THE PRAGMATICS OF REQUESTS BY
JORDANIAN STUDENTS IN AN
ACADEMIC SETTING
PhD Proposal
Done By: Mouad Mohammad Al-Natour
1
1.0 INTRODUCTION
This chapter consists of five parts. The first part explains the background of making
requests in Jordanian and Arabic societies, and introduces which has been done in this
area. The second part sets out the culture of speech acts in Jordan, Malay and English
to highlight the related notions which frame this study. The third part contains the
statement of the problem which explains the reasons for this study. The fourth part
explains the aims objectives, and goals of this study, followed by the research
questions which the study seeks to answer. The fifth part explains significance of the
study and its implications for Jordanian students studying in Malaysia. This followed
by a list of concepts and terminologies used in this study and their definitions. The
final part concludes the chapter.
1.1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
It is claimed that most of our misunderstandings about others are due to our inability
to understand their intentions Thomas (1983). As Austin (1962) explains, we do things
with words, For example, when we say sorry, we are not merely uttering. We are
apologizing for doing something wrong to someone else. So, we have to learn how to
use words appropriately in order to achieve our aim. In our mother tongue and our
culture, we face little or no difficulty in employing words because we have
unconsciously learnt to follow the norms and conventions of our speech community.
People from the same culture share the same communicative strategies in
requesting from each other. However, they tend to use different patterns and strategies
of politeness in requesting. As such, it is imperative to find out what are the best words
and utterances that Jordanian students have to use when they want to request
something from each other. Additionally, it is also crucial to find out what are the
reactions of Jordanians when the requester requests something from them. Because
understanding request in other cultures in an academic setting guide the students to
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behave appropriately with each other, and let them to avoid the problems which may
appear cross-cultural communication.
The notions of directness/ indirectness and politeness play a crucial role in the
negotiation of face during the realization of speech acts such as requests. A request is a
directive act and a pre-event which initiates the negotiation of face during a
conversational interaction. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), requests are
intrinsically face threatening because they are intended to threaten the addressee’s
negative face (i.e., freedom of action and freedom from imposition). Following their
model of politeness, while a request may be realized by means of linguistic strategies
such as on record (e.g., direct and unmitigated) or off record (e.g., hints, irony), a
compromise may be reached by the speaker using indirect requests. According to
Searle, in indirect speech acts “the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he
actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both
linguistic and non-linguistic, together with the rational powers of rationality and
inference on the part of the hearer” (1975: 60-61). Thus, in order to minimize the
threat and to avoid the risk of losing face, there is a preference for indirectness on the
part of the speaker issuing the request to smooth the conversational interaction.
It has been observed that higher levels of indirectness may result in higher
levels of politeness. As Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983) mention, direct
requests appear to be inherently impolite and face-threatening because they intrude in
to the addressee’s territory, and these authors argued that the preference for
indirectness is polite behaviour. Leech suggests that it is possible to increase the
degree of politeness by using more indirect illocutions: “(a) because they increase the
degree of optionality, and (b) because the more indirect an illocution is, the more
diminished and tentative its force tends to be” (1983: 131-32). According to BlumKulka, House and Kasper (1989), indirectness is comprised of two types: conventional
indirectness (CI) which centres on conventions of language including propositional
content (literal meaning) and pragmalinguistic forms used to signal illocutionary force,
and nonconventional indirectness (NCI) which relies heavily on the context and tends
to be “open ended, both in terms of propositional content and linguistic form as well as
pragmatic force” (1989: 42). The link between indirectness and politeness is further
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supported by Searle’s observation that “politeness is the most prominent motivation
for preferring indirectness in requests, and certain forms tend to become the
conventionally polite ways of making indirect requests” (1975: 76).
Requests are a common occurrence in everyday life, particularly in the
maintenance of good relations. This study will explore the request strategies that
Jordanians prefer to use in an academic setting which is a choice between direct and
indirect ways of requesting.
Previous researches on various politeness formulae show that social norms
vary from one culture to the other. Therefore, what is seen as polite behaviour in one
culture may not be seen as such in another. Similarly, what is polite in the Jordanian
culture may not be seen so in other cultures.
In this research the aim is to explore the preferred request strategy among
Jordanian students in the academic setting. Do they prefer the direct request strategy or
the indirect request strategy? Why do they prefer the direct or indirect request
strategy? Which one is more polite for the Jordanian students in the academic setting
according to their culture, norms and traditions? And finally, what are the internal and
external modifications they use in their requests in the academic setting?
