The results for the pilot study and its conclusions

After conducting the pilot study, several scenarios were taken out for a number of reasons. One of them was the limited amount of linguistic material obtained. This point can be illustrated by means of the Bill situation in [4] (see Appendix I):

[4]

Imagine that you are at a restaurant

You are having a nice dinner with your family. You have finished eating the dessert and have asked the waiter to bring you the bill. He does so and quickly leaves you again, so that you can check the bill. He comes back to you after a while and clears the table. You have put the payment on the table, but the waiter hesitates to take it. You can see that he wants to take the money, and you want to let him know that it is ok for him to take it, so you say in English:

The respondent’s answer:

(The waiter’s response): ‘Thank you.’

The pilot study revealed that seven out of nine responses to the scenario in [4] were very short illocutions: e.g. Here, Here you go, Here you are, Here’s the money, We are ready, That’s the payment, etc. The informants undoubtedly interpreted the scenario at hand as Permission.

Howev-er, given the IF-approach distinguishes between speech acts on the basis of the alethic vs. deontic modality (see section 3.1), we attempted to collect linguistic data that would allow this kind of analysis, i.e. we aimed at designing the scenarios in a way that would trigger utterances containing a VP with a modal verb, e.g. It’s alright. You can take the money.

Another important observation relates to the responses to the Trolley scenario [5] given by the two British English speakers in [6].

[5]

You are at the airport

You are on a business trip with your boss, Jack Johnson. The plane has just landed, and you have collected your suitcase and put it on a trolley. Then you see your boss walking with his two suitcases, but no trolley. You only have one suitcase and you believe that your boss needs the trolley more than you do. You want to let him know that it is fine by you, if he uses your trolley, so you say in English:

The respondent’s answer:

(Jack Johnson’s response): ‘Thank you.’

[6]

English 1: ‘I’d take my luggage off if there wasn’t enough room and say:

“Here you go,” [while nodding and pointing to the trolley] straightaway and offer him the trolley; or I’d start to put his luggage on the trolley.’

English 2: ‘Here, you use this [pointing to the trolley]. I only have one suit-case, after all.’

As can be seen from [6], the participants chose to accompany a particular speech act with various non-verbal expressions, such as pointing to the trolley by means of a nod, a hand gesture, a gaze, etc.

I interpret these findings in terms of ‘visualisation’ (see Durst-Andersen, 2000), i.e. the automatic and completely unconscious choice to focus on the picture. It seems quite natural that by visualising a

situ-ation shared by both interlocutors, verbal communicsitu-ation can to a certain extent become superfluous.

Interestingly, the requesting behaviour of the native speakers marked by non-verbal expressions stands in direct contrast to the responses produced by non-native participants of the pilot study. None of the latter chose non-verbal signals over verbal ones. This crucial finding convinced us of the importance of recording on video the final Carlsberg tests in addition to using a dictaphone.

While some scenarios (e.g. the Dessert situation and the Bill situation) were excluded on the grounds stated above, other scenarios were partially modified. Consider, for instance, the Dinner sce-nario in [7], which was replaced by the Ice-cream situation in [11].

[7]

You are at your place

It is evening and you are having a family dinner with your friends. The children have finished their meal and look as if they would like to leave the table, rather than sit and wait for the grown-ups. However, the children hesitate to leave the table, because they usually wait until everyone has finished. You wish to let them know that it is alright, so you say in English:

The respondent’s answer:

(Children’s response): ‘Thank you.’

There were two arguments for replacing this scenario. Firstly, irrespective of their native language background, most respondents opted for speech acts involving alethic Possibility in [9] instead of the expected Permission in [8].

[8]

Japanese: ‘You may go. You may leave.’

English: ‘Ok. If you’ve said “Thank you”, you may leave the

ta-[9]

Danish: ‘So, kids, isn’t it time for you go and play? You can talk to your grand-parents later?’

English: ‘Do you want to go and play upstairs . . . do you want to watch TV . . . do you want to do something . . .?’

Russian: ‘Maybe you could go and play? You see? We could just eat between ourselves. So, if you want so, just put your dishes The respondent’s answer:

(The instructor’s response): ‘Ok-ok. As you want. Keep your hair on!’

During the interviews held immediately after the test, the respondents admitted that giving per-mission to one’s children by using the modal verb may might sound rather formal, and that it would be inappropriate and somewhat ‘marked’ to use it unless the children were very small. As can be clearly seen from [9], the participants preferred giving their children an option, by describing a Possibility rather than issuing a Permission.

On the other hand, irrespective of whether friends or grandparents were invited to dinner, the Chinese and Japanese subjects appeared to be unable as parents to allow their kids to get down. In-triguingly, the permission to get down was to be issued by the guests. Consider [10] for some illustra-tive examples.

[10]

Chinese 1: ‘Children, thank your grandparents for this great supper, and after that you can go.’

Chinese 2: ‘Will ask the guests for permission by saying: “Would you mind if I let my kids to play by themselves?”’

Japanese: ‘If you ask your grandparents if it’s ok to leave the table, you can leave.’

It is worth pointing out that nothing was wrong with the Dinner situation in terms of the con-ditions it was based on in that it was framed in terms of Permission. The fact that the respondents

collection in that Possibility and Permission are two counterparts on the scale of alethic-deontic mo-dality. Hence, the decision to reformulate it into the Ice-cream scenario in [11] was solely based on the specific socio-cultural norms associated with this type of situation in some speech communities, which appeared to prevent respondents from reacting to it in the expected way.

