YOU WANT TO HEAR THE MAGIC WORD? INSHALLAH

Abstract

According to Kecskes (2014:13), "[ijntercultural 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". To illustrate this cultural dichotomy, I can think of how the meaning of what is said in a culture ranked as high context varies significantly, according to such contextual features as speaker, listener, setting (formal vs. informal), time, place, etc. [...]the meaning of a message can be affected by the participants' social status, gender, race, religion, etc. According to the propositional content condition in Searle (1969: 57), "In expressing that p, S predicates a future act A of S". Other authors, however, believe that there is another difference between promises and threats, besides the "negative" aspect of the latter. [...]according to Tsui (1994: 132), the most important difference is that "the purpose of a threat is not to commit the speaker to a future action, but to get the addressee to perform an action".

Headnote

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), "[ijntercultural 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 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: Cefrumos fi-au spàlat maçina! ("Nice car wash!")

Him: Michael, Michael, te rogspune mashallah. ("Michael, please say mashallah).

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:

- Sâfi 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);

- Sd-l porfi sandios (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 leavetaking 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 tdrziu (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, poftd bund i.e. "enjoy your meal") is commonly used in secular contexts and in future-oriented cultures, whereas the second (God bless you, Doamne-ajutd 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 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.

3. Inshallah

This part of my paper will start with some background information on the expression inshallah and will be followed by an account of how cultural differences can affect communication. For the last part, I will analyse some of the pragmatic uses of inshallah in spoken English discourse.

3.1. Inshallah: the ritual

There is, without a doubt, no better way to start speaking about inshallah than to trace it back to The Noble Qur'an. If you are not sure how to do this, any Saudi or Arab colleague will be more than happy to help by immediately producing a copy of the holy book, always at hand, and opening it to the right page: Surah 18, Al-Kahf (Chapter 18, The Cave), verses 23-24. Below I quote the English translation from the bilingual Arabic-English edition published in Madinah, KSA:

23. And never say of anything, "I shall do such and such thing tomorrow. "

24. Except (with the saying), "If Allah wills!" And remember your Lord when you forget and say: "It may be that my Lord guides me to a nearer way of truth than this. "

According to Wikipedia, "[ojne's use of insha'Allah indicates not one's desire to succeed in an endeavor, but rather that the endeavor one embarks on will be within God's will, which might be interpreted as that which is best for humanity, the Earth, and all of Allah's creation."

This view was also well-received and endorsed without exception by all my informants, devout Muslim colleagues in the English department. I will come back to this interpretation in section 3.3., when I look at how and if inshallah can be used with certain speech acts.

As far as the romanized spelling of this Arabic phrase is concerned, some of my informants expressed disagreement as to whether it should be spelt as one word (iinshallah) or more (insha'Allah, in sha Allah). Purists argued that it can only be three words, as in Arabic, others thought that insh 'Allah (with the apostrophe indicating a glottal stop) would be a good compromise, in order to avoid the oversimplified spelling as one word. I was tempted to choose the middle course at first until I realized that the high degree to which this expression has been adopted in spoken English by non-Arab/non-Muslim speakers should be matched by an equally high degree of adaptation in the host language. I had already taken this decision when I discovered that Webster's New World College Dictionary (2010) includes inshallah in its most simplified form.

To conclude this part, the most important thing to remember is that every Muslim is and feels under the obligation of uttering inshallah whenever referring to something they want to do in the future. Needless to say, the implications at the level of intercultural communication are manifold.

3.2. Cultural differences and communication barriers

One of the most extensively investigated topics in applied linguistics, anthropology and other social sciences in the past forty years or so has been the relation between language and culture. It cannot be at all easy, therefore, especially in a limited space like this, to even try to give an overview of the main contributions in this field. However, the limited scope of my present paper will enable me to refer to some of the most relevant findings with respect to cultural dichotomies and how these can affect intercultural communication. The underlying idea of my approach is that increased awareness of the differences existing between various cultures and communication styles can only benefit someone's cultural competence and adaptability. In my particular case, the beneficiaries I have in mind are the students and teachers of EFL engaged in a necessarily intercultural enterprise, but I am convinced that most of the insights which can be derived are applicable to other areas where interpersonal communication and/or decisionmaking are essential.

A widely held assumption among intercultural scholars is that there is a strong tendency to see another culture through one's own cultural frame of reference. Thus an individual's culture becomes the standard or the norm against which other cultures are critically evaluated. Workers in the field of education (including teachers of EFL) should aim at raising cultural awareness in their students so that cultural differences may be viewed with a neutral, non-judgemental eye. Some political correctness enthusiasts maintain that an elevation of the very meaning of different could be the answer. Personally, I cannot endorse such an effusion of utopian prescriptivism: while the semantics of polysemous different is clear enough, its context-sensitive pragmatic meaning will always be problematic - "just different" or "not the same, and therefore bad or inferior".

