The Speech Act of Making Suggestions in English

This study examined to what extent American students and Korean English a Foreign Language (EFL) learners vary in the choice of suggestion strategies and redressive actions, together with an investigation of the learners’ pragmalinguistic failure. Data were collected via the Discourse Completion Task. Results revealed that, while both the natives and the nonnatives exhibited the preponderant use of obligation statements, they varied clearly in the choice of some strategies such as imperatives and suggestory formulae. Moreover, the nonnatives utilized message abandonment and an obligation modal, had better, both of which were totally absent in the native data. It was also found that the natives and the nonnatives displayed differences in the frequencies and types of redressive actions: The natives’ suggestions were mitigated with downtoners most frequently, while the nonnatives’ suggestions, with subjectivizers. Interestingly, subjunctives, which were utilized by the natives, were never selected by the nonnatives. When age was taken into account, the study exhibited differences in the choice of not only some suggestion patterns but also redressive actions between the natives and the nonnatives. The results also provided a various array of pragmalinguistic failure ranging from the misuse of a request strategy where a suggestion is appropriate to a mismatch between a redressive action and a suggestion strategy. On the basis of these results, suggestions are provided with pedagogical implications.