The Speech Act of Thanking as a Compliment Response as used by the Arab Speakers of English –a Comparative Intercultural Study

&nbsp; <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 2.85pt 0pt; direction: rtl; text-indent: 33.15pt; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">This pragmatic study investigated the speech act of thanking as a compliment response as used by non-native speakers of English. The study is an attempt to find whether different cultural backgrounds, specializations, levels of evaluation and the gender of the speakers affect their use of the speech act of thanking as a compliment response.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 2.85pt 0pt; direction: rtl; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">The researcher adopted a discourse completion test (DCT) in both Arabic and English as the tool of the study in order to reach the&nbsp; answers of&nbsp; the following questions: </p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 2.85pt 0pt; direction: rtl; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">1-&nbsp; Are there any significant differences in the ways people from different </p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">cultural backgrounds realize the speech act of thanking? </p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">There are significant differences in the ways Arab learners of English and native speakers of English use the speech act of thanking due to the differences in their cultural backgrounds.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">2- Are there differences in the way non-native speakers from different </p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">specializations (English majors, scientific stream students, literary stream students, and vocational stream students) use the speech act of thanking as a compliment response?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">&nbsp;There are significant differences in the ways Arab learners of English use the speech act of thanking due to the differences in their specializations.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">3- Does the gender of the speaker affect their use of the speech act of </p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">thanking as a compliment response?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">There are no significant differences in the ways Arab learners of English use the speech act of thanking due to the gender of the speakers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">4- Does the level of evaluation affect the non-native speakers' use of the</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">&nbsp;speech act of thanking as a compliment response?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">There are significant differences in the ways Arab speakers of English use the speech act of thanking due to their proficiency levels.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt; direction: rtl; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: rtl; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: 28pt; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: justify" align="justify">The study falls into five chapters. Chapter one introduces the problem, the aims, the significance, the limitations and the methods of the study. Chapter two gives a review of literature written on the previous studies on pragmatics and speech acts, mainly compliments and thanking. Chapter Three provides the methodology and the tools used to find the results of the study. Chapter Four shows the findings of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) in addition to discussing and comparing them to the other studies in other languages. Chapter Five gives a summary and conclusions and provides recommendations and suggestions for further studies.&nbsp;</p>