Contrastive Pragmatics

My research in contrastive pragmatics goes back to my PhD project which was inspired by my personal experience of using various languages and repeatedly stumbling upon pragmatic differences. This strand of my work investigates how English, German, Polish and Russian speakers apologise (2006, 2009, 2012) – also revealing gender-specific differences (2006, 2007, 2008) – and how they make requests (2009, 2012). Apart from showing what constitutes an effective apology and a polite request in the cultures analysed, it has also revealed different understandings of notions such as indirectness, honesty, explicitness and involvement. Based on these findings, I have also assessed the pragmatic input in teaching materials for German learners of English (2010, 2013) and the extent to which it enables learners to communicate in a socially appropriate manner. Recently, I have revisited this area of my research - together with Pepy Bella - by expanding the examined languages to include Greek and by adding data from German, Greek, Polish and Russian learners of English (2020).

Contrastive Pragmatics: Publications

Some months after the book version of my PhD was published, BBC Radio 4 were putting together a programme on apologies for 'Word of Mouth'. They invited me for an interview along with some other guests who spoke about the use of apologies in the court, the media and in restorative justice. A few weeks later, the producer contacted me again. He was preparing a programme on Shostakovich for BBC 3 'Twenty Minutes' and he had heard that Shostakovich had to apologise to Stalin at some point. Could I write an essay about my research but also about Shostakovich's apology and add some anecdotes to make it a bit easier to digest? The essay was broadcast together with one of Shostakovich's symphonies and given the title 'I'm sorry I killed your fish'. The recording is here.