Investigating the Pragmatic Competence of Saudi English Foreign Language and English Second Language Learners: The Speech Act of Refusals

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is twofold: first to measure the pragmatic competence of Saudi English foreign language (EFL) and English second language (ESL) postgraduate students compared to native English speakers (NES) by investigating the speech act of refusal, and second to study the role of gender on the speech acts of refusal by comparing the performance of EFL and ESL males and females. EFL, ESL and NES students' data were collected by using an online written discourse completion task (DCT), which was modified and further classified based on Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz's (1990) model. 48 postgraduate students participated in this study: 16 Saudi EFL students in Saudi Arabia (8 females, 8 males), 16 Saudi ESL students in Saudi Arabia (8 females, 8 males) and 16 British NES (8 females, 8 males). The study found that the Saudi EFL and ESL students have a good pragmatic competence in general, but there are some significant differences between EFL and ESL learners compared to NES in terms of the type of objects used with direct strategies, and a significant difference in the use of adjuncts with different interlocutor statuses and objects. ESL learners' use of indirect strategies with different interlocutor statuses was significantly different from NES, but not from EFL. It also found that the Saudi EFL and ESL postgraduate students were similar, and thus the learning environment created no meaningful differences between the two groups. Moreover, it was found that gender has no great role in performing refusals except in use by EFL females and males of indirect strategies and adjuncts with different interlocutors and the number of instances used with different objects. Therefore, it is recommended that Saudi postgraduate students learn more about the functions of the socio-pragmatic and syntactical structures of the English language to have more effective communication and to raise their pragmatic awareness.