A Study of Iranian EFL Learners' Understanding and Production of Politeness in Three Speech Acts: Request, Refusal, and Apology

Abstract

To achieve one of the major objectives of modern foreign language teaching – enabling learners to communicate functionally in the target language – we usually need an ongoing evaluation of our learners' familiarity with different types of speech acts. Based on such an assumption, this study attempted to investigate Iranian EFL learners' perception and production of politeness in three basic speech acts: request, refusal, and apology. The participants involved 63 MA ELT students. A multiple-choice Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and a politeness rating questionnaire were used to generate participant's data. Selection of situations in DCT was based on three social factors of relative power, social distance, and gender. The emerging data was analyzed mainly based on Blum-Kulka et al.'s Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) and by using descriptive statistics. The data analysis revealed that the participants had enough knowledge about speech act and politeness strategies. In requesting, they mainly relied on indirect strategies; similarly, in refusing, they had a tendency towards using indirect strategies more than direct ones; but in apologizing they acted more directly. Gender as a cultural variable had effect on face saving strategies, and based on Brown & Levinson's politeness theory, Iranian EFL learners in this study mainly resorted to negative politeness.