“What Advice Would You Offer?” Cross-Cultural Differences and Pragmatic Transfer in English and Arabic Advice Giving
Mai Abualsamh
Western Sydney University, Australia
This study contributes to the existing literature on the fields of cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics. Within these fields, studies have focused on various speech acts such as apologies (Jones, 2017), requests (Al Masaeed, 2017), and refusals (Shishavan & Sharifian, 2016). However, only a few studies have investigated the speech act of advising (Davoodifard, 2010; Martinez-Flor, 2003). Therefore, this study examined cross-cultural differences of advice giving as a speech act between Saudi Arabic and Australian English speakers and investigated the occurrence of pragmatic transfer of Saudi students in Australia while offering advice in English.
To achieve this, cross-cultural differences in performing unsolicited advice-giving strategies to the same gender between native speakers of Saudi Arabic (NSSs) and Australian English (ANSs) were first explored. Then, the performance of Saudi students studying in Australia was compared with those of Saudi and Australian counterparts in their home countries to investigate whether they transferred their L1 advice-giving patterns into the L2. Participants included 60 NSSs, 60 ANSs, and 60 Saudi students from both genders. Data were collected using Arabic and English versions of the same Discourse Completion Task. A mixed method design was used to analyse data qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of four selected criteria: (1) The use of advice speech act or opting out; (2) level of directness in advice head act strategies; (3) supportive move strategies and (4) internal modifiers.
Regarding the use of advice-giving speech act, preliminary results showed that ANS participants preferred to avoid offering advice more frequently than NSS participants. When they choose to give advice, Australians showed a clear preference to use an indirect style with the use of a wide range of internal modifiers to mitigate the face-threatening act (FTA). On the other hand, NSS participants preferred the use of direct advice and aggravated the force of advice by using internal upgraders. The preliminary results also showed that Saudi students in Australia followed the L2 pattern in the frequency of advice giving. However, when they choose to give advice, Saudi students seemed to be influenced by their L1 norms in using direct advice-giving strategies. These results emphasize the need for better understanding cross-cultural differences between the different language speakers and that sufficient pragmatic competence is significant to minimize FTA and avoid cross-cultural communication breakdowns.
Key words: interlanguage pragmatics, pragmatic transfer, advice giving
References
Al Masaeed, K. (2017). Interlanguage pragmatic development: Internal and external modification in L2 Arabic requests. Foreign Language Annals, 50(4), 808-820.
Davoodifard, M. (2010). Advice speech-act in Persian as a first language and English as a second language: A study of Iranian students. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Jones, J. (2017). Comparing apologies in Australian English and Bahasa Indonesia: Cultural and gender perspectives. Journal of Politeness Research, 13(1), 89-119.
Martinez-Flor, A. (2003). Non-native speakers’ production of advice acts: The effects of proficiency. Revista Electronica de Linguistica Applicada, 16(2), 139-153.
Shishavan, H. B., & Sharifian, F. ( 2016). The refusal speech act in a cross-cultural perspective: A study of Iranian English-language learners and Anglo-Australian speakers. Language & Communication, 47, 75-88.