The Use of Discourse Connectives in the Written Academic Discourse of Students Majoring in Arabic and their Peers Majoring in English

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper

The present paper explores the use of connectives in the persuasive discourse of 30 Tunisian third-year English majors and 30 Tunisian third-year Arabic majors. The study aims to assess the potential impact of Arabic rhetoric on Tunisians’ EFL writing. A quantitative analysis of students’ Arabic and English essays on the same argumentative task identifies additive connectives as predominant at clause and sentence levels and reveals their overuse in Arabic productions. Causal connectives follow in both corpora, while repertoires remain limited and comparable.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time1 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Contrastive Rhetoric background

Link to discourse connectives

Review of the literature

Terminological distinctions

Pragmatic markers and functions

Discourse markers classification

Distinguishing connectives vs. markers

The Use of Discourse Connectivesin the Written Academic Discourse of Students Majoring in Arabic and their Peers Majoring in English Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics e-ISSN 2490-4198 Vol. 6, No. 1, May 2021, 32-59 © AJAL [http://www.arjals.com/](http://www.arjals.com/) Ons Abdi1 Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, University of Kairouan, Tunisia Abstract The present paper explores the use of connectives in the persuasive discourse of 30 Tunisian third-year English majors and 30 Tunisian third-year Arabic majors. The study aims to look at the potential impact of Arabic rhetoric on Tunisians' EFL writing. A quantitative analysis of the students' Arabic and English essays on the same argumentative task shows the predominance of additive connectives at the clause and sentence levels and their overuse in Arabic productions. Causal connectives are the second most used category in both Arabic and English corpora. The two groups also showed comparable limited repertoires. A qualitative analysis of the data disclosed further similarities and differences in the ways connectives are used, combined and misused. Keywords: discourse connectives, contrastive rhetoric, EFL, Arabic, argumentation. 1 Corresponding author: [ons.abdi@flshk.u-kairouan.tn](ons.abdi@flshk.u-kairouan.tn) Introduction Arab learners' English writing has been investigated in the context of Contrastive Rhetoric, a research area concerned with accounting for the influence of the learners’L1 on their ESL/EFL writing. Based on the assumption that the learners' cultural background and native rhetoric negatively impact their English writing, Contrastive Rhetoric (henceforth CR) has been criticized for its subjectivity in considering British and/or American standard English as the ultimate norm against which all other varieties are weighed. Kubota (1999, 2001), for instance, highlights CR's tendency to exoticize the native culture, language and rhetoric of ESL students against a superior native English Self. Within the framework of World Englishes, Kachru (1995) criticized CR's prescriptive strain and essentialist view which do not recognize the pluralism of the Outer and Expanding Circles' varieties. Instead, the English model used in the Inner Circle is considered the only acceptable alternative, especially in academic discourse. CR research on Arabs’ ESL/EFL writing reported its peculiarity as compared to native speakers' writing. The differences between native speakers' and Arab leaners'English written productions were accounted for with reference to the possible influence of Arabic rhetoric and culture, both portrayed in the literature as residually oral. One of these differences lies in the use of discourse connectives. My paper proposes to investigate the influence of Arabic rhetoric on Tunisian students’ use of connectives in their argumentative writing in both English and Arabic. In the first section, discourse connectives are defined and distinguished from other related terms. This is followed by a review of the related literature, namely studies on the additive character of Arabic rhetoric and its influence on Arabs’ use of connectives. In the second section, the methodology used in the study is detailed and the data analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Last, the results are discussed, and conclusions are drawn. Review of the literature Discourse connectives are referred to, in the literature, by different appellations. These include, but are not limited to, pragmatic markers, discourse connectives, discourse markers and discourse particles. Often used interchangeably, these designations, numerous and diverse, gave rise to a terminological confusion. One way of distinguishing between these concepts is to categorize them from general to specific. Pragmatic markers (henceforth PMs) are described as being the most generic of the aforementioned categories (Fraser, 1999, 2006, 2009) . According to Fraser (2009), they are

FAQs

What is the main research focus of the paper?

The paper investigates how Arabic rhetoric influences Tunisian students’ use of discourse connectives in argumentative writing in both English and Arabic.

How was the study conducted and what did the quantitative analysis examine?

It analyzed essays produced by 30 Tunisian third-year English majors and 30 Tunisian third-year Arabic majors on the same argumentative task, using quantitative methods to identify connective categories and usage patterns.

Which connective category was found to be most frequently used in both groups?

Additive connectives were predominant at both clause and sentence levels, with evidence of overuse in Arabic productions.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper