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You might want to tone down your advice: An experimental investigation of the speech act of advice in French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2024

Emma Corbeau Open the ORCID record for Emma Corbeau [Opens in a new window]  and
Gabriel Thiberge Open the ORCID record for Gabriel Thiberge [Opens in a new window]
Emma Corbeau*
Affiliation:
Université Paris Cité, Paris, France Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle-CNRS, Paris, France
Gabriel Thiberge
Affiliation:
Université Paris Cité, Paris, France Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle-CNRS, Paris, France
*
Corresponding author: Emma Corbeau; Email: emma.corbeau@etu.u-paris.fr
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Abstract

We present experimental results from a web-based study on the speech act of giving advice in French. 86 L1 speakers of French had to continue short and written fictitious interactions we created, in which we manipulated the adviser’s level of experience (explicitly experienced, explicitly inexperienced, or no precision) and the hierarchical relationship between adviser and advisee (top-down, bottom-up, and equals). Participants had to choose between four types of continuations, from indirect strategies to direct prototypical imperative strategies, with variations of the face-threatening value in some continuations, as per Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. Main results from Bayesian regression analyses indicate an overall preference for indirect strategies in French, but also suggest influences from the level of experience and hierarchical relationship. These results will allow for a better understanding of advice as a speech act and contribute to a growing body of work in experimental pragmatics.

Keywords

adviceBayesian modelingexperimental pragmaticsFrenchpoliteness theoryquantitative datasociolinguistics
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , First View , pp. 1 - 24
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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