Crawshaw, Robert and Culpeper, Jonathan and Harrison, Julia (2010) "Wanting to be wanted" : a comparative study of incidence and severity in indirect complaint on the part of French and English language teaching assistants. Journal of French Language Studies, 20 (1). pp. 75-87. ISSN 0959-2695
Abstract
Using data from the ESRC-funded project Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication (PIC), this paper applies contrastive qualitative and quantitative analysis to data derived from oral statements, logbooks and retrospective reports by language teaching assistants in France and England. It demonstrates that the incidence of 'indirect complaint' (Boxer, 1993) is significantly higher amongst English assistants than amongst their French counterparts and also that the 'severity' (Olshtain and Weinbach, 1993) is similarly greater. The study nevertheless shows that personality is a stronger determinant of cultural outlook and behaviour than nationality.