1.2
CULTURE OF SPEECH ACTS IN ARABIC, MALAY ANDTHE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
1.2.1
Arabic and English
Jordanians are similar to other Arabic societies in the usage of request strategies. They
prefer to use the indirect request strategy among themselves and with other
communities around the world. Some studies have been carried out by Jordanian and
Arabic researchers on speech act in requests and apologies such as the ones by ElShazly (1993) and Al-Shalawi (1997). El-Shazly (1993) conducted a study about the
request strategies in American English, Egyptian Arabic, and English as spoken by
Egyptian second language learners. Her study shows that the Arab societies express a
high tendency towards using conventional indirectness which depends on the use of
interrogatives. On the other hand, Al-Shalawi (1997) conducted a study about the
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semantic formulas used by Saudi and American male undergraduate students in the
speech act of refusal. The study found that the Saudis demonstrated the traits of a
collective culture whereas the Americans reflected the spirit of an individualistic
culture in their speech act of refusal.
Umar (2004) conducted a sociolinguistic investigation into the request
strategies used by advanced Arab learners of English as compared to those strategies
used by native speakers of English. He found that the native speakers of English used
more semantic and syntactic modifiers than their Arabic counterparts due to the
linguistic superiority of the native speakers’ group. Moreover, the study demonstrated
that Arab students of English, even at advanced levels, may fall back on their cultural
background when formulating their request strategies. Riyad F. Hussein and Mamoun
T. Hammouri (1998) conducted a research to study the strategies of apology among
Jordanian Arabic and American English speakers. The study showed a contrastive use
of the strategies of apology amongst Jordanian and American respondents. It
highlighted the differences between these two countries and their cultures in
apologizing. Umar’s study found that the Jordanian Arabic speakers’ strategies were
more varied than the American ones. The Jordanians were less direct and used more
elaborate strategies than their American counterparts who opted for more concise
ones. In the Jordanians' Arabic culture, the patterns of thought and religious
orientation are such that they would minimize the degree of offence by praising Allah
and by using proverbial expressions.
In another study, Al-Hami (1993) investigated the realization patterns of the
apology strategies as used by native speakers of English and Arab learners of English.
The study aimed at finding the frequency of usage of the strategies of apology among
the native speakers of English and the Arab learners of English as well as specifying
the types of communicative breakdown the Arab learners of English committed in
using apology. The findings of the study showed big differences in the Arab learners'
performance as compared to the performance of the native speakers. They also showed
that the Arab learners of English and the native speakers of English used nearly the
same strategies; nonetheless, the Arab learners expressed less regret than the native
speakers; and the English speakers acknowledged lack of intent more than the Arab
5
learners. The researcher concluded that differences between the native speakers of
English and the Arab learners of English could be mainly attributed to negative
transfer where cultural patterns differ as well as to the lack of linguistic competence of
the Arabic learners.
1.2.2
Requests Made in Malay
Mohammad Fadzeli Jaafar, Marlyna Maros and Maslida Yusof (2002) ), using a sociopragmatic approach, investigated Malaysian requests in a formal domain. They
describe sociopragmatic features the communicative act of request made in Malay by
Malaysian students. They asked 264 students to respond in Malay to 5 different
domains in which they carried out the speech act of request. The study applied Byon’s
(2002) semantic formulae of Request Supportive Move (RSM): opener, grounder,
disarmer, preparatory and compliment.
Based on Byon’s categories of RSM, the study aimed to investigate firstly, the
patterns of Malaysian requests, secondly, the effect of social variables such as social
distance and social power on the realization patterns of requests, and thirdly, the
strategies of request used by different Malaysian ethnic groups namely, Malay,
Chinese and Indian.
The results showed that Malaysian students applied all request supportive
moves in their speech. The requests were shown by various politeness markers in
Malay: tolong (please), boleh (can/may/could), minta (ask), mahu (want). Most
interestingly, this study found that Malaysian students made a large proportion of their
requests directly.
Based on the request speech event, the selection of direct request strategies
were: imperative, i.e. Tolongpinjamkanbukusaudara...(…please lend me your
book…); explicit performative, i.e. Sayamintak menu lain (I ask for another menu);
hedged
performative,
i.e.
Bolehtakmintapenangguhan…?
(Can
(I)
ask
for
extention…?); and want statement, i.e. Sayamahumeminjambukuini(I want to borrow
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this book). The findings contributed to understanding the pragmatic competence of
requesting of Malaysian students in a formal domain.
