Publications

Publication details [#56227]

Henry, Alex, Debbie G. E. Ho and Sharifah N.H. Alkaff. 2012. "You don't seem to know how to work": Malay and English spoken complaints in Brunei. Pragmatics 22 (3) : 391–416.

Publication type

Article in journal

Publication language

English

Keywords

complaining | directness | mitigation | politeness | response

Language as a subject

English | Malay

Place, Publisher

International Pragmatics Association

Journal DOI

10.1075/prag

Annotation

This study compares the complaints of local native-Malay and expatriate native-English speakers in Brunei in terms of move structure and directness levels and explores the efficacy of polite behaviour in uttering the proper hearer response.