The Libyan Academy of Graduate Studies

School of Languages

Department of English

An Investigation on the Pragmatic Competence of Libyan EFL

Students at Misurata University

A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English in Partial Fulfilment of

the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

By

Mona Bashir Mohammed Almadani

Supervisor:

Prof. Ibrahim Abukhattala

2017
 DEDICATION

To my beloved father and dear mother,

who have offered me all possible support throughout my life.

i
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout the various stages of writing this thesis, I have been assisted by a number of

unforgettable people who deserve my sincerest gratefulness and appreciation. On the top of

them comes my supervisor, Prof. Ibrahim Abukhatala whose guidance, priceless comments

and advice made the task more enjoyable and much easier. I would also like to thank Dr.

Yousef Alramli, the head of English department for his supportive remarks. I feel indebted

to two native sepeakers of English; Mr. Fergal Hatchell and Mr. Simpson who helped me to

evaluate the students‟ responses in the research tests. I am also grateful to all students at

Misurata University, English department who participated and provided data of the

study.My special thanks to a group of friends and colleagues, Manal khshiem and Hana

Zaabia who supported me a lot, deepest thanks to my friend Fatima who exerted incredible

efforts in handling the statistical part of the data analysis.Last but not least, my heartfelt

thanks go to my husband and children who have sacrificed the outdoor fun of weekend

picnics and the indoor warmth of family gathering due to my constant involvement in the

MA study for over three years.

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 ABSTRACT

Although the knowledge of linguistic forms and functions is an essential component in

language learning process, it is also important for language learners to know when and how

to use these forms appropriately in the target language interaction; learners of a foreign

language have to possess pragmatic competence. The current study aims to investigate the

Libyan EFL (English as a foreign language) students‟ pragmatic ability to use English in

social situations. Three components of pragmatics namely speech acts, implicatures and

pragmatic routines were investigated within this study to evaluate the students‟ level of

pragmatic competence as well as to investigate if there is any cultural impact on their

ability to use language appropriately. Three research instruments were employed to collect

data: a multiple-choice completion task (MDCT), a written discourse completion task

(WDCT), and an oral discourse completion task (ODCT). Forty English major students in

their final year in English department at faculty of Arts participated in the study. The results

revealed that these EFL students‟ ability to recognize and produce contextually appropriate

language was somehow low and needed to be developed; they had some difficulties in

using appropriate linguistic forms and strategies to achieve communicative intentions. The

research findings also provide evidence of the effect of Libyan culture on EFL learners‟

pragmatic ability. Some teaching implications were presented in the conclusion to develop

and to raise EFL students‟ awareness and understanding of pragmatic features.

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List of abbreviations

DCT Discourse Completion Task

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ESL English as a Second Language

FL Foreign Language

ILP Interlanguage Pragmatics

L1 First Language

L2 Second Language

MCDCT Multiple-Choice Discourse completion task

NNS Non-Native Speaker

NS Native Speaker

ODCT Oral Discourse Completion Task

SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

TL Target Language

WDCT Written Discourse Completion Task

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Contents

DEDICATION .................................................................................................................. i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................ ii

ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... iii

List of abbreviations ....................................................................................................... iv

List of tables ................................................................................................................... vii

CHAPTER ONE .............................................................................................................. 1

1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1

1.0 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1

1.1 The Research Problem .............................................................................................. 3
1.2 The Research Objectives........................................................................................... 4
1.3 The Research Questions ............................................................................................ 5
1.4 Significance of the Study .......................................................................................... 5
1.5 Context of the Study ................................................................................................. 5
1.6 The Organization of the Study .................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER TWO ............................................................................................................. 8

REVIEW OF LITERATURE .......................................................................................... 8

2.0 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 8

2.1 Theoretical Background ............................................................................................ 8
2.1.1 Aspects of Pragmatics ...................................................................................... 12
2.1.1.1 Speech Act Theory .................................................................................... 13
2.1.1.2 The Cooperative Principle Theory and Implicature .................................... 16
2.1.1.3 Pragmatic Routines ................................................................................... 19
2.1.2 Pragmatics and Culture .................................................................................... 20
2.1.3 Pragmatic Failure in EFL Context .................................................................... 22
2.2 Previous Empirical Studies on Pragmatic competence. ........................................... 25

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CHAPTER THREE ....................................................................................................... 33

RESEAECH METHODOLOGY .................................................................................. 33

3.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 33

3.1 Research Design ..................................................................................................... 33
3.2 Data Collection Tools ............................................................................................. 34
3.3 Participants ............................................................................................................. 36
3.4 Procedure ............................................................................................................... 37
3.5 Data Analysis ......................................................................................................... 38
CHAPTER FOUR .......................................................................................................... 39

FINDINGS...................................................................................................................... 39

4.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 39

4.1 Quantitative Findings.............................................................................................. 39
4.2 Qualitative findings ................................................................................................ 49
CHAPTER FIVE ........................................................................................................... 55

DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................. 55

5.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 56

5.1 Discussion of the Results ........................................................................................ 56
CHAPTER SIX .............................................................................................................. 63

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 63

6.1 Implications ............................................................................................................ 64

6.2 Limitation of the study............................................................................................ 67
6.3 Suggestion for Further Research ............................................................................. 68
REFRENCES ................................................................................................................. 69

APPENDIX 1.................................................................................................................. 82

APPENDIX 2....................................................................... 92.‫خطأ! اإلشارة المرجعية غير معرّفة‬

APPENDIX 3.................................................................................................................. 94

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 List of tables

Table 1: Means, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values of the scores in the

pragmatic competence test ......................................................................................39

Table 2: The distribution of the scores in the pragmatic competence test .........................40

Table 3: Means, minimum and maximum values of the scores in each section of the

pragmatic competence …….……………………………………………………...41

Table 4: The number of correct and incorrect answers in the implicature section ………42

Table5: The total number and percentage of the answers in the implicature section ........43

Table 6: The number of correct and incorrect answers in the pragmatic routine section ..44

Table 7: The total number of the answers in the pragmatic routines section .....................45

Table 8: Number of correct and incorrect answers in the speech act section ....................47

Table 9: The total number of the answers in the speech act section ..................................48

Table 10: A summary of the participants' correct answers in the whole test…….…49

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 CHAPTER ONE

1. INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

This chapter introduces the topic by giving some definitions of pragmatics and

pragmatic comptence and highlights the research problem, the aims and the significance of

the study. It also states the research questions and gives brief information about the context

of the current study.

English as a Lingua Franca has recently come out as a means of communication

between speakers who have different linguistic backgrounds; which in turn has led English

teaching and learning to become ever more important in non-English speaking countries

including Libya.

Learners of a foreign language are usually taught how the language works in terms

of its different forms and functions, learners mainly try to learn and memorize the

vocabularies and the grammar rules of the target language (hereinafter TL). Dornyei &

Thurell (1991) report that traditional language teaching classrooms aimed at developing

grammatical competence above all. The result of this is that after acquiring vocabulary,

grammar and pronunciation for a long period of time, language learners are still unable to

use what they have learnt appropriately and effectively in social interactions (Cohen 1996).

Learners may have mastered the structures of the language but cannot express their

intention and emotion appropriately as they desire. Therefore, a considerable amount of

1
attention has been recently given to the field of pragmatics which concentrates on the use of

language in social interaction (Thomas 1995).

Pragmatics mainly deals with what is beyond the literal meanings of utterances. In

other words, it is concerned with what is actually meant with an utterance based on the

norms and conventions of a particular society, or context, in which conversation takes

place. Therefore, having a good command of the target language‟s conventions enables the

learner to establish and maintain appropriate communication as well as understanding

others clearly (Yule, 1996). Many researchers (e.g., Brown 1987; Krasner 1999; Kramsch

and Thorne 2002) have reported that mastery of formal properties of a language does not

guarantee the appropriate use of it. Language learners should possess the ability to use

language appropriately in a social context; this ability is called pragmatic competence

(Taguchi, 2009).

Pragmatic competence in EFL/ESL contexts is studied within the field of

interlanguage pragmatics (hereinafter ILP). Research within ILP has mostly concentrated

on learners‟ use of pragmatic aspects such as speech acts, implicature, politeness strategies,

pragmatic routines and conversation structures as well as compared non-native speakers

with native speakers in terms of their pragmatic ability (Kasper & Rose 2002).

Libyan EFL students‟ pragmatic competence has not gained much interest amongst

ILP researchers. And since the ability to use a foreign language appropriately is recognized

as one of the important goals of language learning “… different curricula have noticed that

language learners have to be able to use the conventions of the target language successfully

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in order to participate in a conversation” (Viljamaa , 2012, p. 5), I consider it important to

investigate the level of Libyan EFL students‟ pragmatic competence to find out whether

their ability to use socially appropriate language corresponds to the goals of language

learning.

1.1 The Research Problem

In an EFL environment such as in Libya, it is not easy for learners to surround

themselves with large amounts of the input of the target language. As a result, this may

affect EFL learners‟ pragmatic ability which includes performing various speech acts

efficiently, understanding the intention of the speakers, using the appropriate language in

appropriate situations and following the TL rules of conversations. These skills and rules

may vary across cultures and within cultures, so EFL learners may come across some

pragmatic difficulties when using the TL in social situations. Native speakers often

interpret the violation of such socio-cultural rules as "bad manners" rather than a lack of

pragmatic knowledge (Tanaka 1997, p. 16).

As Orafi & Borg (2009) and Abukhattala (2016) state, curriculum in Libyan schools

and universities is mostly exam-oriented that the emphasis has always been on grammar,

memorizing vocabularies and pronunciation as well as encouraging students to learn the

language but not how to use socially appropriate language in situations that they may

encounter with. Both Libyan teachers and students often pay most of their attention to

developing language accuracy in exams at the expense of the communicative value of

language learning. As a teacher of English for over 12 years, I have realized that most of

3
the students were not culturally competent and their deficiency was obvious in using and

understanding some pragmatic features such as speech acts, implicatures, and pragmatic

routines. They mostly transferred their first language norms of speaking into L2.

Some researchers (e.g., Kasper and Rose, 2002) believe that foreign language

classrooms (such as the case in Libya) have difficulties in providing authentic material

because of that English is a foreign language and as such learners have no exposure to

English. Also limited hours of practice and limited intercultural communication in the

classroom may hinder learners‟ pragmatic ability. In fact, committing some pragmatic

errors by language learners might result in unfavourable outcomes; these errors may hinder

good communication between interlocutors or show speakers being impolite or uncaring.

