THE PRAGMATICS OF REQUESTS BY JORDANIAN STUDENTS IN AN ACADEMIC SETTING

PhD Proposal Done By: Mouad Mohammad Al-Natour

1.0 INTRODUCTION This chapter consists of five parts. The first part explains the background of making requests inJordanian and Arabic societies, and introduces which has beendone 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

3 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 addressees 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 addressees territory, and these authors argued that the preference for indirectness is politebehaviour. 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 Blum-Kulka, 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

4 supported by Searles 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

Jordaniansaresimilar to other Arabic societies in the usageof request strategies. They prefer to use the indirect request strategyamong 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 El-Shazly (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 aboutthe semantic formulas used

5 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 Englishspeakers. 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. Umars study found that the JordanianArabic 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 usingproverbial 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 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

6 where cultural patterns differ as well as to the lack of linguistic competenceof the Arabic learners. 1.2.2 Requests Made in Malay

Mohammad FadzeliJaafar, MarlynaMaros and MaslidaYusof (2002) ), using a sociopragmatic approach,investigatedMalaysian 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 appliedByons (2002) semantic formulae of Request Supportive Move (RSM): opener, grounder, disarmer, preparatory and compliment. Based on Byons categories of RSM, the study aimed to investigate firstly, the patterns of Malaysian requests, secondly, the effect of social variablessuch as social distance and social power on the realization patterns of requests, and thirdly, the strategies of request used by different Malaysian ethnic groupsnamely, 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 this book). The findings contributed to understanding the pragmatic competence of requesting of Malaysian students in a formal domain.

7 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 academic setting in the process of requesting. In addition it will explore which one is considered more polite in Jordanian culture.

8 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. This is due to the degree of directness in request- making strategies, their sensitivity to social variables that affect the requests realization, and their performance in terms of the content of strategies which might vary cross- culturally ( El-Shaszly (1993) cited in Al-

9 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 who read it to get a better understanding of the preferred strategies of requests among the Jordanian students.

10 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 studentsin 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. 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

11 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 persons 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 hearers costs and maximizes his benefits and that maximizes the speakers 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. 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 addressees 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 addressees

12 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 addressees 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. 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.

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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, Permissionstrategy, 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 Alertersare 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. 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.

14 The research questions have also been stated in this chapter. The main concepts and terminologies used in this study have also been explained.

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.

15 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 Womans 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. StrategiesofApology inJordanianArabicand American English. Grazer LinguisticStudies 49: pp. 3750. Irbid, Jordan: YarmoukUniversity. 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.

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Umar, A. 2004.Request Strategies as Used by Advanced Arab Learners. Journal ofEducational& Social Sciences & Humanities, 16 (1): 42-87.