Core Request Strategies among Jordanian Students in an Academic Setting

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the pragmatics of politeness with reference to the core request strategies used by the Jordanian students in an academic setting. The respondents comprised 45 males and 5 females who are studying English language in the national university of Malaysia. The data was collected using a Discourse Completion Test, which the questionnaire consisted of 14 situations. These were combined with a rating scale to weigh the imposition for each situation. The data was analysed based on CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Project) and the theory of politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987). The results indicated that Jordanian students used a variety of strategies ranging from the most direct to indirect as the following, inquiry strategy, mind strategy, permission strategy, appreciation strategy and preparatory strategy. The preparatory strategy accounted for 335/700 or 47.86% of the total core request strategies used by Jordanian students. This strategy consider as a polite strategy and indirect. This guides us to say that the Jordanian preferred to be polite and indirect. The indirect strategy could also be attributed to their culture and religious values, whereas the use of direct strategies (the imperative) could be attributed to the closeness and the solidarity between the Jordanian students. This research could be extended to investigate the politeness phenomenon in Jordanian family and social contexts in relation to Islamic values. I Introduction Speakers of any language encounter situations in real life in which pragmatic competence comes into play. Making requests is one of these situations. This speech act is very situation-dependent. The speakers need to know how to perform the speech act taking into consideration such aspects as the hearer, the relationship with the hearer, the topic, the purpose of the speech, and the appropriate linguistic forms. Understanding different cultures is a very important factor in communicating successfully with other people from around the world. Misunderstanding a request sometimes leads to problems and causes negative reactions. For example, if an Arabic-speaking student requested a pen his fellow student for a pen in the class by saying, in English, ―I want your pen for a moment‖ it may appear that he is obligating his classmate to give him the pen, and it may be considered an impolite request. When this sentence is expressed in Arabic it does not have the above connotations, but because the requestor does not know that, ―Could I please borrow your pen for a moment‖, is a better way a misunderstanding could occur. In the case of Jordanian students, misunderstandings may occur when they transfer their Arabic request strategies to other languages such as English or Malay, so the meaning of their requests may then be misunderstood or unacceptable to others. This phenomenon arises because speakers from different cultures hold differing degrees of politeness. Their sensitivity to social variables, also differ which affect their request realization and performance in terms of the content of strategies (Shazly 1993 cited in Eryani, 2007; Al-Ammar, 2000). The findings of Umar (2004), support this view by demonstrating that Arab students of English, even at advanced levels, tend to fall back on their cultural background when formulating their request strategies. In light of the foregoing discussion, this present study aims to explore the aspects of pragmatics in requests made by Jordanian students in an academic setting. In particular, it aims to investigate politeness strategies in the requests that these students prefer during interactions in a non-native English-speaking country, in this case Malaysia. In this study, the students were provided with a situational questionnaire combined with a rating scale for weighing the imposition of each situation. In addition to exploring the preferred request strategies used by Jordanian students, this study also investigates the possible causes of misunderstanding which may occur between them and the interlocutors of different cultural backgrounds such as those from Malaysia and other foreign students studying in Malaysia. These include Jordanian students, lecturers and staff of the Malaysian universities. There are students from different nationalities could also communicate with Jordanian, such Indian, Iranian, Pakistanis, and Chinese.