1.2 The Research Objectives

The objective of the current study is to investigate the level of the Libyan EFL

students‟ pragmatic competence. In particular, it aims to examine the comprehension and

the production of three aspects of pragmatics; namely implicature (implied meaning),

pragmatic routines and speech acts. In other words, it aims to examine the students‟ ability

to understand the implied meanings in social situations, their ability to use appropriate

pragmatic routines in situations and their ability to use different speech acts appropriately

and effectively in social contexts.

This study also aims to investigate whether there is any impact of the Arabic culture on the

production and the comprehension of these three pragmatic aspects.

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1.3 The Research Questions

This study attempts to answer the following questions:

1. What is the level of pragmatic competence of Libyan EFL students in Misurata

University?

2. Does cultural background have any significant impact on their pragmatic ability?

1.4 Significance of the Study

This study will be a significant endeavour to fill the gap of research on teaching and

learning English by providing valuable data regarding the Libyan EFL learners‟ level of

pragmatics competence. Also, it hopes to help curriculum developers, education policy

makers, and textbooks writers to better meet the needs of EFL students to use the target

language appropriately in the socio-cultural settings. Moreover the research will provide

implications and recommendations on how pragmatics can be developed effectively in an

EFL environment.

1.5 Context of the Study

Libya is an Arabic speaking country where English is a foreign language; this is to

say English is not used outside the classrooms at all. Misurata University, where the current

study is conducted, is located in Misurata which is the third biggest city in Libya.

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 English is a compulsory subject in the Libyan education curricula. It is taught from

the fifth primary grade (at the age of ten) till the third year of a secondary school. English is

also studied intensively by students who are enrolled in the English department at Libyan

universities, including Misurata University. English major students at university study

linguistics, literature, applied linguistics and language pedagogy, general Knowledge

courses and Educational courses. Abukhattala (2016) declares that the students‟ level of

English language proficiency is hypothetically around intermediate level when they come

to the university, and they are supposed to arrive at a near-native level of competence by

their last semester..

Libyan teachers tend to focus on the development of students‟ linguistic

competence, ignoring other aspects, including pragmatic competence. And this may lead

Libyan EFL students, even after studying English for several years, failing to use language

appropriately in social interactions, despite the fact that they possess a good mastery of

grammatical rules and vocabulary.

1.6 The Organization of the Study

This dissertation consists of seven chapters:

Chapter one introduces the topic, highlights the problem of the research, the aims

and the significance of the study. It states the research questions and gives brief information

about the context of the current study.

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 Chapter two reviews the literature of relevant issues and definitions regarding

pragmatics in general and pragmatic competence in particular, and discusses the three

aspects of pragmatics which were examined in the current study. It also discusses the

culture and its relation to pragmatics, as well as the pragmatic failure in EFL context..

Besides, it gives a review of empirical studies on EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence and

studies on speech acts, implicature, and pragmatic routines.

Chapter three describes the study design, and the instruments used in the current

study: written discourse completion task (WDCT), multiple-choice discourse completion

task (MDCT) and oral discourse completion task (ODCT). A detailed description of the

procedure of data collection and data analysis are also presented.

Chapter four reports the findings of both collected quantitative and qualitative data.

The data are presented in the form of tables and texts.

Chapter five analyses the findings to answer the research questions. Specifically, it

identifies the students‟ level of pragmatic competence and find out if there is any impact

due to the cultural background of the students.

Chapter six presents the conclusion, the pedagogical implications, limitation of the

study, and provides some suggestions for further research.

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 CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.0 Introduction

There has been a growing focus on the topic of pragmatics and the pragmatic

competence among language teachers and researchers in the past several years. Pragmatic

competence has gained great interest by many scholars (e.g., Levinson 1983; Mey 1993;

Trosborg 2010; Yule, 1996). This chapter is divided into two main sections namely

theoritical back ground and empirical studies on pragmatics . theoritical background section

provides a critical overview and theories of relevant issues regarding pragmatics in general

and pragmatic competence in particular, as well as some key concepts such as cultural

variation and its relation to language use and pragmatic failures. The second section gives a

review of empirical studies on EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence.

2.1 Theoretical Background

In the 1970s, pragmatics has been developed as an important field of research and

became a significance issue in linguistic thinking. Scholars define pragmatics variously

based on wider or narrower dimensions. For instance, Levinson (1983), who is considered

as one of the pioneers in this field, reports that the field of pragmatics concentrates on how

language users can match the utterances with their underlined meaning in a context.

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Further, he maintains that “pragmatics is the study of ability of language users to pair

sentences in the contexts in which they would be appropriate" (P. 24). This suggests that

the study of pragmatics looks into the meaning of language use to identify and distinguish

two intents or meanings in each utterance (or act of verbal communication). One is the

informative intent (i.e. the sentence meaning), and the other is the speaker intended

meaning (Leech, 1983). For example, the utterance “I am hungry,” means that the speaker

feels pangs of hunger as well as he/she intends to request something to eat. According to

this vision, pragmatics studies the context in which an interaction occurs and the intention

of speakers, in addition to the relationship between interlocutors. Equally significant is

when and where the speech event takes place. To illustrate, the same utterance “I am

hungry” can convey a different speech act when it is produced by a beggar in a street, it

would be generally perceived by a passerby as a request for money rather than for food.

(Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000).

Another definition of pragmatics has been offered by Crystal (1985). According to

him “the study of language from the point of view of users, particularly of the choices they

make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effect

their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication” (p. 240).

Noticeably, Crystal‟s view of pragmatics is restricted to the speaker who produces the

utterance, ignoring other important aspects of interaction such as the context. Thus, Yule

(1996) provides a more conclusive definition, as he states that pragmatics is “the study of

meaning as communicated by a speaker or writer and interpreted by a listener or reader”

(p.3). Yule goes on to explain that utterances do not always express the explicit meaning. A

9
speaker, who is delivering his/her message to the hearer, has some intended meanings.

These intended meanings sometimes are not uttered directly, but implicitly for a particular

purpose. As such, according to Yule (1996), pragmatics focuses on what is not explicitly

stated in the utterances and how people interpret those utterances based on situational

contexts. In view of this explanation, pragmatics includes four elements:

First, what people mean by their utterances and what the words in those utterances

might mean literally. Second, how speakers sort out what they need to say in accordance

with the status of whom they are conversing with, and under what circumstances. This

aspect leads to defining pragmatics as the study of contextual meaning. Third, how listeners

make inferences about what is said in order to interpret correctly the speaker‟s intended

meaning. Fourth, the social distance between the listener and the speaker determines how

much needs to be said (Yule, 1996).

Communication among native speakers who share the same culture and language is

full of indirect expressions. Second or foreign Language learners have to understand what

the words conveyed rather than the literal meanings of those words. Thus pragmatic

knowledge enables language users to understand each other in different settings when the

meaning is not clearly stated. The following example (cited from Yuan, 2012) shows how

pragmatic competence is essential to keep the flow of conversation.

A: How is Tom going at school?

B: Ah well…you know what they say… Boys will be boys

A: yeah but girls aren‟t easier… you know what Jess did the other day?

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Speaker B in this conversation does not answer directly how Tom does at school; however

the speaker A understands what is meant. EFL learners may find it difficult to understand

the intended meaning of the sentence “Boys will be boys” since the meaning is not clearly

conveyed. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic

competence (Kasper, 1997).

Pragmatic competence is a very important component for learners to achieve their

goals in communication. According to Hymes (1967), as cited by Zayed, (2014),

communicative competence includes not only the knowledge of linguistic components of

the language (linguistic competence), but also the knowledge of how, when and where this

knowledge is used (pragmatic competence). Canale (1988) reports that pragmatic

competence includes “illocutionary competence, which is the knowledge of the pragmatic

conventions for performing acceptable language functions, and sociolinguistic competence,

which is knowledge of the sociolinguistic conventions for performing language functions

appropriately in a given context” (p, 90).

These two constituents (illocutionary competence and sociolinguistic competence)

were adopted again by Bachman‟s (1990) in the model of language competence, Bachman

considered pragmatic competence as the ability to use the language to express a wide range

of functions, and interpret their illocutionary force in discourse according to the socio-

cultural context in which they are uttered.

More recently, Rose (1999) proposes a working definition of pragmatic

competence, which is extensively accepted by researchers in the field of pragmatics. She

defines the concept as the ability to use available linguistic resources in a contextually

appropriate way. Whereas Barron (2003) defines pragmatic competence as the “knowledge

11
of the linguistic resources available in a given language for realizing particular illocutions,

knowledge of the sequential aspects of speech acts and finally, knowledge of the

appropriate contextual use of the particular languages‟ linguistic resources” (p. 10).

From the above definitions, it can be noted that pragmatic competence has been

defined from two perspectives: “knowledge” and “ability”. Despite the “ability” or

“knowledge” argument, researchers agree that being pragmatically competent involves two

basic components: pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence, while the

former refers to the resources that learners use to perform communicative acts and express

intended meanings, including selection of pragmatic strategies such as directness and

indirectness, routines and a large range of linguistic forms which can intensify or soften

communicative acts, the latter focuses on the social perceptions underlying learners‟

interpretation and performance of communicative action (Kasper & Rose, 2001).

2.1.1 Aspects of Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the subfield of linguistics that studies how language is used in social

interaction. According to Livenson (1983), the study of pragmatics includes at least five

main areas; speech acts, implicature, deixis, presupposition and conversational structure.

One emphasis of research in pragmatics is on language learners‟ ability to use these

pragmatic features (i.e. pragmatic competence). This interest has eventually been developed

into interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), a branch of pragmatics, which is specifically devoted

to how non-native speakers comprehend and produce pragmatic aspects in a target language

(Kasper, 1997).

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 In the field of ILP research, a number of theories and concepts have formed a

framework for empirical investigations of learners‟ pragmatic competence. The theoretical

framework of this study draws on the analysis of the speech act theory, cooperative

principles theory and pragmatic routines to investigate the pragmatic competence of EFL

Libyan learners

2.1.1.1 Speech Act Theory

The notion of speech act has been introduced by Austin, the Oxford philosopher, in

his seminal book How to Do Things with Words (1962). His views are regarded as an

important contribution to the field of pragmatics.

Austin believes that people do not use language to only state something but also to

perform a kind of action. He starts his discussion by introducing several sentences to make

a comparison between what he calls constative utterances and performative utterances. His

theory suggests that performatives are sentences that represent an action; the interlocutor

uses certain words in a certain context to perform certain action. The action, which is

performed when a 'performative utterance' is issued, belongs to what he terms speech acts

such as requesting, promising and refusing or apologizing, whereas utterances that do not

denote performing certain action, are called constative utterances. They are mainly used in

descriptions and assertions. He further discusses how constatives might be performatives as

well. For example the constative sentence “the window is closed" might be a directive to

perform certain action, as the interlocutor wants the window to be opened; in this case, the

constative utterance is regarded as implicit performative. From this example and many

other similar ones, Austin finds out that the distinction between constatives and

13
performatives utterances is not clear-cut and might be overlapped. This leads him to shift to

another classification in order to understand the various acts that sentences may perform;

Austin proposed three classifications of acts:

a) Locutionary act: the act of using words to form sentences (what is said).

b) Illocutionary act: the intended action by the speaker, or the intention behind the

words (what is meant).

