“Could you help me with these bags, brother? My shoulders are falling.” Transfer in IL Requests Performed by Algerian EFL Learners

Abstract

The present study attempts to investigate the pragmatic transfer in interlanguage requests performed by Algerian EFL learners. For data gathering, a three-item Discourse Completion Task has been administered to two controlling groups of native speakers: Arabic and English and two learner ones at two proficiency levels: low-proficient and high-proficient. The responses have been coded and analysed. The findings show that the performance in Arabic and English exhibits two types of differing politeness systems: positive-face-based and negative-face-based respectively. In learners’ production, pragmatic transfer has been operative in the employment of request strategies i.e. the weighing of the situational variables (sociopragmatic) and the wording of these strategies (pragmalinguistic). In addition to transfer, interlanguage production has been affected by lack of pragmatic knowledge, interlanguage-specific features, and language constraints. Proficiency has not given marked advantage to high-proficient learners over the low-proficient. In this paper, we have considered practical implications for intercultural communication and speech acts’ pedagogy in EFL classroom.