Foreigner talk in Japanese : speech adjustments of native speakers with intermediate and advanced non-native speakers

Abstract

The present study investigates native speakers' speech adjustments for non-native speakers whose proficiency levels are intermediate and advanced. The studies on Foreigner Talk (FT) in the past 15 years are reviewed and summarized. Most of the literature on FT deals with beginner level non-native speakers in or outside the classroom, and lack statistical plausibility. The present study aims to remedy these deficiencies. Ten native speakers of Japanese and five intermediate and five advanced level non-native speakers of Japanese are selected on a voluntary basis from two university communities. Their social background, such as age, sex, social status, physical appearance, prior acquaintance, is controlled in order to compare native speakers' speech adjustments more objectively. A problem solving technique is used in the experiment in order to hold the subjects' attention on content, not on language. Three tape-recording sessions for the native speakers, and two sessions for the non-native speakers are assigned on a one-to-one basis. Six linguistic features (formal form, syntactic deletion, coordinate conjunctive forms, repetitions to promote comprehension, honorific forms, complex constructions) are selected to see differences in their use by native speakers in their discourse with native and non-native speakers. The hypothesis that native speakers use more listener-oriented speech for non-native speakers than for native speakers is examined in the context of six more specific sub-hypotheses. The statistical results show that speech adjustments of the native speakers with highly proficient speakers are very minimal: Their only adjustment with the advanced speakers is in coordinate conjunctive forms. Their speech adjustments with the intermediate speakers are found in coordinate conjunctive forms, syntactic deletion, and repetitions to promote comprehension. Especially, repetitions to promote comprehension are statistically very significant. The native speakers, on the whole, try to make themselves understandable (they are listener-oriented) when they talk with the intermediate speakers. Other features (formal form, honorific forms, complex constructions) do not show any difference in their use by the native speakers for either listener proficiency level. The findings in the present study may be applied in classroom teaching for intermediate and advanced level non-native speakers, but the primary purpose of this study is to contribute to studies on FT in general.