Linguistic and Pragmatic Failure of Arab Learners in Direct Polite Requests and Invitations: A Cross-cultural StudyIn a cross-cultural context, the speakers' cultural disposition, linguistic codes, and social identity may influence their pragmatic behaviour; thus, lead to communication breakdowns. This paper studies the cross-cultural pragmatic failure in polite requests among Arab participants from different cultural backgrounds, and reattempts to test[ validate] the universality of Speech Act Theory, and Theory of Politeness. To that end, 96 situations have been collected from 16 Arab participants divided into two groups to examine the polite strategies they use in request and invitation situations. The results of the qualitative data analysis have shown that almost all participants favour conventionally direct strategies in requests and invitations to express politeness and hospitality.