The importance of developing the intercultural and pragmatic competence of learners of colloquial Arabic

Courtesy expressions play an important role in Arabic culture. Therefore, a learner should be aware of them in order to fully master the Arabic language. The current research studies compliment responses in Colloquial Arabic and their use in teaching Arabic as a foreign language. The first part of the research is a comparative ethnographic study on compliment responses in peninsular Spanish and in Lebanese Arabic. Secret recordings were used in order to register these communicative interactions and create a corpus formed with real language samples. In the second part of the study, a corpus of courtesy expressions comprising of all Arabic dialects is built. Formulaic expressions and invocations against the ‘evil eye' are used in all the various Arabic dialects. This shows the relationship between language and culture in Arabic societies and the importance of introducing the pragmatic and intercultural competence when teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language. Keywords: Courtesy expressions, compliment/compliment responses, intercultural and pragmatic competence, colloquial Arabic.