Linguistic and pragmatic failure of arab learners in direct polite requests and invitations: A cross-cultural study

Abstract

In a cross-cultural context, the speakers' cultural disposition, linguistic codes, and social identity may influence their pragmatic behaviour; thus, lead to communication breakdowns. This paper studies the cross-cultural pragmatic failure in polite requests among Arab participants from different cultural backgrounds, and reattempts to test[ validate] the universality of Speech Act Theory, and Theory of Politeness. To that end, 96 situations have been collected from 16 Arab participants divided into two groups to examine the polite strategies they use in request and invitation situations. The results of the qualitative data analysis have shown that almost all participants favour conventionally direct strategies in requests and invitations to express politeness and hospitality. As for the Arab students who are UK citizens, the results indicated that they have a tendency to use more indirect strategies in different situations. However, this indirectness was perceived as lack of hospitality in invitations, and lack of pragmatic clarity in requests by the first group. The results of the data analysis show that there is no one formula of how politeness can be perceived by different cultures, and that the differences stem out from different socio-cultural norms. The findings also provide worthwhile insights into theoretical issues concerning Arabic communicative acts, as well as the relation between the universal pragmatic features, and culture-specific theoretical differences.