Requests as Impositions: negative face among Saudi learners of English

Ikram Rouissi

University of Carthage, Tunisia

Abstract

The notion of communicative competence goes beyond the acquisition of linguistic competence to include pragmatic competence. Pragmatic competence is concerned with the use of language according to context and culture. A lack in the development of pragmatic competence may lead to communication breakdowns or cultural misunderstandings (Kasper and Blum-Kulka, 1993). Acquiring an appropriate level of pragmatic competence can be quite challenging because of the lack of clear prescriptive rules and the transfer of L1 socio-cultural norms (Chick, 1996; Cohen, 2007; Nakajima, 1997). Being primarily concerned with how non-native speakers acquire second language pragmatic knowledge (Kapser, 199), Interlanguage pragmatics has received a staple focus in second language acquisition research. Against this background, the present paper, drawing upon Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model of speech acts, investigates the realization of requests among Saudi EFL learners and the effect of degree of imposition enshrined therein in different eleven situations. Brown and Levinson maintain that Requests constitute an imposition on the hearer’s negative face because they represent an impingement on his freedom of action. They stress the role of three variables: distance, power, and ranking of imposition in speech act realization. The strategies posited in this framework for realizing formal requests (i.e., negative politeness strategies) represent the analytical categories adopted in this study. The study reveals that Saudi learners show a lot of care in not causing direct hits at their interlocutor’s negative face. It also reveals a number of pragma-linguistic failures and suggests that they might be better explained in terms of the learners’/speakers’ concern about their own negative face. The study is intended to draw teachers’ attention to the necessity of developing programs or courses which raise the learners’ awareness about the performance of requests in a cross-culturally sound way.

Keywords: Interlanguage pragmatics, Politeness, Negative Face, Requests, Variables, Distance, Power, Imposition,   Speech Acts.