An-Najah Staff

This study consists Of two major sections: In section one, I provide a literature review on the notion of indirectness in broader terms and in Arabic discourse.
I strongly believe that this notion is reconstructed and formed by the participants in the process of communication. In my analysis of the research on indirectness in Arabic discourse, I point out some of the inadequacies that pertain to the mechanisms that have been applied to the notion of indirectness. For instance, the studies that have been done on Arabic speech patterns indicate that Arabic-speaking individuals have a tendency to use certain rhetorical devices such as exaggeration, repetition, and assertion that make their discourse patterns indirect to their Anglophone interlocutors. (See, Gudykunst & Kim, 1997,1984; Hamady, 1960; Patai, 1973; Almaney & Alwan, 1982; Hall, 1976, 1959,198-2; Zahama, 1995; Levine, 1985; Shouby, 1951; Hitti, 1958; Chenje, 1965; Cohen, 1987). These studies attribute such indirectness in Arabic-speech patterns to both cultural and linguistic reasons.

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