PhD Degree Awarded to Ms. Khulood Khaled Al-Adimi in Linguistics
Ms. Khulood Khaled Abdulwali Haidar Al-Adimi was awarded a PhD degree in Linguistics for her dissertation titled: Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Competence in Making Requests: A Comparative Study between Yemeni EFL Learners and Native Speakers of English, which was submitted to the Department of English, Faculty of Languages– Sana’a University. The dissertation defense was held on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
The PhD Viva-Voce Committee, which was formed based on a resolution issued by the Graduate Studies and Scientific Research Council, consisted of the following:
# Committee Members Designation Position
1 Assoc. Prof. Mujeeb Ali Murshid Qasim External Examiner Chair
2 Assoc. Prof. Abdulwadood Ahmed Annuzaili Main Supervisor Representative Member
3 Assoc. Prof. Abdulmalik Mansour Saleh Saif Internal Examiner Member
The dissertation aimed to:
Identify the “head act” request strategies and internal modification devices used by the three groups.
Explore similarities and differences in their request formulations.
Examine the impact of social power and social distance on the choice of request strategies.
Investigate the effect of pragmatic transfer from the native language on the performance of Yemeni learners of English.
The study yielded several key findings summarized as follows:
Significant cross-cultural differences existed in the performance of request acts. Native American English speakers showed a strong preference for conventionally indirect strategies, particularly preparatory inquiry forms, and employed a wide range of lexical and syntactic mitigation devices.
Native Yemeni Arabic speakers relied heavily on direct strategies and frequently used contextual justifications rather than explicit linguistic modification, reflecting Arabic social and cultural norms.
Yemeni learners of English demonstrated an interlanguage pattern combining English-like indirect strategies with Arabic-influenced directness. Although they frequently used conventionally indirect forms, they employed direct strategies far more often than native English speakers and relied extensively on the politeness marker “please,” indicating a limited range of linguistic modification devices.
In light of these findings, the researcher recommended the following:
Conducting further studies using naturally occurring data, longitudinal research designs, and instructional interventions to support the development of pragmatic competence in foreign language learning contexts.
The dissertation defense was attended by a number of academics, researchers, and specialists, students, colleagues, and the researcher’s family.
