The realization of the speech act of disagreement by Tunisian nonnative and American native speakers of English

Oct 15, 2026

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The present study investigates how Tunisian non-native English students and American native speakers realize the speech act of disagreement. A discourse completion test (DCT) elicits disagreement strategies from informants, and the produced acts are quantified and qualitatively categorized using Brown and Levinson’s politeness model. The analysis examines variation under social distance and social power, revealing significant native/non-native differences in direct versus indirect strategies. Pedagogical implications are drawn for teaching speech acts and pragmatics.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages33

Reading Time1 h 23 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Literature review

The realization of the speech act of disagreement by Tunisian nonnative and American native speakers of English Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics e-ISSN 2490-4198 Vol. 6, No. 1, May 2021, 60-92 © AJAL [http://www.arjals.com](http://www.arjals.com) Hassen Khammari1, University of Manouba, Tunisia Abstract The present study investigated the production of the speech act of disagreement among Tunisian non-native students of English and American native speakers of English. Discourse completion test (DCT) was used to elicit disagreement strategies by the informants. Non-native informants produced a total of 376 acts and native informants produced 395 acts. The acts were categorized based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Model. The speakers’ performance of disagreement in variation with the contextual factors of Social Distance and Social Power was examined. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results showed that there were significant differences between native and non-native speakers of English with regard to the frequency of direct and indirect strategies of disagreement. Non-native informants used a higher percentage of direct strategies (47%) and a lower percentage of indirect strategies (13%) than their native counterparts, who produced indirect strategies considerably (30%) . NNSE opting for direct disagreement strategies might be attributed to their poor pragmatic and sociolinguistic knowledge of indirect strategies. This work can have pedagogical implications in teaching speech acts and pragmatics. Keywords: Speech acts; disagreement; pragmatics of politeness; transfer. [1](1 Corresponding author: hassenkh08@live.fr)[ Corresponding author:](1 Corresponding author: hassenkh08@live.fr)[ hassenkh08@live.fr](1 Corresponding author: hassenkh08@live.fr) Introduction Pragmatic competence is concerned with the use of language according to context and culture. Any lack in the development of pragmatic competence may lead to cultural misunderstandings and/or communication breakdowns (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993) . Nakajima (1997) notices that acquiring a satisfactory pragmatic competence is the most challenging and complicated part of the target language acquisition process. The reason is that “pragmatic competence cannot be clearly judged as correct or incorrect according to prescriptive rules”(Nakajima, 1997, p. 50) . More and more evidence is gathered to stress the importance of being able “to function within the total meaning system” of the target language (LoCastro, 1986, p. 5) . What generally happens when second or foreign language learners communicate with native speakers of the language they are learning is that they tend to “use the rules of speaking of [their] own speech community or cultural group”(Chick, 1996, p. 332) . In performing a disagreement, a high level of pragmatic competence is necessary to carryout a disagreement felicitously. Acquiring the “rules” of appropriateness is necessary to perform the speech act of disagreement and avoid misunderstandings and communication breakdowns. The present paper seeks to shed light on pragmatic ability development (one of the obstacles to the achievement of language proficiency) and to raise pragmatic awareness among EFL learners and sensitize them about the pragmatic norms that govern the target language. The present paper attempts to answer the following research questions: 1. Do Social Distance and Social Power have an influence on the level of directness in MA Tunisian non-native speakers’ and American native speakers’disagreement strategy selection? 2. Is there evidence of transfer from Tunisian Arabic in Tunisian students’ disagreement responses? Literature review Today, a substantial body of research exists on interlanguage pragmatics. Yet, some speech acts and some cultures have received more attention than others. Studies on apologies (Holmes, 1989; Linnell et al., 1992), refusals (Beebe,Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz

FAQs

What method was used to elicit disagreement strategies in the study?

The study used a discourse completion test (DCT) to elicit disagreement strategies from Tunisian non-native and American native speakers of English.

How did non-native and native speakers differ in disagreement strategy use?

Non-native informants used a higher percentage of direct strategies (47%) and a lower percentage of indirect strategies (13%) than native speakers, who produced indirect strategies considerably (30%).

Which contextual factors were examined for their influence on disagreement directness?

The study examined contextual factors including social distance and social power to see how they affected the level of directness in disagreement strategy selection.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper