EFL Iraqi Learners' Pragmatic Failure in English Animal Idiomatic Expressions

Abstract

This research concerns the pragmatic failure of the Iraqi EFL learners in interpreting the meanings of some sorts of idiomatic expression; namely, animal idiomatic expressions. Regardless of their grammatical formation, idiomatic expressions use tends to be largely dependent upon context. Pragmatic failure is a term which was first coined by Jenny Thomas in (1983) which is defined as the inability to understand what is said by what is intended. Pragmatic failure is of two types: pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic failure. As known, the meaning of animal idiomatic expressions vary from culture to culture, because of the difference of norms and principles the culture imposes on the residents of certain place. Pragmatically, the use of idiomatic expressions in English carry a diversity of meanings which learners of other languages will surely fall short in determining the exact intentions of speakers using these expressions as well as having a relation to the culture that the speech community has. The culture pragmatically place a major role too. However, this is due to the fact that idiomatic expressions have indirect speech acts and implicatures bond by the culture of the language that ought to be figured out by the learners. The study hypothesizes that most of EFL Iraqi learners will fail to interpret these expressions and also after putting these idiomatic expressions into their contexts.