A pragmatic analysis of EFL learners' responses to interview about the illocutionary act of Despicable Me animation

Language learning is an integration of both form and meaning, both linguistic competence and pragmatic knowledge. In fact, language acquisition cannot be occur just by either form or meaning. Due to the importance role of pragmatic knowledge in language development and the paucity of studies in this area, the current study tried to explore different illocutionary speech acts in the episodes of Despicable Me animation based on the interviews gathered from ۱۰ EFL learners at intermediate level. The results represented that directive speech act were used highly in comparison to the other types. Furthermore, there was no trace of the declaration speech based on the reports of interviews. The study showed that Iranian EFL learners had optimal knowledge of pragmatics.

Keywords:

Pragmatic knowledge , animation of Despicable Me , Iranian EFL learners