The Danish

5.1.3.1. On decision models and the categories outside the pragmatic wheel

Following the same procedure as above, I shall start out by considering the Danish English re-sults of decision models in [27]. As was the case with [2] and [17], some of the DESs made a round in a pragmatic wheel several times:

[27]

Interestingly, the statistics in [17] and [27] are more or less similar, except for a minor difference in the results for interrogative frames (two in [17] vs. six instances in [27]). In other words, both the RESs and the DESs used the declarative sentence structure with can most frequently. This is similarly a surprising result for the Danish speakers, whom I anticipated would employ imperative utterances to a larger etxent than can be seen in [27] (see the initial hypothesis II in section 1.2). In section 5.1.3.2, I shall consider specific linguistic realisations of the imperative frame employed by the DESs, which occurred more frequently in the DED than in the BED and the RED. For now, it seems reasonable to include the DMTD and see whether the results conform to my initial hypothesis.

[28]

The results in [28] are not in accordance with the initial hypothesis II either in that in revealed many more instances of the interrogative frame than the expected imperative one. Moreover, 14 out of 15 instances of the interrogative frame in [28] represent negated questions, which I construe in terms of Permission (see section 3.5.6.5). Ironically, the DMTSs preferred to use the interrogative frame – which is exactly what I expected to find with the ENSs. Put differently, in terms of traditional research in pragmatics, the Danish respondents have ostensibly accepted the conditions of the deontic frame at hand (i.e. (+P(ower), +D(istance)), thereby employing negative politeness strategies (Brown

& Levinson, 1987; Scollon and Scollon, 1983:167).

Going back to the Danish English results in [27], it was not feasible to establish whether the DESs perceived the Trolley scenario in terms of Permission, simply because the distinction between the deontic and alethic meanings of can is blurred in Modern English (see section 3.5.6.3). I shall, therefore, base my general conclusions for the Danish speakers on the Mother Tongue results, namely that the Danes perceive the Trolley situation as such involving Permission.

Still, neither [27] nor [28] proves our initial expectation with the Danes, whom I anticipated would largely employ imperative sentence structures in their mother tongue, on the one hand, and transfer imperative forms from Danish into Danish English, on the other. I shall return to this issue of the obvious lack of direct transfer of the requesting strategies when doing an intralanguage analysis in section 5.1.4.1.

5.1.3.2. On the categories of the pragmatic wheel

As mentioned in the previous section, most of the DESs made use of declarative utterances,

mainly surfacing in the form of the category satisfaction conditions, as in [29] (see the attached

The communicative event in [29] is interesting in several respects. First, P55 states the problem, as it were, by asking a question, Should I take your bag? Still, the interrogative form should I is inap-propriate because it implies either irritation on the part of the speaker or simply reads as if the speaker was debating with herself about whether to take the bag or not, which is definitely not the case in the situation at hand.

Second, P55 offers the hearer her ‘best bid for a solution to a problem’ by employing the declara-tive sentence form with the token just, which in [29] I construe as an instance of a prescripdeclara-tive particle whose function is to remove the obstacle that prevents the hearer from complying with the request (see sections 2.1.3.4 & 3.5.5.2.2).

Eventually, I believe that both should I and just in [29] are linguistic transfers from Danish, where they correspond to, respectively, skal jeg and the prescriptive particle bare.

Moreover, the DESs employed different imperative forms to those produced by the ENSs and the RESs. Besides the distinctive 2nd person imperative, like Put your bag on the trolley, the DED also exhibited 1st person plural forms, like Let’s share the trolley, and a small number of ‘permissive’

constructions, such as Let me and Allow me, which are analysed in the present study in terms of the

‘best-bid-for-a-solution-to-the-problem’ decision model (see section 3.5.9). Consider an example (see the attached Excel-document I.2):

[30]

*P59: Mr John !

*P59: Please let me take your luggage on my trolley . *P59: Because I have enough space .

It is particularly interesting that the DESs used imperative constructions like in [30], since just a few of the ENSs and the RESs made use of them. Moreover, similar cases of the speaker’s offer to help the hearer were also found in the DMTD. They are either framed as interrogatives and represent the category of verbalised thought, as in [31], or exemplified by the category of future action, as in [32].

[31]

*P78: Skal jeg ikke lige smide den med på min vogn?

*P78: ‘Don’t you want me to throw it on my trolley?’

*P78: Vi skal alligevel følges.

*P78: ‘We are going the same way anyway.’

[32]

*P88: Ah få den nu herop!

*P88: ‘Oh come on! Put it up here!’

*P88: Så skal jeg nok lige tage den.

*P88: ‘I’ll take it.’

This distinct tendency among the Danish respondents to underscore the speaker’s costs to herself at one end, and benefits to the hearer at the other, further supports my argument about their percep-tion of the Trolley scenario: i.e., a subordinate (-P(ower) is giving Permission to her superordinate (+P(ower). Interestingly, this level of complaisance was not found with the ENSs, nor was it observed with the Russian respondents.

All in all, the analysis of the DED and the DMTD did not reveal any direct linguistic transfers.

The interrogative frame was mostly applied by the DMTSs, while the declarative frame with can was predominant among the DESs. But there is evidence of the socio-pragmatic transfer from Danish into Danish English in the form of the speaker’s pronounced desire to help the boss with his problem, notably the DESs’ employment of the permissive forms Let me / Allow me.