Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project Research Articles

Request Strategies in Saudi ESL Learners’ Email Communication: A Pragmatic Analysis

Growing research on intercultural communication has highlighted the importance of both linguistic and pragmatic competence among learners of English as a second language (ESL). Emails serve as a preferred means of communication between university students and professors. This study investigates Saudi ESL learners’ pragmatic competence in creating email requests to their professors, addressing questions about greetings, directness, request strategies, and information sequencing. The goal is to show the need for explicit pragmatics instruction. The naturalistic data comprised 50 emails written by Arabic-speaking ESL graduate students in academic contexts, covering requests regarding deadline extensions, retaking exams, lecture absences for various reasons, and letters of recommendation. The analysis was guided by the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). The findings suggested that explicit pedagogical guidance in speech act performance could benefit non-native English speakers. This study contributes to the growing body of research on institutional email practices, politeness conventions, and interlanguage pragmatics.

Favor-Asking as Used by Jordanian University Students: A Socio-Pragmatic Study

This paper contributes to the existing literature on an important aspect of politeness by investigating the linguistic performance of the speech act of favor-asking as used by Jordanian university students. Specifically, it aims to explore the effect of gender and social distance on favor-asking performance. Data were collected from 100 Jordanian university students (50 males and 50 females) studying at two Jordanian universities: Jordan University of Science & Technology and Yarmouk University. The data were analyzed based on the speech act theory, using the content analysis model (i.e., the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) proposed by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). Results demonstrated that the core strategy used in favor-asking among the students is significantly affected by gender and social distance. Conventionally indirect strategies (CISs) were found to be the most used category among all strategies; however, the female participants tended to use them much more often than the male participants. Keywords: Favour-asking, Applied linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Jordanian society.

Apologizing in Kodhi

ABSTRACT This preliminary study investigates apology strategies in Kodhi, an Austronesian language spoken in Sumba, Eastern Indonesia. To understand how Kodhi speakers formulate conceptions of apology, seven hours of video recordings of natural Kodhi speech were analyzed. The apology taxonomy proposed in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) is used as a starting point for classifying the types of apologies in Kodhi. In the absence of performative apology verbs (e.g. ‘(be) sorry’, ‘pardon’ among others), Kodhi speakers employ a range of alternative semantic formulae including the use of non-verbal udhoko to confirm the authenticity of a corresponding verbal apology act and ‘(don’t) be angry’ strategies. This is in addition to some apology strategies consistent with the cross-linguistic literature as outlined in the CCSARP model. The results of the study introduce the unique ways of apologizing in Kodhi society, and in so doing, lend valuable insight into Kodhi ‘linguaculture’.

Request Strategies in Kuwaiti Arabic and British English: A Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Study

The study at hands is a cross-cultural exploration of request strategies in Kuwaiti Arabic and British English dialects. A mixed method approach of a qualitative and quantitative analysis was used (i.e., a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and semi-structured interviews). Data was collected from a total of five hundred participants, two hundred and fifty from each group. Sixty participants were chosen for the semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the collected data was based upon Brown and Levinson's (1987) social variables (e.g., power, distance, and ranking). Also, the data was analyzed following Blum-Kulka and Olshtain's (1984) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). The results of the study revealed that Kuwaiti Arabic and British English participants used the conventional indirect level in the form of query preparatory in most situations. Furthermore, power as a social variable affected Kuwaiti Arabic and British English participants’ flow of a request in conversations. Participants used direct request strategies when the power of the speaker was high. As for the semi-structured interviews, the results indicated that there is a sociocultural norm between the Kuwaiti society and the British society, which affected their use of requests.

Persuasive Strategies of Saudi EFL Learners

The aim of this study is to investigate the speech act of persuasion used by Saudis learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Moreover, I seek to explore the differences between genders in the use of these strategies. The participants are 50 males and 50 females at level 7 of their bachelor’s degree in English. Data are collected using the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) method, which contains six scenarios similar to real-life situations. Data are analysed quantitatively using the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project nine-point rating scale, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and Chi-square. The results of the DCT reveal that Saudi EFL learners use more direct strategies in English, namely hedge performatives and performatives. In addition, males are shown to be more inclined to use direct persuasive strategies compared to females. This research will benefit language learners, teachers, and researchers, as it highlights linguistic aspects of the speech act of persuasion that should be considered when learning and teaching a foreign language. The implications of this study inspire future research into different aspects of speech acts..

