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You Want to Hear the Magic Word? Inshallah Mihăi Ă

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You Want to Hear the Magic Word? Inshallah Mihăi Ă YOU WANT TO HEAR THE MAGIC WORD? INSHALLAH MIHĂIŢĂ HOREZEANU University of Timişoara and King Khalid University in Abha Abstract: The present paper focuses on how the Arabic expression ‘inshallah’ (i.e. “God willing”) is used in English by Arab speakers and how it is (mis)understood by non-Arab/non-Muslim speakers of English. I start from some general considerations pertaining to intercultural communication, and then proceed to examine how cultural differences can account for communication barriers and failures. The last part of my paper looks at the various communicative functions of ‘inshallah’ from a speech-act theoretic perspective. Keywords: inshallah, intercultural communication, situation-bound utterances, speech acts 1. Introduction That teaching English as a foreign language is full of challenges and rewards may well sound like a trite observation, but I believe that it deserves both special mention and careful consideration when it involves interacting with people from a widely different culture, especially when the socio-cultural setting is not your own. Such a working environment is bound to lend new significances to theoretical constructs, and familiar concepts like pragmatic failures or cultural breakdowns are constantly reinventing themselves. The somewhat contemplative nature of cross-cultural pragmatic findings now gives way to an intercultural- pragmatic approach, where language is used in actual social encounters and cooperation acquires new dimensions, with participants striving to create common ground and mutual understanding. According to Kecskes (2014:13), “[i]ntercultural communication represents a transactional model of communication […] that moves beyond merely understanding or ‘respecting’ cultural differences toward creating a ‘third culture’ that combines elements of each of the participants’ original cultures in novel ways”. Such third cultures or intercultures are the result of altering and blending pre-existing cultural patterns with situationally conditioned new elements. “This process is very similar to linguistic creativity” (Kecskes 2014:87). During my three-year ongoing experience of working with Saudi students, I have been confronted with a wide range of phenomena, some of which have immediate relevance to the applied linguist concerned with the structural aspects of teaching EFL, while others pose problems (or raise issues) of a pragmalinguistic and/or sociopragmatic sort. The distinction between these two terms is due to Kasper (1992) and describes the two ways in which pragmatic transfer manifests itself. The pragmalinguistic type of transfer is more closely related to language, i.e. to the linguistic means by which speech acts and politeness are expressed, whereas the sociopragmatic type reflects the cultural component of communication, i.e. linguistic behaviour which is appropriate from a socio-cultural perspective. As Bou Franch (1998:7-8) remarks, “[t]he teacher will have no problem in correcting pragmalinguistic failure but will have to be cautious and not correct but just point B.A.S. , vol. XXI, 2015 194 out and discuss cases of sociopragmatic failure that reflect the students’ system of values and beliefs about the world”. In other words, some things can be taught, corrected or prescribed, while others must not be imposed. It rests with the teaching practitioner to discern the fine line between the two and proceed accordingly. The present paper focuses on one particular expression from Arabic, inshallah (i.e. “if God wills it”), as used in English sentences and utterances by Arab speakers, including Saudi students as well as Saudi and non-Saudi Arab colleagues at King Khalid University (KKU) in Abha, Saudi Arabia. Moreover – and more interestingly, perhaps – I will look at how this formulaic expression is (mis)understood by non-Arab/non-Muslim speakers of English. 2. Situation-bound utterances In order for the reader to understand the relevance of my chosen linguistic item in the light of my general reflections on the intercultural matters above, I should point out that this expression, which is by no means the only one worth looking at, though probably one of the most intriguing, belongs to the class of situation-bound utterances (henceforth SBU). The term was coined by Kecskes to cover something already under socio-pragmatic scrutiny since the late 1960s (e.g. Goffman 1967). According to Kecskes (2010:3), “SBUs are highly conventionalized, prefabricated pragmatic units whose occurrences are tied to standardized communicative situations”. A thorough description of SBUs is given in Kecskes (2014), where we also read that “situation-bound utterances are especially important because they are reflections of socio-cultural patterns, cultural models and behavioral expectations in a speech community” (2014:72). 