C) Perlocutionary act: the effects that an utterance has on thoughts, feelings and

attitudes, or actions of the hearer.

To illustrate, the locutionary act of the utterance, “it is cold” is that a speaker complains or

states something about the temperature. At the same time, it has an illocutionary act with a

force of a request or an offer for closing doors. It also becomes a perlocutionary act when

the listener is persuaded to go and close the door.

Later on Austin‟s ideas have been developed by the American philosopher, Searle

(1969, 1975). Searle claims that Austin‟s classification is based on taxonomy of

performative verbs and so the overlap between categories and within a category is

unavoidable. He argues that speech acts‟ classification needs to be based on illocutionary

acts, but not on performative verbs, and on a system of criteria which is suitable to speech

acts. From this point of view, Searle (1975) proposes five basic categories of illocutionary

acts:

1. Representatives (assertive): speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be

the case or not; e.g., it was a warm day.

2. Declaratives: speech acts that result immediate changes in a particular state; e.g.,

I now pronounce you husband and wife.

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 3. Expressive: speech acts that state the speaker psychological attitude such as

thanking and apologizing; e.g., I am really sorry.

4. Commissives: speech acts that compel the speaker with future deeds like

promising and refusing; e.g., I will be back.

5. Directives: speech acts that are used to make the hearer do something. Such as

requesting e.g., Don‟t touch that.

(Yule 1996, p. 53)

In everyday conversations, the relationship between the actual words spoken and

their underlying purpose (the speaker's intentions) is not always straightforward. This had

led Searle (1975) to distinguish between what he calls direct and indirect speech acts.

According to Yule (1996), direct speech acts have direct relationship between the structure

(form) and the function of an utterance, that is the locution act and the illocution act

coincide each other, e.g., wash the dishes. Whereas indirect speech acts have indirect

relationship between the form and the function of the utterance, in other words the structure

and the function are not matched, e.g., can you wash the dishes?

In fact, the use of direct and indirect speech acts are claimed to be universal (Kasper

and Schmidt, 1996). However Barron (2003) declares that the issue of universality has been

considered controversial in that it doesn‟t account for cultural differences. Languages have

similar sets of speech acts but the realisations and contexts of these acts differ from one

culture to another. Interlocutors have the choice to use the forms they want in the

interaction, but these choices are based on some social conventions. In order to use

different aspects of pragmatics such as speech acts appropriately in the target language, L2

15
learners need to possess knowledge of these different social conventions and develop their

pragmatic ability to use these conventions properly in interactions.

2.1.1.2 The Cooperative Principle Theory and Implicature

Another influential contribution to the development of pragmatics as an independent

discipline has been made by the philosopher Grice (1975). His theory together with those of

Austin‟s and Searle‟s, as have been discussed earlier, inspired greatly the research

conducted in pragmatics (Davies, 2007).

Grice (1975) introduced the cooperative principle to distinguish between sentence-

meaning and speaker meaning. To illustrate, he explained the difference between “what is

said” and “what is meant” in the conversations and the social interactions, for example,

A: Are you coming to the party tonight?

B: My parents are coming for a visit.

A competent speaker of English would have little trouble understanding the

inferring meaning in B‟s reply (that B could not attend the party). To give a logical

explanation for the process of inferring meanings, Grice (1975) formulates the cooperative

principle theory. According to this theory both interlocutors and hearers should speak

cooperatively and mutually accept each other to get meanings across and be understood.

This is to say that participants in the conversation are cooperating with each other. As Yule

(1996) states, Grice‟s principles, together with the four maxims that participants are

expected to obey, is the basis of successful interaction; these maxims are proposed by Grice

16
as basic assumptions or guidelines that speakers follow in a conversation in order to make it

as cooperative as possible:

1. The maxim of Quality: to say only what one believes to be true.

2. The maxim of Quantity: to provide as much information as the listener needs,

neither less nor more.

3. The maxim of Relevance: make your words relevant to the discourse and the

context in which these words occur.

4. The maxim of Manner: be clear and orderly in your talk to avoid ambiguity.

Based on Grice‟s principle and these four maxims, participants of a conversation are

assumed to cooperate with each other to be understood by providing an appropriate amount

of information that is true and relevant to the context, and also being as clear as

possible. For instance:

A: Where are my car keys?

B: They‟re on the table in the dining room.

In the above example, B has answered clearly (Manner), truthfully (Quality), has

given just the exact amount of information (Quantity) and has directly answer A‟s question

(Relation). Thus, B cooperates, obeys the four maxims and says exactly what he/she meant.

However, when one or more of these maxims are violated by the speaker, the

listener attempts to understand what the speaker intends to convey beyond the literal

meaning of the words. For example, the sentence “He is a tiger” violates the maxim of

quality, since the word tiger is not for human. But the hearer assumes that the speaker is

being cooperative and then infers that he/she is trying to say something different from the

literal meaning. He can then figure out that the speaker probably meant to say, “He is

17
aggressive, just like a tiger”. This additional conveyed meaning is what Grice called

implicature.

Grice (1975) defines implicature as “the conveyed meaning of the speaker” (p. 43).

He proposes two different types of implicature; conversational implicature and

conventional implicature. According to him, conventional implicatures do not depend on

social contexts for their interpretation, they are associated with specific words (e.g. but,

even and yet) that result in extra meanings when those words are used. For example, Sami

even helped the little boy to cross the road. This sentence implies that Sami was not

expected to help the boy but he did. The conventional interpretation of the word "even"

creates this implied meaning.

Whereas conversational implicature is a kind of extra meaning which depends

highly on contextual factors and it is not literally conveyed in the utterance. Levinson

(1983, p. 102) gives the following example:

A: Where‟s Bill?

B: There‟s a yellow VW outside Sue‟s house.

In this example, B‟s reply is irrelevant to A‟s question and violates the conversation

maxims. However, interlocutor A understands B‟s implied meaning based on the social

context and on their shared contextual knowledge that Bill owns a yellow VW and might be

at Sue‟s house.

Conversational implicatures have different types such as Idiosyncratic Implicature

Typology and Formulaic Implicature Typology and some of these types may be particularly

difficult or easy for EFL students to understand (Bouton 1994)

18
 Levinson (1983) believes that “the notion of implicature is one of the single most

important ideas in pragmatics.” (p.97). Implicature is the key to explain why speakers are

able to interpret conventionally indirect utterances (Sabater, 2011). For many applied

linguists (e.g., Leech, 1983; Levinson 1983; Yule, 1996), the concept of implicature is

acknowledged as an essential part of pragmatic knowledge that EFL learners should

possess to be able to use the conventions of the target language successfully and to

participate in a conversation.

2.1.1.3 Pragmatic Routines

Pragmatic routines, also known as situational routines, are considered as an

important part of pragmatic knowledge (Roever, 2005). Pragmatic Routines are

conventional expressions that are used in specific situations such as leave-takings, greeting

expressions and question-answer pairings (Roever, 2005). Routine formulae constitute a

substantial part of adult native speaker‟s pragmatic competence, and language learners need

to acquire a sizable repertoire of routines in order to cope efficiently with recurrent and

expanding social situations and discourse requirements (Coulmas, 1981). For example,

“thanks for having me” is a typical pragmatic routine said to the inviter by someone who is

leaving a party,“What brings you here?” is often said by a medical doctor to the patient

when starting a medical interview, and many others such as “here you go” and “sorry for

being late”. Such routines are part of normal interaction and thus, knowledge of the TL‟s

routine formulae is vital to EFL learners as Bardovi-Harlic (2012) states.

19
 Pragmatic routines are universal phenomena, for example, greeting exists in almost

all cultures. However, because cultures differ, there are variations in the use of the routines

which are difficult for learners to understand and sometimes cause misunderstanding,

Barron (2001) states that “… in some cultures pragmatic routines may be required in

situations where in another culture they may not.” (p,167)

The ability to master and use pragmatic routines of a TL is beneficial for EFL

learners, as they provide speech with a proficient and natural flavor. Some of pragmatic

routines, such as “what does it mean” and many others, also help learners to solve some

regular communication problems when they need time to arrange their thoughts and to

prepare the next conversational moves (Coulmas, 1981).

To sum up, these aspects of pragmatics (i.e., speech acts, implicature and routines)

discussed above, present what pragmatics entails as a subfield of linguistics. The

knowledge of these features is essential in normal interaction. The ability to take part in a

conversation involves the ability to use and understand these different aspects of

pragmatics. Thus, pragmatic competence includes the knowledge of all of these aspects.

The learning of some pragmatic features of a new language is often challenging foe EFL

learners since conventions differ greatly between cultures.

2.1.2 Pragmatics and Culture

Many anthropological linguists and scholars (e.g., Brown, 1987; Geertz, 1973),

state that culture and language are inseparable from each other. This implies that a language

is a part of a culture; and it cannot be learnt without referring to its culture.

20
 As has been discussed earlier, some pragmatic aspects such as speech acts, routines

and implicature, are claimed to be universal in that they exist in almost all cultures (Kasper

& Schmidt, 1996). However, as cultures use different languages which underlying different

ethnicities and values, their pragmatic system is likely to be different from each other.

Trosborg (2010) states that what can be appropriate in one culture might be

inappropriate in the other cultures. For example, there are some cultural differences

between Arabic culture and English culture. Hofstede (2005), as cited in Nydell (2012),

states that the Arabic culture is considered to be collectivistic in the sense that “the Arab

people are integrated into strong and cohesive in-group” (P.76). This contrasts with western

cultures such as the American, which is highly individualistic, that is the connection

between individuals is loose. Cultural differences may have an impact on the way of using

language in social contexts.

Many cross-cultural studies have proved that culture has an effect on the way in

which language is used pragmatically. Several studies (e.g Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; Kasper

2001; Alzumor, 2010) have shown that different cultures possess different rules of

appropriateness (i.e., the preferred ways of speaking and the ways in which speech acts are

accomplished). According to Gass and Neu (2006), Speech acts are realized differently

from culture to culture, and these differences may result in misunderstanding and

communication difficulties that range from the humorous to the serious. To illustrate, the

indirectness of speech acts is preferable in many cultures such as in Arabic culture (Sattar

&Lah, 2009; Alzumor, 2010) and this can be considered as inappropriate in some other

cultures such as German, polish and Russian. Ogiermen (2009) states that indirectness in

21
communication increases the hearer‟s interpretive effort and can even lead to perceive a

speaker as a manipulative.

