Urban Hijazi Kafhala: Saudi Cultural Pragmatic Schema

Hijazi Arabic (hereto forth UHA) is a Saudi dialect that has received considerable scholarly interest as of late. Research into HA has focused on its idiomatic expressions (Al-Jahdali, Idioms of body parts in the Hijazi dialect of Arabic: a study based on cognitive semantics. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leicester. Leicester.figshare.com. Repository. https://hdl.handle.net/2381/9951, 2010), speech acts of gratitude expression and responses to it (Altalhi, Speech acts of thanking and thanking responses by Hijazi females. An Master’s thesis. Ball State University, Muncie. Repository. http://liblink.bsu.edu/catkey/1777241, 2014), loan words (Alahmadi, Int J Engl Linguist 5(6):34–58. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v5n6p34, 2015), intralingual translation (Alwazna, J Psycholinguist Res 49:571–582. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09697-5, 2020), and language attitudes (Alahmadi, Adv Lang Lit Stud 7(2):249–256. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.2p.249, 2016). However, the pragmatic features of Hijazi Arabic have been minimally engaged. The present study investigates the linguistic phenomenon of Urban Hijazi Kafhala (hereto forth UHK): a part of the politeness system within the group that speaks Hijazi. It seeks to identify some of its linguistic forms, its purposes, and the factors affecting it. In addition, it aims to develop an understanding of the Hijazi pragmatic cultural schema rooted in this linguistic phenomenon by employing Mey’s (J Pragmat 42(11):2882–2888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.06.009, 2010) pragmatic act theory and Sharifian’s (Cultural linguistics: cultural conceptualisations and language, vol 8. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam. https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.8, 2017) pragmatic cultural schema analysis. Data for this study was collected using online survey questionnaires, the researchers’ knowledge as emic observers of Hijazi culture, and discussions with four Hijazi speakers to validate the data. Findings indicate that the most significant factors affecting Urban Hijazi Kafhala include the participants’ role, social status, social distance, frequency of contact, age, and gender. The cultural pragmeme schemas mainly revolved around five central themes: expressions of feeling, health and well-being, comments and/or inquiry about recurrent life events, the weather, and compliments.