The Linguistic Realization of Disagreements by EFL Egyptian Speakers

Abstract

Due to the lack of sociolinguistic knowledge of the L2, non-native speakers may transfer their linguistic and sociocultural L1 pragmatic norms into the L2. Hence, this could lead to pragmatic failure and intercultural misunderstandings. Thomas (1983: 96-7) argued that grammatical errors may impede communication. Nevertheless, they can be clearly recognized as errors. On the other hand, she added that pragmatic failure, particularly if the speaker has an advanced L2 level, is not easily identified, and the non-native speaker could be stereotyped as impolite or unfriendly. Thus, pragmatic failure is more damaging than grammatical errors. Even though some studies report the positive correlation between L2 pragmatic proficiency and linguistic proficiency (Scarcella, 1979; Trosborg, 1987; Beebe and Takahashi, 1989), other studies demonstrated that high levels of L2 proficiency may not entail high pragmatic competence (Kasper and Blum-Kulka, 1993; Kreutel, 2007). In order to reach a better understanding of native-speaker L1 production, a variety of speech acts have been extensively studied. Nevertheless, the speech act of disagreement has received little attention in the literature, particularly in relation to computer-mediated communication. More specifically, no studies have investigated the speech act of disagreement in social network sites like Facebook or in relation to Egyptian participants. Thus, this paper aims at analyzing naturally occurring disagreements by Egyptian participants with an advanced level of English, in the social networking site Facebook. In addition, it intends to distinguish between the strategies employed depending on the method of data collection, namely the naturally occurring instances in Facebook versus a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). Even though DCTs have been criticized for being “unnatural”, they allow the collection of “the prototype of the variants occurring in the individual‟s actual speech” (Hill et al, 1986: 353).A third objective of the paper is to investigate the differences between American and Egyptian production of disagreement strategies in a DCT. Finally, the present work briefly explores the role of topicin the employment of disagreement strategies.