Cultural assumption can also be essential in determining speakers‟ meaning and

inferring implicatures. Pragmatic meaning which includes implicature is closely associated

with culture as Portner (2014) states. He gave an example of two Chinese girls who are

looking at the dessert display in a French restaurant, and one says to the other, “That tart is

not too sweet” She intends this comment as praise of the tart and might implicate that her

friend should order one. This speaker‟s meaning arises from the fact that most of Chinese

people find western desserts too sweet. Among some other cultures, the same comment

(“That tart is not too sweet”) could be interpreted as a criticism, rather than a compliment.

In intercultural communication, interlocutors who are from different cultural

backgrounds may adhere to their own cultural conventions, and speak or behave in the way

they believe is appropriate without paying attention to the fact that it could be appropriate

or not in the target language. Thus, it is commonly acknowledged that if the L2 learners are

not aware of the different cultural pragmatic features, they may get a risk of inter-cultural

pragmatic failure (will be discussed in the next sub-section). Thomas (1983) believes that

the main reason behind any pragmatic failure is the differences between the 'cultures' of the

interlocutors.

2.1.3 Pragmatic Failure in EFL Context

One important source of difficulty and misunderstanding in communication is the

inability to recognize the speaker‟s communicative intention. Thomas (1983, p. 92) uses the

term „pragmatic failure‟ to refer to the inability to recognize what is meant by what is said.

22
It is this kind of error which leads to communication breakdown. Basically, according to

Thomas (1983), there are two types of pragmatic failure in EFL context: pragmalinguistic

and sociopragmatic failures. Pragmalinguistic failure happens because learners respond to

what speakers say rather than what they mean (Kasper, 1984, p.3). For example:

A: I've got some sandwiches ready for you here. I hope it will be enough.

B: Yes, of course it will be enough.

In this example, A does not mean whether the sandwiches are enough or not. A merely tries

to express gratitude. Therefore, B‟s reply seems to be inappropriate; it should be something

like “thank you” or “how thoughtful”. In fact, B has no intention to offend A, but, being

pragmatically incompetent, leads to such a response.

While sociopragmatic failure is related to how the speakers‟ sociological knowledge

influences their interaction; it denotes the breakdown of the social conditions placed on

language in use. Therefore, sociopragmatic decisions are social in the first place rather than

linguistic. The most probable source of sociopragmatic failure might be the learners‟

limited knowledge of the social and cultural values of the TL (Kasper, 1997).

An example of such kind of failure can be seen in the following conversation

between a Libyan student and his English teacher, Miss Helen:

Student: Teacher Helen, how much do you earn per month in our university?

Helen: oh, I‟m fully satisfied.

23
 In this conversation, there are two apparent problems. The first problem involves

the addressing form of the teacher (teacher Helen). In fact, the word „teacher‟ cannot be

used as form of addressing in English whereas it is usually used as an addressing form in

Libya context. The second problem is that the student is pushing his teacher into an

embarrassed situation by asking about personal issue. Some private topics as salary,

religious, ages, martial staus etc. would never appear in Westerners‟ routine conversations.

In fact, both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic failure do not only affect

language production but also affect understanding. Non native speakers may interpret

foreign language conversations by following their own cultural norms, which may not

match the target language norms. Jung (2002) believes that in order to have effective

communication; EFL learners must gain pragmatic knowledge which entails the following

abilities:

1. Ability to carry out speech acts. It is necessary for the learners not only to know how to

select the speech act required in every situation, but also they should be able to choose the

suitable linguistic codification to carry out this speech act.

2. The ability to produce and interpret non-literal meanings beyond words (implicature).

3. The ability to use politeness strategies.

4. The ability to use conversational structure and pragmatic routines for example, taking

turns, pauses, greeting expressions, etc.

5. The ability to use cultural knowledge.

To sum up, the aspects of pragmatics, namely speech acts, implicature, Grice‟s

cooperative maxim and pragmatic routines, discussed above, present what pragmatics

24
entails as a subfield of linguistics. The knowledge and the ability to use these different

aspects of pragmatics are essential in accomplishing successful communication. It is also

discussed that within different languages and cultures, the categories and the realizations of

speech acts may vary, the judgment of implicatures and using routines can differ or can be

perceived in different ways, which may lead to communication breakdown especially in

EFL context.

2.2 Previous Empirical Studies on Pragmatic competence.

Pragmatic competence is a crucial component in conducting a successful

communication; it facilitates matters to interlocutors to convey their communicative

intentions and to understand hidden messages. Considerable amount of research has been

carried out emphasizing the importance of the pragmatic competence among language

learners (e.g. Allami & Naeimi, 2011; Hoffman-Hicks 1992; Hou, 2007; House, 1996; Li

et. al., 2015; Ruan, 2007; Viljamaa, 2012; Wang, 2004; Xu, 2003; Yuan 2012; Zangoei &

Derakhshan, 2014).

Hou (2007) conducted a survey to investigate the pragmatic competence of Chinese

College English learners and to explore the implications of developing the Chinese

learners‟ level of pragmatic competence. In Hou‟s research study, questionnaires were used

to collect data from the participants. Findings showed that the learners‟ levels of pragmatic

competence were much lower than their linguistic levels. According to Hou, the learners‟

low level of pragmatic competence generated misunderstandings and unpleasant emotions

from the side of the listener. Hou in his conclusion related the study‟s finding to the

25
teachers‟ negligence of teaching pragmatic aspects (such as how to use speech acts and

perform politeness strategies) which are very essential factors for EFL learners to be

effective speakers.

Similarly, Li et al. (2015) conducted a study to investigate Chinese EFL learners‟

pragmatic competence in terms of both awareness and production. Three research

instruments were employed to collect data: a multiple-choice discourse completion task

(MDCT), a written discourse completion task (WDCT), and an interview. The results

showed that Chinese EFL learners‟ ability to identify and produce contextually appropriate

language is low. The researchers concluded that their participants had difficulties in using

appropriate strategies and linguistic features to achieve communicative intentions. A very

serious problem that they encountered was the intended meaning and force of different

linguistic forms and strategies. The result of Li et al. (2015) study also provided evidence

that Chinese EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence is still much influenced by Chinese

language and culture.

Another study was conducted by Viljamaa (2012) to examine the pragmatic

competence of EFL Finnish learners of English, and to investigate whether any pragmatic

development can be found between students with different grades at a secondary school.

The researcher tested the learners' ability to use and understand context-situational routines,

implicatures as well as speech acts by using a multiple-choice test.

In contrast with the previous two studies which mentioned above (Hou, 2007 and

Li et al., 2015), the results of Viljamaa‟s study showed that the major level of high

secondary school students‟ pragmatic competence was high. It also showed evidence of

pragmatic development in using pragmatic aspects among the different graders examined in

26
the study. Viljamaa concluded that the developing of pragmatic competence among these

learners correlated positively with the exposure to the target language. He explained that

some of these learners have stayed in English-speaking countries for some years and others

spent a good amount of their free time doing different activities in English. This is to say

that the exposure to a sufficient amount of the input enhances the pragmatic ability for EFL

learners.

Regarding the Arabic context, there are a number of studies which have focused on

the pragmatic competence of EFL learners. For instance, Djail (2012) investigated the

importance of developing the pragmatic competence of EFL Algerian university students of

English and to find out whether they are able to use English properly in different social

situations. Findings of Djail‟s study indicated that these students were not pragmatically

competent; in other words, they could not use the language effectively in different social

situations, and sometimes they failed to understand the intention of the language users.

Djail (2012) related this failure to neglecting pragmatics as a necessary tool for

language learning and that their teachers do not give much focus on the pragmatic aspects

of the English language. Thus, they commit pragmatic errors.

Based on the empirical evidence of these studies and many similar ones, one can

state that it is vitally important for language learners to become familiar with the

pragmatics of the target language in order to avoid miscommunication in real interactions.

In EFL context, Pragmatic competence is an essential area to be investigated to examine the

learners‟ ability of using language effectively.

One major component in the area of evaluating EFL learners‟ pragmatic

competence is the investigation of the appropriateness production and perception of speech

27
acts. Numerous pragmatic studies have been conducted for empirical research purposes to

study the performance of different kind of speech acts by language learners. The relevant

literature on Arabic EFL learners‟ production of speech acts is relatively abundant. For

instance, there are some studies conducted to investigate requests (e.g., Al-Ammar, 2000;

Aribi,2012), apologies (e.g., Al-Ali, 2012; Alzumor 2011), complaint (Osman, 2006; Umar,

2006), offers (e.g., Alqahtani. 2009; Alaoui, 2011), compliment (e.g., Farghal & Al-Khatib,

2001), thanking ( e.g., Bataineh, 2013; Elzeini 2001) and refusals (e.g., Al-Eryani, 2007;

Alshalwai, 1997; Al-kahtani 2005; Mohammed, 2012; Umale, 2011)

A review of some of those studies (e.g., Al-Ammar, 2000; Al-Ali, 2012; Aribi,

2012; Umar, 2006) revealed that Arab learners of English even at advanced levels may rely

on their cultural background when performing speech acts. And they apply their native

language social norms and rules to perform and understand speech acts. The major findings

of those studies also showed that there were some similarities as well as significant

differences between the native speakers of English and EFL Arab learners in terms of the

strategies they utilized to perform speech acts. For instance, Umar‟s study (2006) revealed

that Arab learners didn‟t demonstrate sufficient socio-pragmatic skills that qualify them to

produce appropriate speech acts in a given situation. Further, in his study, Al-Ali (2012)

investigated the speech act of apology made by Saudi EFL learners and native English

speakers. The findings showed that the apology behaviour used by the Arab learners of

English reflected some aspects of their linguistic and cultural background.

Some other studies focused their investigation on the strategies used by EFL Arab

learners when performing speech acts. For instance, Umale (2011) provided a detailed

study of the similarities and differences between the British and the Omani ways of

28
refusing in English. Findings of Umale‟s study showed that the Omani learners used more

direct strategies than the British in refusing requests and offers. The indirect strategy was

only used when they dealt with higher status people by expressing regret and giving reasons

for their refusals. The researcher concluded that in some cases, Omanis participants used

long answers giving a string of reasons and indulged in too many polite words, causing

pragma-linguistic failure. Sattar & Farnia (2014) examined the refusal strategies made by

Arab Iraqi learners. In contrast with Umales‟ study, the findings indicated that the Iraqi

participants preferred to use more indirect strategies (e.g. excuse and regret) than the direct

ones (e.g. No and negative ability _I can‟t) in expressing refusal.

