LANGUAGE IN INDIA

HOW DO IRANIAN COMPLAINEES USE CONVERSATIONAL STRATEGIES IN THEIR COMPLAINTS?
Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan, PhD in TEFL

INTRODUCTION - DYNAMICS OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT COMPLAINTS

Direct complaint (DC) is a face-threatening act through which a speaker makes complaints about someone or something that is present in the speech act scene (Murphy and Neu, 1996; Olshtain and Weinbach, 1993). Indirect complaint (IC) or Griping, on the other hand, can be described as a non-face-threatening speech act in which the responsible party or object of the complaint is not present during the interaction within which the speech act is performed (D’Amico-Reisner, 1985).

Both direct and indirect complaints have the potential of leading to lengthy interactions between speaker and addressee; however, it is usually in the indirect complaint or griping that one finds conversational material upon which shared beliefs and attitudes may be expressed (Tatsuki, 2000). As such, the indirect complaint (IC) becomes a solidarity-building device since it freely invokes the listener to engage in a series of commiserative responses to demonstrate attention and concern, or to maintain intimacy and stable social relationships. Closely related to the concept of griping is what in Australian English is called whinging.

WHINIGING

Using Natural Semantic Approach, Wirezbicka (1991, pp.181-2) defines whinging as:

1. I say something bad is happening to me
2. I feel something bad because of this
3. I can’t do anything because of this
4. I want someone to know this
5. I want someone to do something because of this
6. I think no one wants to do anything because of this
7. I want to say this many times because of this

Wierzbicka (1991) compared her own definition of whinge with the definitions of complaints (direct and indirect) to highlight the range of meanings a word can have with respect to the culture in which it is a part.

INDIRECT COMPLAINTS AS EVALUATIVE RESPONSES

According to both Tannen (1990) and Michand & Warner (1997), indirect complaints frequently serve as back-channels or evaluative responses in an extended structure of discourse exchanges; they may invoke expressions like “Oh, that’s horrible!”, “Yeah, I know what you mean” ,and “That’s too bad.”

COMPLAINT CONVERSATIONS

Kumagai (2004) defined complaint conversations as conversations that involve two parties with distinct communicative orientations: (a) the complainer and (b) the complainee. She distinguished complaint conversations from quarrels in that the former involves an effort by the complainee to minimize the confrontation while, with the latter, the two confront each other on a par.

DYNAMICS OF COMPLAINTS IN IRAN

This study on Farsi specifically focused on the role of complainees' sex, age, perceived situational seriousness, and social class in relation to their responses to complaining behavior.

In this study of the effects of complainees' sex, age, perceived situational seriousness, and social class on the use of conversational strategies in their response to complaining behavior of complainers, 465 subjects of varying age, sex, and social class were observed and tape recorded in spontaneous conversation by 25 field workers. The field workers also filled out a checklist that provided the data of the study, which were then input into two nonparametric tests: (a) Mann-Whitney U Test, and (b) Kruskal Wallis H Test. The results of data analysis showed that sex and social class caused the differential use of two conversational strategies whereas perceived situational seriousness caused the differential use of only one strategy. The results also indicated that age resulted in the differential use of none of the conversational strategies in questions.

SOME OF THE FINDINGS REPORTED IN THE DETAILED ARTICLE

In their emotional reaction to complaints, more male than female subjects expressed disagreement whereas more female than male subjects expressed regret. As for the second strategy (i.e., dealing with the complaint situation), stalling and diverting were female rather than male strategies while repeating was a male strategy. The third strategy had to do with the way subjects provided rhetoric for argumentation. Male subjects preferred to reorient the conversation or complaint to a solution whereas female subjects preferred to close the conversation. As for manipulating the development of the conversation, which is the fourth strategy, males preferred to confront the complainer on a par where as females preferred to minimize the confrontation.

The comparison of percentages for expressing disagreement across social classes further illustrate the importance of power in the choice of strategy. As for the second strategy, the percentages indicated that high class subjects preferred to stall the complaint. The preferred strategy for low class subjects was repetition (of the apology); the mid class subjects, however, preferred to divert the complaint. In the case of the third strategy, subjects across all social classes preferred to reorient the complaint to a solution. Finally, the high-class subjects tried to minimize the confrontation between the complainers and themselves while both the low class and the mid class subjects preferred to confront the complainers on a par.

This is only a summary of some of the points discussed in this paper. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN A PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan

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