A semantic/pragmatic exploration of requests : politeness orientation in British English and Syrian Arabic
This study is concerned with probing the realization patterns of requests in Syrian Arabic and British English to examine whether they follow a similar trend across a variety of social situations. Hence, the analysis focuses on the different patterns of requestive strategies and modification types speakers of the two languages use. It additionally tests the extent to which the social variables of power, familiarity and imposition can affect the choice of strategies and modification in the context of these two languages. Data were collected by means of a mixed-methods approach of discourse completion test/task and interviews. A total of 2400 requests were elicited from 100 Syrian students and 100 British students. To gain qualitative insights, 20 follow-up interviews were conducted with a subset of these students. The methodological 40 framework was based on a combination of Blum-Kulka et al.'s (1989) model for said requests and Marti (2006) for unsaid requests. Results have shown that both Syrian and British speakers favour conventionally indirect strategies, thus confirming the findings of the Cross-Cultural Speech Acts Realization Project (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) that the conventionally indirect strategy
Khamam, Ruba Riad
A semantic/pragmatic exploration of requests : politeness orientation in British English and Syrian Arabic. This study is concerned with probing the realization patterns of requests in Syrian Arabic and British English to examine whether they follow a similar trend across a variety of social situations. Hence, the analysis focuses on the different patterns of requestive strategies and modification types speakers of the two languages use. It additionally tests the extent to which the social variables of power, familiarity and imposition can affect the choice of strategies and modification in the context of these two languages. Data were collected by means of a mixed-methods approach of discourse completion test/task and interviews. A total of 2400 requests were elicited from 100 Syrian students and 100 British students. To gain qualitative insights, 20 follow-up interviews were conducted with a subset of these students. The methodological 40 framework was based on a combination of Blum-Kulka et al.'s (1989) model for said requests and Marti (2006) for unsaid requests. Results have shown that both Syrian and British speakers favour conventionally indirect strategies, thus confirming the findings of the Cross-Cultural Speech Acts Realization Project (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) that the conventionally indirect strategy
semantic_pragmatic exploration request politeness orientation british english syrian arabic study_concern probe realization pattern request syrian arabic british english examine_whether follow_similar trend across variety social situation hence analysis focus different_pattern strategy modification type speaker language_use additionally test extent social_variable power familiarity imposition affect choice_strategy modification context two_language data_collect mean mixed_methods discourse_completion test_task interview total request elicit syrian student british student gain qualitative insight follow interview_conduct subset student methodological_framework base combination model say request request show syrian british speaker favour conventionally indirect strategy thus confirm finding cross cultural speech acts realization project conventionally indirect strategy