2.1. SBUs and culture specificity When making judgements about the culture-specific nature of SBUs, what we have to take into account is not only the existence or non-existence of an SBU in a particular culture, but also what Kecskes (2014:73) calls “situational obligatoriness”. In other words, there are certain occasions when the use of an SBU is appropriate, required or even obligatory in some cultures, while in other cultures this is not the case. One can immediately see how easily pragmatic transfer can occur when all this is ignored. For quick illustration purposes, I will mention the eagerly awaited – if not promptly uttered – mashallah (i.e. “God willed it”), which is an obligatory accompaniment to any compliment in English when addressing an Arab interlocutor. The compliment can be said in appreciation of someone’s personal qualities, achievements, possessions and, very frequently, children. Not uttering this expression renders the speaker’s compliment insincere, gives away his/her feelings of envy and is a very bad omen, since it is primarily said in order to ward off the evil eye – a widespread superstition in the Saudi society. This last aspect appears to be so important that if you are not quick enough in saying mashallah , your Arab partner is sure to say it on your behalf, whereas one of my Romanian colleagues, who also teaches at this university, whenever I grace him with a compliment, would never volunteer to say it, but insist that I say it myself. Me: Ce frumos ţi-au spălat maşina! (“Nice car wash!”) Him: Michael, Michael, te rog spune mashallah. (“Michael, please say mashallah ). 195 WORDS IN CONTEXT I was not at all surprised, therefore, to hear the following brief exchange between one of our students (S) and an American (non-Muslim) teacher (T) in the corridor the other day: S: They called me for an interview at Almarai. (a well-known Saudi business company) T: Mashallah! Other examples of how situational obligatoriness varies across cultures might include: - Să-ţi fie de bine (Romanian, roughly, “May this be for your health”, said after someone has finished eating a meal, especially when you provided the food and in response to your guest thanking you); - Să-l porţi sănătos (Romanian, roughly, “May you wear it in good health”, said when someone has bought or received an article of clothing); - Welcome aboard! (said to someone joining a team, etc.) - (I’ll) talk to you later (i.e. “Good-bye”) Note here that this expression counts as an SBU only when uttered as a leave- taking formula and not as a freely generated utterance: Can I see you for a minute? Sorry, I must be off now, but I’ll talk to you later. In other languages, this difference in meaning, function and speaker’s intention is made obvious by different structures; compare, in Romanian, Vorbim mai târziu (literally, “We’ll talk later”) as a non-SBU equivalent of the utterance above with Mai vorbim (roughly, “We’ll talk again/ some more”) for a corresponding SBU. 2.2. Routines and rituals Within the heterogeneous class of SBUs, Kecskes (2003) makes a useful distinction between situation-bound routines and situation-bound rituals , to which I will refer, for reasons of brevity, as routines and rituals . The first subclass (e.g. nice to meet you , take care , welcome aboard , poftă bună i.e. “enjoy your meal”) is commonly used in secular contexts and in future-oriented cultures, whereas the second ( God bless you , Doamne-ajută i.e. “May God help you/us”, etc., alhamdulillah , i.e. “thanks be to God”, inshallah , etc.) can be used in both secular and religious contexts and are widely preferred in tradition-oriented cultures (e.g. Arabic, Turkish, Chinese or Japanese). As Kecskes (2014:75) remarks, unlike routines, such rituals are to be used in their original form, without any paraphrase or translation. This is why there is little chance, for instance, that an Arab speaker of English will utter anything like “God willing” instead of inshallah . Moreover, the use of rituals, unlike that of routines, is obligatory. 2.3. From ritual to routine Another important difference between rituals and routines is that the latter “generally do not sound sincere, and interlocutors are aware of this” (Kecskes 2014:75). Not surprisingly then, it is SBU rituals that convey information about the set of deep-seated values and beliefs in a certain culture. However, Kecskes (2014) appears to draw the distinction between routines and rituals on mutually exclusive Q R Q S Q P , vol. XXI, 2015 196 terms. What happens when an SBU ritual loses its constitutive attributes? Is frequency of use indicative of the strength of a ritual or of the fact that routine seems to have set in? I direct these difficult questions towards such well- established verbal rituals as alhamdulillah , inshallah or wallah (i.e. “I promise by God that what I’m telling you is true”), which feature abundantly in everyday English, as spoken by and to Saudi students and staff at KKU. While these expressions retain the flavour of untranslated (and non-translatable) rituals, I can reasonably assume that, at least when used by non-Muslim Western speakers, they set out on a taxonomic journey from ritual to routine.
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