Request Strategies and Gender Differences among Bangladeshi Students within Online Classrooms

This research tried to identify the type of requests made by the students within a few Bangladeshi online classrooms. The study also aimed at focusing on possible gender differences between the students based on the requests they made. It adopted the research method used by Onem (2016), who investigated how men and women make requests and observed how they differ in the case of being polite and showing directness. Since there have been no previous studies conducted like this before, this paper analysed and categorized the types of requests by addressing the research gap. The theoretical framework relied on the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), outlined by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). Three video records of online classes of “London School of English, Keraniganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh” were undertaken as the main data which was observed naturally followed by analysis and interpretation. The data analysis framework was also undertaken from the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) theory by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). To analyse the data gathered from the videos, a particular coding scheme of (CCSARP) was used. The result obtained showed that the female students made around 62.5% requests while the male students did only around 37.5%. The requests made by the female students were not only significantly higher but they were more polite than the males. Therefore, this small-scale study is expected to help teachers and both male and female students improve their communication skills. The types of requests identified in this study might help students of both genders become aware of their request-making techniques and help the researchers understand the process of request-making in the students' minds.

Request strategies in email communication: The case of Indonesian graduate students in Japan

While research in speech act has received a lot of academic attention, how requesting strategies are performed in email communication among non-native speakers in a broader cultural context remains scarcely sufficient. This study investigates requesting strategies employed by non-native English-speaking students (i.e. Indonesians) to non-native English university professors (i.e. Japanese) through the medium of email. It further sought whether the strategies performed are different between low and high imposition requests. This study applied both qualitative and quantitative approaches using a corpus of 56 authentic emails. The data were analyzed using a modified version of the request strategies framework of Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) contrived by Economidou-Kogetsidis (2011). The results show a pattern of different requesting strategies emerged in accordance with the imposition of the requests the students make. While Conventionally Indirect Strategy in the form of query preparatory is found to be favored when writing low imposition email requests, this strategy is not appeared to be preferred when students write high imposition requests. Instead, Indonesian students tend to employ a great deal of Hint Strategies and let the professors interpret their intention in the emails.

Polite Requests of Indonesian Learners of FLE and French Native Speakers: An Interlanguage Study

This study anchored in the field of Interlanguage Pragmatic (ILP). The approach taken is speech act based. The investigation focuses on realization of polite requests produced by Indonesian learners of Français langue étrangère (FLE) (henceforth abbreviated as ILF) and native speakers of French (henceforth abbreviated as NSF). The model used for the investigation is the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) model formulated by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), modified by Warga (2005) and Bae (2012). The model applied to the analysis of the data is based on three politeness systems of social relationship between speaker and addressee proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2001). Data was be collected by using Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT). Six out of twelve request situations formulated by Reiter (2000) categorized into each politeness system were selected to be analyzed. The WDCT were tested to 20 ILF; 1 learner of Universitas Negeri Medan and 19 learners of Universitas Negeri Jakarta. The 20 participants are those who are certified of Diplôme d'études en langue française (DELF) of B2 level (advanced level). As the baseline data of the study, the e-mailed data of 20 NSF were also collected. The study found that there is a preference of Indonesian learners of FLE and native speaker of French to use Conventional Indirect strategy in their requests. This strategy, even realized in slightly different number of use, was highly used and considered to be the most polite request by the two groups.

External supportive moves in Yemeni Arabic as used by female speakers in the same gender and cross gender

This study investigates the types and frequency of supportive moves in Yemeni Arabic as used by female speakers in the same gender and cross-gender. The respondents of the study were 336 undergraduate students from Sana’a University, aged 20-23. All of the participants are relatively homogeneous in terms of their cultural background. The data were collected by using Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The analysis of the data is based on Blum-Kulka et al’s (1989) CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project) coding scheme. The results showed that Yemeni females showed greater use of external supportive moves when interacting with females more than to males. Regarding the use of external supportive moves according to the direct head act of requests and indirect head of requests, in general, female respondents in F-F, F-M interactions have a great tendency to employ external supportive moves with the direct and indirect head act of requests. It seems that the use of external supportive moves in Yemeni Arabic with the indirect head act of requests is obligatory to mitigate and soften requests and make it polite request. In other words, it was observed that female respondents convey polite requests by using external supportive moves regardless of directness or indirectness.

