The Pragmatic Development of Understanding of the Speech Act of Promising among Chinese-Speaking Children

• Main Authors: Yi Wang, 王懿
• Other Authors: Chun-yin Doris Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/88160353017426058272

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 100 === The present study aims to investigate the pragmatic development of Chinese-speaking children‘s understanding of the speech act of promising by examining four factors which affect their promise judgments and production of promises: the promisee‘s social status, the outcome of the promise, the promiser‘s sincerity, and the explicitness of making the promise. Two comprehension tasks and one production task were conducted using a total of one hundred subjects. The subjects were divided into five groups of twenty: four experimental groups (consisting of children aged 6 to 9) and one control group (adults). With regard to the comprehension tasks, the study found that the older subjects and the control group were more likely to recognize a promise made to a promisee of superior social status as an actual promise than a promise made to a promisee of inferior social status. On the other hand, the younger subjects did not exhibit sensitivity to the social status of the promisee. In addition, the younger subjects were more greatly affected by the outcome of a promise than the other groups, and it was also found that they had a greater difficulty distinguishing words from deeds; that is to say, younger children could not distinguish a promise as it exists as a speech act from the actual action associated with the promise. However, in terms of what role sincerity plays in the judging of promises, it was discovered that a promiser‘s sincerity had no effect whatsoever on the promise judgment of any of the participants. This indicates that an insincere promise was still considered to be a promise by all groups. Furthermore, a promise made explicitly with a clear statement of a future act was more likely to be considered as an effective promise by all participants. Finally, the results of the production task revealed that Chinese-speaking children are readily capable of making a commitment by the age of six. The promising strategy most frequently adopted among all groups was to state the future act explicitly. The younger children participating in the study showed greater difficulty in making a promise as explicitly as the older children and adults. In all of the groups, the performative verb daying ‗promise‘ was rarely found in our data. This definitively proves that daying ‗promise‘ does not constitute a significant element of the speech act of promising.