History Of Pragmatic Transfer English Language Essay

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It has been found that there are no differences in compliments between Saudi males and native speakers of English. Secondly, when responses to compliments are to be said, differences arise. From the study, it was discovered that Saudi males do not produce target-like compliment responses. Moreover, language proficiency does not play a major role in pragmatic competence. As the I noticed from the responses to compliments that Saudi males whether majoring in English or not, they produce the same responses except that the English teachers group translate the responses literally into English.


Pragmatic transfer is defined as "the influence of learners' pragmatic knowledge of language and culture other than the target language on their comprehension, production, and acquisition of L2 pragmatic information" (Rizk 2003, p. 404).

Pragmatic competence is absolutely essential in face-to-face interactions in a foreign language. Children acquire pragmatic competence in their native language through interaction with their parents or older children, in other words, engagement in contextualized communicative activities. They receive continuous feedback from parents and peers who form appropriate routines, establish rules, and "correct" children's inappropriate behavior. This feedback contributes to the acquisition of the pragmatic skills required to function in their community. In contrast, most adult foreign language learners lack that type of input. Consequently, the classroom becomes the most important, and maybe the only, source of relevant input for the enhancing of their pragmatic competence.


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The importance of the present study arises where People think that ESL Learners must learn just grammar rules and writing styles in classrooms whereas other aspects of the language can be acquired through

experience or watching T.V. Actually, it can be done this way, however, we do not know how much time will be allocated for it and how well learners would acquire semantic meanings without any guidance to make the situations clearer and more intelligible.

Having done this, ESL learners will lack the appropriate ways of communication with native speakers of a particular language or even non-natives in everyday dialogues. In my opinion, linguistic mistakes can be corrected and the person would be considered that he is not grammatically competent. However, semantic or pragmatic mistakes may cause offence to the other person. Additionally, it might lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding which results in communicative breakdown. Basically, communicative breakdown is communicative failure in which conversations halt at this point. When misunderstanding takes place, none of the partners know what to say or how to reply to such expressions. Unawareness of the other's culture is the major cause of this problem. Therefore, teaching pragmatics is fundamental in ESL classes to enable the students speak the target language confidently and appropriately.

Pragmatic competence is as essential and important as linguistic competence. Being linguistically competent does not necessarily means that you are pragmatically competent. In fact, being able to construct grammatically correct sentences does not mean that theses sentences are pragmatically appropriate or even acceptable. I am going to shed a light on all these early mentioned topics, finding out from the result how pragmatic competence is important for SL learners.

Literature review:


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that. That what is meant by pragmatic transfer according to Rizk(2005). There are two kinds of pragmatic transfer: positive which is considered to be a proof of pragmatic universality among languages, and negative transfer which is being not able to understand the target language which always results in pragmatic failure. Negative pragmatic transfer, as Rizk (2003) explains, takes the form of translating some "formulaic expressions/ phrases" functioning to express different speech acts in (L1) to express the equivalent speech act in L2. (p.405). El Samaty (2005) mentions one factor that may influence pragmatic transfer and that is learners' awareness of "what constitutes a language specific or a universal issue" (p.342). Learners would not transfer an L1 pragmatic feature to L2 if they know that it is language specific. In fact, language specific refers to the features or expressions of a language which cannot be used in other languages.

Pragmatic studies which deal with different speech acts have not been conducted till recently. These studies focused on L1 in most cases, however later, L2 and cross-cultural communications have been introduced. The L2 pragmatic transfer researches have shown that in spite of being linguistically competent in a second language, learners are likely to transfer L1 pragmatic rules in their L2 production (El Samaty, 2005). Takahashi and Beebe (1998) theorized that there is a positive relation between L2 proficiency and pragmatic transfer. They argued that more proficient learners tend to transfer L1 socio-cultural norms more than less proficient learners because they have enough control over L2 to express L1 sentiments at a high pragmatic level. Eslami-Rasekh (2004) backs this claim stating that linguistically competent learners do not necessarily possess comparable pragmatic competence. "Even grammatically advanced learners may use language inappropriately and show differences from target-language pragmatic norms".

Â Â  In 1986, Blum-kulka and Olshtain used discourse completion tests to analyze the utterance length of requesting strategies in Hebrew. They collected the data from non-native speakers of Hebrew at three proficiency levels, and they found out that high-intermediate learners produced utterances longer than the utterances of low-intermediate and advanced learners, which was considered by the researchers as pragmatic failure ( Ghawi 2002, p.39).

Compliments in both Arabic (Saudi culture) and American cultures:

Compliments have been defined by a lot of linguists. Compliments in short are praise that are said to people

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to make them happy or to encourage and congratulate them on their success they achieve. Every culture has different types of compliments. Moreover, every culture uses various compliments according to variable situations. Therefore, cultures get distinguished from each other. Many people think that they can pay any kind of compliments to people coming from different cultures claiming that we are giving praise, so it is fine. In fact, it is not for several reasons. Firstly, compliments might be rarely used in a particular culture which people might think that it is a kind of being in love or trying to get the other partner to your side. Secondly, some compliments in a specific culture might be considered insults in other cultures. For instance, we cannot compliment on a girl saying "you are fat" in Arabic or even Malaysian or European cultures whereas the same clause can be understood as a compliment in the African culture.

