Question about resources

[Lisa DeWaard Dykstra]

Dear Colleagues,

A subscriber to the list asked me to clarify a bit some of the details of my
task, specifically what I meant by the text in red below. In Russian the two
address pronouns, *ty* and *Vy*, are used systematically to signal the
perception each interlocutor has of the relationship. Typically, *ty* is
used with intimates and *Vy* with strangers and also with those of higher
status (e.g., bosses, people older than oneself). However, in addition to
this standard usage, there exists a range of manipulation of these forms
which typically occurs in emotionally-charged situations. For example, a
wife who is angry at her husband may switch temporarily from the familiar *
ty* to the distant *Vy* to accent her anger; conversely, a switch from *Vy*to
*ty* can signal a desire to move to a closer, more intimate relationship, be
it a romantic one or a friendship. In my task, I used video clips from
classic Russian films of emotionally-charged situations, some of which
contained a switch from one pronoun or the other and some which did not.
Although none of the respondents picked out the feature consistently, female
respondents as a whole outperformed male respondents to a statistically
significant degree at two separate institutions.

Please let me know if more detail is needed, and thank you in advance for
your ideas!
Lisa


2007/10/30, Lisa DeWaard Dykstra <lisa.dewaard.dykstra at gmail.com>:
>
> Dear IGALA List Subscribers,
>
> I am currently working on a conference paper and am having a difficult
> time finding resources for the specific problem I am trying to address in my
> work. In my dissertation work on perceptions of politeness (specifically I
> investigated whether non-native learners of Russian perceived the
> sociocultural weight of the manipulation of address pronouns in a listening
> task) I found that the only statistically significant variable in my study
> was gender, with female learners outperforming male learners consistently at
> two different institutions. By the time I had determined this result I no
> longer had access to my informant populations so I was unable to interview
> the learners to try to figure out what about their listening caused them to
> react to the material differently. The explanation I gave in my dissertation
> -- that men and women were listening differently, but I didn't know why --
> was all I was able to say at that point. Now I am interested in pursuing
> further why this difference came about, but I am having a difficult time
> finding sources to consult. Has anyone on the list come up against a similar
> finding?
>
> Thank you for your time,
> Lisa
>
> --
> Lisa DeWaard Dykstra, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of Spanish and Second Language Acquisition
> Clemson University
> 308 Strode Tower
> Clemson, SC 29634
> 864-637-8491
>



-- 
Lisa DeWaard Dykstra, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Spanish and Second Language Acquisition
Clemson University
308 Strode Tower
Clemson, SC 29634
864-637-8491
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