Expressive Speech Acts in Colloquial Cairene Arabic and American English A Study in Form and Function:

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the expressive speech acts in Colloquial Cairene Arabic (henceforth CCA) and American English (henceforth AE), in an attempt to point out the similarities and differences between them. The data were collected by using a Discourse Completion Task (henceforth DCT) containing fifteen situations which prompt making the speech acts under investigation. The situations included in the DCT involved different representations of three social variables (i.e. social distance, power, and imposition). Native speakers of CCA and AE were invited to complete the DCT forms. The collected data were subject to an analysis of function, which was done by using coding schemes in order to conduct a quantitative analysis andclarify the influence of the social variables (i.e. social distance, power, and imposition) on making this speech act. Additionally, mood and modality were selected as key tools to investigate the forms of the expressive speech acts used in CCA and AE. The results of this study illustrated similarities as well as differences in the types and frequencies of the strategies used to make the speech acts under investigation in CCA and AE.Besides, similarities and differences in the uses of mood and modality.

Key Words: Expressive speech acts; cross-cultural; strategies; mood and modality; CCA; AE