Alzumor (2011), in his study focused on the speech act of apology. He investigated English

apology strategies used by Arab learners of English in India. His study consisted of three

groups; Arab students, American speakers and British speakers. The researcher concluded

that the linguistic realization of apology in the different given situations showed that

English speakers and Arabic speakers assign varied degrees of severity to the same

situation which is attributed to cultural differences.

Some comparative studies were conducted on Arabic context as well. For instance,

Nelson et.al. (2002) investigated similarities and differences between Egyptian Arabic and

American English refusals using a modified Discourse Completion Test. Results indicated

that both groups employed similar semantic formulas in making refusals. They also used a

similar number of direct and indirect formulas. In contrast with Abed (2011) who

investigated Iraqi EFL learners' refusal strategies and compared them with two groups:

(Iraqi native speakers of Arabic and American native speakers of English). The results of

29
Abed‟s study revealed that refusals of Iraqi learners of English were different from both

Arabic and American native speakers.

The EFL learners‟ inappropriate use of speech acts in different social settings and

their choice of inappropriate linguistic forms to realize them is an indication of a lack in

their pragmatic competence. Zayed (2014) conducted a study to investigate Jordanian EFL

teachers‟ and students‟ use of five different speech acts (Apology, compliment, greeting,

request and thanking) in the classrooms. The findings of the study revealed that EFL

teachers and students did not have proper use of any of the examined speech acts. Zayed

(2014) also recommended that that teachers and students alike require more practicing on

how to use the English speech acts appropriately in order to develop their pragmatic

competence.

Although there is a large body of literature in the Arabic context on the importance

of pragmatic competence among EFL learners, most of the studies have centred around

examining only speech acts, ignoring other constructs such as implicatures and/or

pragmatic routines. Some researchers and scholars such as Roever (2005), Yamashita

(2008) and Liu (2010) maintain that it is neither sufficient nor reliable to rely on such

studies to investigate pragmatic competence. It does not seem to be appropriate to use only

few speech act items to test learners‟ pragmatic ability and claim that the learner is at a

certain level. Also, Ziafar & Maftoon (2015) state „pragmatic test with high construct

validity includes all these three constructs‟ (p.49).

Therefore, an approach such as including implicatures and routines besides speech

acts was suggested by Roever (2005), Garcia (2004) and Trosborg (2012) to assess the

30
pragmatic competence level of EFL learners. According to them, this approach to assess the

pragmatic competence level of EFL learners can provide researchers with more applicable

findings.

A number of empirical studies have been carried out in non -Arabic contexts (e.g.,

Bouton, 1994; Garcia, 2004; Lee, 2002; Taguchi, 2002 and Roever, 2012) to examine how

English implicatures and pragmatic routines were interpreted and understood by EFL

learners. Their major findings revealed that the EFL learners‟ ability to figure out the

implied meanings was limited and needed to be developed. For example, Lee (2002)

investigated the ability of Korean learnerers of English with high English proficiency to

interpret conversational implicatures and compared with that of native speakers of English.

She found out that non native speakers of English encountered some difficulties in

interpreting the implicatures as well as there were some differences in the strategies

employed to interpret them by both groups. Some factors such as language learners‟

knowledge of the TL culture that includes personal biases and transfer of knowledge from

the native culture can influence the performance in interpreting implicatures.

Also Bouton (1994) examined the extent to which EFL students can derive the same

message from implicatures as native speakers do. The tool used in the study was the

MCDCT. The results showed that non-native students performed significantly poorer in

interpreting the implicatures than native students. The results also revealed that language

background and cultural background could be factors underlying a person‟s ability to

interpret implicature. Roever (2012) investigated the EFL students‟ knowledge of

pragmatic routines, the results showed that simple formulae, such as “How are you? ─

Fine, thank you” are usually learned very early in the EFL classrooms, whereas often more

31
difficult exchanges are learned gradually or during time spent in the target language

country

Reviewing the literature in this chapter shows that there is more L2 pragmatics

research on speech acts than on any other aspect of pragmatics (Kasper & Rose 2002,

p.134). Implicatures and pragmatic routines have received little attention, especially in the

literature of Arabic context. In other words, most of the previous studies conducted in the

Arabic context are exclusively comparative ones as they have restrictively looked at the

similarities and differences on the realizations of the speech acts between Arab learners of

English and native speakers of English. Further, some previous studies mainly aim to

investigate the strategies used by Arab learners to perform English speech acts. Thus, the

current study attends to fill up the gap in the literature by choosing three essential

components of pragmatic competence, namely speech acts, implicature and pragmatic

routines to investigate the level of EFL Libyan learners‟ pragmatic. In this way both the

EFL learners‟ production and the comprehension of pragmatic aspects are investigated.

Moreover, reviewing the literature demonstrate that there has been little research done in

this area in Libya, which is an additional important reason for this study.

32
 CHAPTER THREE

RESEAECH METHODOLOGY

3.0 Introduction

The assessment of EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence is a challenging task

because of the contextualized nature of pragmatics (Martínez Flor & Usó Juan, 2011;

Viljamaa 2012). Reviewing the literature showed that various data collection methods have

been introduced and developed by researchers (e.g., Hudson, Detmer, & Brown, 1995;

Matsugu, 2014; Roever, 2001, 2005; Yamashita, 2008; Ziafar & Maftoon, 2015). The

decision upon which method(s) to use or which method is the most applicable usually

depends on the specific objectives of the study. This chapter provides a detailed

description of research design , tools and procedure used in the current study.

3.1 Research Design

The present research is designed as a case study conducted at the faculty of Arts in

Misurata. A case study usually focuses on one (or few) instances of particular phenomenon

with a view to providing an in depth account of events or experiences. It has used for a

wide range of purposes in social research and can be categorized into three types; mamely

exploratory, explanatory and descriptive (Yuan, 2012). The current study was exploratory

in that the purpose was to explore the EFL students' pragmatic competence.

33
 The case study approach allows the researcher to use a variety of data and research

methods as a part of investigation, through case study methods a researche is able to go

beyond the quantitive statistical results and qualititative results. Thus to achieve the

objective of this study, a mixed-method within a framework of both qualititive and

quantitive approaches were adopted. Martínez Flor & Usó Juan, (2011) state that

combining both qualitative and quantitative methods in a single study can help in better

understanding research questions and improves the validity of research. It san also help in

analyzing data in form of numbers and words.

3.2 Data Collection Tools

Researchers in the field of pragmatics have used different methods for collecting

data. The most popular and widely used method, either oral or written, has been the

discourse completion task (hereafter DCT), (Felix-Brasdefer, 2010). The reliability and

validity of the DCTs have been affirmed as an effective measure of L2 learners‟ pragmatic

competence by many researchers (e,g., Ahn, 2005; Jianda, 2006; Hudson, Detmer, and

Brown, 1996; Rose, 1997; Yamashita, 1996).

In order to collect both written and oral data, three types of DCT format were

chosen to be used in the current study; written discourse completion task WDCT, multiple-

choice discourse completion task MDCT and oral discourse completion task ODCT.

3.2.1. A written discourse completion task (WDCT) is an instrument that requires

the participants to read a written description of a situation, including factors such as setting,

participant roles, and degree of imposition and asks them to write what they would say in

that situation. In general, DCTs can be used to test both production and comprehension of

34
the different types of pragmatic aspects such as speech acts and politeness. The WDCT

provides learners with an opportunity for a display of knowledge that is precluded for many

non-native speakers by the cognitive demands of face-to-face interaction (Bergman &

Kasper, 1993, p. 101).

In addition, the reliability of the WDCT has been affirmed as a measure of L2 learners‟

pragmatic competence, Jianda (2006) and Roever (2005) explored some methods to

evaluate EFL learners‟ pragmatic competence. Their findings showed satisfactory results

and implied that the internal consistency reliability of the WDCT is highly satisfactory.

3.2.2 The multiple-choice discourse task (MCDCT) resembles the WDCT but

instead of open responses, they have several alternative responses and the respondent has to

choose the most appropriate answer. It has been widely used to test implicature (e.g.,

Bouton, 1988, 1994; Garcia, 2004; Roever, 2001) and routine expressions (Hagiwara,

2007; Roever, 2001). For instance, Roever (2005) developed tests for ESL pragmatic

ability using MCDCTs, to investigate the comprehension of implicature and routines, and

knowledge of speech act strategies. The instruments were pilot-tested several times. Results

showed that the degree of imposition and proficiency caused difficulty in only the speech

act section. However, strong evidence for the validity of the MCDCT was found in the

implicature and routine sections. In addition, MDCTs are very practical in the sense that

they can be used to gather data from a large number of participants.

3.2.3 Oral discourse completion task (ODCT) is used to gather more naturalistic

data, it requires participants to listen to a description of situation, imagine themselves in

that situation and respond orally as if they are in real interaction.

35
 The advantage of both WDCTs and MCDCT is that social and situational variables

can be controlled. In addition, it is possible for the researchers to collect a great amount of

data in a comparatively short amount of time (Yamashita, 2008). However, WDCT and

MCDCThave also been criticized for being artificial in terms of reflecting real

communication (Golato, 2003).

As has been discussed in the literature review pragmatic ability for the language

learner is the ability to comprehend the pragmalinguistic action as a listener and also be

able to produce it as a speaker in the TL and following its cultural norms. In order to

measure learners‟ pragmatic ability in a test, both comprehension and production should be

equally important (Yamashita, 2008). Therefore, the current study aims to examine both

learners‟ production and knowledge of some pragmatic features. The speech act section is a

production questionnaire WDCT & oral DCT, while the implicature and routines are in

multiple-choice formats MCDCT.

3.3 Participants

Participants of the current study were advanced English majors studying at the

faculty of Arts in Misurata. They were fourth-year students (in 7th and 8th semesters) in the

English department. The rationale behind this choice is that fourth year students of English

are supposed to acquire communicative and pragmatic strategies and use these strategies

appropriately in different social contexts. Therefore, (40) English majors (35 females and 5

males) in the 7th and 8th semester are selected as the target respondents in order to

investigate how well they are pragmatically able to use English appropriately in social

situations. Most of them are in their early twenties (20-24). They had been learning English

36
for the duration of around ten years in school and college, and only (3) of them had ever

visited an English speaking country for a period of time.

3.4 Procedure

The data of this study were gathered in two phases. Firstly, students were given a

written pragmatic competence test (appendix 1) to answer. This test consisted of the

multiple choices DCT and the written DCT. The MCDCT was adopted from (Bouton

1994; Rover 2005) and used to investigate the comprehension of implicature and the

knowledge of pragmatic routines. Whereas the WDCT was used to investigate the

production of different types of speech acts (apology, requests, refusal, compliment,

thanking and advice), the situations were adopted from different related studies (Matsugu,

2014; Lihui & Jianbin 2010; Sattar& Lah, 2009).

