Pragmatic Competence and the Production of Compliment among Saudi EFL Learners and American Native Speakers

This study endeavors to explore the cross-cultural similitudes and contrasts in compliment reactions among Saudi EFL learners(SNNSs) and American Native Speakers (ANSs). It is important in linguistic interaction between native and non-native English speakers to reflect the cultural values of compliment expressions as they are of wide variety in terms of their roles and usages. Intercultural competence is necessary to avoid communication failures, and at the same time, to establish a rich ground for expanded communication between native English speakers and their non-native speakers. The data will be elicited through a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which is embraced and adjusted from Tamimi Sa’d (2015a). The questionnaire consists of 6 real-life academic situations, provoking the speech act of compliment. The data will be categorized as stated by Herbert’s (1986) classification and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The researcher believes significant differences are observed as well as similarities in the choice of compliment response types by both groups of SNNSs and ANSs, as well as male and female SNSs. Moreover, the results reveal some instances of miscommunication in intercultural interactions because the participants might follow their first cultural norms. Therefore, this paper will help to avoid pragmatic failures and improve language teaching and learning.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.