Überzeugungs- und Überredungsmittel in mündlichen Aufforderungsakten im deutsch-italienischen Sprachvergleich

The purpose of this study is to draw a comparison between the realization of requestive speech acts in Italian and in German, and to investigate the different strategies of persuasion in the two speech communities, with a particular attention to the relationship between efficiency and politeness.
 The empirical part of the study consists in the comparison of 320 requests formulated by Italian and German speakers. Linguistic data were elicited by means of a discourse completion test containing four socio-pragmatic situations. Realizations of requests were analysed according to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project’s (CCSARP) Coding Manual, reported in Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), and discussed at two levels: the cross cultural variation and the situational variation.
 Results show that both groups of participants are perfectly aware of the differences between the situations proposed and tailor their requests according to the context. It is found that both groups of subjects rely heavily on conventionally indirect strategies. On the whole, German speakers appear to use more indirect request strategies than their Italian counterparts, and at the same time choose with a higher frequency phrasal, lexical and syntactical modificators. Italian speakers tend to select slightly lower levels of indirectness but compensate with a consistently larger use of external modificators. Moreover, both Italian and German speakers seem to recur more often to strategies of Überzeugung, probably because the most used modificator for both groups of respondents is the Grounder.
 Our results differ in interesting ways from general expectations in the situation in which the face threat is arguably the highest, calling for further investigation of the difference in the perception of the social parameters determining the rated face threat between the two speech communities. Deeper insights into the link between indirectness and politeness in the two cultures at issue are also needed in order to understand the reasons behind the pragmatic choices observed.

External Request Modifications in Yemeni Arabic as Used by Male-Male and Male-Female Interactions

The current study explores the types and frequency of external request modifications in Yemeni Arabic as produced by male speakers the study participants were 336 undergraduate students (168 male participants and 168 female participants) from Sana’a University, aged 20-23. All of the participants are relatively homogeneous in terms of their cultural background. The data were collected by using Discourse Completion Test (DCT).The analysis of the data is based on Blum-Kulka et al’s (1989) CCSARP (Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project) coding scheme. The results of the study showed that the male speakers generally showed greater use of external request modification to mitigate their requests. Seven external request modifications were identified in the data of the present study in M-M, M-F interactions. However, in M-M interactions, the number of external request modifications, which were identified in the data, was 2006. On the other hand, in M-F interactions the number of external request modification was 2016. The results revealed that Yemeni males showed greater use of the external request modification when interacting with females more than to males.

Alerters in Malay and English Speech Act of Request: A Contrastive Pragmatics Analysis

This study focuses on the speech act of requests, specifically on the alerters. An ‘alerter’ refers to the discourse feature used in initiating a conversation or the getting attention of the hearer. Request as a speech act is much investigated for its Head Acts and Supportive Moves, however, alerter as one of its initial discourse features has not been much looked into. In the context of contrastive pragmatics study on the Malay language in Malaysia, the study of alerters in request has yet to be explored. Hence, the aim of this study is as follows: 1 - to classify the Malay categories of alerters by Malaysian Malay speakers, and 2 – to compare them with alerters in the English language. The participants consist of 400 native speakers’ of Malays from a central city and a rural area, aged between 12 to 56 years old, and varied in social backgrounds. The data was collected via Discourse Completion Task within a span of 3 months, and also coded and analysed using the framework of Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) by Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1984). The findings revealed 10 categories of alerters by Malay speakers. The findings also indicated similarities and differences in the categories of Malay alerters and English alerters which could be the result of intercultural fusion in the sociopragmatis of doing requests within English, and the languages in Malaysia with the Malay language. Keywords: Alerters; English Requests; Malay Requests; Sociopragmatics competence; contrastive pragmatics

