الفهرس 
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Abstract
This dissertation is a cross-cultural pragmatic study investigating the complaint speech act in English and Arabic through comparing the sociolinguistic behaviors of British English native speakers (BENSs) and Egyptian Arab native speakers (EANSs). The subjects of study include 76 BENSs and 76 EANSs. They are requested to respond to a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) involving twelve complaint-evoking situations. The subjects’ responses are classified in the light of Trosborg’s taxonomy of complaint strategies (1995), with three other strategies presented in Yian’s (2008) research. The subjects’ responses are classified according to eleven strategies of complaint. Moreover, this study aims at exploring complaints from a politeness perspective. Therefore, the subjects’ responses are, also, analyzed with respect to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) five strategies of politeness. The cross-cultural differences between British and Egyptians in the act of complaining are examined in terms of the social and situational variations (social power, social distance, and severity of the wrong), level of directness, and cultural influences. Findings of the study showed that British and Egyptian speakers are significantly different regarding their preference of strategies. That is, Egyptian subjects are more inclined to indirect strategies than British. Besides, subjects’ production of complaints is influenced by social and situational variations given in a specific context. In addition, it is confirmed that speakers’ different cultural backgrounds have a great impact on their verbal behaviors.