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Loutfi, Ayoub: Interlanguage Pragmatics, A Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests,
Hamburg, Anchor Academic Publishing 2015
PDF-eBook-ISBN: 978-3-95489-917-3
Druck/Herstellung: Anchor Academic Publishing, Hamburg, 2015
Additionally: Université Mohammed V Rabat, Rabat, Marokko, Bachelor Thesis, 2011
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Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
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Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
By
Ayoub Loutfi
The ultimate goal of this study is to investigate the issue of pragmatic
transfer from L1 into the interlanguage of Moroccan learners of English, namely
when these learners make requests in English. More specifically, this study
seeks to compare the average frequencies of direct and indirect strategies used
by both native Moroccan English as a foreign language learners and native
English speakers. Finally, this study will further attempt to explore whether
transfer decreases as the study level increases, namely the case of the Moroccan
EFL university learners at the first and the third level of University.
A number of sixty subjects take part in the present study. They are divided
into two groups. The first group involves the Moroccan learners of English who
in turn bifurcated into two groups of academic level: Second Year (N=20) and
Third year (N=20). The subjects in the second group are 20 native speakers of
English. In order to answer the research questions addressed in this study, the
Discourse Completion Task (DCT) is adopted. This DCT provides the subjects
with a number of seven situations in which different situations are controlled,
namely social distance, power relation, and the degree of imposition. A
Moroccan Arabic DCT is also used in order to examine how Moroccan students
perform requests in their mother tongues.
The results reveal that evidence of pragmatic transfer is found in the
requests produced by Moroccan learners of English. Thus, the first hypothesis is
confirmed. The second finding is that academic level does not play a major role
in pragmatic ability. For this fact, the second research hypothesis is rejected in
favor of the null hypothesis drawing the conclusion that pragmatic transfer is not
related to academic level. To sum up the whole, a number of research and
pedagogical implications are suggested.
Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
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To the memory of my grandfather,
May his soul rest in peace!
To my parents and my two sisters whose very moral and financial support I have
always appreciated.
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CA:
Contrastive Analysis.
CAH:
Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis.
CCSARP:
Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project.
CISs:
Conventionally Indirect Strategies.
DCT:
Discourse Completion Test.
EFL:
English as a Foreign Language.
HD:
Hearer-Dominance.
IL:
Interlanguage.
ILP:
Interlanguage Pragmatics.
L1:
First Language.
L2:
Second Language.
MLrs:
Moroccan Learners of English.
MLrs1:
First Year Moroccan Learners.
MLrs3:
Third Year Moroccan Learners.
NSs:
Native Speakers.
SD:
Speaker-Dominance.
SLA:
Second Language Acquisition.
Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
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So many are the people who helped me to fulfill this piece of study. First
and foremost, I am greatly indebted to Professor Nourddine Amrous for his
guiding and assisting at all stages of this work and for supplying necessary
materials and documents. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the participants in
this study for their outstanding cooperation and willingness to share their
thoughts with me. For help and generous support I should thank Mr.Adil Azhar
and Prof. Iqbal Zeddari.
I am also grateful to those friends who helped me to collect data for the
study. In this respect, I thank Hicham Ahamdi, Youssef Frej, and Othman
Maghnaoui. I am subsequently indebted to my seminar classmates whose
discussions and interest have been a source of motivation that keeps me going.
Of these, I would like to especially mention: Zineb El Mouhtadi, Mohamed
Mettar, Lamyae El Baroudi, Nada Biddou, and Soukaina Cherkaoui, to mention
but a few.
Last, but far from least, my very sincere thanks go to my parents, sisters,
and my uncle Aziz for their moral and financial support. In fact, there are too
many people to enumerate that some of whom were undeservedly omitted. Of
course, however, I am responsible for any shortcomings in the study; any credit I
happily share it with all mentioned above.
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Page
ABSTRACT ... 1
DEDICATION ... 2
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... 5
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ... 7
1.1.
O
BJECTIVES AND
R
ATIONAL
... 7
1.2.
W
HY
R
EQUESTS
? ... 8
1.4
R
ESEARCH
Q
UESTIONS AND
H
YPOTHESIS
: ... 8
II.1.
I
NTRODUCTION
... 11
II.2.
T
HE
T
HEORETICAL
B
ACKGROUND
... 11
II.2.1.
P
RAGMATIC COMPETENCE
... 11
II.2.2.
S
PEECH
A
CTS
... 13
II.2.3.
C
ROSS
-
CULTURAL
P
RAGMATICS
: ... 14
II.2.4.
I
NTERLANGUAGE
P
RAGMATICS
... 15
II.3.
P
RAGMATIC
T
RANSFER
... 16
II.3.1.
O
N
T
RANSFER
... 16
II.3.2.
P
RAGMALINGUISTIC
/S
OCIOPRAGMATIC
T
RANSFER
... 17
II.4.
