Investigating the Request Strategies among the Arab International Students and Malaysian Employees at a University in Malaysia

Abstract:

This paper investigated the ways in which the Arab international students realize requests with special reference to politeness strategies as patterned by Blum-Kulka (1989). The aim was to pragmatically analyze the most preferred request strategies and the types of external modifications by those speakers in the process of making requests in the academic setting at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics (PPBL), National University of Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia. To achieve this, the data was collected and recorded from two observed situations in which the two Arab students were involved in conversations, thus, making requests with two Malaysian employees. It was analyzed based on the model of request strategies by Blum-Kulka (1982) using the frequency of occurrences of such request strategies and external modifications. The results revealed that the speakers most preferred the use of conventional direct requests followed by the conventionally indirect requests and the non- the conventionally indirect requests respectively. Moreover, it was found that the use of reasons and positive politeness expressions used as external modifications made the requests smother and mitigated their effect in such situations.