Intercultural Pragmatic Variations Between American Native Speakers and Iranian L2 Learners: A Focus on Refusals

Refusal is a face-threatening speech act and thus requires L2 speakers to be acquainted with certain face-saving tactics in normal interaction with others especially native speakers. Intercultural pragmatics research should thus focus on the differences that exist cross-culturally and might negatively impact communications between learners and native speakers. The current study aims to probe the cross-cultural pragmatic differences that impede appropriate communications between interlocutors in natural language use contexts. The participants were 200 Iranian EFL learners (studying in Iranian universities) and 75 American students (studying in the U.S.). A Written Discourse Completion test was used to collect the data, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis procedures were used to track cross-cultural variations in terms of appropriate production of refusals in English. The results showed that there were noticeable differences between both cultures in terms of face-keeping tactics used to mitigate the illocution force of dismissing others proposals or invitations (e.g., IFID), directness, and sociopragmatic appropriacy of the content of the refusal speech act. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of the findings will also be discussed.

Keywords:

Intercultural pragmatic variations , sociopragmatic appropriacy , refusal speech act , face-saving tactics