Pragmatics across cultures exploring the use of speech act of request and politeness strategies employed by native vs non-native speakers
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Date
2017
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university of Oum- El- Bouaghi
Abstract
Pragmatic transfer is a widespread phenomenon that is causing pragmatic failures and communicative breakdowns. Not many studies have dealt with this issue internationally and locally, so in this pragmatic study the requestive speech acts' realization patterns of both native and non-native speakers will be examined and it takes place at Larbi Ben M'hidi University-Oum El Bouaghi . It tackles how different the use of request strategies between native and non-native speakers in terms of socio-linguistic factors such as size of imposition, social distance and power. It also explains the relationshipbetween directness and indirectness with politeness and how it could increase or decrease the degree of imposition by the speaker on the hearer.
The subjects of this study were divided into 2 groups of non-native speakers (Algerian EFL leaners), each group consists of 20 students and a group of native speakers that consists of 20 students from English speaking countries.
The data collecting tool was a DCT (Discourse completion task) that was given out to EFL leaners at the English department of Larbi Ben M'hidi University. The DCT was completed voluntarily after a brief description of the latter and the study in general. The analysis of the data revealed significant differences between the uses of request strategies by the group of EFL leaners and the other group that consisted of English native speakers.
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Keywords
Requesting strategies, Politeness strategies, Pragmatic failure, Social context