The test was given to the students in their normal lecture in addition to a small

background questionnaire containing personal questions about students such as age,

semester and gender, (See appendix 1).

Secondly, some of the participants were chosen randomly for the oral DCT to obtain

more natural responses. The oral DCT test (appendix 2) included nine communicative

situations which students are likely to meet in real life contexts. These items were selected

on the basis of an extensive review of literature on pragmatic competence. The students

listened to the situation and asked to respond immediately, the responses were recorded by

the researcher for the sake of analysis.

37
 To evaluate the appropriateness of the responses given by the students in relation to

both the pragmatic competence test and the oral DCT test, two native speakers of English

were requested to rate the tests. They are English teachers working in Tobactus Language

Learning Centre in Misurata. By their assistance, the researcher could determine which of

the participants‟ responses were appropriate and which were not.

3.5 Data Analysis

The data of the current study was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Firstly, the data obtained from the written pragmatic competence test was analyzed

quantitatively with the use of SPSS statistics program (version 18). The number of correct

and incorrect answers in the three sections of the test was examined. The test had 30 items;

every correct answer was given one point while an incorrect answer was give zero. For

those items which were left blank, zero points were given. The overall points of the test

were 30. Therefore, to examine the learners‟ level of pragmatic competence, the means,

standard deviations, minimum and maximum values of the scores in the different sections

of the test were calculated.

Secondly, the responses collected from the oral DCT test were analyzed

qualitatively. Responses were transcribed and then given to a native speaker of English to

rate them as appropriate, acceptable, problematic or unacceptable/inappropriate. The native

speaker was also requested to give some comments on the inappropriate ones.

38
 CHAPTER FOUR

FINDINGS

4.0 Introduction

This chapter presents the results of the data analysis in two sections. The first is a

report on the analyzed data to answer the research questions from the quantitative

perspective. This section includes a statistical description of the participants‟ responses in

the pragmatic competence test. The second section explores the data using a qualitative

analysis of the results of the oral test.

4.1 Quantitative Findings

The obtained data from the written pragmatic competence test was analyzed

quantitatively to evaluate the students‟ level of pragmatic competence. The following table

shows the minimum and maximum scores of the whole test, as well as the mean and the

standard deviation (i.e. the measure of the extent to which the values of the distribution) of

the test scores:

Minimum Maximum Mean of the Standard

score score scores Deviation
Pragmatic test 09 23 17.2 3.4

Table1 _ Means, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values of the

scores in the pragmatic competence test

39
 As discussed in the previous chapter, the written pragmatic competence test contains

30 items (appendix 1); one point was given to each appropriate answer. Thus, the possible

range of the scores was (0/30). As Table 1 presents, none of the participants reached the

maximum score of 30 points in the test since the maximum value of points was (23),

whereas the lowest point was (9). Compared with the total score of 30, the means value of

the test score was (17.2) points, the standard deviation was only (3.4) which mean that the

gained points clustered around the mean. Table 2 shows the scores that the participants got

of in the pragmatic competence test:

Scores Number and percentage

(0/30) of the students
9 1 (2.5%)

11 2 (5%)

12 2 (5%)

13 4 (10%)

14 5 (12.5%)

17 5 (12.5%)

18 4 (10%)

19 3 (7.5%)

20 4 (10%)

21 3 (7.5%)

22 3 (7.5%)

23 4 (10%)

Table2 _ The distribution of the scores in the pragmatic competence test

40
 As Table 2 shows, only 4 students (10%) from 40 students reached the maximum

score (23 points) while only 1 (2.5%) scored the minimum score of (9), 5 students (12.5%)

got (17) and 4 had (14) points.

In general, fourteen students (35 %) answered less than half of the questions correctly (09-

14 points) while twenty-six students (65%) answered more than half of the questions

correctly (17-23 points), however their scores were not relatively high.

The pragmatic competence test has three components; implicature (8 items),

pragmatic routines (8 items) and speech act (14 items). The table below presents in detail

the students‟ scores of each component in the test:

Minimum score Maximum score Means of the

scores
Implicature (08) 01 07 4.1

Pragmatic 02 07 5.5
routines (08)
Speech act (14) 02 12 7.6

Table 3_Means, minimum and maximum values of the scores in each

section of the pragmatic competence

As Table 3 shows, the maximum score in the implicature section was (07) points;

and the minimum score was (1) point. The mean in this section was (4.1) points.

41
Furthermore, 2 students got the score of (7) and only one participant got the minimum score

of (01) points. Table 4 shows that there was some variation in the number of correct and

incorrect answers produced by the participants in the different test questions in the

implicature section:

Implicature Number of correct Number of incorrect

answers Answers

Item 1 36 04

Item 2 16 24

Item 3 17 23

Item 4 28 12

Item 5 11 29

Item 6 12 28

Item 7 26 14

Item 8 15 25

Total 161 159

Table 4 _ the number of correct and incorrect answers in the implicature section

Item 1 in the implicature section (Do you know where Frank is, Sarah? – Well I

heard music from his room earlier) was answered correctly by the majority of the

participants. Likewise, two items 4, 7 (see appendix 1) were answered accurately by (28,

26) participants respectively. The question items that got the most incorrect answers by the

42
participants were items number (5 and 6); items number 5 was indirect criticism (How did

you like Derek‟s essay? – Well I think it was well-typed). Whereas item 6 violated the

maxim of relation (“Do fish swim?” – He thinks they will surely get a low grade).

The remaining items 2, 3 and 8 were answered incorrectly by a number of

participants; item 2 which was a type of indirect criticism implicature: (How do you like

what you‟re having?” Ted: “Well, let‟s just say it‟s colorful.), was answered incorrectly by

24 participants (60%). Item 3 demanded the understanding of idiosyncratic implicature was

answered incorrectly by 23 participants (57.5%). Whereas item 8 violates the quality

maxim: (_“What did Brian sing?” _ I‟m not sure, but Matt was playing “My wild Irish

Rose”) was answered incorrectly by 25 participants (62%).

Altogether, the total number of the answers in the implicature section was 320. The correct

answers were only 161, which constitute 50.3% of the total answers as it is presented in

Table5:

The total number correct answers incorrect answers

of answers n % n %
320 161 50.3% 159 49.7%

n = number
% = percentage

Table5_ the total number and percentage of the answers in the

implicature section

43
 As for the second section of the test (pragmatic routine section), the mean of the

section was (5.5) as it is shown in Table 3; and this indicates that pragmatic routines section

got higher points compared with the implicature section. The maximum score as (7) and the

minimum was (02), there were a great variation in the answers of the pragmatic routine

items, the following table (Table 6) shows the number of correct and incorrect answers in

this section:

Pragmatic Number of correct Number of incorrect

routines answers Answers

Item 1 17 13

Item 2 24 16

Item 3 24 16

Item 4 13 27

Item 5 34 06

Item 6 22 28

Item 7 37 03

Item 8 24 16

Total 195 125

Table 6_ The number of correct and incorrect answers in the pragmatic

routine section

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 The item which got the most correct answer was item (7) which required replying

an apology: (In a crowded street, a woman steps on your foot. She says “I‟m sorry”. What

would you probably say?), this item was answered correctly by participants (92%). Also

item question number (5) produced relatively good number of correct answers; it was about

how Claudia would leave a message on the phone‟s roommate answer to tell her friend

something (see appendix 1).

Whereas the item that got the most incorrect answer was item number 4: (Ted is

inviting his friend: “I‟m having a little party tomorrow night at my place.”How would Ted

probably go on?). The appropriate response to this situation was (Do you think you could

make it?”), which was chosen by a few numbers of participants. Item number 1: (Tom

ordered a meal in a restaurant and the waitress just brought it. She asks him if he wants to

order something else. What would the waitress probably say?), was also somewhat

problematic for the participants since this item was answered incorrectly by 17 participants.

Item questions number 2, 3 and 8 (see appendix1) were answered incorrectly by 16

participants (40%).

The overall answer of this section was 320, Table 7 shows that the number of correct

answers produced by all participants was 195; which was about (61%) of the total answer:

The total number correct answers incorrect answers

of answers n % n %
320 195 60.9% 125 39.1%

n= number %= percentage

Table 7_ the total number of the answers in the pragmatic routines section

45
 Regarding the speech act section, it had 14 items of different kinds of speech acts

(namely refusal, request, greeting, apology, thanking, promise, inviting and compliment).

This section was a written task, the participants were asked to write what they would find

suitable to say in a given situation. The items were evaluated according to which was

appropriate answer or acceptable () and which were not acceptable ().

The mean of the scores in this section was (7.6), the scores ranged from 2 to 12

points. Three participants got only 2 points whereas five participants reached the maximum

score of 12 points. About 53% of the participants answered more than half of the questions

correctly.

Table 8 shows the overall numbers of the correct and incorrect answers in the

speech act section. The item which got most incorrect answers was item number 14; it was

about how to respond a compliment: (You have bought a new mobile phone. Your friend

has looked at it and tried some functions, s/he says: “Wow, how smart! My mobile does not

have such functions). Most of the participants‟ responses were a kind of thanking or

offering to give the mobile to the speaker such as: (take it if you want is yours) or (I will

buy you one). Whereas the appropriate answers which were given by the two native

speakers (raters) were (I know!, why don‟t you buy one of this) or ( Yeah I really love it ,

maybe you should buy one!).

Item question number 7 also got a considerable incorrect answers, it was about how

to greet your English friend on a rainy day: (You meet your classmate who comes from

London on a rainy day. You greet him by commenting on the weather. What would you

46
probably say). Most of the participants commented by considering the rainy weather as a

wonderful weather (oh nice weather, isn‟t it) and (it is good to see you in a nice rainy day).

The native speakers who evaluated the responses considered this kind of response as an

inappropriate way of greeting.

Items Type of speech act The number of The number of

correct answers Incorrect answers
1 Refusal 20 20
2 Refusal 25 15
3 Refusal 24 16
4 Request 25 15
5 Request 26 14
6 Greeting 19 21
7 Greeting 10 30
8 Apology 29 11
9 Apology 31 09
10 Thanking 27 13
11 Inviting 21 19
12 Promise 23 17
13 Advice 17 23
14 Compliment‟s 07 33
Response
Total 304 256

Table 8_ Number of correct and incorrect answers in the speech act section.

47
 Table 8 also shows that the participants‟ performance was excellent in two test

items (item 8 and 9 apology) since approximately 77 % of them answered these items

correctly. Items 1,2 and 3 contained a situation in which the participants had to refuse the

speaker‟s request /offer, more than half of the answers were considered appropriate . Item

12 was answered incorrectly by 42% of the participants; it included a situation in which

you give promise to your teacher to be ready next class. By contrast, the question items

number 13 was answered correctly by 42% of the participants, it was about how to advice

to your friend. Only the apology items (8 and 9) were answered correctly by a relatively

good number of participants (77.8%). The items with approximately 62.7 % correct

answers contained situations that demanded making requests (item 4 and 5), situation 4

demanding to carry out a request to a waiter in restaurant and (item 5) demanded

performing a request to professor at university.