[11]

You are at your place

You have invited a colleague, his wife, and their child, Johnny, for a dinner.

You have finished eating ice cream for dessert and Johnny looks as if he would like to have some more ice cream. However, he hesitates to ask about it. You wish to let him know that it is alright, so you say in English:

The respondent’s answer:

(Children’s response): ‘Thank you.’

The pilot study similarly revealed situations based on deontic modality (Prohibition and Obliga-tion) that appeared to trigger alethic speech acts. This was, for example, the case in the Dog scenario in [12], which was designed in terms of Prohibition, but was consistently understood by the participants as Warning in [13].

[12]

You are at your place

You invite your friend, John, over for a beer. He has not seen you for some time and does not know that you’ve got a puppy. You have forgotten to tell him that it bites. And in the next moment, you can see that he is about to pick it up. You do not want an accident, so you say in English:

The respondent’s answer:

(John’s response): ‘Oh, cheers, mate!’

[13]

Japanese: ‘Mind you it may bite.’

English: ‘Careful, he might bite you!’

Chinese 1: ‘Careful my friend!’

Chinese 2: ‘Be careful and keep away from the dog. It may scary you.’

Danish: ‘Watch out! It’s a bit feisty.’

Consequently, the two prohibitive scenarios, namely the Dog situation and Crab scenario (see Appendix I) were replaced by the Poison scenario and the Peanut situation (see Appendix III).

On the basis of similar considerations, the Bank situation I (Appendix I) was replaced by the Bank scenario II (Appendix III), both instantiating Obligation. To be more specific, the initial Bank situation was changed with respect to the social variable of power. I assumed that situations where the speaker with less power than the hearer would issue Obligation were highly implausible – although not impossible. However, this factor obviously made the situation unpredictable, if not completely unreliable, in that it could eventually give rise to requests that did not match the scenario description.

Hence, it was decided to redefine this situation in terms of power, namely, the (+P(ower)) speaker and the (-P(ower)) hearer.

The last issue that needs to be mentioned in relation to the scenarios based on Obligation is the final decision to replace the Mobile scenario by the Bus situation which was used as a demonstration during the pilot test. This decision was similarly based on the reasons mentioned above, namely the mismatch between the design of the situation and the received responses. Presumably, this mismatch was caused by the fact that the respondents had a hard time accepting the premise of the Mobile situ-ation that sets the stage for a highly face-threatening act; and nearly all informants participating in the pilot study reacted to it by verbalising Possibility instead of the anticipated Obligation: e.g. ‘Can you please turn off your phone? We have already told you once, so it would be very nice if you turn it off this time’ or ‘Do you mind standing out in the vestibule?’.

As to the respondents’ reflections on the scenarios, some of the participants found a few of them rather implausible. For instance, a Japanese informant commented that the Mobile situation would not occur in Japan by virtue of the unsaid conventional rules of behaviour in public transport, where

speaking aloud is considered to be ill-mannered.

Keeping these cultural discrepancies in mind, we decided to ask the participants who had a hard time relating to and accepting the premise of a particular situation to transfer it to a foreign environ-ment, where the respondent would be expected to employ ELF. We assumed that this would not be a problem since the participants were Carlsberg employees who would travel to the countries where the situations described in the scenarios could well be part of reality. Eventually, the situations that were potentially unrealistic in some of the language communities were reformulated in terms of the location of the scene and ended up taking place in England.

In terms of using pictures as an extra tool, it became clear that they needed a further and more scrupulous adjustment in terms of gender and cultural differences. More specifically, it turned out that a Western-looking woman could be perceived differently in Asia and Western Europe. Furthermore, the pilot test showed that respondents may have a hard time associating with the opposite sex of the character in the scenario. We addressed this problem by deciding to portray a unisex speaker, which was thought to facilitate the respondents’ process of ‘imagining’ the situation.

Ironically, this – as well as a number of the decisions mentioned above – did not completely produce the desired results in terms of understanding the scenarios as intended. In the case of cartoons, for example, many of the SPT respondents in Russia ended up misconstruing some situations mainly because they were not familiar with the cartoon genre and couldn’t identify with the person in the picture. Retrospectively, it was clear that the simple and unambiguous pictures used for the pilot study seemed to produce better results than some of the cartoons made by the professional cartoonist (see all cartoons in Appendix III).

However, at the time of the pilot study, we believed that the cartoon was the best format as an elicitation tool for intercultural purposes. That is, it was assumed to eliminate differences in gender associations in different cultures. This can be illustrated by means of the cartoon depicting the Library scenario (see [14]).

Finally, the pilot study revealed that when the subjects were given the description of the first situation, they were still somewhat uncomfortable about the experimental set-up and showed signs of anxiety and tension (for similar findings, see Arnsberg & Bentsen, 2009). This was obviously because they felt insecure about their English and explains why they sought the instructor’s approval of their responses (e.g. numerous repetitions, rephrasing, using interrogative intonation pattern with declara-tive utterances, etc.).

[14]

Despite the fact that this might not bring about the desired results, it was decided to deal with this issue by visiting the factories in Denmark, Russia, and Great Britain a day before launching the tests, because we believed that meeting the participants at their workplace and talking to them in a casual atmosphere would remove their initial embarrassment.