Level of directness and the use of please in requests in English by native speakers of Arabic and Hebrew

This study explored the effects of the interlocutors' power/social status on the mode of directness and the use of the politeness marker please in the production of requests by advanced L1 Hebrew and L1 Arabic speakers of English. Data were collected by using a Discourse Completion Task. The results showed that the use of direct requests decreased and the use of indirect requests increased in both groups of speakers as the status of the addressee went from lower to higher than the speaker. However, the pattern of influence of the status factor differed between groups in the case of please. Specifically, L1 Arabic speakers exhibited the greatest use of please in FL English when the addressee was either lower or higher in status than the speaker, whereas the L1 Hebrew speakers only exhibited a preference for the use of please when the addressee was lower in status than the speaker. These findings are discussed in terms of the relative influence of the native language and culture, knowledge of the target English language, and in the case of L1 Arabic speakers, the influence of Hebrew as well. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.