Making requests in various Muslim countries observe their respective cultural
traditions. Some are more Islamic while others have adopted norms that are in the
values of various cultures. Most Arabic societies use the indirect request strategy,
because they prefer it as a polite strategy of communicating with others.
1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Understanding politeness in requests is crucial in order to explore pragmatic aspects of
language. Politeness is an interdisciplinary phenomenon. There has been an increase
in the number of publications dealing with the phenomenon. One example is the study
conducted by Umar (2004) to explain the formulation of requests made by Arabic and
native speakers of English. He found in his study that native speakers of English used
more semantic and syntactic modifiers than their Arabic counterparts. Arab students
of English, even at advanced levels, may fall back on their cultural background when
formulating their request strategies. Such an analysis of the definition of politeness
allows us to understand how it may be cross-culturally conceptualized and understood.
It is important to explain the misunderstanding when requests are made among
these students in an academic setting. Moreover it is important for Jordanian students
in Malaysia to understand both the Malay and English request strategies to perform
their requests politely. This study may help Malaysian and other international students
understand how the culture of Jordanian students affects their requests, and the
strategies they use.
Requesting is performed differently from one society to another, according to
their cultures, norms, thinking and languages. This research explores the preferred
request strategies used by Jordanian students in the academic setting. The study seeks
to explain the internal and external modifications that the Jordanian students use in the
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academic setting in the process of requesting. In addition it will explore which one is
considered more polite in Jordanian culture.
Understanding other cultures is a very important factor in communicating
successfully with other people from around the world. Misunderstanding a request
sometimes leads to problems and causes negative reactions. Misunderstanding may
occur when the Jordanian students transfer their Arabic request strategies to English or
Malay so literally that the meaning of their requests is misunderstood or unacceptable
to others. For example, when the student requests a pen from his partner in the class by
saying ‘I want your pen for a moment’ it may appear that he is obligating his partner to
give him the pen, and additionally it may be considered an impolite request. The
meaning of this sentence in Arabic is different, but because the requestor does not
know that it is better to say in English ‘Could I please borrow your pen for a moment’,
so misunderstanding could occur.
1.4
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Requesting is understood differently from one culture to another and from one society
to another, according to their cultures, norms, thinking and languages. As El- Shazly
(1993) comments, the Arabic culture motivates the Arabic society to request from
others indirectly, as it is considered a polite strategy of communicating with others.
This research focusses on the preferred request strategies used by Jordanian students in
the academic setting. It also explains the internal and external modifications that the
Jordanian students use in the academic setting in the process of requesting. Next, it
explores which strategy is considered more polite according to the Jordanian students.
Studies on native speakers of Arabic have shown that Arabs do indeed have
problems when direct requests are made to them. One of these studies was by Abdul
Sattar (2009 which clearly showed that the most frequently used request strategy by
Iraqi postgraduate students is the preparatory strategy (can, could) which means that
they prefer to be polite and indirect in their requests. They find it extremely difficult to
request others directly because it seems to be impolite. In short, studies have indicated
that they are likely to encounter problems in handling the speech act of requesting.
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This is due to the degree of directness in request- making strategies, their sensitivity to
social variables that affect the request’s realization, and their performance in terms of
the content of strategies which might vary cross- culturally ( El-Shaszly (1993) cited
in Al-Eryani (2007, p.23), and Al-Ammar (2000)) For example, Umar (2004)
demonstrated that Arab students of English, even at advanced levels, may fall back on
their cultural background when formulating their request strategies. It is suggested that
Arab learners of English are not aware of the pragmatic differences between Arabic
and English and that an appropriate Arabic request scheme in a given situation might
not be appropriate in English in the same situation.
The present study focuses on requests among Jordanian students in an
academic setting. It is an investigation of the strategies of request in Jordanian culture;
in this case, it involves a group of Jordanian studentsin a public university in Malaysia.
As they come to study to obtain a degree in a specific field, and to work in that field,
these students encounter situations in real life in which the Arabic language comes
into play. Making requests is one of these situations. This speech act is dependent on a
situation where the speakers know how to perform the speech act - by considering
such aspects of the hearer, the relationship with the hearer, the topic, the purpose of
the speech, and the appropriate linguistic forms for the speech act.
Requests are part of our daily life; we request from others and others request
from us. Thus, it is a daily mutual action. Therefore, it is very important to know how
requests are made in different cultures. In this study, the focus is on the requests made
by Jordanian students in the academic setting.
