The introduction by Habib Abdesslem in the Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics provides an overview of three papers featured in the journal, each dealing with different aspects of applied linguistics. The papers focus on psycholinguistics, contrastive rhetoric, and pragmatics, offering insights into their respective areas of research.
The purpose of this introduction is to contextualize these studies and emphasize their contributions to the field. The introduction covers a psycholinguistic investigation into how native speakers, heritage speakers, and late learners of Arabic process morphologically complex adjectives, a contrastive analysis of discourse connectives in argumentative essays written by students of Arabic and English, and a pragmalinguistic study examining the speech act of refusal across different cultures.
The methodologies mentioned include masked priming for analyzing lexical processing, an open-ended writing task for contrastive rhetoric analysis, and the use of discourse completion tests (DCT) to elicit data on speech acts. These methods were applied to various participant groups, including different types of Arabic speakers and learners of English.
The key findings highlighted in the introduction include differences in how morphological processing occurs in Arabic compared to Indo-European languages, the varying use of discourse connectives by Arabic and English students, and the cultural differences that influence how disagreement and refusals are expressed. These findings suggest that Arabic language processing may require unique approaches and that cross-cultural communication studies must account for differing politeness strategies.
In conclusion, Abdesslem emphasizes the significance of these studies for advancing research in neurolinguistics, contrastive rhetoric, and pragmatics. The introduction encourages further exploration and contributions to these fields, underlining the value of the research presented in this issue of the journal.