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Keeping the peace: A cross-cultural comparison of questions and requests in Australian English and French

This paper investigates one of the most common sources of crosscultural misunderstanding between French and English Speakers: the way questions and requests are phrased. It is based on an analysis of hundreds of authentic speech acts recorded in an office-work Situation in which French people used English äs a second language. The analysis, based on an adaptation of the Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project coding System, compares questions in English by Australian Speakers with questions in French and in English by native French Speakers. Marked differences in the choice of syntax and lexicon emerge between the two groups. Three types of explanations are put forward for this linguistic behavior: 1) mastery of L2 and/or fossilization, 2) pragmalinguistic transfer and 3) socio-pragmatic failure. Together they throw light on why native French Speakers often come across äs blunt in an English-speaking environment while claiming that their Australian counterparts tend to 'beat around the bush'. The differences in communicative strategies in turn reflect diverging cultural assumptions towards the listener and what constitutes face-threatening acts.