Abstract:
This study was an attempt to shed light on the use of requestive speech act by Iranian nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English and Canadian native speakers (NSs) of English to find out the possible similarities and/or differences between the request realizations, and to investigate the influence of the situational variables of power, distance, context familiarity, and L1’s possible influence. Participants were 4 different groups: Canadian NSs of English, Persian NNSs, Iranian hotel staff, and Iranian English learners. Data were obtained by a discourse completion test (DCT) including 12 situations and was translated into Persian to elicit the data from the Persian NNSs. Then, data were analyzed and codified based on the cross-cultural speech act realization pattern (CCSARP; Blum- Kulka & Olshtain, 1984). Findings indicated that the Persian culture is more direct and positive-politeness oriented, whereas the Canadian culture tends to be indirect and negative- politeness oriented. The Iranians revealed more variations in their request performance and were more sensitive to power differences. The Canadians were fixed and used conventionally indirect strategies in most situations
Machine summary:
A Pragmatic Study of Requestive Speech Act by Iranian EFL Learners and Canadian Native Speakers in Hotels M.
com Abstract This study was an attempt to shed light on the use of requestive speech act by Iranian nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English and Canadian native speakers (NSs) of English to find out the possible similarities and/or differences between the request realizations, and to investigate the influence of the situational variables of power, distance, context familiarity, and L1’s possible influence.
Data were obtained by a discourse completion test (DCT) including 12 situations and was translated into Persian to elicit the data from the Persian NNSs. Then, data were analyzed and codified based on the cross-cultural speech act realization pattern (CCSARP; Blum- Kulka Olshtain, 1984).
Therefore, L2 learners should be able to utter expressions considered as contextually suitable besides being aware of what constitutes proper linguistic behavior in different social contexts, which highlights the link between pragmatic competence and culture (Schaure, 2009).
As seen in Table 2, mood derivable, obligation, want statement, and query preparatory strategies were the main sources of difference in head act strategies among the four groups because their SR value was greater than 2.
Frequency/percentage of head act strategies in combination B Groups Mood F* P** SR Performative F P SR Hedge F P SR Want Statement F P SR Query F P SR Strong Hint F P SR 42.