Week 3: Speech Acts

Went through the various speech acts and how different culture groups respond to the different speech acts eg. compliments and such.
One thing that still bothers me is the lost of meaning through translation of the different languages. To want to observe intercultural speech acts across language, i guess it is still important that the observer must know the language?? If not, how can you describe and actualy understand what they say?

About the DCT on the compliments, i think that my answers would have differed greatly if the compliment was done in Japanese. I remembered Pam complimenting me with "I f**king love your watch" and I would just go "Of course. Why do you think i bought it?"
But if it were in Japanese "腕時計が素敵"　my reply would be "そんなことないっスよ". A clear rejection of the compliment. Then again, the person i am speaking to will also greatly affect my answer.
Just a "thank you" from me would usually mean that i'm just patronizing you and i don't actually give a sh*t about what you think. (￣へ ￣ )