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The analysis of compliment responses in a number of languages has attracted a growing research interest and information is already available on how native speakers of English and Arabic respond. This allows for the prediction of certain cross-linguistic pragmatic differences that might characterise compliment responses in the case of Arabic-speaking EFL students. Rather than engage in speculation on the matter, the present study investigates this empirically by examining English compliments paid by Kuwaiti undergraduates to their peers and the responses these elicited. The corpus comprised 632 compliment responses, almost two thirds of which were in English, the remainder being nonverbal, Arabic or bilingual. Analysis was carried out to establish frequencies of simple (a single illocution) and complex (two or more illocutions) responses, the types and frequencies of different illocutions, and the influence of native language norms of expression. Results showed the latter to be very strong, detracting from the authentic nature of English responses. Discussion explores the cultural and linguistic bases underlying such responses. It is pointed out that such an analysis provides useful information for cross-linguistic pragmatics and foreign language pedagogy.

The present study investigates the pragmatics of 'inSallah in Jordanian Arabic. It demonstrates that this expression has drifted extensively from its semantic import by acquiring a wide spectrum of illocutions, thus becoming a pragmatically multi-purpose expression. The study further shows that the pragmatic utilizations of 'insällah should be sought within the speech event rather than the isoated speech formula. Consequently, a speech formula is viewed as an operator that acquires differing pragmatic values in various situations. From this arises the diversified pragmatic assignments to 'insällah in wide-ranging contexts.

The present paper shows that while the concept of fatalism is all-pervasive in Arabic, it is kept to a minimum in English. Consequently, the translator into English is unlikely to be able to conserve the fatalism of Arabic expressions. Four areas are used to draw evidence for this cultural barrier: death terms, discourse conditionals, tautological expressions, and proverbial expressions. In most cases, the translator is forced to adopt functional equivalents, despite the fact that fatalism is missed in the functionally corresponding expressions. Résumé: Alors que le concept de fatalisme est omniprésent en langue arabe, il est réduit au minimum en anglais. Aussi le traducteur en anglais ne peut conserver la dimension fataliste des expressions arabes. Quatre exemples rendent manifeste cette barrière culturelle: les termes relatifs à la mort, les formes conditionnelles, les expressions tautologiques et proverbiales. Dans la plupart des cas, le traducteur est contraint de recourir à des équivalents fonctionnels, ce qui n'empêche pas qu'ils ne rendent pas la composante fataliste.