COMMITMENT/RESPONSIBILITY AVOIDANCE STRATEGIES IN MOROCCAN : ARABIC LANGUAGE USE

Abstract

The study of patterns of message construction, or of language usage simpliciter, has provided a significant means of ingress to some of the most vital aspects of social interaction. This assumption has been the primary motive behind our interest in, and investigation of, the empirically observable, and pervasive speech phenomenon of commitment/responsibility avoidance strategies, specifically among native speakers of Moroccan Arabic. In most societies, respecting one's commitments and upholding one’s responsibilities are regarded as objective measures of moral integrity. Failing in both respects entails serious consequences to be borne on a person's public self-image. Consequently, language users would find it on occasions necessary to avoid committing themselves to the promises and assertions they make, just as they would attempt to avoid their responsibility for blameworthy actions. Politeness considerations and face preservation motives seem to be the overarching purposes for making commitment/responsibility avoidance utterances. The present research work is, therefore, anchored in, and relevant to, two of the major theoretical frameworks in linguistic pragmatics, namely, speech-act and politeness theories. This thesis aims to determine whether native speakers of MA have a tendency to make commitment/responsibility avoidance utterances, or , otherwise, perform self-committing and responsibility-accepting speech-acts, in response to speech situations involving face-threat. It also aims at identifying the realization patterns or output strategies used for performing the language acts under study. Collection of the relevant data is carried out using quantitative instrumentation. The dual-choice questionnaire and the DCT used as data collection methods consist of a varied set of situational prompts, which involve speech acts with different rankings of imposition. Based on the research findings, we have been able to make valid inferences concerning the extent to which the informants' choices are indicative of their tendency to avoid commitment/responsibility. This tendency has been confirmed by the results yielded for most of the situational prompts on the questionnaire, and a clear correlation between the gender, level of education, and age variables is observed as female, illiterate, and older respondents tend to be more avoiding of commitment/responsibility than the remaining groups. Taking responses to Situation (4) (i.e. an information request situation) as an example, we observe that 76% of males against 81% of females have opted for the commitment avoidance utterance choice provided in option (A). Illiterate respondents have shown a similar pattern of responses: 100% of these respondents against 71% of respondents with a university level of education have opted for commitment avoidance response A. Likewise, 100% of respondents aged above 65 against 70% of respondents aged [15-25] have chosen option A in responding to Situation 4. Of note also is that the tendency to avoid commitment/responsibility is relatively low where the degree of imposition on negative face is assessed as being high. Responses to Situation (3) (i.e. the car-borrowing request situation) lend evidence to this finding as only 22% of male respondents against 30% of females have chosen to avoid commitment. We have equally been able to identify a total of 19 pragmatic moves/strategies, and 4 syntactic processes used for making commitment/responsibility avoidance utterances. The implications of the study have a bearing on different fields of interest, including SLA research, and speech act and politeness theories.