Pragmatic Awareness of Speech Acts, Politeness, and Grice Maxims of Iraqi EFL Postgraduate Students

Abstract

This study examines postgraduate students’ awareness of pragmatic aspects, including Grice Maxims, Politeness, and Direct and Indirect forms of speech. According to Paul Grice’s theory of implicature, which is considered one of the most important contributions to pragmatics, this paper discusses how postgraduate students can meet the cooperative principle when communicating effectively. It also outlines how does politeness principles influence obeying or violating the maxims and how is the use of direct or indirect forms of utterances prompted by politeness. Sixteen master’s students of Linguistics and Literature were asked to take a multiple-choice test. The test will be represented along with the interpretation of each option given in each item. The initial point that the study investigates if belonging to two different groups (Linguistics and Literature) will result in various performances; this will be supplied with a clear-cut answer in the practical part. The theoretical part summarizes a literature review of the discoursal aspects understudy. In addition to clarifying maxims of quality, quantity, relation, and manner, the theoretical part discusses direct and indirect speech and how indirect speech is used to communicate perlocutionary effects. The conclusion will summarize the whole study by drawing upon the theoretical and practical parts simultaneously and providing further reasons for the variability and choice of one option over another.