Altogether, the total number of the responses was 560. The appropriate answers

were 304 which constitute 54.2% of the total answers.

The total number correct answers incorrect answers

of answers n % n %
560 304 54.2% 256 45.8%

n= number
%= percentage

Table 9_ the total number of the answers in the speech act section

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 To sum up, Table 10 shows the number and the percentage of all participants‟

correct answers in the all three sections of the test. The number of the correct answers was

(660) which constitute 55.1% of the overall answers (1200), this percentage shows a clear

statistic description of the level of the students in the pragmatic competence test:

Components of correct answers correct answers

the test n %
Implicature 161/320 50.3%

Pragmatic 195/320 60.9%

routines

Speech acts 304/560 54.2%

The whole
pragmatic 660/1200 55.1%
competence test

Table 10_A summary of the participants' correct answers in the whole test

4.2 Qualitative findings

Responses for the oral DCT (see appendix 3) were analyzed qualitatively. The oral

DCT (Appendix 2) consisted of different situations in which the participants were asked to

answer them orally. Their responses were judged by an English native speaker as

appropriate, problematic or inappropriate.

The inappropriate responses were analyzed and classified into four categories. They

are cultural transfer, misuse of the linguistic forms, inappropriate strategies and

insufficient linguistic and pragmatic knowledge.

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1. Cultural transfer: Some participants based on their home cultural knowledge to

respond some situations; such as when asked to respond to the situation of leave-taking,

situation 2: (you come across one of your classmate; he greets you and inquires about

something. You answered him and wanted to leave. What would you say?). Some students

responded:

Any other services!

Okay, any other help you need.

Well anything else.

These three responses and some other similar ones (see appendix 3) were considered

problematic by the evaluator of the test and caused miscommunication among interlocutors

from different cultures. Libyan people usually say “aya khedmah” which literally means in

English “any service” when they intend to close conversation and want to leave. Such a

reply may not be understood by English native speakers as an expression of leave taking.

When asked to respond to Situation 7 (replying a compliment about new dress),

some phrases again related to their cultural background were used and responded

inappropriately. They used some expressions that are usually utilized in the same situation

in Libyan daily conversations, examples are:

Oh thanks, it is yours.

Oh you love it, please take it.

It is not so expensive, if you want it, I will give it to you.

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 I will buy you one dear if you want.

No, it is not. Your dress is more beautiful.

Such these kinds of responses are not common in English. As Ishihara & Cohen (2014)

state that English native speakers usually accept the compliment gladly and say “thank you,

it is so kind/sweet/nice of you” or they elaborated positively such as “I bought it from that

shop”, “this colour is my favorite” or “l love yours too”.

2. The misuse of the linguistic forms: Some responses showed lack of linguistic

competence among participants. This is to say that participants used some inappropriate

expressions which may lead to misinterpretations, for example, in responding to situation 1

(refusing your professor request to fill up a questionnaire), some participants refused by

saying:

I am happy to help you sir but I am in a hurry.

Oh Dr. I love questionnaires but I have a lecture right now.

It is my pleasure to do this but my father is waiting… mmm I have to go

home.

I have the honor to do this for you my teacher but you know these days I m

busy in studying.

These responses were considered as problematic by the evaluator, because the first

part of the speech showed that the speakers accepted to fill the questionnaire. In such cases,

it is more appropriate to use subjunctive mood such as “ I would be happy to .... But...)

51
 Similarly in situation 6 (your friend arrived late to an important lecture. You were

the presenter and you were account on his/her presence to give you a support on an

important matter. After the lecture what would you say to him/her), some participants‟

responses were considered as inappropriate and led to misinterpretations because of the

improper choice of some linguistic forms, such as:

Thanks dear for your coming!

O they always say to come late is better than never, but today if you never

come is better.

3. The inappropriate strategies: Some participants used direct strategy in which indirect

strategy is preferable to use such as in situation 1 (refusing a professor request). Also more

direct strategies were used in situation 4 which was a request to borrow a pen from a

stranger.

Some other responses were considered as problematic in the apology situation due

to the lack of certain strategies. The participants in situation 9 apologized by saying:

I‟m so so sorry I lost your book, I didn‟t know where I left it, mmm you

know everyone forgets.

Oh, Dr. lost your book while I was on the bus.

I am so sorry Dr I do not know how that happened.

I am so sorry; your book has lost by accident.

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 Such these responses were considered problematic because they did not follow the

most appropriate taxonomy of apology strategies [explicit apology expression+

explanation+ acknowledgment of responsibility+ a promise of forbearance] Holmes (1990).

Those responses contained only apology expressions and explanations which were not

enough to treat the situation. The participants had been expected to acknowledge the

responsibility and give suggestions on how they can rectify the fault of losing the

professor‟s book.

4. The insufficient linguistic and pragmatic knowledge: some participants didn‟t know

how to utilize the speech acts and the pragmatic routines needed in some situations; they

also were not able to choose the suitable linguistic codification to carry out some speech

acts. One of the participants said in the compliment-response situation (situation 7) “I will

say nothing I will only smile because I don‟t know what is the correct way to reply a

compliment in English”

Some participants made some grammatical mistakes and used poor vocabularies

which may lead to misinterpretations or blocked the conversation. Others did not know the

meaning of some expressions such as in situation 10 “Is Pope Catholic” which is

commonly used by English native speakers to mean” surely yes”

In situation 3 most of the participants responded by saying “yes” to the negative

structured question: “Aren‟t you coming along with us”. However, those who answered

correctly by saying “No” tried to make promises to come by saying “No, i may try to come”

and “mm maybe, I will see” (see Apendix3). The evaluator commented that using “maybe”

53
in such a situation might cause misunderstanding about whether the person is refusing the

invitation or not.

Several responses to the situation 4, which was about how to request a pen from a

stranger, were regarded as problematic:

If you had a pen with you, i need it.

Can you give me your pen if you have?

I need your pen please.

In addition, some responses to situation 5 “you want to send a phone message to

your English teacher who has been absent for three lectures. What would you say” showed

the inability of the participants to use language appropriately as well as rely on their native

language in using some expressions:

Hello sir. Where are you? We miss you and get busy on you!

Hello sir. We worried of you? You were absent for 3 classes.

Hello and how are you? You were absent 3 lectures. Are you Ok?

Hello, I want to ask about you, what happened with you.

Some other participants misunderstood the intended meaning and replied “yes, he is” in

situation 8 which was:

Ali: “do you like linguistics?”

54
 Sam: “well let‟s just say that I don‟t jump for joy before the class.

Does Ali like linguistics?

To summarize, the qualitative analysis showed that the participants had tried to vary

their language to be more polite. However, they had difficulties in using appropriate

strategies and linguistic elements to achieve communicative intentions. A very serious

difficulty they had was the lack of understanding of pragmatic rules in language and how to

use them effectively.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

DISCUSSION

5.0 Introduction

The pragmatic competence of Libyan EFL students was investigated within the

current study. The results, obtained from both written and oral pragmatic competence tests,

were presented in the previous chapter. This chapter discusses these results in order to find

answers to the research questions:

1. What is the level of pragmatic competence of Libyan EFL students in Misurata

University?

2. Does cultural background have any significance impact on their pragmatic

ability?

5.1 Discussion of the Results

The participants' pragmatic competence level was judged by their scores in the

written pragmatic competence test in addition to their performance in the oral pragmatic

test. The pragmatic tests contained three components; namely implicature, pragmatic

routines and speech acts.

Regarding the evaluation of the students‟ knowledge and understanding of

implicatures, the results showed that the mean score of the implicature section was 4.1 out

56
of 8 and the correct answers were 161, which constitute 50.3% of the total answers. In other

words, about half of the total items were answered incorrectly. This result can be compared

to Roever‟s result (2005) and Bouton (1994), as the implicature items used in the current

study‟s test and those two studies were the same. In Roever‟s study, learners answered

60.41 % of the impliacture items correctly which was somewhat higher than the score of

the current study‟s participants (50.3%), Bouton as well found that Japanese learners of

English answered 73 % of the implicature items correctly which also was a relatively

higher than the current study‟s result in the implicature section.

The number of incorrect answers in the implicature section also showed that the

implicature items, which contained indirect criticism, were the most difficult for the

students, such as (item 5, appendix 1). The students were expected to comprehend what a

professor intended to mean by commenting on an irrelevant element of a students‟ essay.

It is also clearly observed that most of the students were not able to make a correct

inference of the given implicatures in the test because they seemed to rely on a literal

translation strategy. For example, some students in the multiple-choice DCT chose the

alternatives that present the surface meaning of the given utterances, and this may have led

them to fail in realizing the intended meaning of the sentences. On the other hand, students

could simply interpret the implicature items that based on logical reasoning, for example in

situation (1) a great number of students could easily arrive at the correct assumption that

Frank was in his room because of the loud music. Apparently, this kind of conversational

implicature, which appears to be logically universal in its interpretation, was less difficult

for EFL students.

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 It is also observed that some participants could not make any sense of some

situations because of their limitation of lexical meaning. Such as the expression in situation

10 in the oral DCT “Is the Pope Catholic?”, most of the participants showed no knowledge

about the word “Pope” or even “Catholic”. This expression is used as a response by native

speakers of English to imply that the answer to the question was “obviously, yes”. Some

students asked about the meaning of this expression since they have grasped neither the

linguistic nor the cultural background of it. This may explain why the students are not able

to make satisfactory scores of the implicature in the written DCT.

To put it briefly, the results of the implicature section indicated the students‟ ability

to interpret and understand impicatures is limited, and both linquistic and cultural

background are factors underlying a person‟s ability to interpret implicature.

Regarding the section of the pragmatic routines, the results obtained revealed that

the mean score was 5.5 and the number of correct answers given by participants was 195 ;

which constitute (61%) of the entire answers. This result was to some extent close to

Roever‟s (2005) result in the pragmatic routine section, which was (59.5%). Comparing

students‟ responses in this section, it is apparent that the students found some difficulties in

understanding some pragmatic routines more than others. The formulae „Do you think you

could make it?‟ was the appropriate answer to the given invitation for attending a party in

situation(4), it was chosen by very few students, whereas as the formulae „Say that again,

please‟ in the phone situation(6), and „No thanks, I‟m full‟ in situations (3) were chosen

correctly by most of the students. This proves what Roever (2012) argued in his study (see

58
literature review chapter) that some routines could be easily recognized and learned by EFL

students than others.