Realistically, just like cultural differences, cultural stereotypes will always be around.

3.2.1. High-context vs. low-context cultures

An often-quoted cultural dichotomy which has inspired a significant amount of empirical research is the distinction between high-context and low-context cultures, first mentioned in Hall (1976).

The difference between high- and low-context cultures is in direct correlation with the roles played in communication by the extralinguistic context on the one hand, and the linguistic code, on the other. As we can see, the word context refers exclusively to the situational context and thus, whenever the meaning of a message is encoded mostly in the context and very little of it in the verbal code, the associated culture in which this typically occurs is a high-context one. Conversely, when the meaning of what is said is typically found in the verbal language rather than in the physical context, the culture in which this is the general tendency is called a low-context culture. Asian and South American cultures belong to the first category while European and North American cultures to the second.

The implications at the level of discourse are that in high-context cultures the speaker does not have to be specific, as most information is to be found in the context, not in the verbal message. Moreover, the responsibility for a proper decoding and interpretation of what is meant rests with the listener, who will have to face two serious challenges: vagueness and/or pragmatic ambiguity.

On the other hand, in low-context cultures, it is the responsibility of the speaker to phrase his/her message in an accurate manner, which leaves very little scope for contextual ambiguity.

To illustrate this cultural dichotomy, I can think of how the meaning of what is said in a culture ranked as high context varies significantly, according to such contextual features as speaker, listener, setting (formal vs. informal), time, place, etc. Thus, the meaning of a message can be affected by the participants' social status, gender, race, religion, etc. Sometimes the spatial and temporal coordinates are important (e.g. the time of day, the day of the week, etc.). Certainly not all features bear the same degree of importance or relevance. In some Arab and East Asian cultures, social status is very important. Saudi Arabia, for instance, boasts a tribal society, with some tribes obviously being more influential than others. The first question which I am asked by locals or people from the Indian subcontinent in casual social encounters is invariably "From where?" so that I can be immediately classified. Luckily in my case, my sincere answer is a winner. Saudi Arabia may just be the only country in the world where the locals are literally overjoyed to hear that you come from Romania: we provide the best football players and coaches in the Kingdom. Whatever else I say after that does not matter much. The context I find myself in is meaningful enough.

The two terms, high and low, are not seen in an absolute sense, but rather along a continuum from high to low, which makes it possible for various cultures to be described as higher- or lower-context. Thus if Asian cultures are considered to be high-context, in contrast with European cultures which are typically lowcontext, the cultural spectrum remains broad enough to accommodate finer distinctions between higher- and lower-context cultures, for example, those in Eastern and Western Europe, respectively.

3.2.2. Directness vs. indirectness of expression

This opposition, which is seen here as a cultural dichotomy rather than just a contrasting pair to be encountered within one and the same culture, can be correlated with the two opposing types of culture mentioned before. Preference for direct communication is characteristic of low-context cultures, whereas highcontext cultures will normally use indirect means of conveying a message. Moreover, under the umbrella of "directness vs. indirectness", we can distinguish further stylistic or rhetorical contrasts such as: simplicity vs. elaborateness, linearity vs. non-linearity or logical argumentation vs. emotional persuasiveness. Each of these contrasts can be investigated on their own, but I have chosen just to mention them, given the current purpose of my study. It is for the same purpose that the focus here is only on the differences which affect intercultural communication involving North American/European and (Saudi) Arab participants.

The first thing one can perhaps notice is the divide between direct and indirect communicators. Zaharna (1995) and Feghali (1997) both group these differences under communication patterns.

Directness in communication is usually associated with clarity of expression. Utterances are unequivocal, transparent, and repetitions are avoided. Metadiscursive expressions like Let 's get to the point, Let 's not change the subject or Don't beat about the bush will not be appreciated by Arab interlocutors and will have, if anything, a negative effect. When the answer to a yes-no question is inshallah, the American/European speaker would be well-advised to refrain from following it up with a Is that a yes or a no?, because the original answer will most likely be repeated. Rather s/he should reinforce it by repeating inshallah and hope for the best.