D
EFINING
R
EQUESTS
... 17
II.4.1.
D
IRECT AND
I
NDIRECT
S
TRATEGIES
... 18
II.4.2.
T
HE TWO TYPES OF INDIRECT STRATEGIES
... 18
II.4.2.1.
C
ONVENTIONALLY INDIRECT STRATEGIES
... 18
II.4.2.2.
N
ON
-
CONVENTIONALLY
I
NDIRECT
S
TRATEGIES
(H
INTS
) ... 19
II.4.3.
M
ODIFICATION
C
ATEGORIES
... 19
II.4.4.
P
REVIOUS
S
TUDIES IN THE
M
OROCCAN
C
ONTEXT
... 20
II.5.
C
ONCLUSION
... 21
III.1.
I
NTRODUCTION
... 23
III.2.
R
ESEARCH
Q
UESTIONS AND
H
YPOTHESIS
: ... 23
III.2.1. Research Questions: ... 23
III.2.1. Research Hypothesis: ... 23
III.3.1. Proficiency Level and Academic Background ... 26
III.4.1. The discourse completion task ... 26
III.4.2. Description and Rationale ... 27
III.4.3. Situational Variables ... 27
III.4.4. The Moroccan Arabic DCT... 28
III.5.1. Data analysis ... 29
IV.2.1. Major Request strategies by NSs and Mlrs ... 34
IV.2.2. Interlanguage Pragmalinguistic Transfer in the Use of the Major Strategies ... 34
IV.3.1. Directness ... 36
IV.3.1.1. Direct strategies... 36
IV.3.1.2. Directness used by MLrs... 37
IV.3.1.3. Conventionally indirect strategies (CISs) ... 38
Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
6
IV.3.1.4. Perspectives:... 41
IV.4.
S
OCIOPRAGMATIC
A
NALYSIS
... 43
IV.4.1. Directness ... 43
IV.4.2. Perspectives ... 47
IV.5.
C
ONCLUSION
... 49
V.1.
S
UMMARY OF THE OBJECTIVES
... 52
V.2.
S
UMMARY OF THE
M
ETHODOLOGY
... 52
V.3.
S
UMMARY OF THE
R
ESULTS
... 52
V.4.
L
IMITATION OF THE STUDY
... 53
V.5.
R
ESEARCH
I
MPLICATIONS
... 53
V.6.
P
EDAGOGICAL
I
MPLICATIONS
... 53
V.7.
C
ONCLUSION
... 54
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The way language is acquired and learnt has for long been an intriguing
issue in social science. This questions has attracted researchers from a variety of
disciplines and people from different theoretical persuasion and predilections.
The process of second language acquisition
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is yet another of area that is worthy
of investigation, given to the agglomerate of the issues that this process
engenders to second language learners (L2, henceforth). Of interest to the
present objectives is the way this process jointly interacts with a number of
factors, most important of which is the learner's mother tongue.
A question of considerable interest is whether or not a learner's first
language affects the process of second language acquisition, in as much as that
this interference may either help ease or thwart the developmental path of the
learning process. Another interesting query concerns the extent to which formal
education reduces or helps circumvent this interference.
On this view, the present study sets as its research goals the objectives of
providing an investigation to the issue of pragmatic transfer from L1 into the
interlanguage of Moroccan learners of English, namely when these learners
make requests in English. More specifically, this study will seek to compare the
average frequencies of direct and indirect strategies used by both native
Moroccan English as a foreign language learners and native speakers of English.
Finally, this study will further attempt to explore whether transfer decreases as
the study level increases, namely the case of the Moroccan EFL university
learners at the first and the third level of University.
Various are the reasons that lie behind my choice of this topic. Firstly, my
own experience as a student of English in both the high school and the
university has inspired me to analyze and identify the causes of pragmatic
failure that many Moroccans EFL learners undergo. Secondly, I have selected
this topic to know how these students perform speech acts of requesting in both
their L1 and L2, and what influences the former exerted on the latter. Moreover,
there is an ostensibly scanty number of research that have been conducted in
interlanguage pragmatics, namely within the Moroccan context; hence, many
1
Throughout this study, the term second language will be used in the sense of languages other than one's mother
tongue, be they second, third, fourth...etc.
Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
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questions still remain uncovered and a lack of an in-depth understanding of the
factors that influence interlanguage pragmatic development are yet to be
revealed.
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The speech act of requesting has been chosen in the present paper as the
best tool through which one can identify about Interlanguage Pragmatic transfer.
Indeed, requests are used in everyday communication both in Moroccan Arabic
and in EFL performance and, therefore, they occur in a variety of forms (e.g.
Imperatives, Declaratives and interrogatives) with differing situational features.
