Producing and recognising speech act of promising in Saudi Arabia: a case study at Jouf University

Abstract

The current study investigated the ability of Saudi EFL students in the southern region of Saudi Arabia (hereafter SA) to produce and recognise utterances related to the speech acts of making promises. The qualitative study was conducted at Jouf University. To achieve the objectives set in the study, 10 hypothetical situations adapted from Beebe et al.’s (1990) DCT were selected. These 10 situations expressed the speech acts of promising and imitated real-life situations in SA; These situations were collected orally from 8 female Saudi students through semi-structured interviews (hereafter SSI) conducted with them. In addition, three questions of the SSI and five situational statements were proposed to enhance and enrich the findings. The focus was placed on identifying the various ways of promising when producing a promise in communication. The study’s population for the SSI was chosen from the English Department at Jouf University in Tabarjal’s 3rd and 4th year- 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th levels. The collected data were then transcribed using the NVivo software-12 version and analysed using thematic analysis. The study focused on the various responses to each question provided by each respondent. The findings indicated that Saudi EFL students faced significant difficulties when it comes to recognising the speech act of promising. Specifically, while 45% of students demonstrated the ability to recognise the speech act of promising, the majority of students 55% did not. Additionally, the findings showed that students frequently made unconditional promises rather than conditional promises, refusing promises, or delaying promises. In summary, the analysis revealed that Saudis issue pledges in various ways for various reasons. Indeed, the current study made a contribution to linguistics by focusing on examining speech acts in general and the speech acts of promising in particular by focusing on the prominent ways and reasons of the speech act of promising.