Avoiding a direct answer by Arab communicators is usually done in order to save face, both the speaker's and the listener's. This was pointed by Zaharna (1995: 249), Feghali (1997: 358) and supported by Saudi (Arab) colleagues as well as by my MA students in Language and Culture Awareness. However, given that in Western cultures an indirect or ambiguous response normally anticipates a dispreferred request refusal, for instance, it is not difficult to see why the Arab speaker's commendable attitude is likely to fall flat or even be a cause for frustration and concern. Other commonly heard examples, besides inshallah, include the use of tomorrow, no problem or don 't worry, which Westerners soon learn not to take at face value but rather interpret as an indirect avoidance strategy.

3.3. Inshallah: a speech-act theoretic perspective

So far we have seen that the use of the expression inshallah is made mandatory for (non-)Arab Muslims by the Qur'an and that, given the cultural preference for indirectness, this expression occurs all too frequently in contexts where a direct communicator would expect a straightforward answer.

In the last part of my paper, I will look at the various communicative functions of inshallah, as they occur (or may occur) in English discourse. The core assumption of my approach is that by examining whether this expression is compatible or not with a certain speech act, more revealing insights can be gained as to why intercultural communication failures occur. Many questions, of course, still remain unanswered, the most important of which, perhaps, is whether the standard theory (e.g. Searle 1969) can account for specific manifestations of speech acts across cultures.

The examples I use (though not always mention) in this section are from various sources: fieldnotes, daily observations, interviews, the Internet, referenced articles and my own constructed examples, which I included in the interviews.

That inshallah is used with various meanings and intentions in everyday discourse is not difficult to observe. One of the former American commanders in Iraq, David Petraeus, is supposed to have said that "This is not an inshallah time", meaning, no doubt, that this is the time to take action without any delay or hesitation. I was not able to find whether this is just local folklore or not, but what I did find was the following statement he made during an end-of-year briefing for journalists in Baghdad: "Success will emerge slowly and fitfully with reverses as well as advances. Inevitably there will be tough fighting, more tough days and more tough weeks, but fewer of them, inshallah" (Colvin 2007). Here the meaning is obviously different, i.e. "hopefully".

3.3.1. Promises

The speech act with which inshallah is most frequently associated is that of promising. It is also one of the most problematic in intercultural communication. According to the propositional content condition in Searle (1969: 57), "In expressing that p, S predicates a future act A of S". This will inevitably trigger the use of inshallah. In fact, as Masliyah (1999: 101) points out, "the Muslim should add the formula of inshallah even when referring to an event which will undoubtedly occur in the future". Considering that Searle's preparatory condition for promising states that "It is not obvious to both S and H that S will do A in the normal course of events" (1969:59), we understand that inshallah simply has to be uttered.

But the most interesting part in the structure of the speech act of promising is the distinction Searle makes between the essential condition and the sincerity condition. The essential condition states that "S intends that the utterance of T will place him under an obligation to do A" (Searle 1969: 60). T here is used for "sentence", since S is used for "speaker". The sincerity condition, on the other hand, states that "S intends to do A" (1969: 60) and accounts for why some promises are sincere, while others are insincere.

I believe this distinction between sincerely wishing to do something, on the one hand, and undertaking an obligation to perform something is of utmost relevance in intercultural communication. As all my (Saudi) Arab informants pointed out, the use of inshallah in promises does not signal insincerity or not wishing to carry out the act, but rather the impossibility of unconditionally assuming responsibility for something which is not under the promisor's complete control. In other words, from a Muslim's point of view, another essential condition is missing from Searle's account: inshallah, i.e. if G od wills.

This finding is also supported by Masliyah (1999: 99): "The use of this expression is... neither a simple means of shirking responsibilities nor a belief in fatalism". On the contrary, it expresses "a wish and a hope that a certain action will take place in the future" (Masliyah 1999: 100) and can even "assist" the speaker in seeing his/her wishes come true.

Webster's New World College Dictionary (2010), previously mentioned in section 3.1., includes two meanings for inshallah: 1. "God willing" and 2. "please God". If we combine the two meanings, we could perhaps understand the striking, oxymoronic description of a Muslim's use of inshallah as "active abandonment" or as "a[n] incentive to strengthen his good intention" (Masliyah 1999: 100).

As I mentioned before, the use of inshallah is most commonly associated with promises or rather, from a Westerner's point of view, with infelicitous commitments. Strangely enough, however, typical examples are more difficult to find and the reason for this, I believe, is that Arabs usually fight shy of volunteering commitments; they avoid what I might call "assertive promises". Instead, this speech act is elicited in the form of an answer to a yes-no question, uttered as a request:

Me: Can you come to my office tomorrow?

Student: Inshallah.

