Teaching cross-cultural pragmatics through AVT

There is fairly little research on using translation to advance pragmatic competence in learners of English and highlight how translation can advance cross-cultural pragmatic awareness in EFL. The study attempts to explore how audio-visual translation (AVT) can introduce cross-cultural pragmatics to Greek learners of English. The data derive from the animated film Inside Out (Pixar 2015). The study takes dubbed dialogues to be a target-oriented data set, with the subtitles as an intermediate, constrained type of transfer where pragmatic shifts may be least visible or not at all. The research uses (a) the positive/negative politeness distinction as manifested through interpersonal proximity/distance (Brown and Levinson 1978; Sifianou 1992; Yule 1996; Horn and Ward 2006), and (b) the un/certainty avoidance communication style (Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov 2010). The aim is to familiarize learners with the significance of cross-cultural pragmatic awareness and its use in EFL teaching and learning. Analysis of the data is followed by a questionnaire addressing bilingual participants who confirmed the findings of the study. Results show types of pragmatic variation across English and Greek: for instance, the subtitles showed less signs of positive politeness strategies and more uncertainty features, while dubbing manifested more positive politeness strategies and stronger uncertainty avoidance, i.e., in alignment with features of the target language. Findings allow learners to look beyond grammaticality, at the level of pragmatic preference.