An Intercultural Pragmatic Study of Speech Act of Correction in Korean EFL Context

Taking an intercultural pragmatic approach, the present study compared native English speakers and Korean L2 learners performance of the speech act of correction and how it is realized with status unequals. The difference in status here is not necessarily socio-economic, but rather a matter of the power structure within the classroom context. By focusing on correction, this study looked at situations where one person knows the other has had a factual errors. The study attempted to find out whether there is pragmatic transfer from Korean (L1) among L2 learners of English in the strategies used to realize the speech act of correction. The correction speech act classified as an expressive is one of face-threatening speech acts and therefore have received much attention because of their potential for causing cross-cultural miscommunication. The participants included 20 Korean university students and 10 native English speakers. The data consisted of responses to four items of written discourse completion test per participant to elicit the speech act of correction. All the responses were analyzed as consisting of a sequence of semantic formulas (Cohen & Olshtain, 1981). Findings indicated the cultural background and L1 effects on the use of correction strategies.