This research investigates the adaptation of negative politeness strategies in the requests of Jordanian and Omani students in digital communication. The study employs Brown and Levinson's politeness theory to examine how students from these two cultures use politeness strategies (indirectness, asking questions, apologizing, and minimizing imposition) in writing emails, text messages, and social media interactions. Data were collected from 60 students (30 Jordanian and 30 Omani) through semistructured interviews, surveys, and observational inputs. The study finds variations across cultural expressions. For example, Omani students mostly put their questions in pairs, but they find single questions acceptable, while Jordanian students generally ask for things in single questions. Furthermore, the roles of digital translation tools, such as Google Translate and DeepL, are being studied concerning how they translate politeness strategies, particularly indirectness and hedging. The research found that such machine tools have not done very well in reflecting these pragmatic characteristics but instead, in many cases, lose markers of culture and politeness. Pragmatic adoption of digital translation will expressly enhance future research along with culturally aware translation tools. Future studies should investigate better ways to utilize digital devices in capturing the heterogeneous aspects of politeness across cultures. Moreover, Future researchers can investigate the reasons for misunderstanding the negative politeness strategies by native speakers when they interact with nonnative speakers like Jordanians and Omanis.
Mehawesh et al. (Thu,) studied this question.