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

Abstract

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.