This chapter investigated the main features of politeness behaviour and spoken requests comparing two age groups of Saudi women in a social setting. The part of the analysis of the data in this chapter was for Arabic requests and politeness strategies. As found by several studies on Arabic requests, the findings of this study showed that Saudi Arabic requests have a general tendency towards direct strategies (Alfattah and Ravindranath, 2009; Al-Marrani and Sazalie, 2010a, b; Al-Momani, 2009; Atawneh, 1991). This means that the use of direct strategies is an expected behaviour in an Arabic context. However, showing a higher level of politeness with the use of direct strategies can be by employing various linguistic
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expressions such as religious and politeness formulas. On the other hand, the use of conventional indirect strategies also reflects a higher level of politeness in the Arabic context.
The chapter has also provided a socio-pragmatic analysis for the elicited data in relation to the similarities and differences in practicing requests across the two generations. One of the aims of this study was to investigate the linguistic features of spoken Arabic requests amongst Saudi women in a social context. To achieve this aim, the study also aimed to investigate the impact of the social variables of age, power status, social distance, the degree of imposition and gender in each request’s context. Furthermore, the study aimed to examine the impact of the Arabic address system and the religious values on the practices of politeness.
The collected data was based on role play scenarios of requests to female and male hearers in close and distant relationships and each pair of scenarios included two degrees of imposition (DI-, DI+). Based on the role play scenarios, the first part focused on requests to female hearers in three levels of power status (S<H), (S=H) and (S>H) in contexts of close and distant relationships, while the second part of the discussion focused on requests to males in the same contexts. The main purpose was to find the differences and the similarities in the request behaviour that might be resulted from the impact of social variables.
The data showed that there was an obvious impact of social variables on the request behaviour of both age groups in each pair of scenarios. While they tended more to employ most direct strategies in contexts of close relationships as a way of showing intimacy and solidarity, they preferred, on the other hand, to employ face saving strategies in their requests to hearers more distantly related. The preference for using indirect strategies in requests to males even in close relationships highlighted the impact of power status and the dominant role of males in Saudi social life. In addition, the use of the most direct sub-strategies also varied in accordance with the differences between the speaker and the hearer. Imperatives, for instance, are usually used when the speaker is equal or has a higher status than the hearer, otherwise employing imperatives might be unacceptable behaviour.
The findings also show the role of the factors of mayanah and kulfah. In relation to the concept of face, the factor of mayanah is more related to positive politeness in which the speaker tends to employ most direct strategies as a result of the close relationship with the hearer. However, the factor of kulfah can be obvious when the speaker employs indirect strategies and addresses the negative face of the hearer and this tendency results from the distant relationship between the interlocutors.
The results revealed the impact of gender segregation as one of the significant cultural values that distinguish Saudi society. This impact was clear on the request behaviour when the participants showed a strong preference to avoid requests to the elderly and same age male strangers, while when they were
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asked to make requests to children they showed similar behaviour when they interacted with boys and girls in distant relationships.
As discussed previously, since conventional indirect strategies are classified as negative politeness strategies as and subject to more cultural dimensions and social values than other request strategies, there was more analysis for its sub-categories. The conventional indirect sub-categories are: request perspective and conventions of means. The data showed that the participants preferred using the strategies of hearer- perspective and this tendency reveals that the speaker shows a greater tendency towards positive politeness by using such strategies that function to create solidarity between the interlocutors. Additionally, the results showed that the most frequent strategy amongst the conventions of means were employed as possibility strategies.
Request and politeness strategies included other strategies known as external and internal modifications and the data showed that the participants of each age group used variations of both external and internal modifications for the purposes of saving face and softening the force of requests, since the speech act of requests is considered one of the face threatening acts within politeness theory. While grounders and imposition minimizers were the most external modifications employed by the participants, the data show that the most internal modifications were employed as politeness markers and interrogatives. The use of religious expressions when making requests also serves various functions in the spoken Saudi variety such as showing that both interlocutors belong to the same religious and social group.
