Making request strategies by Kurdish migrants, none native speakers and British native speakers

Abstract EN

The present study investigates the difference and similarities of giving request strategy by British native speakers and Kurdish immigrants in the UK.

For this purpose, the data was collected using a discourse completion test (DCT).

Accordingly, 16 participants were involved in this research studying at the Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trend city in the UK.

They were asked to respond to the questions to three different situations in which they carried out the speech act of request.

The data was analyzed by focusing on both indirect and direct level of requesting strategies according to the analytical framework of Blum-Kulka, et al (1989).

Analysis of the data showed that the participants perform similar and few different request strategies according to the social factors (social distance, social power) which are very influential in the choice of polite request strategies by none native speakers.

The results revealed that, when requests are addressed to people in lower positions, Kurdish interlocutors tend to use more indirect request strategies in performing their requests.

The findings have also shown that Kurdish subjects prefer to use conventionally indirect strategies in addressing their friends.

Furthermore, when the listener is in a higher position, none native speakers use more indirect strategies to show their respect and deference.

The responses of this study have shown that Kurdish immigrants who are educated in an English cultural environment are influenced by English linguistic and cultural environment; thus, it is suggested that pedagogical implication to study pragmatics in EFL setting to provide more native like learning sociolinguistic competence in target language.