1.5
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
This research will explore the request strategies among Jordanian students in the
academic setting and the strategy they prefer to use when they make requests, as well
as the internal and external modifications they use in their requests. In addition, the
study investigates which strategy is more polite according to their culture. This
research will add new knowledge in the area of requests and politeness and help those
9
who read it to get a better understanding of the preferred strategies of requests among
the Jordanian students.
The study will also explore the possible causes of misunderstanding which
occurs between them and other students from other cultures in Malaysia and the other
international students in the university.
1.6
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What are the preferred requesting strategies used by the group of Jordanian
students in the public university in Malaysia?
2. What are the internal and external modifications used by the Jordanian
students in the process of making requests in the academic setting?
3. Based on the weight of imposition in the questions, which request strategy is
perceived as more polite by the Jordanian students: the direct or indirect
request strategy?
1.7
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
One of the limitations of this study is to investigate the pragmatic of request by
Jordanian students in an academic setting in the Malaysian universities, especially
among the postgraduate students in the academic setting in the Malaysian public
university.
One possible limitation of the research and the limitation that I was not able to
establish completely is that in the selection of a homogeneous sociolinguistic group
because there were more males than females among the Jordanian students in
academic setting in Malaysia selected as participants in this study. Also of the
Jordanian society do not send their daughters mostly to study outside alone.
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There is also a somewhat wide age range (20s-40s) among the participants.
Nevertheless, the data gathered can still be broadly representative of the speech
behaviour of native speakers of Arabic languages; any imprecision can be clarified in
future research. Furthermore, the focus of the present research was not on
sociolinguistic factors like age and gender but on the pragmatic factors widely
discussed in the literature on linguistic politeness (e.g., Brown and Levinson 1987 and
the many works inspired by their study) such as —relative power, social distance, and
weight of the imposition.
This research focuses on the misunderstanding in requests which occurs
among the Jordanian, Malay, and students from other countries who are studying in
Malaysian universities, as well as misunderstanding which occurs among the
Jordanian students, university lecturers and the staff in the Malaysian university. So
this study try to demonstrate that the application, including most of the request
strategies are used similarly among the subjects in this study, but different
performance used depending on the cultures of these students, lecturers and staff of
the universities cultures.
1.8
DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPTS AND TERMINOLOGIES
There are some concepts which will be explained here because they are part of the
terminology of this research.
One of these important concepts is Politeness, Brown and Levinson (1987; 65) define
politeness as “saying and doing things in such a way as to take into account the other
person’s feeling”. According to Lakoff (1975: 33), “to be polite is saying the socially
correct things” while Leech (1983) describes politeness in terms of costs and benefits
for both speaker and hearer. According to him, an utterance that minimizes the
hearer’s costs and maximizes his benefits and that maximizes the speaker’s costs and
minimizes his benefit, is observed as a very polite utterance. Ide (1993: 7) on the other
hand, views politeness as behaviours “without friction”.
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Request is defined as a directive act and a pre-event which initiates the negotiation
of face during a conversational interaction. According to Brown and Levinson (1987),
requests are intrinsically face threatening because they are intended to threaten the
addressee’s negative face (i.e., freedom of action and freedom from imposition).
According to Brown and Levinson (1987:65) and Leech (1983), direct requests appear
to be inherently impolite and face-threatening because they intrude into the
addressee’s territory, and these authors argue that the preference for polite behaviour is
indirectness. According to Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper, indirectness is comprised
of two types: conventional indirectness (CI) which centres on conventions of language
including propositional content (literal meaning) and pragmalinguistic form used to
signal an illocutionary force, and nonconventional indirectness (NCI) which relies
heavily on the context and tends to be “open ended, both in terms of propositional
content and linguistic form as well as pragmatic force” (1989: 42).
The indirect speech act of request is defined by Searle as those speech acts in
which “the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of
relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the rational powers of rationality and inference on the part of
the hearer” (1975: 60-61).According to Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech
(1983), direct requests appear to be inherently impolite and face-threatening because
they intrude into the addressee’s territory, and these authors argue that the preference
is indirectness for polite behavior. Leech suggests that it is possible to increase the
degree of politeness by using more indirect illocutions: “(a) because they increase the
degree of optionality, and (b) because the more indirect an illocution is, the more
diminished and tentative its force tends to be” (1983: 131-32).