In addition to request strategies, the data showed some interesting findings in relation to the use of the Arabic address system. In addressing parents, the younger age group used modern forms while the older subjects tended more to employ traditional terms. The use of address forms was also affected by the impact of the changes in social variables and therefore by the changes in the levels of kulfah and mayanah. As a result of kulfah, some participants tended to use formal address forms and other terms show that there was a degree of formality in the given contexts (distant relationships). Employing address forms was also affected by the factor of gender segregation and as shown by the data the participants avoided using endearment forms in addressing male strangers. The impact of power status was also obvious when the participant used kinship terms in addressing elderly strangers.
There was additional quantitative statistical analysis for the frequencies of politeness strategies employed by the participants. The main reason was to support the socio-pragmatic analysis and to find out whether there were significant differences in request behaviour between the two age groups and to find whether there is an impact of each social variable on request behaviour. The first part of the statistical analysis was conducted on the use of directness strategies in a social context. The tendency of Arabic towards positive politeness was shown in the data and also it was found that the two age groups were similar in their general behaviour in using politeness strategies in the context of spoken Arabic requests. The second part focused
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on examining the impact of social variables on requesting behaviour comparing the two age groups shown by the data and the results of the ANOVA test, the most significant impact on the general use of directness strategies was related to the factor of social distance. However, the data showed that even employing direct strategies in Arabic requests is varied in accordance to the changes on the levels of both power status and the degree of imposition. This behaviour was shown in the data through the statistically significant differences in employing the sub-categories of direct strategies.
This chapter also provides more detailed analysis for both inter- and intra-group differences and similarities in their requests across the twelve scenarios. While the two groups showed similarity in request behaviour to hearers with close relationships, they showed differences in their requests to elderly strangers and unknown children in a context of (DI+).
To provide more analysis for the differences in the request behaviour within each age group in accordance with the variation in (DI), a T-test was performed, showing that the younger informants employed different strategies in their requests to child relatives, elderly strangers and unknown children. The statistical analysis on the other hand shows that there was a significant impact of (DI) in the requests of the older participants to hearers in contexts of (DSD).
In the requests to unfamiliar individuals, the impact of gender is significant in most situations (p<0.5). The informants showed different behaviour when they made requests to elderly strangers in both contexts of low and high degree of imposition. The first situation was asking an elderly stranger to swap her/his seat (DSD, DI-) and the second situation was asking an elderly person sitting by mistake to give up the seat (DSD, DI+). The impact of gender was insignificant in the requests to strangers of the same age (requests for information in a shopping mall) (p>0.5). However, the impact of gender was obvious in a context of high degree of imposition (borrowing someone’s mobile in a shopping mall) (p<0.5). The impact of gender segregation was significant when the participants were asked to make requests to elderly strangers because they were required to perform the scenarios while they were accompanied with one of their male relatives (see sections 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2).
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CHAPTER FIVEREQUESTS IN STUDY AND WORK CONTEXTS
This chapter presents the results of the socio-pragmatic analysis of the second part of the role play scenarios in the main study, focusing on the requests in work/study contexts. As mentioned previously, according to certain cultural and religious values, work and study contexts are subject to gender segregation in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, the requests collected in work/study contexts are restricted to female-female interaction.
The chapter presents the analysis of spoken requests by two age groups of Saudi females in work/study contexts to female hearers across contexts that vary in degrees of social distance, power status and the degree of request imposition. As in Chapter Four, the age range is 20-39 for the younger age group and 40-60 for the older age group and the relationship between the interlocutors in the work/study context is represented according to two levels of social distance: close (CSD) and distant (DSD). Each of these levels includes six situations according to the power status S<H, S=H and S>H, and requests imposition: low degree of imposition (DI-) and high degree of imposition (DI+). The scenarios will be discussed in more detail in the following sections.
The main focus of the generated data in each scenario was on the level of directness in Saudi requests in a work or study context. After the discussion of directness in both close and distant relationship contexts, there will follow more analysis for all other linguistic strategies used in conjunction with request strategies for social and cultural purposes i.e. external internal modifiers, forms of address and religious expressions.