3.3.2. Threats

One of the speech acts that I found of particular interest with respect to the use of inshallah is that of threatening. I have to admit that in this particular case, my interest was purely theoretical, with my constructed examples attempting to replicate imaginary, yet possible situations:

If you do this again, I'll kill you.

If you try to see my daughter again, I'll sue you.

If I ever catch you talking to him (said to a daughter), you 'll never go out again.

In each of these cases the question was: can inshallah accompany a threat? And if "yes", is the threat effective anymore? If "no", isn't the speaker in conflict with the commandments in the Qur'an? (i.e. always to use inshallah when a futuretime action is involved).

My underlying assumption was that either way, a Muslim speaker is faced with a dilemma which makes it impossible for him/her to issue a felicitous threat. This time, my informants' opinions were split, though not widely divergent. Some answered that inshallah is not normally used with threats, while others said "yes, but rarely". The reasoning behind this was somewhat similar: as already mentioned in section 3.1., the envisaged future action must be in the best interest of humanity and all of Allah's creation. It is what I might call the moral constraint. On the other hand, when speakers do use inshallah in threats, they believe that this does not run counter to the moral constraint and hope that by saying it, they will be assisted in carrying out the threat.

In addition to these arguments, I would like to mention that in my interviews I had assumed, according to the classical speech act theory, that a threat, just like a promise, belongs to the class of commissives. Other authors, however, believe that there is another difference between promises and threats, besides the "negative" aspect of the latter. Thus, according to Tsui (1994: 132), the most important difference is that "the purpose of a threat is not to commit the speaker to a future action, but to get the addressee to perform an action". Whereas a promise places the speaker under an obligation to perform the action, a threat clearly does not.

I believe that, to some extent, this finding can also provide an explanation for why inshallah does not normally occur in threats.

3.3.3. Warnings

Another future-oriented speech act is that of warning. Again, my legitimate question was: can inshallah be used with this particular speech act? My examples included hypothetical situations such as the following:

If you do this, God will punish you/you will burn in hell.

If you see him again, you will bring shame on our family.

This time my informants' answers to the question above were a unanimous "no". Indeed, there seems to be a sense in which a warning and inshallah just don't go together, but I could not work out what it is from the answers to my questionnaire. For one thing, if we gloss inshallah as "God willing" and repeat the last part of the examples above, the awkwardness of the combination becomes apparent:

?? [...] God will punish you, God willing.

?? [...] you will burn in hell, God willing.

?? [...] you will bring shame on our family, God willing.

In my opinion, the true reason for the infelicitous use of inshallah with a warning lies in the specific nature of this speech act which, unlike a promise or a threat, excludes the speaker's personal involvement in and control over the undesirable consequences of non-compliance. If so, can a Muslim speaker's warning risk sounding like a sinful boast? Most probably not.

3.3.4. Expressives

The class of expressives includes "ritualistic acts in which speakers express civility and goodwill towards each other" (Tsui 1994: 152). As far as the use of inshallah is concerned, well-wishing is perhaps the speech act with which this expression is most frequently associated due to its future-oriented character. Here are a few examples found in Masliyah (1999: 103):

(to a pregnant woman) Inshallah you deliver safely.

(to an unmarried girl present at a wedding) Inshallah the day comes soon when He takes you into account.

(to a bachelor) Inshallah God let you have [...] a good and well-bred girl.

Other more commonly heard examples are:

Have a nice vacation/weekend, etc. inshallah!

Good luck inshallah!

Enjoy your dinner inshallah!

In all these cases, the recipient can answer by thanking or by repeating the sacred word.

Leave-takings and farewells are also fully compatible here:

Keep in touch inshallah.

See you soon inshallah.

Again, replying by repeating the keyword for optimistic reinforcement winds up the exchange nicely.

Other expressives on the long list compiled by Masliyah (1999) to illustrate various contextual uses of inshallah are condoling and congratulating. However, this is done with little (if any) attention being paid to internal speech- act configuration. The examples in which inshallah is used do not actually count as either condolences or congratulations, but rather as wishes, because reference is made not to a past event but to one in the future:

Inshallah what he has missed in age, be added to yours.

Inshallah the deceased leaves behind longevity for you. (Masliyah 1999:104)

Let us note, in passing, that in other cultures, this wishing component will fail to have the intended consoling effect - quite the contrary.

Paradoxically, the use of inshallah in the example below, far from conveying the meaning of congratulating, sounds more like a consolation:

("Congratulating" a woman who has given birth to a daughter) Inshallah, she will be followed by sons. (Masliyah 1999:102)

In Middle-Eastern cultures it is very important for a woman to give birth to a boy, both for her "reputation" as a woman and for the future of the family - the husband may insist on his wife continuing to conceive until a baby boy is bom. In a polygamous society, however, there are other options as well.

