IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/arp/ellrar/2015p63-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Directness and Indirectness of Speech Acts in Requests among American Native English Speakers and Saudi Native Speakers of Arabic

Author

Listed:
  • Khalid Khulaif Alshammari

    (Indiana State University, Indiana)

Abstract

Within the scope of the field of Pragmatics includes the study of speech acts. Yule (1996) defines a speech act as "an action performed by the use of an utterance to communicate" (48). This communication occurs between the speaker and the hearer. This study compares the directness and indirectness of speech acts of requests by investigating Arabic and English data among American speakers of English and Saudi speakers of Arabic. Differences are revealed between the two groups in terms of formulating requests and how social power and social distance between interlocutors may affect the choice of using these strategies of requests in the same given situations. Based on the results, the researcher found that most Saudi native speakers of Arabic used direct requests when requesting to their intimate friends and when superiors were requesting to their inferiors. However, most American native speakers of English have a tendency to use indirect requests including hints and context embedded meaning when addressing unfamiliar friends and when inferiors are addressing their superiors.

Suggested Citation

  • Khalid Khulaif Alshammari, 2015. "Directness and Indirectness of Speech Acts in Requests among American Native English Speakers and Saudi Native Speakers of Arabic," English Literature and Language Review, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 1(8), pages 63-69, 11-2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:arp:ellrar:2015:p:63-69
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.arpgweb.com/pdf-files/ellr1(8)63-69.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.arpgweb.com/?ic=journal&journal=9&month=11-2015&issue=8&volume=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arp:ellrar:2015:p:63-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Managing Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arpgweb.com/index.php?ic=journal&journal=9&info=aims .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.