Core Request Strategies among Jordanian Students in an Academic Setting

This study aims to investigate the pragmatics of politeness with reference to the core request strategies used by the Jordanian students in an academic setting. The respondents comprised 45 males and 5 females who are studying English language in the national university of Malaysia. The data was collected using a Discourse Completion Test, which the questionnaire consisted of 14 situations. These were combined with a rating scale to weigh the imposition for each situation. The data was analysed based on CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Project) and the theory of politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987). The results indicated that Jordanian students used a variety of strategies ranging from the most direct to indirect as the following, inquiry strategy, mind strategy, permission strategy, appreciation strategy and preparatory strategy. The preparatory strategy accounted for 335/700 or 47.86% of the total core request strategies used by Jordanian students. This strategy consider as a polite strategy and indirect. This guides us to say that the Jordanian preferred to be polite and indirect. The indirect strategy could also be attributed to their culture and religious values, whereas the use of direct strategies (the imperative) could be attributed to the closeness and the solidarity between the Jordanian students. This research could be extended to investigate the politeness phenomenon in Jordanian family and social contexts in relation to Islamic values.