Abstract:
The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness, its subscale features, and their general and specific pragmatic motivation. In this regard, the speech act of refusal was selected as a target speech act because of its face-threatening feature. Eighty-two participants took part in the study, of whom 78 were Iranian EFL learners, and the rest (N=4) were American native speakers. All participants were required to complete a multiple choice meta-pragmatic awareness questionnaire (MPAQ) consisting of 12 situations representing refusal to four topics. Refusal scenarios were balanced in terms of interlocutors’ social status, degree of familiarity, and degree of imposition. Iranian learners were then asked to complete 48 items of general and specific pragmatic motivation questionnaire adopted from Tajeddin and Zand-Moghadam (2012). Analyzing data using Pearson correlation indicated that there was a significant correlation between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness and their general and specific pragmatic motivation. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between meta-pragmatic awareness and severity, familiarity, and degree of imposition or severity. Moreover, employing Path Analysis through Amos 24 to examine whether meta-pragmatic awareness and its subscales could predict general and speech-act-specific pragmatic motivation demonstrated that all three sub-constructs of meta-pragmatic awareness predicted general and specific pragmatic motivation positively and significantly. This study is of immense importance as it helps teachers consider the importance of maintaining face in a conversation to help learners increase the motivation of learning making refusals.
Machine summary:
g. , Chalak & Kassaian, 2010; Dornyei, 1990, Mirzaei, & Forouzandeh, 2013; Oxford & Shearin, 1994; Pishghadam & Khajavi, 2014; Pishghadam, Makiabadi, Shayesteh, Zeynali, in press), there are just a number of motivation studies in the area of ILP carried out so far to investigate the place of motivation for learning pragmatic features (Cook, 2001; Lo Castro, 2001; Niezgoda & Roever, 2001; Tagashira, Yamato, & Isoda, 2001; Takahashi, 2001; Tajeddin & Zand-Moghaddam, 2012).
To do so, the following research questions were formulated: Research Question One: Is there any significant relationship between advanced Iranian EFL learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness (status, familiarity, and severity) and general pragmatic motivation?
Research Question Two: Is there any significant relationship between advanced Iranian EFL learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness (status, familiarity, and severity) and speech act specific motivation?
In this respect, many studies have demonstrated the relationship between SLA and individual variables such as age, gender, language aptitude, intelligence, self- esteem, anxiety, learning styles, and motivation (Arnold, 1999; Dornyei, 2005; Dornyei & Skehan, 2003; MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Clément, 2016; Robinson, 2005; Schmidt, 2010; Taguchi, 2012).
Takahashi (2005) employed the motivation questionnaire developed by Schmidt, Boraei, and Kassabgy (1996) but with some modification to investigate the relationship between Japanese EFL learners’ motivation for language learning as a manifold cognitive construct and the way learners process L2 pragmatic input.
ILP research provides plenty of studies on pragmatic transfer in learner language (Abrams, 2013; Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Carrel & Konneker, 1981; Cohen & Olshtain, 1981; Garcia, 1989; House, 1988, Kasper, 1992; Pinto, 2012; Pinto & Raschio, 2007, 2008; Taguchi, 2011).