خلاصة:
The pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of language
use vary across different situations, languages, and cultures.
The separation of these two facets of language use can help to
map out the socio-cultural norms and conventions as well as
the linguistic forms and strategies that underlie the pragmatic
performance of different language speakers in a variety of
target language use situations. This study explored the
sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic variations in the
expression and realization of three speech acts of apology,
request, and refusal by American native speakers and Iranian
EFL learners. The participants were 100 graduate and
undergraduate Iranian students and 50 American native
speakers. A written discourse completion test (WDCT) was
developed through a bottom-up procedure and used for
collecting the data. The results showed that considerable
variations emerged in the semantic formulae, sociopragmatic
content, and pragmalinguistic forms the participants employed
in realizing the speech acts in relation to the contextual
variables and individual differences. The American
participants employed more (pragmalinguistic) formulaic
strategies and were generally more direct than the Iranian L2
learners. Further variability was also noticeable in the
participants’ choice of sociopragmatic appropriacy formulae
in order to mitigate their speech acts and avoid offending their
interlocutors. The findings indicated that there is an intricate
reciprocity between the sociopragmatic values and the variant
forms or strategies that language users employ on the
pragmalinguistic level of language use. It is then suggested that
pragmatic variation be traced and probed on the two
pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic planes of language use in real-life (or simulated) contexts.
ملخص الجهاز:
"In order to be pragmatically competent, learners must map their sociopragmatic knowledge on pragmalinguistic forms and strategies and be able to use their knowledge online under the constraints of a communicative situation (McNamara & Roever, 2006; Roever, 2004).
The study of speech act realization patterns and strategies in a wide range of language use situations has so forth yielded insightful results in comparative cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics research that explore how force can be mapped onto form by different language users (e.
On that account, this study aims to explore the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic variations between American English NSs’ and Iranian EFL learners’ in their production of the apology, request, and refusal speech acts, using a written discourse completion test (WDCT) instrument and its accompanying multidimensional scoring system.
To sum up, in spite of the presence of a similar range of strategies, noticeable cross-cultural pragmatic variability was evidenced in the frequency and semantic content of the sociopragmatic formulae as well as the pragmalinguistic forms used in each language use situation.
In addition, the findings related to the speech act realization patterns that emerged in the American and Iranian participants' data can provide a starting point for classroom exploratory interactive activities to further probe the cross- cultural L2 pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic variability by EFL teachers and learners.
In fact, the findings supported the dynamic interrelationship between language and culture and produced a picture of cross-cultural pragmatic and stylistic variability in terms of English speech act realization patterns of L2 learners and native speakers."