Saudi culture is a part of the Arabic culture except for very few differences in terms of politeness and some other speech acts. In fact, Saudis usually pay compliments on several things such as appearance, traits, and personal skills. It is not something strange that Saudis frequently give complements; Arabs in general like to pay much praise to each other. It seems that it is purposeful in a way that it keeps the relations among friends and relatives more intimate and it can be a tool sometimes to please somebody whom you feel that you upset her/him. English in Saudi Arabia is considered a foreign language. The medium of instruction at school, colleges and universities is Arabic except in English departments where English is applied as the medium of instruction. Culture is carried and delivered through language, however, since the language is still not completely there, so the culture would not be understood. Therefore, very few people speak English fluently and clearly. In fact, even the ones who speak fluently, they still have some problems with the western (English) culture. Consequently, pragmatic errors will appear in their speech.

Compliments form.



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(1) You look great.

(2) Your car is nice.

(3) Good job.

If we compare the American compliments to the Arabic compliments (Saudi in particular) we will find out that Saudi compliments are longer than the American ones. Consider this example:



The length of the Saudi compliments appears to be related to two features of Arabic discourse: 1) Repetition of almost the same idea with a change in words and.

2) The use of several adjectives in a series.


2 Attributes praised.


Compliment responses

Responses to requests or apology can be easy and limited. These two kinds of speech acts might not differ much in most languages. Additionally, the responses can be shortened by saying either yes or no. However, when it comes to compliment responses a lot of things must be considered such as the kind of the

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Research questions

As I mentioned earlier, the purpose of this study is to examine pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Arabic learners of English(Saudis in particular). Three related research questions emerged:

What are the similarities and differences in compliments and compliments responses between male NSs and Saudi male NNSs of English?

When speaking in English, will Saudis male's compliment responses be closer to Arabic or English?

To what extent language proficiency plays a role in their use of compliment responses?







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Tool: Discourse Completion Test.

The tool consists of 5 scenarios created by the researcher. The subjects are expected to respond to the compliments given in the scenarios. Additionally, observation also has been used to come up with more valid results.

First scenario:




Those who responded in Arabic said "but you are more handsome"/this is because you have a good taste/ really? Swear to God.

The third group who responded in English said "your eyes are beautiful and they see everything beautiful" others responded: "I bought it in the sales, it is so cheap". Just one person said: "thanks, I like it too"

Second scenario




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Third scenario




The first group who responded in Arabic said "thanks, so are you ". Those who responded in English said "but you are more punctual/ I think you are the symbol of punctuality.

Forth scenario:

Your friends are in your house. And then you served them tea. One of your friends complimented on it saying "the tea is very sweet and delicious" you sayâ€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.

Americans responded to compliments with acceptance saying "thank you" some responded with acceptance offering the recipe: "would you like the recipe?

Those who responded in Arabic said:"that is because your taste is sweet and you taste everything sweet/ your taste is distinct in that you know which is delicious and which is nasty.,

Those who responded in English said:" I dipped my sweet finger in it that is why it is sweet". others responded: "but you are much sweeter than the tea".

Fifth scenario:

You solved a very tough equation in the class that no one could do it. Your professor was impressed with you. When you left, your friend paid you a compliment "you are excellent, man"

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Americans responded with comment acceptance: "thanks, but I was studying hard last night" and

others offered their help "do you want me to help you?"

Those who responded in Arabic said "do you really think so? I know you are just complimenting me.

Those who responded in English translate literally from Arabic saying "but you are better"

Sixth scenario:

You redecorated your house in a very eye-catching way. Some visitors came over and paid you a very wonderful compliment saying: "what a beautiful decoration!! You are very tasteful."


Americans simply responded with comment acceptance saying: "thanks a lot, you really made my day" others responded this way: "actually it took me too long"

The second group who responded in Arabic said: "thanks, you are very tasteful as well."

The third group who simply translated from Arabic into English responded "I do not think so. Do you really mean it or just complimenting?" others said "please no compliments, speak the truth; is it beautiful or not?"

Results and findings




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Limitations of the study

The study aimed to find out whether Saudis produce target-like compliment responses or not. In fact, it asserts that there is a problem in terms of responding to compliments. However, it did not state some solutions to such a problematic issue. Therefore, I would suggest a research area for the future to find out some practical solutions to this problem. Moreover, there is another area of research as well which is can we teach pragmatic competence to SL learners as well as we are teaching linguistic competence? Is it possible? How would it be successful to the level of learners? What are the good methods that can be applied to teach pragmatic competence?

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