Abstract
The study focuses on the strategies English as a foreign language (EFL) learners choose to take on in requests without evaluating them against the norm of a native speaker, as the concept of native speaker is ideologically problematic in the time of super-diversity. The study uses cultural scripts proposed in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics to interpret the strategies of EFL learners in making requests. Seventy-six requests were elicited from twenty-six undergraduate Omani EFL learners through Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs). The results obtained from the DCTs were supported by the results of the focus discussion group and our personal observations as faculty members and students’ advisors. The study shows that contrary to the claims made in most of the literature on requests in interlanguage pragmatics, EFL learners use indirect strategies. In addition, they use address terms and provide reasons for their requests. These strategies are shaped by cultural scripts that prioritize the values of politeness, strong family, and tribal orientation in the Omani society. Findings suggest that awareness of these communication strategies promotes tolerance and sensitivity towards the communication styles of others.
Highlights
Why Do We Need One More Study on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Requests?This article reports on the results of a study that investigates the communication strategies used in English speech acts, requests, by EFL learners of one of the universities located in the Sultanate of Oman.The research has been initially inspired by the anecdotal evidence collected in our everyday encounters as faculty members with the undergraduate students
We focus on the requests that EFL learners choose to take on as part of their linguistic repertoire instead of assessing their pragmatic competence against that of native speakers of English
The participants selected for the study reflect the multilingual nature of their community as they speak a number of languages, such as Omani Arabic, as a local variety of Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), as the official language of the country; Mehri and Jibbali, as the two indigenous languages spoken in the area where they reside; and English as their additional language
Summary
This article reports on the results of a study that investigates the communication strategies used in English speech acts, requests, by EFL learners of one of the universities located in the Sultanate of Oman. The research has been initially inspired by the anecdotal evidence collected in our everyday encounters as faculty members with the undergraduate students Based on this anecdotal evidence, the initial conclusion was that while making different types of requests (i.e., requesting a permission to miss the class, asking for help, requesting an extension on submitting an assignment, requesting a better mark, asking for a mark breakdown, etc.), EFL learners typically made pragmatic errors. Following Blommaert and Rampton (2011), we start with the assumption that the terms “norm” and “native speaker” are ideologically problematic at a time of linguistic superdiversity (p. 5).1 Blommaert and Rampton (2011) further state that by abandoning these notions, research can focus on how people take on different linguistic forms when they
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