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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH PRAGMATIC CONTRASTS > Inherent difficulty of PMs: underspecification of meaning, polyfunctionality, polyfunctionality, context dependency; > Lack of appropriate input in teaching materials; > Interlingual differences (L1-L2 contrasts): as a matter of fact, it is impossible to find one-to-one correspondences between PMs in two different languages. There may be — partial equivalence (which may lead to false interlingual identification of L1 PMs with L2 PMs): e.g., Hungarian hiszen may be identified with English because, although it may correspond to a number of English PMs (because, but, after all, etc.); — total absence of a PM in either L1 or L2: e.g., Hungarian bezzeg has not got even a near-equivalent in English. 10.9 CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS PREVIEW: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IN THE FOLLOWING SITUATIONS? WRITE DOWN YOUR ANSWERS AND DISCUSS THEM WITH OTHERS IN THE CLASS. You borrowed a book from a friend in your class and you forget to bring it back when you are supposed to return it. How would you apologise? You accidentally bump into a well-dressed elderly lady in an elegant department store, causing her to spill her packages all over the floor. You hurt her leg too. It’s clearly your fault and you want to apologise. You say: ... At a restaurant you change your mind after the food has already been served. You want to apologise and change the order. What would you say? ... Research on pragmatic contrasts among languages started in the last quarter of the 20th century. The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Project (CCSARP) compared speech acts (complementing, thanking, apologising, complaining, requesting, advising etc.) in different languages. Besides speech acts most cross-cultural studies focused on politeness phenomena in different languages and cultures. Speech acts and politeness phenomena are very closely related to culture. In some Arabic countries the verb divorce is performative: a man can divorce a woman by saying I divorce you three times. This is not a performative verb in other cultures. The differences between Oriental (Chinese, Japanese etc.) and Western cultures in the role of politeness and modesty are well-known. As a result, pragmatics and intercultural studies are overlapping. + 177 +
