An Investigation of Iranian EFL learners’ Politeness Strategies and the Speech Act of Request

The present study aimed at investigating the politeness strategies used by Iranian EFL learners while conducting the speech act of request. To do so, 03 female Iranian EFL learners completed a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) designed Blum-Kulka et al. (1919). The DCT was in English and attempted at studying the politeness strategies utilized by learners while making English requests in five different situations considering different levels of Social Distance (SD) and Social Power. The data obtained for each situation was individually analyzed and the appropriateness of the strategies was discussed. In the next stage, the results were compared to those obtained from similar studies on native English speakers. The comparison revealed that, yet surprisingly, the strategies and their frequency of use by Iranian EFL learners was to a high degree similar to the ones used by native English speakers, however, minor differences did exist regarding the cultural differences. The findings of this study can help EFL instructors and curriculum designers better understand the nature of cultural difference impact on the politeness strategies and help them make an attempt at improving the main sources of misunderstanding in cross-cultural communications in English.

Keywords:

politeness theory , politeness strategy , speech act of request , EFL learner