Arabic Invitation Strategies by Iraqis: Social Distance as a Variable

Abstract

The present study investigates invitation speech act strategies employed by Iraqi Arabs in the Iraqi Arabic dialect. A modified version of an open-ended Written Discourse Completion Task was used to collect data from three situations in which the participants were to invite lower-status interlocutors with close, familiar, and distant social distance. Based on Garca's (2008) classification of invitation strategies as head acts and supportive moves, the obtained data were analyzed descriptively. The study reveals that Iraqi Arabs employed 25 types of invitation strategies, which is 12 more than those used in García's (2008) categorization. Head acts were the most preferred strategies used by Iraqi Arabs compared to supportive moves. Iraqi Arabs preferred directness rather than indirectness in making their invitations, showing that they viewed invitations as face-enhancing acts rather than face-threatening acts. Direct strategies were the most dominant among head acts, whereas aggravators from supportive moves were the most utilized ones. It has also been shown that mood derivable (imperative) as a direct strategy, which ranked first on the directness scale, was the most preferred strategy in making invitations across the three levels of social distance, i.e., close, familiar, and distant. Additionally, complimenting as a supportive move was the most frequently employed strategy across the three situations. Some new strategies, which were neither included in  García's (2008) classification nor in the results of other studies, were employed by Iraqi Arabs, such as showing solidarity, addressing terms, indebting by the inviter, requesting a promise, rejecting excuses, warning, insisting, and invoking the name of God. This study will provide non-Iraqi Arabic speakers, who belong to different ethnicities and cultures and speak different languages, with pragmatic knowledge when making invitations in any possible communication with Iraqi Arabs, and consequently, pragmatic failures and misunderstandings will be avoided. Previous studies focused on social status, while social distance has not been given its due importance. The present study focuses on the three levels of social distance.