華語與英語旅遊評論網回應抱怨之策略分析與教學應用

Abstract

抱怨是日常生活中常見的言語行為，說話者實施抱怨行為時將威脅聽話者的面子，形成具衝突性的溝通情境。語用學領域不乏針對抱怨言語行為的研究，然而現今回應抱怨行為研究多屬於企業管理的範疇，較少從語用學的角度探討回應抱怨的言語行為。此外，這些語用學的回應抱怨研究多聚焦面對面溝通及電子郵件的語境，以網路平台為語料來源之語用策略研究仍在少數，且尚未出現華語與英語的對比研究。因此本研究欲藉由旅遊評論網的真實語料，探討華語與英語回應抱怨策略之異同。本研究以Tripadvisor旅遊評論網的臺灣站與美國站為語料來源，蒐集華語及英語回應抱怨語料共600筆。本研究分析飯店業者回應抱怨時所採取的核心策略、輔助策略類型以及策略組成結構的分布。研究結果顯示，華語與英語的回應抱怨行為具有相似性，部分策略的使用情形則反映出集體主義與個體主義文化的溝通特質。在核心策略方面，兩者使用頻率最高的兩大核心策略皆為致謝策略與致歉策略，除此之外，華語多使用改善策略向消費者提出改善措施；英語則偏好使用說明規則策略為其行為提出理據。在輔助策略方面，兩者使用頻率差距最大的策略為自我肯定策略，反映出集體與個體主義社會的面子取向特徵。在策略組成結構方面，兩者均以四種核心策略結構及兩種輔助策略為主，華語所使用的策略組成結構比起英文種類較少且使用分布集中，英語的策略組成結構則較為多樣且分布較分散。整體而言，本研究發現英語回應抱怨的語料體現個體主義的文化特性，華語回應抱怨行為大致符合集體主義文化之特色，部分華語語料則反映出網路溝通較為直接且活潑的特質。根據研究結果，本研究進一步設計華語回應抱怨言語行為的教案，並以Google Classroom為教學工具模擬回應評論區，盼能透過課堂活動提升學習者在跨文化的網路商務溝通中運用回應抱怨策略之語用能力。Complaints are common speech acts in daily life and constitute face-threatening acts to complainees. In the field of pragmatics, complaint speech acts have been frequently observed in many studies. However, most previous studies on complaint responses apply the perspective of business management, while few are from the pragmatics field. Additionally, pragmatics studies of complaint responses have so far focused on face-to-face and e-mail contexts; no analysis has been done on Chinese–English language use on online review sites. This study aims to compare complaint responses between Chinese and English and explore the similarities and differences of the pragmatic strategies they use. Accordingly, this study utilized Tripadvisor.com, a representative online tourism review site in both Taiwan and the U.S., to collect 600 sets of corpora in Chinese and English. The collected corpora were analyzed according to the head act, supportive move, and strategy composition structure.The results show that Chinese and English were similar in terms of online complaint response behavior, while the usage of the pragmatics strategies partially reflected the different communication traits of collectivist and individualist societies. Both Chinese and English users mainly used apology and thanking strategies to respond. In addition to these strategies, Chinese users preferred to use the improving strategy to provide ideas for improvement, while English users preferred the explanation strategy to rationalize their behavior. In terms of the supportive move, there was a distinct difference in the use of the self-enhancement strategy between Chinese and English users. The finding that English complaint responses used a greater number of self-enhancement strategies than Chinese complaint responses is consistent with the face tendencies of individualism and collectivism. For strategy composition structure, both Chinese and English users mainly adopted a structure of four head acts and two supportive moves. There were fewer types of Chinese strategy composition structures, and the usage distribution was more concentrated than that in English. Overall, this study’s findings demonstrate that the English online complaint response corpus reflected individualism cultural features, while most of the Chinese complaint response corpus corresponded to collectivism, and part of the corpus mirrored the features of online communication, which is more direct and vibrant.Based on the results, the present study further designed a teaching plan for Chinese complaint responses and utilized Google Classroom as a learning tool to simulate the complaint response area, aiming to enhance learners’ complaint response competence in the cross-cultural online business context.