Complimenting behaviour in the performance of native speakers of Irish English and Iraqi Arabic: a cross-cultural pragmatics study

The present study seeks to identify and contrast the linguistic patterns used by native speakers of Irish English (NSIrE) and native speakers of Iraqi Arabic (NSIA) in producing the speech behaviour of complimenting, with reference to the influences of contextual variables, such as social distance and status, gender, and cultural values upon the respective groups' pragmatic performance. It also investigates the impact of those same influences upon the pragmatic performance of Iraqi learners of English as a foreign language (IEFLLs). A three-pronged procedure (mixed-methods approach) has been implemented for carrying out the required analyses from the three randomly selected groups of data, with fifty subjects each for the elicitation of pragmalinguistic production of the speech act of compliment giving (CG) and compliment response (CR) in both English and Arabic, plus interviews with another three groups, twenty-five subjects each, conducted on two occasions in Ireland (Limerick) and Iraq (Kut). In order to achieve its objectives, the present study has adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods in its data collection, including a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), interviews, and a content analysis of a textbook. Contrastive data analysis has shown that although complimenting behaviour is a universal phenomenon in world languages, its realisation and production are culture- specific. This is clearly reflected in the pragmatic performance of the three groups of data, i.e., NSIrE, NSIA, and IEFLLs in both CGs and CRs. A detailed description of how the elicited data was collected and analyzed is clearly presented in the conclusions and pedagogical suggestions of the present thesis. A significant conclusion reached in the present study was that pragmatic transfer, which accounts for almost half of the CRs uttered by the IEFLLs, clearly manifests the strong effect of the deep-rooted native speakers‟social norms in the realization of the IEFLLs' strategies of CRs. For example, another result from the interviews has indicated that most of the NSIA interviewees (75%) have declared their pre-conceived worry about a harmful eye, whereas such a superstition is totally alien to the Irish culture. Results of the current study have pedagogically suggested the inclusion of pragmatic instruction in the EFL classes to an extent which makes Iraqi learners of English as a foreign language learn and use their target language both correctly and appropriately. It is hoped that the findings of the current research study fill a lacuna in the cross-cultural, interlanguage pragmatics studies.