Influence of Social Power and Distance on Request Strategies in Saudi Arabic

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of social power and distance on the strategies involved in performing the speech act of request by native speakers of Saudi Arabic. The participants of this study are 26 males and 8 females; all are undergraduate students enrolled in different disciplines at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. Data for this study was collected through the use of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). The results revealed that the direct strategy is the most preferred strategy employed in making requests by Saudi Arabic native speakers and the nonconventional indirect strategy is the least strategy. It is hoped that this study will facilitate the acquisition of Saudi Arabic pragmatics by non-native speakers in a way to eliminate the miscommunications they may encounter in relation to the sociocultural norms.