Linguistic appropriateness and social variables as performed by EFL learners at Sudanese Universities

This paper aims to investigate to what extent EFL learners consider social distance, status and context of formality when addressing their colleagues and professors. The population of the study consists of 182 fourth-year level students at the Universities of Al Fashir, Nyala and Zalingei. The data were collected by using open-ended Discourse Completion Test (DCT), then, the subjects’ responses were analyzed according to their appropriateness with reference to the aforementioned social variables. The results were presented in terms of frequencies and percentages by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study concluded that EFL learners at Sudanese Universities are pragmatically incompetent and accordingly, their performance with reference to the social distance, status and context of formality has been proved to be inappropriate compared with the conventional English speech acts under the investigation. The results also showed that respondents tended to be more direct in addressing distant colleagues and professors and were unable to distinguish between formal and informal social contexts. Moreover, an apparent influence of Arabic and Sudanese culture has been reflected in their responses to some situations.