Abstract:
The current study investigated the disagreement strategies as realized by young adult native Kabyle speakers. It also examined the influence of the gender of the participants and the social status of the interlocutor on the participants’ choice of strategy. The sample of the study consisted of 25 males and 25 females living in Bejaia, Algeria. To collect the data, the researcher used a written discourse completion task (WDCT). The collected data were analyzed and categorized based on the taxonomy of disagreement strategies established by Ma?z-Arévalo (2014). The findings showed that the participants used two main disagreement strategies (mitigated and strong), which were divided into sub-strategies. In addition, they relied on mitigated disagreement strategies rather than strong ones.
“Giving explanations” was the most common mitigated sub-strategy, and blunt statement of the opposite was the most frequent strong sub-strategy. Moreover, the findings of the study showed that the gender of the participants had an influence on the frequency of disagreement more than the type of strategies selected. Female participants produced slightly more disagreement instances than males. Both genders relied more on mitigated sub-strategies. In addition, the interlocutors’ social status also affected the overall frequency of disagreement strategies, as speakers produced more disagreement strategies when they addressed higher-status interlocutors compared to equal-status and lower-status interlocutors. Nevertheless, social status had little influence on the types of strategies used. Swearing was used to reinforce the speaker's disagreement.
