Pragmatic Features of Saudi Arabian University Students’ Emails to Lecturers

The Ph.D. dissertation consisting of 400 Saudi university student emails in Arabic and English languages at different Saudi Arabian universities. The emails were examined qualitatively to explore the purposes of students’ emails, the composition of those emails, the linguistic and pragmatic strategies used, and finally, the pragmatic transfer from L1 to L2 in writing emails in English.

The email purposes were categorized into facilitative, substantive, and relational topics which were adapted from the coding scheme of classifying students’ emails in Biesenbach-Lucas (2005) and Bulut & Rababah (2007) studies. The overall structural moves of emails: openings, the body of an email, and closings were investigated to find the common features of Saudi Arabian students’ emails to their lecturers. The linguistic and pragmatics strategies used in students’ requests were coded based on the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) request coding schemes with modifications from the existing data. I also analyzed the contents of the emails and interviewed the lecturers in order to find out the appropriateness of students’ emails in relation to rapport management (Spencer-Oatey, 2005)

Preliminary results show that students used the colloquial language of verbal communication ‘i.e. informal’ in writing their emails more than the standard one. The emails in both languages sent for substantiative, facilitative and relational topics and they both had openings, the body of emails, and closings. Results also indicate the influence of pragmatic transfer from Arabic into English in the use of request forms and supportive moves. For example, the use of ‘want’ statement, ‘imperative form’, ‘small talk’, ‘justification’ and the socio-religious expression ‘du’a’ to thank the lecturers. The students used supportive moves in their emails to minimize the obligation in requests and maintain good relations with lecturers.

In conclusion, this research contributes to the understanding of Saudi Arabian students’ writing communication which may be influenced by culture, language, gender, and context. More broadly speaking, it proves that language use is socio-culturally determined (Fairclough, 1995).