Sequence Organization of Requests among Australian English and Saudi Arabic Speakers: A Contrastive Study

Abstract Previous research on cross-cultural pragmatics has primarily focused on how native speakers of different languages perform speech acts in relation to politeness and directness. However, Gabriele Kasper (2006), among others, has called for adopting a more discursive approach rather than analyzing data according to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (ccsarp) coding scheme. Therefore, this paper used Conversation Analysis for Interlanguage Pragmatics to investigate sequence organization of requests in Australian English and Saudi Arabic using role-play scenarios. It specifically examined pre-expansions, pre-pres, accounts in request turn, insert-expansions, and post-expansions, and the extent to which the social variable power affects them. The results showed that both languages shared some regularities in aspects of sequence organization but differed in others. Power influenced the production of some regularities in both languages.

Croatian EFL Learners’ Interlanguage Requests: A Focus on Request Modification

This paper explores the development of pragmatic competence in the interlanguage of Croatian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at three proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced). It investigates the way Croatian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) use internal and external supportive moves to modify their requests. Data were collected using an oral Discourse Completion Test consisting of ten school-related situations. The research participants were 60 EFL learners aged between 11 and 18. The coding categories developed in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP, Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) and adapted by Schauer (2009) were used to analyse the data. Overall results indicated that the request production of EFL learners showed little variation regarding the type of modification and frequency of their use. Results also indicated weak evidence of pragmalinguistic development across levels, particularly in the use of grounders. The infrequent use of request modification suggests that pragmatic instruction should be included in FL classrooms to facilitate the development of L2 pragmatic ability.

Pragmatic awareness of ELT teacher trainees: A study of refusals of requests

This study specifically aims to determine Turkish English Language Teaching (henceforth ELT) teacher trainees’ choices in using speech acts set of refusals in terms of directness from the aspect of pragma-linguistics in a Turkish, an English as a Foreign Language (henceforth EFL), context. The randomly chosen participants were 133 ELT teacher trainees (100 female, 33 Male), who are fourth-year students from ELT Departments of Education Faculties at four different universities (Gazi University (GU), Başkent University (BU), Middle East Technical University (METU), Hacettepe University (HU). The study used a questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task (henceforth DCT) based on the Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1984) for data collection. The study elicited judgments of various refusal formulations of the trainees in eighteen different situations in terms of directness and indirectness. The context of each situation based on three variables with different levels. These are gender (same-opposite), social status (low-equal-high), and social distance (intimate-acquaintance-stranger). Each of the eighteen situations has a different triplet of these variables. The findings are interpreted statistically and verbally. The refusal strategies gathered by this study were analyzed based on a sequence of semantic formulae provided by Beebe and Takahashi (1990). The findings of this study indicate that aspects of refusals may cause difficulties for ELT teacher trainees. The trainees of all the universities employed more statements of excuse/reason/explanation than of other strategies. This is further proof of the value of face. In the whole data what is obviously seen is that teacher trainees mostly prefer indirect strategies. The findings proved that the trainees were sensitive to the status of the requester, and they are less sensitive towards acquaintances. All trainees used most statements of indirect Excuse/reason/explanation when they refused people of each gender. Nevertheless, opposite-gender refusals require more elaboration and more care, which proves the trainees’ more attention to the requesters of opposite gender. This study suggests the need to raise their pragmatic awareness of Turkish ELT teacher trainees regarding the use of refusal strategies in particular contexts.

Interlanguage Request Production of Nigerian Learners of English as a Second Language

Within the Nigerian context, the communicative approach to English language teaching and learning is developing. However, the overemphasis of grammatical competence in the English language curriculum and pedagogy and the dearth of research into the interlanguage pragmatics of Nigerian ESL learners lead to inadequate knowledge of the pragmatic features of the English of Nigerian learners. This provides little basis for the teaching and learning of pragmatic competence, which according to Finegan (2008), is an important factor in the achievement of fluency in an L2. Using a discourse completion task and the CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project) coding scheme (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984), this study investigated the request strategies of Nigerian undergraduate ESL learners whose native language is Igbo. The results revealed a preference for directness in their request production. Recommendations were made as regards the ESL curriculum and classroom practices.Keywords: pragmatic competence; speech act; requesting;

