is next two weeks, Ma’am.

or

Sup : (asking you and your classmates to submit the assignment today) Irrelevancy

Claim 1%

Challenge 13%

52% Silence

10%

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P57 : Excuse me Sir, but according to my note you said to submit it next two weeks.

It indirectly implies that s/he cannot submit the work that day. Using counterclaim, the IEFL learner tries to strive for safe zone where it will be okay if s/he do not submit the work that day.

Condition 3:

You are going to watch a movie with your friend. S/he said, “Cartoon movie will be

great!”. In fact, you do not like cartoon movie. You think it is childish and fictional.

1. Say to your friend, “...………..…………..……..…………” 2. Keep silent because……….……….…………..

Irrelevancy Claim

0%

Challenge 25%

33% Silence

13%

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This condition is more casual compared to two previous conditions. It happens between peers where they are going to watch movie, but they have not decided which movie to watch yet. One of them proposes cartoon movie to be watched, the other one is expected to disagree because actually s/he do not like cartoon movie. Figure 3 shows interesting finding about disagreement strategies in this condition. The same with the two previous conditions that counterclaim is the most appeared strategy, in this condition 33% of the participants tend to use counterclaim as the strategy to disagree with peer. In this condition, IEFL learners use counterclaim by uttering very indirect disagreement, like what is being presented below.

Peer : Cartoon movie will be great!

P6 : Action movies are better.

or

P42 : I will be sleeping during the movie.

or

P96 : It would be great, but I think drama comedy is good for today.

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drama comedy instead of cartoon movie. All expressions uttered by P6, P42, and P96 are indirect disagreement as it is the nature of counterclaim. Counterclaim creates ambiguity that the participants expect the interlocutor will get the „signal‟ so that they

will not watch cartoon movie. Compared to other conditions, silence is applied in biggest amount which was 13%. Irrelevancy claim is not applied in this condition.

Condition 4:

You are working in the same group with Jessica and Alice for the final project. The topic to be presented is free. Jessica has proposed her idea for the topic. However, you think the topic is too large and ambitious for the project.

1. Say to Jessica, “...………..………….………...”

2. Keep silent because……….………...

Irrelevancy Claim

0%

Challenge 36%

52% Silence

6%

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This condition happens in university setting where three students are working on their final project. Having different opinion is usual thing in group work, so is in this condition. The participants are expected to disagree because one of his or her group member, named Jessica, has an idea which they think too large and ambitious for the final work. As seen in Figure 4, counterclaim appears the most in this condition which is 52%. In this condition, counterclaim is applied by expressing statement that does not directly disagree with the previous claim, partial agreement is also present in this condition

Peer : (proposing idea for the topic)

P14 : I think it’s is too difficult for us.

or

P39 : You have a good idea, but I think we can make a simple one.

Then the second most used disagreeing strategy is challenge with 36% occurrence. Challenge is expressed by using interrogative sentence. It is mostly applied in more polite way by using the word please.

P1 : Can you please make it more specific?

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Condition 5:

Your sister said “Boys who smoke are cool.” You do not think so. In your opinion,

smoking has no use. Instead, it is not good for health and environment.

1. Say to your sister, “...………”

2. Keep silent because………

In this case, familial relationship exists between the interlocutors. The participants are expected to respond as an older brother or sister.

Sub : Boys who smoke are cool.

P20 : No, I totally disagree.

or

Sub : Boys who smoke are cool. Irrelevancy

Claim

1% Challenge 10%

31% Silence

7%

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Figure 5 shows interesting findings. Generally, all strategies are applied in this condition. The most appeared disagreeing strategy in this condition (with subordinates) is different with the previous four conditions (with superior and peers). In the previous four conditions, the most employed disagreement strategy is

counterclaim, but in this case, where the IEFL learners have to disagree with subordinates, they employ contradiction most with 51% occurrence. In disagreeing with subordinates, IEFL learners tend to be bold and direct.

DISCUSSION

In this part, interesting findings of this study will be discussed. The first interesting finding is about irrelevancy claim disagreement strategy that is not applied in condition with peer. As shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4, irrelevancy claim does not occur. Irrelevancy claim is applied when the speaker want to say that the previous claim is irrelevant. In condition 3 in the DCT, the previous claim is Cartoon movie will be great, and in condition 4, the previous claim is about a group member proposing an ambitious topic. The previous claims in all conditions apparently influence the use of strategy. The previous claims shown in condition 3 and 4 might be not stimulating enough to emerge irrelevancy claim strategy. That is why

irrelevancy claim does not exist in condition 3 and 4 which are about disagreement with peers.

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of the hearer. The reasons behind the silence are various, but silence mostly occur in condition 3 where the IEFL learners are expected to disagree with a friend.

Peer : Cartoon movie will be great.

P50 : (keeping silent to keep my friend‟s feeling)

or

Peer : Cartoon movie will be great.

