For decades an objective within Linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic...Show moreFor decades an objective within Linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic differences of intrusion of the spatial domain within the temporal domain by comparing Native English speakers to Mandarin-English bilinguals. With deviation in linguistic construction of space = time metaphors between the two languages, the main question subject to this study is whether linguistic differences bear influence on the conceptualization of the abstract domain of time. Furthermore, an insight is given in the manner abstract concepts are concreted by the human mind with an emphasis on bilingual processing. As the processing within the bilingual mind has been subjected to much debate over recent year, an attempt to reconcile various views has been laid bare. The present study exists of two replicated tasks which yielded different conclusions in their original state. While the results of the present study remain inconclusive, one task hints at a global difference between Mandarin-English bilinguals' conception of time and English native speakers' conception of time. The other task has not revealed any implication on linguistic processing due to crosslinguistic differences.Show less
For decades an objective for linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence and/or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic...Show moreFor decades an objective for linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence and/or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic differences in observed intrusion of the spatial domain on the temporal domain by comparing English monolinguals toMan darin-English bilinguals. The main question in this study is whether the observed linguistic differences in the temporal domain between Mandarin and English bear influence on the conceptualization of this domain by the human mind. The present study comprises of two replicated experiments. When the two presently replicated experiments were conducted originally they drew deviating conclusions from one another regarding a similar question. While the results of the present study remain inconclusive, results hint at a global difference between Mandarin-English bilinguals’ conception of time and English native speakers’ conception of time based on language. This hint implicates that there might be an underlying effect of language on the mental representation of time. The second experiment has not revealed any implication on linguistic processing due to observed crosslinguistic differences.Show less
This thesis examines transferability of sociopragmatic knowledge to L2 speech act realization by studying request production in English and Russian. It aims at investigating whether native Russian...Show moreThis thesis examines transferability of sociopragmatic knowledge to L2 speech act realization by studying request production in English and Russian. It aims at investigating whether native Russian speakers transfer sociopragmatic knowledge to the requests in English and how they assess their linguistic behaviour in L2 compared to the performance carried out by native English speakers. To study the subject, native Russian speakers and native English speakers were asked to participate in two speech tasks: the Oral Discourse Completion (the ODCT) Test and the stimulated recall interviews (the SRI). The ODCT was aimed at elicitation of requests in eight situations that were constructed with consideration of three social parameters: social distance, power, and imposition. Native Russian speakers were asked to produce requests both in Russian and in English to detect transfer. Native English speakers produced requests in English, and their answers served as a baseline for comparison. Native Russian speakers as well as native English speakers were asked to reflect on their language use during the SRI. Three groups of requests, as well as speakers’ reports, were obtained and compared in relation to social distance, power, and imposition. The qualitative research method showed that even though there is cross-cultural variation in the Russian and English languages, sociopragmatic knowledge that is embedded in Russian culture does not affect the second language use. Russian speakers do tend to use more direct strategies in request production in the native language, as suggested by other related research on the Russian language. However, the findings of this study suggest that Russian speakers more often opted for indirect strategies, which relates their linguistic behaviour to Western tradition.Show less