4. Conclusion

It is very difficult - if not impossible - to give definitive answers when dealing with the realm of intercultural encounters, and any attempt to do so may result in even more questions being left unanswered.

Developing intercultural and interactional competence, especially in English Language Teaching, is certainly not a one-time target, but an ongoing process.

My paper has analysed some of the uses of inshallah as it occurs in English, which is the lingua franca used by people from different cultures living in the Middle East. More specifically, the situations I had in mind were the interactions at KKU, to which I am a witness every day. These interactions involve verbal exchanges between students and teachers on the one hand, and among teachers themselves, on the other. The students (all Saudis) invariably use Arabic, not English, to communicate among themselves. Sometimes it appears that Saudi speakers make conscious use of Arabic expressions in English as a means of "disidentification" from the Western culture, to borrow a term from Bou Franch (1998:6).

What then prompts non-Muslim speakers to use such ritualistic expressions in their daily English? Can it be a conscious effort of cultural self-adjustment or adaptation? Or rather the alluring exoticism of what the online English Wiktionary now labels "Arabic English"?

Whatever it is, I keep overhearing now my other Romanian colleague making arrangements with a South-African (Don't forget about tomorrow, inshallah! 11 o'clock, inshallah), now an American colleague reassuring a student (/ will mark you present, inshallah). As for myself, if I see an impatient student making for the door before the class is over, I say to him Whereto, inshallah? (i.e. "Just where do you think you're going?"), which is normally followed by nonverbal compliance. Better still, when I learn that my favourite beef tenderloin is not currently in stock and find myself asking my local Egyptian butcher Inshallah?, he will just say: Come on Friday, inshallah, which is exactly what I was hoping to hear.

Maybe this is an inshallah time, after all.

Acknowledgements: I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the colleagues and students who helped me understand the intricacies of the Arabic expression inshallah. I am particularly grateful for the assistance given by: Dr. Abdullah Al-Melhi (Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Translation), Dr. Ahmed Assiri (Vice Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Translation), Dr. Ahmad Alfaifi (Chairman of the Department of Translation), Dr. Ismail Alrefaai (Director of the Language Research Centre), Dr. Abdul Wahed Al-Zumor, Dr. Basim Kana'an and Faisal Alfadhil (my former brilliant student in Linguistics).

References

References

Bou Franch, P. 1998. 'On Pragmatic Transfer' in Studies in English Language and Linguistics, pp. 5-20.

Colvin, R. 2007, December 29. 'Petraeus: Iraq Security Fragile, Gains Reversible" [Reuters. Online], Available: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/12/29/us-iraqpetraeus-idUSKIM94778620071229. [Accessed 2015, January 13].

*** 2015. English Wiktionary. [Your Dictionary. Online], Available: http://www.yourdictionary.com/inshallah. [Accessed 2015, January 24],

Feghali, E. 1997. 'Arab Cultural Communication Patterns' in International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 21 (3), pp. 345-378.

Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. New York: Anchor Books.

Hall, E. T. 1976. Beyond Culture. New York: Doubleday.

*** 2015, January 31. 'Insha'Allah' in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [Online]. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insha'Allah. [Accessed 2015, February 9],

Kasper, G. 1992. 'Pragmatic transfer' in Second Language Research, vol. 8 (3), pp. 203231.

Kecskes, I. 2003. Situation-Bound Utterances in LI and L2. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kecskes, I. 2010. 'Situation-bound Utterances as Pragmatic Acts". In Journal of Pragmatics, pp. 1-9. [Online], Available: doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.06.008. [Accessed 2015, February 11],

Kecskes, I. 2014. Intercultural Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Masliyah, S. 1999. 'A Cross-cultural Misunderstanding: The Case of the Arabic Expression Inshallah, 'If God Wills" in Dialog on Language Instruction, vol. 13 (1-2), pp. 97116.

Searle, J. R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Noble Qur'an in the English Language (n.d.). Madinah, K.S.A.: King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur'an.

Tsui, A. B. M. 1994. English Conversation. London: Oxford University Press.

Zaharna, R. S. 1995. 'Understanding Cultural Preferences of Arab Communication Patterns' in Public Relations Review, vol. 21 (3), pp. 241-255.

*** 2010. 'Webster's New World College Dictionary' in [Your Dictionary. Online]. Available: http://www.yourdictionary.com/inshallah. [Accessed 2015, January 24],