A cross-cultural study of request speech act: Iraqi and Malay students

Abstract

Several studies have indicated that the range and linguistics expressions of external <br />modifiers available in one language differ from those available in another language. The <br />present study aims to investigate the cross-cultural differences and similarities with regards <br />to the realization of request external modifications. To this end, 30 Iraqi and 30 Malay <br />university students are selected as the participants of this study. Spencer-Oatey's (2008) <br />rapport management theoretical framework is used to examine how face rapport is <br />managed through the use of external modifications. The corpus consists of responses to a <br />Discourse Completion Test (DCT) consisting of eight situations. The questionnaires, <br />adopted from Rose (1994), were distributed among Iraqi students and Malaysian Malay <br />students studying at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia. The corpus was then analyzed <br />based on Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper's (1989) classification of external modifiers. The <br />primary objective of this paper is to compare the effect of situational factors on the <br />realization patterns of request modification between Iraqi and Malay university students <br />.The findings indicated that grounders are the most common external modifier used by the <br />subjects. Results also show more similarities than differences between the subjects under <br />study in terms of the use of mitigation devices such as apologies, compliments and <br />gratitude. However, both Iraqis and Malays differ in their perception of the situational <br />factors. Finally, the study suggests some pedagogical implications for both ESL and EFL <br />teachers.