The result obtained from the speech acts section showed that the number of correct

answers given by the students was 304 out of 560; this number constitutes 54% of the total

answers (see Table3). The students participated in the present study showed their awareness

of the social distance relations between them and the addresses in most of the situations, so

they sometimes exaggerated using polite words which made the utterance obsequious. Also

they used long answers and a lot of reasons attached even if the situation didn‟t require any

justifications, as in the case of situation (3), which was about refusing to lend money.

The analysis of the participants‟ responses in the speech act section also revealed

that the students were guided by certain home cultural norms and thinking when they use

different kind of speech acts in English, they may subconsciously apply these norms to the

target language while communicating, for example the given responses to the situation (6)

in the written pragmatic competence test (about greeting your English friend at dinner

time) illustrated that the students were reliant on their L1 cultural norms and beliefs. In

Libya, when you meet friends around dinnertime it is acceptable to greet them by an

invitation to share food or by asking whether they have had dinner or not yet. So, the

students gave lot of responses such as “hi dear come and have a dinner with us?” or “hello

dear if you haven‟t had a dinner yet come and share it with me?” However, native English

speakers do not usually ask such private questions when greeting each other even at dinner-

time as commented by the raters of the tests.

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 Other illustration of the influence of the L1 cultural norms and thinking was the

item of responding to a compliment “Wow, how smart! My mobile does not have such

functions” this item produced the most incorrect answers as shown in (Table8). Most of the

participants‟ responses were a kind of thanking or offers to give the mobile to the speaker.

Native speakers of English usually accept the compliment gladly and then they tried to

elaborate positively such as saying “I bought it from X shop” or “why don‟t you buy one”.

A similar kind of cultural influence was found in the situation of (compliment-response) in

the oral test. Some students‟ responses showed literal translation of Arabic formulaic

expressions used as compliment responses such as “no it‟s not, you only compliment me!”,

“Your eyes are beautiful” and “I‟m your pupil” such expressions are commonly used by

Libyan speakers to respond a compliment in Arabic in an attempt to show modesty and

avoid self-praise. However, these expressions were not always suitable to utilize as a

compliment-response in English.

Students relied to a greater extent on their L1 pragmatic ability when

communicating in the L2, they assumed some pragmatic principles to be universal and can

be applied to the target language, and situation (7) clearly illustrated that. The situation was

about how greeting your English friend on a rainy day. Most of the participants greeted the

friend by considering seeing him/her in a rainy weather was a wonderful thing “oh nice to

see you in such a beautiful weather” or “it seems you come from London with heavy rain!”

The two native speakers who evaluated the responses considered these kinds of responses

inappropriate answers, they commented on this situation by saying that rainy weather is not

enjoyable to meet friends “Oh! Lousy day” and “hello dear, what a terrible weather!”

60
 Moreover, the analysis of some students‟ responses, in both written and oral tests,

seems to indicate that most of students relied on using limited strategies in different

situations, the ability modals (can/could) seemed to be the most preferred by the students to

make requests, apologies exaggerated using polite words which made the utterance and

advice. This might indicate that the students are not familiar with other types of strategies

used in some formal situations such as “would you mind if”. Also, they failed to produce

the “acknowledgment of responsibility” and “offer of repair” strategy in the apology

situations, which were considered as a vital strategy in apology taxonomy, (Holmes, 1990).

Therefore, one might be justified in claiming that, in addition to being unfamiliar

with the L2 cultural norms; the students also lack knowledge of appropriate strategies that

they can apply in more formally demanding situations.

To sum up, the discussion above revealed that the pragmatic competence‟s level of

the Libyan EFL students at Misurata University is relatively not good and it needs to be

developed. Students seem to possess a limited knowledge of the understanding and

production of the pragmatic aspects included in the tests. Libyan EFL students appear to be

insecure and choose to rely on their L1 cultural background to make judgments in terms of

what is meant rather than what is said, students also have inadequate ability to produce

socially appropriate language in a particular situation where one is communicating as well

as performing a specific sort of speech act.

As has been noted from the data obtained from the participants, the pragmatic

knowledge of the Libyan EFL students need to be expanded, also they need to made

61
familiar with L2 pragmatic techniques and strategies in order to accomplish the

communication goals and completing tasks efficiently through suitable and appropriate

language.

62
 CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION

This study investigated the current level of pragmatic competence of some Libyan

EFL students at English department/ Misurata University in terms of their comprehension

and production of pragmatic aspects, namely implicatures, pragmatic routines and speech

acts. Considering the data obtained from both written and oral pragmatic competence tests,

the level of these participants' pragmatic competence is somewhat low and needs to be

developed. Their pragmatic knowledge has to be expanded, as building up pragmatic

knowledge is an essential component of the ability to produce appropriate language in

social contexts.

Participants in this study, who are in their final year majoring English at Misurata

university, still have difficulties in adhering to foreign social and pragmatic conventions

while communicating English due to their lack of pragmatic knowledge and cultural

information associated with the target language. Perhaps more to the point, a lack of cross-

cultural awareness can be a severe hindrance in the understanding of a message which is

linguistically accurate or comprehensible. Data provide explanation for the kinds of

pragmatic errors they commit most frequently and what kinds of pragmatic knowledge they

lack most.

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 One interpretation of the Libyan students‟ pragmatic deficiency could be the

unavailability of pragmatic knowledge in the materials that provided to them as EFL

learners. Despite the many years of studying English in schools and college, Libyan

students are not able to use the language in social and communicative situations

appropriately; this lack of authentic input might be the leading factor to such a disappointed

outcome. In Libya, students don‟t have a sufficient opportunity to expose themselves to

authentic material of English to acquire knowledge, text books and the instructions of their

teachers are their major sources to build up their English language proficiency. However it

seems that English materials and curricula in Libya are mostly selected in terms of their

literal value, for the purpose of practicing grammatical items and improving the student‟s

reading ability, they may not well designed to help of cultivating the student‟s pragmatic

competence.

Many scholars and researchers (Barron 2001; Kasper 2001; Mohammed 2012) have

proved that the teaching of pragmatics facilitates the learners‟ sense of being able to find

socially appropriate language for the situations that they may encounter.

6.1 Implications

The findings have indicated that participants have inadequate pragmatic knowledge

and lack of cultural information of the TL which both have resulted in committing some

pragmatic errors in communication. Some implications for teaching pragmatic features

have been included in many of the studies in the field of second language acquisition (e.g.,

64
Holmes & Brown 1976, Kasper 1996; Olshtain & Cohen 1991; Rose 1997; Shankulie,

2012), they all highlight the need to provide EFL students with sufficient knowledge of

cross-cultural differences in communication in order to develop pragmatic ability and to

function appropriately in foreign language interactions.

One way of developing learners‟ pragmatic competence can be the teaching of the

target language in Context. In the traditional teaching process, EFL teachers usually

concentrate on explaining the meanings and pronunciations of the utterances and don‟t pay

much attention to the context in which the utterances are said. As a result, students can utter

different sentences and know clearly their semantic meanings, but they cannot use them

appropriately in social situations. Students in most cases try to rely on their own

understanding and translation, however, due to the cultural difference cross languages, the

students‟ judgments and translation may not fulfil the objective and the intention of the

communication. Therefore, teachers have to pay much more attention to the context, to

when, where and to whom students can use an utterance instead of regarding it only as an

English equivalent of their native language utterance.

Another way is the Exposure to Authentic Materials in the classrooms. Authentic

materials such as songs, web pages, radio & TV broadcasts, short films, leaflets and

posters, present EFL students with real language as it is used by native speakers, and

provide them with valid linguistic data for their natural acquisition process. Once they get

into contact with plenty of authentic materials, they can imitate the manners of native

speakers, and use the language in the same way native speakers use, and, step by step, sense

of appropriateness will be formed. Rose (1997) encourages teachers to use short films to

65
help raising students‟ pragmatic knowledge and to serve as a source of examples for

pragmatic features such as speech acts. Films and videos can be a good representation of

language use in real situations.

Some researchers (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig et. al, 1991, kasper 1997) have proved that

one of the most effective ways of developing pragmatic competence in EFL class is to

provide students with sufficient opportunities to practice their pragmatic knowledge. It is

not enough to provide learners only with relevant pragmatic input; what is more important

is to give them opportunities to practice what they have learnt in the classrooms. According

to Kasper (1997), practice requires student-centered interaction in the classrooms, this is to

say that students take alternating discourse roles as speaker and hearer, yet different types

of tasks in the classrooms should be also concerned with participants' social relationships

and include some communicative acts as opening and closing conversations, expressing

emotive responses as in thanking and apologizing, or influencing the other person's course

of action as in requesting and offering. Furthermore, activities such as role-play, simulation,

and drama can engage students in different social roles and speech events. Such activities

provide opportunities for EFL students to practice the wide range of pragmatic and

sociolinguistic knowledge and unconsciously began using them socially in real

communication.

Some other activities can be a class discussion in which learners compare certain

functions in their native culture to the same in the target language and recognize the

cultural differences. Teachers should take both accuracy and appropriateness into

consideration while conducting the discussion task. For example, the teacher may choose

66
the speech act of compliment as a topic under discussion in the class and asked students to

collect natural data from movies, novels or TV about the performance of this speech act.

Then in class, students analyze their data, summarize their findings and present it to their

groups and together try to observe the strategies and linguistic forms by which

complimenting is accomplished (what formulae are used, and what additional means of

performing compliments are employed by native speakers of English). Also, after

observing some examples, students may examine in which contexts the various ways of

performing compliments are used.

Furthermore, intensive training courses for in-service teachers of English should be

provided by the education policy to enhance their teaching and linguistic skills.

In brief, to master a foreign language successfully, learners should develop

pragmatic competence in addition to the communicative competence. Besides emphasizing

other aspects of the TL, teachers should encourage EFL learners to pay more attention to

how to use language appropriately in different contexts and help them see the language in

context, raise consciousness of the role of pragmatics, and explain the function pragmatics

in specific communicative events.

6.2 Limitation of the study

One limitation can be that the test measured only three aspects of pragmatics, which

are implicature, situational routines and speech acts. It was not possible, within the scope of

the current study, to examine all the aspects of pragmatics or the production of these

67
features. In spite of the limitations, this study represents one of the first attempts to

measure Libyan learners‟ pragmatic competence.

6.3 Suggestion for Further Research

Future research can investigate the influence of the current learning environment in

Libya on the acquisition of the L2 pragmatics of English, such as the syllabi, course design

and teacher beliefs and practices, Moreover, the factors contributing to the learning process

can also be investigated, such as the effect of different instructional methods and individual

variables in order to determine how L2 pragmatic competence can be promoted.

68
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