A comparison of requests by Kuwaiti Arabic native speakers, English native speakers, and Kuwaiti Arabic speakers of English

This doctoral dissertation investigates a particular aspect of pragmatic competence, the production of the speech act of requesting, by Kuwaiti Arabic (KA) speakers of English as Foreign-Language (EFL) at two proficiency levels: intermediate and advanced. The non-native speakers' (NNS) data is compared to a control data of native-speakers (NS) of their first language (L1) and another control of NSs of the target-language (TL). The elicited requests are analyzed on two dimensions: the core request and mitigation devices. The core request is performed using one of six strategies which range from direct to conventionally indirect to non-conventionally indirect, depending on the transparency in stating the content of the request. Mitigation devices, which as the name suggests serve to soften the impositive force of the request, entail two types: external and internal. External modification is represented by utterances added outside (before or after) the request proper. Internal modification, on the other hand, is added within the request proper, and can be manifested via lexical/phrasal downgraders and/or syntactic downgraders. The analysis showed some similarities between the NNS requests and the KA requests, represented by a higher frequency of using direct strategies and a lower frequency of employing internal modification relative to the English NSs. Comparing the NNS data to the English control data revealed similarities in the distribution of the sub-strategies of the request strategy 'Preparatory' and the use of some external modifier types. The similarities between the L1-NNS pair seem to emphasize the role of existing L1 pragmatic knowledge in the development of TL pragmatic competence essentially through transfer as argued by Bialystok (1993). The similarities between the NNS-TL pair lend support to the import of noticing the relevant pragmatic feature(s) for achieving successful acquisition of pragmatic competence as suggested by Schmidt (1993). There were also some differences between the two proficiency levels in the NNS data. The most significant observation relates to the use of syntactic downgraders. The advanced NNSs modified their requests using this type of internal modification more frequently than did the intermediate NNSs. Such differences suggest that this aspect of request formation (syntactic modification), being structurally more complex, is acquired at a later stage and requires a higher level of proficiency in the TL. In fact, results of the present study overall conform to the findings of existing studies on requests. This contributes to the verification of the proposed features of NNS or learners' language (identified as intertanguage IL) from a new L1 perspective, KA. In other words, the consistency between findings of the present study and other request studies investigating other Lts strengthens the argument for the existence of some pragmatic universals shared across different languages. Results of the present also accord with Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987) politeness theory. According to Brown and Levinson, the choice of request strategy and degree of mitigation used is determined by the assessments of three social variables: (P), status power of the speaker relative to the hearer, (D), social distance or familiarity between the speaker and the hearer, and (R), ranking of the imposition of the request. In situations of superior hearer, unfamiliarity between the speaker and the hearer, and/or high imposition requests, the use of direct requests is expected to subside. Brown and Levinson argue that the use of extreme indirectness in such situations can communicate a higher level of politeness. Not explicating the content of the request directly allows room for the hearer to decline inconvenient requests. Findings of the present study revealed that participants tended to vary their choice of request strategy and use of mitigation devices depending on the combined effect of the three variables (P), (D) and (R). Another important finding is that the conventionally indirect strategy 'Preparatory' (interrogatives enquiring about conditions such as H's ability, permission, and etc., to do the requested act) was employed significantly more than the other request strategies. This particular strategy was preferred by the requesters not only in the more demanding situations, for example when requesting from a superior, but in a variety of other situations. The present study thus serves to support the universality of the politeness value of the strategy 'Preparatory' as argued in other request studies investigating speakers of other L1's.