Studies in Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis

Cultural Dimensions and Pragmatic Failure: The Case of Moroccan EFL University Students

Omar Ezzaoua — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This study examines the impact of cultural values on the production of three speech acts (complaints, apologies, and refusals) by Moroccan Learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The study involves three groups of participants: Moroccan EFL learners (MLE), American speakers (AE), and Moroccan Arabic speakers (MA). The objective of this cross-cultural pragmatic study is to explore and identify the extent to which pragmatic failure can be attributed to the cultural value and dimensions of the learners rather than their linguistic incompetence. Participants were given Discourse Completion Task questionnaires to elicit their reactions to various situations. The results, based on Hofstede's cultural dimension framework (2010) and Hall's cultural specifications (1976), showed that culture has a significant effect on the performance of the speech acts under investigation. Findings suggested that cultural specificities do affect the pragmatic choices made by the interlocutors across the three groups of informants.

A Critical Discourse Study of Shakespeare’s Theological Conceptions in Acts IV and V of Richard II: The ‘Divine Mandate’ of Richard Kingship Falls Apart

Tlili Saad — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article studies the rebellious Shakespeare’s politico-religious discourse in the Renaissance England. An appropriated interdisciplinary blend of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) is employed to lay bare the discursive strategies appropriated by William Shakespeare to safely express his pragmatic philosophy of politics and religiosity in Acts 4 and 5 of Richard II. This study attempts to bring together linguistic, sociocognitive, and critical metaphorical aspects in one single CDA framework. Serving methods and tools of analysis from various well-known CDA approaches such as Fairclough (1989 and 1995), Van Dijk (1993 and 2001), and the Critical Metaphor Analysis (henceforth CMA) model (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) are selected to fulfil the aims of analysis. The horrendous fate of King Richard II is an exemplar that evidently embodies Shakespeare’s preach of political pragmatism against a deep-rooted holistic system of politico-religious justified by alleged divine regencies.

Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure in Moroccan EFL learners’ Requests

Adiba Bousfiha, Abdelfattah Laabidi — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Most of our misunderstandings of other people are not due to any inability to hear them or to parse their sentences or to understand their words…. A far more important source of difficulty in communication is that we so often fail to understand a speaker’s intention”

(Miller in Thomas 1983:92)

The concern in this paper is with such situations where we fail to understand “what is meant by what is said” thus with situations of pragmatic failure especially in an area of cross-cultural communication. Undoubtedly, these are situations where the actual use of language for the maintenance and preservation of social harmony among interactants depict clearly cross-language variations and interference. The discussion will revolve around such basic issues as: a) how interactional events in intercultural communication establish relationships between participants marking dimensions of social distance, status and politeness, b) the effects which different linguistic forms in different languages can have on the performance of the foreign language learner and c) basically the implications of all this for the teaching of the pragmatic competence to the non-native speakers of English, with special reference to the teaching of English at the university level in the Moroccan context.

Keywords: Intercultural communication; politeness; pragmatic failure; Requests.

A Study on the Use of Suggestion Strategies among Yemeni Learners of English

Yahya Al-Marrani — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The current study attempts to investigate the use of suggestion strategies among Yemeni learners of English at private universities. The participants of the study were 41 undergraduate students from English Department in the three private universities. The data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). They were analyzed according to the models proposed by Martinez Flor. (2005), whose analytical framework classified suggestion strategies into three types: direct, conventionalized forms, and indirect. The results of the current study revealed that Yemeni learners of English at private universities almost tend to use the same types of suggestion strategies in the six situations with slight differences in their percentages. The results showed that there are three types of suggesting strategies used by the students namely; direct suggestion56.5%, conventionalized form 24.4%, and indirect suggestion 19.1%. Moreover, the results indicated that there are no significant statistical differences in the use of suggestion strategies according to the participants of the three universities. However, the results of the study showed that there is a slight difference in favor of Al-Nasser University in situation one and for the National University in situation four.

Emirati University Students’ Use of the Request Speech Act in Arabic in Email Communication with Faculty

Tanju Deveci, Elrashid Yousif Abbas — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Students’ academic performance is greatly affected by their communication skills, a significant one of which is email writing. Due to technological advances and the distance education imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a great deal of communication between students and professors is in the form of email communication. Students’ inattention to the rules of this particular genre may result in face-threatening situations. Prompted by the lack of research on university students’ utilization of the request speech act in Arabic emails, this study investigated 96 Emirati first-year students’ request behaviors in Arabic in communication with university professors. Data were collected using a discourse-completion task and an evaluation form filled in by two judges. Results showed that the students mostly produced a direct request speech act. However, a significant number of them failed to follow the expected discourse structure often omitting the subject line, not thanking or writing their names at the end. The judges thought the emails were generally respectful. However, they felt they were not appropriate, which was mainly caused by the frequent mistakes with spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. There were also instances of informal language use and grammatical errors. Based on these results, recommendations are provided focusing on awareness-raising and practice activities.