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“Could you help me with these bags, brother? My shoulders are falling.” Transfer in IL Requests Performed by Algerian EFL Learners

Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Dendenne, B. (2014). “Could you help me with these bags brother? My shoulders are falling. ” Transfer in interlanguage requests performed by Algerian EFL learners. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 10(2), 29-47. The present study attempts to investigate pragmatic transfer in interlanguage requests performed by Algerian EFL learners. The data of the study was gathered by means of a three-item Discourse Completion Task. The task was administered to two controlling groups of native speakers: Arabic and English and two learner groups at two proficiency levels: low and high. The responses were coded and then analysed by counting the frequency of request strategies and exploring their wording at levels of head acts, request perspective and modification. The findings showed that the performance in Arabic and English exhibited two types of differing politeness systems: positive-face-based and negative-face-based respectively. In learners ’ production, both types of pragmatic transfer were evident. The pragmalinguistic type was operative in the employment of linguistic structures inspired by the mother language and word by word translation. The sociopragmatic type was extant in the employment of the request strategies and the perception of the situational variables that were in line with the learners ’ mother language. In addition to transfer, interlanguage production was affected by lack of pragmatic knowledge, interlanguage-specific features, and language constraints. The factor of language proficiency did not give marked advantage to the high-proficient learners over the low-proficient. The paper also sheds some light on practical implications for intercultural communication and speech acts ’ pedagogy.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1885485127
FWCI: 4.215
Cites: 37
Cited by: 5
Related to: 10