P31 : (keeping silent for solidarity)

In this condition, silence happens between peers. Some IEFL learners choose to be silent rather than saying something that might hurt their friends‟ feeling. Some

participants that choose silence as disagreement action in this condition stated their reason are solidarity between friends. Although at that time they do not agree that cartoon movie is great to watch, they follow what their friend want to watch carton movie by employing silence strategy. In negative side, this might not be enjoyable for the speaker to watch movie that they do not like but on the other hand it shows how IEFL learners really consider the application of politeness in their real life, even with peers.

CONCLUSION

The current study aims to find out IEFL learners‟ strategies in expressing disagreement. Generally, all disagreement strategies were employed in all conditions, except in condition with peer. In conditions where IEFL learners disagree with peers,

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the most employed strategy in disagreement. It opposed the result of a study by Kreutel (2007) that believes non-native speakers use mitigation devices less frequently than native speakers, but often resort to undesirable features. The findings of this study show IEFL learners tend to mitigate FTA by applying counterclaim

strategy. On the other hand, the findings corroborated with Nguyen (2009) that stated that both native and non-native speakers prefer using non-conflicting disagreement strategies than conflicting ones and they mostly express their disagreement in a non-threatening way.

This study has several limitations. This study limits the participants on IEFL learners only. It is not a comparative study between native and non-native speakers. This study tries to find what strategies employed by IEFL learners in dealing with disagreement, not going deeper about reason or other factors such as culture that might influence the choice of strategies. For further study, it is suggested to do similar study about strategy in disagreement but with the additional focus on the reasons behind the choice of certain strategy.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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REFERENCES

Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., Kasper, G. (1989). Cross Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Guodong, L., & Jing, H. (2005). A Contrastive Study on Disagreement Strategies for Politeness between American English & Mandarin Chinese. Asian EFL Journal, 7, 10 (1).

Jasim, M. & Aziz. F. (2010). Silence as Non-verbal Positive Politeness Strategy in August Strindberg‟s The Stronger: A Pragma-Stylistic Study. Journal of Missan Researchers, 7 (13).

Kreutel, K. (2007). “I‟m not agree with you.” ESL Learners Expressions of Disagreement. TESL-EJ Top, 11(3).

Locher, M. (2004). Power and politeness in action: Disagreements in Oral Communication. Berlin/New York: Mouten de Gruyter.

Muntigl, P. (1995). The Conversational Structure and Face Implications of Everyday Arguing. Simon Fraser University.

Nguyen, T. P. T. (2009). Politeness Strategies in Showing Disagreement in Group Work Used by Viatnemese and American Undergraduate Students. Hanoi. Niroomand, M. (2011). An Investigation of Iranian EFL Learners‟ Use of Politeness

Strategies and Power Relations in Disagreement across Different Proficiency Levels. English Language Teaching, 4 (4), 204-220.

Nakane, I. (2007) Silence in intercultural communication: perceptions and performance. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.

Takahashi, T. & L M. Beebe. (1993). Cross-linguistic influence in the speech act of correction. In Kasper & Blum-Kulka (Eds,), Interlanguage Pragmatics, (pp. 138-157). New York: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. England: Longman.

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Zacharias, N. T. (2012). Research Methods for Second Language Education. Satya Wacana Christian University.

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APPENDIX

Appendix 1. Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and Demographic Survey.

NIM : ……….

Dear English Department students,

I am interested in researching Indonesian EFL learners‟ application of strategies in expressing disagreement. I would be very grateful if you would kindly spare a few minutes of your time to fill out this questionnaire, as I think it should be very useful in improving the teaching and learning of speaking in the future. Feel free to give your opinion because there is no right or wrong answer, but please use English. Many thanks.

Five scenarios are described below in which you are expected to pretend that you

really face those situations. Please give response with the ‘speaker’ by writing out

what you are going to respond in real life scenarios.

1. Your supervisor questions the originality of the paper you submit. S/he says to you, "I don't think these ideas are yours." However, they are yours.

3. Say to your supervisor, “...………...………….…”

4. Keep silent because………..

2. Your lecturer asks you and your classmates to submit the assignment today. You do not make the assignment yet because you believe s/he said that the deadline is next week.

1. Say to your lecturer, “...………...……..…...…”

2. Keep silent because………...……….…………..

3. You are going to watch a movie with your friend. S/he said, “Cartoon movie will be great!”. In fact, you do not like cartoon movie. You think it is childish and fictional.

1. Say to your friend, “...…………..…..……..…………”

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4. You are working in the same group with Jessica and Alice for the final project. The topic to be presented is free. Jessica has proposed her idea for the topic. However, you think the topic is too large and ambitious for the project.

3. Say to Jessica, “...………..………….………...”

4. Keep silent because……….………...

5. Your sister said “Boys who smoke are cool.” You do not think so. In your opinion, smoking has no use. Instead, it is not good for health and

environment.

3. Say to your sister, “...……….…”

4. Have you ever stayed in English-speaking countries? Please put a check (√)

฀ Yes, which is/are ……… ฀ No

5. Have you passed the following courses? Please put a check (√) ฀ Interpersonal Speaking

฀ Transactional Speaking ฀ Public Speaking

If I need more information on your questionnaire, can I contact you for an interview? Please put a check (√) ฀ Yes ฀ No

If you say Yes, complete the following information: Name :

Phone number : Email :