Abstract
With the advancement of technology ,the study of cross-cultural communication via on line has become an important and researchable topic in linguistic theory and its applications.The aims of this study are two- fold (a) exploring the influence of cultural diversity on on-line interaction between American native speakers (NSs) and Iraqi non-native speakers (NNSs) of English which, together with other factors might potentially lead to what Thomas(1983) calls "pragmatic failure" (PF), a main cause of communication breakdowns and (b) specifying which type of PF occurs more frequently between the two groups along with the reasons behind such failures. To achieve these objectives , a number of online chats conducted between (10) American speakers of English and (8) Iraqi graduate students of English were collected and analyzed on the basis of Thomas' (1983) division of PF in an attempt to verify the assumption that pragmatic failure is a result of cultural diversity between the two groups of participants.Results revealed that the cultural differences between the two groups could be a major cause of misunderstanding ie. PF., a finding which can be of value to textbook designers and teachers of English as a foreign language (FL)who are required to improve students' pragmatic ability in classroom by focusing not only on their grammatical competence but also on their pragmatic competence.
Highlights
Out of the total number of the chats which represents the data of this study, only (8) illustrative examples were analyzed in view of Thomas's division of pragmatic failure" (PF) showing the frequency and percentage of failures each group commit in their interaction and how PF affects the interpretation of messages and sometimes block communication completely
This study offers an insight about the role of the cultural diversity and its influence on online communication between American native speakers (NSs) and Iraqi nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English
1.Cultural diversity can be treated as an explanatory variable in crossculture pragmatic failure
Summary
With the advent of electronic communication, cross cultural issues have prompted great interest by researchers and practitioners alike.This can be clearly seen in the increasing amount of research examining technologymediated contexts with focus intercultural communication through NSNNS email interactions, ( Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig (1996) , Stockwell ,2003 , Jiang & Nicrasova's (2007) Liddicoat and Tudini, 2013,) For example, Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig (1996) examined email requests produced by NS and NNSs of English and were chosen to be assessed by the faculty members..The findings of their study indicated that learners did not use mitigation devices,focused on students' needs and lacked statuscongruent language .In Stockwell's ( 2003) study , 48 learners of Japanese involved in e-mail interactions with NSs were examined to spot what features of topic threads contributed to,sustaining interactions.The end-ofthread messages (i.e., those messages which referred to the last message in a conversation thread) were investigated in terms of whether or not a reply was invited, and those messages for which a reply was invited were further analysed to identify the reason why a reply was not received. Jiang & Nicrasova 's (2007) examined processing of formulaic expressions between NSs and NNs of English on computer in which they were asked to judge the grammaticality of each expression cited. Results revealed that both groups responded faster with lower error rates for formulaic expressions than non-formulaic ones.This is indicative of a significant effect of formulaicity since the grammaticality of non-formulas takes more time to judge. In another study carried out by Liddicoat & Tudini, (2013), online interactions between a group of NNSs and a group of Italians were analyzed..Findings revealed that the power of NNSs was manifested through the enactment by NS of a" didactic voice''ie. The didactic voice was manifest in interactions where NNS positioned themselves in language learners using social interaction with NS to practice the language
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