Interlanguage Request Production of Nigerian Learners of English as a Second Language

Within the Nigerian context, the communicative approach to English language teaching and learning is developing. However, the overemphasis of grammatical competence in the English language curriculum and pedagogy and the dearth of research into the interlanguage pragmatics of Nigerian ESL learners lead to inadequate knowledge of the pragmatic features of the English of Nigerian learners. This provides little basis for the teaching and learning of pragmatic competence, which according to Finegan (2008), is an important factor in the achievement of fluency in an L2. Using a discourse completion task and the CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project) coding scheme (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984), this study investigated the request strategies of Nigerian undergraduate ESL learners whose native language is Igbo. The results revealed a preference for directness in their request production. Recommendations were made as regards the ESL curriculum and classroom practices. Keywords: pragmatic competence; speech act; requesting;

Apology Speech Act Realization in the Sarawani Balochi Dialect: A Case Study of Female University Students

AbstractThis study aims at extracting and categorizing apology strategies in the Sarawani Balochi dialect. It also investigates the effect of the status and gender of addressees on the type and number of apology strategies employed by Sarawani Baloch female university students (SBFUS) based on a revised version of the Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) proposed by Blum‐Kulka, House and Kasper (1989). The results show that while they used most of the apology strategies mentioned in CCSARP, which speaks to the universality of employing apology strategies, the participants also used new strategies reflecting the influence of their religious and cultural values. The results also show that although the status of the addressees significantly influenced the type and number of apology strategies used by the SBFUS in each type of apology situation, gender did not seem to have any such effect. Regarding the type and number of apology strategies, the most frequently used apology strategies were “illocutionary force indicating devices” and the “combination of 2” strategies.

Inappropriateness in Iraqi EFL Learners’ E-mail Requests to Professor

<div><p><em>This study investigates the use of the speech act of request by </em><em>Iraqi EFL (English as a foreign language) learners </em><em>in student-professor e-mail communication. It aims to examine request strategies and internal modifications in academic requests in e-mail. There has been little investigation of the issue of an academic request made by Arab EFL learners to a higher status person via an authentic data. Thus, this study intends to provide more investigation of the strategies and internal modifiers that are produced by Iraqi EFL learners when they interact with their professors via e-mail. However, this study adapts the CCSARP (cross-cultural speech act realization project) originally suggested by [12] and modified by [8] in terms of strategies and internal modifications. Findings uncover that Iraqi EFL learners have a pragmatic problem when they issue their requests to a higher authority by e-mail. They mainly produce direct requests to higher status individuals. Such types of request require conventional indirectness to be appropriate pragmatically. These learners have limited pragmatic knowledge of conventional indirectness when they produce their requests to their professors. Moreover, Iraqi EFL learners are influenced by their L1 (first language) as they resort to direct sub-strategies that are customary forms in their Iraqi Arabic. This research unveils that Iraqi EFL learners have pragmalinguistic knowledge in syntactic downgraders and a pragmalinguistic deficiency in lexical devices due to the structurally oriented approach used to teach these learners. </em></p></div>

A Comparative Study of the Use of Affective Markers in Supervision Comments: Case of Native versus Non-native Supervision Comments

Investigating supervision comments, as a form of interaction between the teacher and the learner, is an area of research that has received little attention so far in spite of being crucial in creating an atmosphere of friendship and confidence-building. Previous research in this area has emphasized the role of affect in supervision comments in distance learning, however, this issue has not been investigated with regard to native versus non-native supervisors’ comments in face-to-face supervision settings. To address this, an attempt was made, in this study, to examine the use of affective markers in the supervision comments provided by native/non-native supervisors on MA TESOL/TEFL Iranian students. To do so, the written comments of the supervisors on the students’ theses were analysed using a framework called Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CSARP) Coding Manual. The results indicated that the non-native supervisors tended to rely entirely on ‘bold on record’ strategies for providing written comments on their students’ theses and this was in contrast to the native supervisors’ tendency to use ‘redressive moves’ with affective markers rather than non-redressive or direct moves. The percentage of application of internal and external ‘redressive moves’ was another finding of the present study.