Pragmatics has been defined as the study of how utterances have meanings in
speech situations with the speakers and hearers involved (Leech 1983). Utterance
meaning is the main research object in pragmatics, whereas semantics focuses on
sentence meaning. For instance, from a pragmatic point of view, a statement like It is
cold today can be an assertion about the weather, a request to turn on the air
conditioner, or some other speech acts, depending on the intention of the speaker in
the specific situations.
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The speech act, according to Searle (1979), the performance of one
illocutionary act by way of performing another. For instance, in the utterance It is hot
today, the secondary illocutionary act of the utterance is a statement of weather
conditions; however, depending on the specific context, the primary illocutionary act
might be making a request to the addressee to turn on the air conditioner.
In other words, the hearer has to “search for the specific point that was
intended by the speaker but not explicitly stated” (Sifianou 1992: 16).
The request in this study contains three units (core request, internal and
external modifiers and alerters), the researcher will define these units and mention
some of these unit's strategies.
Head act (core request): head act is the minimal unit which can realize a
request; it is the core of the request sequence, Blum Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989:
17). Some examples for the core request strategy are: Preparatory, Permission
strategy, Mind strategy, Intention strategy, inquiries strategy, needs statements,
appreciation strategy, Mood derivable, Want strategy, and Hint strategy.
Internal modifications are the linguistic elements or syntactical structures
within the request proper (Blum Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989: 17). such as: I
hope.., I wish....
The external modifications are the linguistic elements or syntactical structures
which appear prior or after the core request (Blum Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989:
17). Examples are: Grounders, Preparatory, rewards, disarmers, Imposition
minimisers, getting a precommitment
Alerters are the elements whose function it is to alert the hearer's attention to
the ensuing speech act (Blum kulka, House, and Kasper (1989: 17). Examples are:
Excuse me, hello, hi, father of Ahmad.
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1.9
CONCLUSION
This chapter consists of the main points that the study seeks to explore. It highlights
the reason for this research, which is the misunderstanding which occurs among the
Jordanian, Malay and English students in an academic setting in performing requests.
The research questions have also been stated in this chapter. The main concepts and
terminologies used in this study have also been explained.
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1.10 References
Abdul,Sattar. 2009. Iraqi Postgraduates’ Production and Perception of Requests: A
Pilot Study. The International Journal of Language Society and
Culture29:56-70. ISSN 1327-774X.
AL-Ammar, M. 2000.The Linguistic Strategies and Realizations of Request
Behaviour in Spoken English and Arabic among Saudi Female English
Majors at Riyadh College of Arts.Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Riyadh: King
Saud University.
Al-Hami, F. 1993.Forms of Apology Used by Jordanian Speakers of EFL: A Cross
Cultural Study. Unpublished M.A. Thesis.Amman: University of Jordan.
AL-Shalawi, H. 1997.Refusal Strategies in Saudi and American Culture.Unpublished
M.A. Thesis. Michigan: Michigan University.
Austin, J.L. 1962. How ToDo Things With Words. MA: Harvard University Press.
Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. & Kasper, G. 1989.Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests
and Apologies. Norwood, NewJersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Brown, P.& Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals InLanguages Usage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
EL-Shazly, A. 1993. Requesting Strategies in American English, Egyptian Arabic
andEnglish as Spoken by Egyptian Second Language Learners. Unpublished
M.A.Thesis. Cairo: American University.
Ide, Sachiko. 1993. Preface: the Search for Integrated Universals of Linguistic
Politeness. Multilingua7 (12): 7-11.
Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Woman’s Place.Harper and Row.
Leech, G. N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman Group Limited.
Mohammad FadzeliJaafar, MarlynaMaros&MaslidaYusof. 2002. The Style of
Malaysian Requests in a Formal Domain: SociopragmaticApproach.Bangi:
National University of Malaysia, Malaysia.
Riyad F. Hussein& Mamoun T. Hammouri. 1998. Strategies of Apology in Jordanian
Arabic and American English. Grazer Linguistic Studies 49: pp. 37-50. Irbid,
Jordan: Yarmouk University.
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Thomas, J. 1983. Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure.Applied Linguistics4 (2): 91- 109.
Searle, J.R. 1979.Speech Acts. Cambridge, UK: The Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. 1975. Indirect Speech Acts. . In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds.). Syntax and
Semantics, pp. 59-85. New York: New York Academic Press.
Sifianou, M. 1992. Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece: AAross-Cultural
Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Umar, A. 2004.Request Strategies as Used by Advanced Arab Learners. Journal
ofEducational & Social Sciences & Humanities, 16 (1): 42-87.