learners of English who use positive remark.
73
It is negatively transferred since NSs of American English significantly use the other alternative of using positive
remark in correcting to only someone who has lower-status level. It is evident by the fact that, in the situation in which professor correcting a student for
mentioning wrong date, more than half of NSs of American English soften their corrections with using any positive remark, whereas there is no one who uses
positive remark in the correction in the situation of student correcting the professor over mentioning wrong name of scholar.
74
4. Developmental Aspects as Non-Structural Factors of Pragmatic Transfer
Pragmatic transfer is widely investigated by doing contrastive analysis between interlanguage data of L2 learners in comparison with the data of NSs of
L1 and L2 as responses toward some comparable contexts. But, not simply doing such ‗structural‘ comparison, investigating the occurrences of transfer has to
involve non-structural factors which may potentially influence learners in recognizing which their L1 pragmatic knowledge is transferable into L2
contexts.
75
Developmental aspects are non-structural factors which can be involved in analysis of pragmatic transfer. Developmental aspects focus on
learners‘ level of proficiency and learners‘ length of stay in L2 community as two aspects which may affect the occurrences of pragmatic transfer since these aspects
influence learners‘ familiarity on L2 pragmatic knowledge.
76
73
Tomoko Takahashi and Leslie M. Beebe 1993, op.cit. p. 141-145.
74
Ibid. p. 141-145.
75
Terence Odlin 1989, op.cit., p. 28.
76
Gabriele Kasper 1992, op.cit., pp. 219-221.
As a developmental aspect in non-structural factors of pragmatic transfer, learners‘ level proficiency relates to the occurrences of pragmatic transfer.
Learners with low-level proficiency are considered to make more numbers of pragmatic transfer, while learners with high level proficiency are considered to
have the ability to classify which are transferable and not.
77
However, noticing that level of proficiency alone cannot assure learners‘ development of L2
pragmatic knowledge, Kasper proposes that length of stay in L2 community can be further examined as developmental aspect in the investigation of pragmatic
transfer since it may increase learners‘ familiarity with L2 contexts.
78
C. Speech Act of Thanking
The realization of speech acts is the scope of the term ‗pragmatics‘ in the notion of pragmatic transfer which is proposed by Kasper. According to Austin,
speech acts are defined as ‗utterances that do things‘.
79
Austin exemplifies that uttering ‗I name this ship Queen Elizabeth‘ when smashing the bottle is an
instance of speech act in which the utterance is a part of doing an action of naming.
80
By noting the example, speech acts are utterances which do not describe, report or state that someone is doing an action, but speech acts are
utterances which become parts of doing actions. Using the terms ‗illocutionary acts‘ and ‗speech acts‘ interchangeably, there
are five types of speech acts in Searle‘s conception: representatives, directives,
77
Ibid. pp. 219-220.
78
Gabriele Kasper 1992, op.cit. p. 220.
79
J. L. Austin, ―How to do things with words,‖ in Dawn Archer and Peter Grundy., editors, The
Pragmatics Reader New York: Routledge, 2011, p. 19.
80
ibid. p. 19.