Furthermore, a request constitutes a face-threatening act (Brown and Levinson
1978; 1987); hence, speakers will need to make use of strategies so as to reduce
the threat and to decrease the potential damage. Moreover, there have been
studies that have been undertaken in the illocutionary act of requests. Therefore,
there is a firm ground upon which one can base further study.
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This study seeks to examine the use of L2 speech act of request by
Moroccan learners of English. Under this light, the purpose is to explore the
strategies used by Moroccan learners of English and to see the amount of
transfer from L1 to L2 when they perform requests in English. To this end, this
study will intend to answer the following questions:
1.
To what extent do Moroccan learners of English rely on their L1 in
the production of English requests?
2.
To what extent does the level of proficiency affect Moroccan
learners production of English requests?
3.
To what extent do Moroccans learners differ with English native
speakers in the production of English requests?
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In pursuance of this aim, two hypotheses have been formulated:
Hypothesis 1: There is evidence of pragmatic transfer in the English
requests produced by Moroccan learners of English.
Hypothesis 2: Pragmatic transfer decreases as the study level increases.
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The present paper is made up of four chapters organized as follows. The
first chapter will seek to define some key-concepts so as to situate the present
study in its theoretical background. This section also reviews the most important
studies that have been undertaken in Morocco within the frames of
Interlanguage Pragmatics. The second chapter intends to give and present a
rigorous description whereby the data was collected. The third chapter falls into
two parts. The first reveals the results of the data collection and the other one
will lay the ground for the discussion of these results. The study then will be
closed with a general conclusion, drawing some research and pedagogical
implications.
Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
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Chapter One
Review of the
Literature
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The aim of this chapter is to situate the present study in its theoretical
perspectives under which the findings are meant to be discussed. The chapter is
introduced with a discussion of the pragmatic component in linguistics,
particularly as part of the native speakers communicative competence.
Moreover, the chapter briefly traces the major pragmatics trends within the
frames of speech act theory. Next, an overview is given of the fields of cross-
cultural pragmatics and interlanguage. A definition is supplied of the field of
interlanguage pragmatics, to which this study belongs, along with a concise
description of some relevant studies carried out in the Moroccan context.
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The concept of communicative competence was first introduced by the
anthropologist and sociolinguist Hymes (1964) to refer to communicative
competence that does not consist only of grammatical competence; that is to say,
not only should linguistic competence involve the formal knowledge of the
target language, but also the knowledge of the sociocultural rules of appropriate
language use. The fact of the matter is that Hymes concept of competence was
introduced as a reaction against Chomsky's (1965) notion of competence. For
Chomsky, competence encompasses the perfect knowledge of an ideal-speaker
listener in a homogeneous speech community. As Chomsky (1965: 3) states:
"Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener
in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language
perfectly, and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and errors in applying this
knowledge of the language in actual performance."
In this regard, Hymes (1971) maintains that ,,there are rules of use without
which the rules of grammar would be useless (1971: 278). As a matter of fact,
Hymes concept of communicative competence brought a radical shift to the
study of language, which began to account for studying language in its actual
use that is appropriate and acceptable to a particular speech community. More
recently, other linguists have extended the idea of communicative competence
further. In this regard, Canale and Swain (1983) include three components
within their model of communicative competence:
Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Case Study of Moroccan EFL Learners' Requests
12
The sociolinguistic component which addresses the extent to which an
utterance produced is accepted and appropriate to a particular socially and
culturally defined setting. In addition to the sociolinguistic component, Canal
and Swain's model of communication competence also include the discourse
and strategic competence
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.
It is along these lines that Bachman (1990) emphasized the role of
pragmatics in communicative competence. Pragmatic competence is concerned
with the ability that enables speakers to produce and understand utterances in
relation to specific communication purposes and specific speech context in order
to produce effective communication. Bachman subdivided pragmatic
competence into illocutionary competence and sociolinguistic competence. The
former is described as the knowledge of communicative strategies and how to
use them appropriately. The sociolinguistic competence, on the other hand, deals
with the acceptable use of a particular language within a particular context.
The British pragmatician Leech (1983) subdivided pragmatic competence
into pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Pragmalinguistics can be applied to
the more linguistic end of pragmatics-where we consider the particular resources
which a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions (Leech,
1983: 11). In this regard, Kasper (1997) elucidates that such resources are the
strategies for performing speech acts that include directness and indirectness
strategies and linguistic forms, which can alleviate or intensify speech acts.
Sociopragmatics, on the other hand, can be better defined in Leech's
terms as "the sociological interface of pragmatics" (Leech, 1983: 10). It is
concerned then with the interface of linguistic action and social structure. More
specifically, it demonstrates the effect of such limitation as social status, social
distance and degree of imposition on the choice of linguistic realization of a
particular communicative acts and strategies.
2
See Canal and Swain (1983) for more details.
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