11 - Ritual Frame Indicating Expressions in Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Research 2: The Use of T/V Pronouns in IKEA Catalogues across Linguacultures in the Globalised Economy

Summary

In Chapter 11, we venture into the realm of language and globalisation, as well as translation, by examining the ways in which translated IKEA catalogues handle (and fail to handle) potential cross-cultural irritations triggered by the translation of the English pronoun you. By so doing, we provide a case study for the cross-cultural pragmatic analysis of pragmatically salient expressions, which often have very different pragmatic meaning and power across linguacultures. In terms of methodology, we first conduct a contrastive pragmatic analysis of translational choices of pronominal form in a variety of catalogues, spanning Belgian French to Mainland Chinese and to Hungarian. Following this, we conduct an ancillary investigation of the linguacultural perceptions of the (in)appropriacy of the translational choices that we are studying, by deploying an ancillary investigation in the form of interviews.