Nonnative students’ perception of disagreement in university academic discussion

Abstract

Disagreements can be face-threatening for both the speaker and hearer, as they are usually expressed as counter-responses to the interlocutor’s claims. Differences in cultural preferences to this speech act and inconsistent link between preferred pragmatic strategies and speaker’s linguistic proficiency have been reported in the past literature, suggesting complexities in effective conveyance of oppositions. Meanwhile, disagreement is often a required component of academic discourse in assessing critical thinking skills. As English is used as the lingua franca in many academic contexts today, it is necessary to investigate how nonnative students accomplish this task. This paper reports on mitigation strategies and structural organizations of disagreements in academic group discussions for nonnative university students in Hong Kong. Totalling eight hours of twenty-minute in-class discussion data has been collected, followed by interviews of eight students. Mitigation strategies from the past literature and Bardovi-Harlig and Salsbury’s (2004) acquisitional stages for disagreements were used as analytical frameworks. The findings showed that, regardless of proficiency levels, students’ disagreements were almost always mitigated and often placed later within a turn, demonstrating characteristics of advanced acquisitional stage. Students’ perception toward disagreements in academic discussion and their sensitivity in enacting this speech act will be further discussed.