A Cross-Cultural Study of Offering Advice Speech Acts by Iranian EFL Learners and English Native Speakers: Pragmatic Transfer in Focus

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to compare the speech act of offering advice as realized by Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The study, more specifically, attempted to find out whether there was any pragmatic transfer from Persian (L1) among Iranian EFL learners while offering advice in English. It also examined whether Iranian EFL learners’ perception of directness/indirectness in the realization of offering advice develops as a result of proficiency development. In order to achieve the objectives, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to collect the speech act of offering advice from among Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers. The findings indicated that Iranian EFL learners were not as balanced as native English speakers in the use of indirect use of offering advice. It was also observed that Iranian EFL learners had not acquired the pragmatic competence to offer native-like advice with regard to social power and social distance between interlocutors. The result also revealed that Iranian EFL learners and the native English speakers favored a number of similar strategies for the realization of offering advice, though there were differences in terms of frequency use of the speech acts of offering advice. Thus, this study showed evidence of pragmatics transfer.