Influence of social power on perception of speech act of apology by Jordanian second language speakers

Abstract

Please fill up the following information accurately. (Please use Times New Roman, 12 pt.
Influence of social power on perception of speech act of apology by Jordanian second language speakers
The present study aimed to investigate the influence of social power, as a social hierarchy, on perception of speech act of apology by 40 Jordanian second language speakers (JL2Ss) compared to that of 40 Jordanian non-English speakers (JNESs) and 40 English native speakers (ENSs).   Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) were used to elicit data from the three groups of participants. For data analysis, one way ANOVA, post hoc pair comparisons statistical tests were employed. Similarities and differences between Jordanian Arabic and British English cultures were detected. Social power found to have an impact on Jordanian participants perception significantly higher than ENSs. Moreover, significant mean differences among the three groups regarding their perception of the four context-internal variables were also found. Further, results showed that although JL2Ss are high proficient in English they still lack the required sociopragmatic competence which consequently led to negative sociopragmatic transfer. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications, findings could benefit EFL course designers and teachers to develop EFL curricula and teaching materials in Jordan which may remedy the JL2Ss lack of pragmatic knowledge of the target language and reduce pragmatic failure across cultures.
Information about Author(s)*
Author 1
Author (Last name, First name)	Al-Khaza'leh, Bilal
Affiliated institution (University)	Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
Country	Malaysia
Email address	[e-mail]
Department & Rank	Department of English studies & PhD candidate
Corresponding author (Yes/No) Write only one corresponding author.	Yes
Author 2
Author (Last name, First name)	Zainal Ariff', Tun Nur Afizah
Affiliated institution (University)	Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
Country	Malaysia
Email address	[e-mail]
Department & Rank	Department of English studies & Assistant prof
Corresponding author (Yes/No)	No
Author 3
Author (Last name, First name)	Mohmd Sidek, Harison Hanisa
Affiliated institution (University)	Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
Country	Malaysia
Email address	[e-mail]
Department & Rank	Department of English studies & Associate prof
Corresponding author (Yes/No)	No
Author 4
Author (Last name, First name)
Affiliated institution (University)
Country
Email address
Department & Rank
Corresponding author (Yes/No)

Keywords

• social power,perception,DCT,SRQ

References

1. Al-Adaileh, B. A. M. (2007). The speech act of apology: a linguistic exploration of politeness orientation in British and Jordanian culture. (Doctoral dissertation).University of Leeds. Retrieved March 16, 2016 from http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/202/1/uk_bl_ethos_446510.pdf.
2. Al-Ali, M. N., & Alawneh, R. (2010). Linguistic mitigating devices in American and Jordanian students' requests. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(2), 311-339.
3. Ahar, V., & Eslami-Rasekh, A. (2011). The Effect of Social Status and Size of Imposition on the Gratitude Strategies of Persian and English Speakers. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(1), 120-128.
4. Al-Issa, A. (2003). Sociocultural transfer in L2 speech behaviors: Evidence and motivating factors. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27(5), 581-601.
5. Al-Khresheh, M. (2010). Interlingual interference in the English language word order structure of Jordanian EFL learners. European journal of social sciences, 16(1), 106-113.
6. Al-Momani, H. S. (2009). Caught between two cultures: The realization of requests by Jordanian EFL learners. (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved March 16, 2016 from https://dspace.iup.edu/bitstream/handle/2069/176/Husam%20Al-Momani.pdf?sequence=1.
7. Arghamiri, A., & Sadighi, F. (2013). The impact of metalinguistic knowledge and proficiency level on pragmatic competence of Iranian EFL learners. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World, 4(1), 181-192.
8. Al-Sobh, M. A. (2013). An Analysis of Apology as a Politeness Strategy Expressed by Jordanian University Students. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3(2), 150-154.

