Saudis in intercultural communication: bridging gaps in pragmatic competence
Publication Date
July 28, 2026
Creator
Yasir Mohammed A Alwulayi
Abstract
The increasing global interconnectedness and English's dominance as an international language have highlighted the need for pragmatic competence in second and foreign language education. While much emphasis has previously been placed on the development of grammar and vocabulary, there is now wide recognition that effective communication also requires mastery of pragmatic norms. From an inter-language pragmatic perspective, this study identifies and compares apologies, complaints, and refusals strategies and semantic formulas performed by Saudi EFL/ESL learners compared with ones performed by Saudi monolingual speakers of Arabic and British English native speakers as control groups. It aims to shed light on this topic by discovering four main points: First, it identifies and compare the types of semantic formulas used in the speech acts of complaints, apologies, and refusals across British English native speakers, Saudi Arabic monolinguals, Saudi EFL learners, and Saudi ESL learners. Second, it examines the structural organization of these speech acts within and across participant groups. Third, this study investigates how address terms influence the expression of these speech acts in each cultural and linguistic group. Fourth, it assesses the extent to which contextual factors, particularly social distance and imposition degree, influence participants’ speech act performance. This study adopts a comparative, cross-sectional, and qualitative-quantitative (mixed-methods) research design. This study uses a descriptive and analytical approach, utilizing Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) to collect data and systematically categorize linguistic responses. The key findings of this study show that pragmatic competence is both culturally situated and developmentally influenced. Although native speakers and ESL participants demonstrated flexible and contextually rich pragmatic strategies, EFL participants showed limited variation and sociopragmatic control. Saudi Arabic participants showed complex and culturally consistent strategies rooted in shared values and relational communication. These results affirm the need to address pragmatics explicitly in L2 education, especially in EFL contexts where authentic exposure is limited.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Chalupnik, Malgorzata
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
UoN Repository URI
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Alwulayi, Yasir, 20405575, Second.pdf
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