9. Aydin, M. (2013). Cross cultural Pragmatics: A study of Apology Speech Acts by Turkish speakers, American English Speakers and Advance Nonnative Speakers of English in Turkey. Retrieved March 16, 2016 from http://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1268&context=etds
10. Al-Zumor, A. W. Q. G. (2011). Apologies in Arabic and English: An inter-language and cross-cultural study. Journal of King Saud University-Languages and Translation, 23(1), 19-28.
11. Banikalef, A. E. A. A., & Maros, M. (2013). Social Beliefs for the Realization of the Speech Acts of Apology among Jordanian EFL Graduate Students. English Linguistics Research, 2(1), 134-145.
12. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. E. (2015). The effect of instruction on pragmatic routines in academic discussion. Language Teaching Research, 19(3), 324-350.
13. Beebe, L.-T. Takahashi, & R. Uliss-Weltz.(1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. On the Development of Communicative Competence in a Second Language. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.
14. Beebe, L., & Zhang Waring, H. (2001). Sociopragmatic vs. pragmalinguistic failure: How useful is the distinction. Paper presented at the annual NYSTESOL Applied Linguistics Winter Conference, New York, NY.
15. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. E. (2015). The effect of instruction on pragmatic routines in academic discussion. Language Teaching Research, 19(3), 324-350.
16. Bataineh, R. F., & Aljamal, M. A. (2014). Watch out and beware: differences in the use of warning between American and Jordanian undergraduate students. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 11(1), 87-111.
17. Bataineh, R. F., & Bataineh, R. F. (2008). A cross-cultural comparison of apologies by native speakers of American English and Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(4), 792-821.
18. Bella, S. (2014). A contrastive study of apologies performed by Greek native speakers and English learners of Greek as a foreign language. Pragmatics, 24(4), 679-713.
19. Bergman, M. L., & Kasper, G. (1993). Perception and performance in native and nonnative apology. Interlanguage pragmatics, 4(1), 82-107.
20. Binasfour, H. S. (2014). Apology strategies: A comparison of Saudi English learners and native speakers of American English: Unpublished master's thesis, southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
21. Blum-Kulka, S. (1982). Learning to say what you mean in a second language: A study of the speech act performance of learners of Hebrew as a second language. Applied Linguistics, 3(1), 29-59.
22. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (Vol. 31): Ablex Pub.
23. Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and Apologies: A Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns(CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196-213.
24. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Vol. 4): Cambridge University Press.
25. Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2013). Strategies, modification and perspective in native speakers’ requests: A comparison of WDCT and naturally occurring requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 53, 21-38.
26. Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
27. Farashaiyan, A., & Hua, T. K. (2012). A cross-cultural comparative study of gratitude strategies between Iranian and Malaysian postgraduate students. Asian Social Science, 8(7), 139-148.
28. Hou, Y.-c. (2006). A Cross-cultural Study of the Perception of Apology—Effect of Contextual Factors, Exposure to the Target Language, Interlocutor Ethnicity and Task Language. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.
29. Ifantidou, E. (2014). Pragmatic Competence and Relevance (Vol. 245): John Benjamins Publishing Company.
30. Jebahi, K. (2011). Tunisian university students’ choice of apology strategies in a discourse completion task. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(2), 648-662.
31. Ji, S. (2008). What do paragraph divisions indicate in narrative texts? Journal of Pragmatics, 40(10), 1719-1730.
32. Kashkouli, Z., & Eslamirasekh, A. (2013). The Effect of Context-External Factors on Context-Internal Factors in Apology Perception: A Case in Iranian Context. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 1590-1599.
33. Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer. Second language research, 8(3), 203-231.
34. Kasper, G., & Dahl, M. (1991). Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in second language acquisition, 13(02), 215-247.
35. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language: Wiley-Blackwell.
36. Kousar, S. (2015). Politeness Orientation in Social Hierarchies in Urdu. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 3(2), 85-96.
37. Lin, M.-F. (2014). An Interlanguage Pragmatic Study on Chinese EFL Learners’ Refusal: Perception and Performance. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(3), 642-653.
38. Luo, X., & Gao, J. (2011). On Pragmatic Failures in Second Language Learning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(3), 283-286.
39. Maeshiba, N., & Yoshinaga, N. K. G. and Ross, S.(1996). Transfer and Proficiency in Interlanguage Apologizing. Speech acts across cultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 155-187.
40. Martínez-Flor, A., & Usó-Juan, E. (2010). Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues (Vol. 26): John Benjamins Publishing.
41. McNamara, T. (2006). Language testing: The social dimension (Vol. 1): John Wiley & Sons.
42. Mirzaei, A., Roohani, A., & Esmaeili, M. (2012). Exploring Pragmalinguistic and Sociopragmatic Variability in Speech Act Production of L2 Learners and Native Speakers. Journal of Teaching Language Skills, 4(3), 79-102.
43. Morkus, N. (2009). The realization of the speech act of refusal in Egyptian Arabic by American learners of Arabic as a foreign language. University of South Florida. Retrieved March 17, 2016 from http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3113&context=etd.
44. Nakhle, M., Naghavi, M., & Razavi, A. (2014). Complaint Behaviors among Native Speakers of Canadian English, Iranian EFL Learners, and Native Speakers of Persian (Contrastive Pragmatic Study). Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 98, 1316-1324.
45. Nureddeen, F. A. (2008). Cross cultural pragmatics: Apology strategies in Sudanese Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(2), 279-306.
46. Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A. (1990). The learning of complex speech act behaviour. TESL Canada Journal, 7(2), 45-65.
47. Rababah, G. (2003). Communication and linguistic problems facing Arab learners of English. Indian journal of applied linguistics, 29(1), 127-142.
48. Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. IRAL-International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 10(1-4), 209-232.
49. Spencer‐Oatey, H., & Franklin, P. (2014). Intercultural interaction: Wiley Online Library.
50. Tabatabaei, S., & Farnia, M. (2015). Learner’s English Proficiency and their Pragmatic Competence of Refusal Speech Acts. Beyond Words, 3(1), 53-77.
51. Takahashi, S. (1996). Pragmatic transferability. Studies in second language acquisition, 18(02), 189-223.
52. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91-112.
53. Trosborg, A. (2010). Pragmatics across languages and cultures (Vol. 7): Walter de Gruyter
54. Wolfson, N. (1989). Perspectives: sociolinguistics and TESOL: Newbury House Publishers Cambridge.