Pragmatic Failure Committed by Jordanian Undergraduate EFL Learners

Abstract

Pragmatic Failure Committed by Jordanian Undergraduate EFL Learners Yazan Shaker Almahameed, Mohamad Mansour Al-Ajalein Abstract The study aims at shedding light on pragmatic failure committed by Jordanian learners of English when producing some language functions in light of two variables; gender and power. The sample of the study consists of 30 undergraduate students at Amman Arab University majoring in English language and translation. The data was collected through a completion test including four items representing four language functions: accepting compliment, asking for permission, expressing congratulation and expressing condolence. Each one of the four items consists of three situations; where the addressee is male, where the addressee is female and where the addressee is someone in power. The findings of the study revealed that the tested students showed good level of communicative competence. This success is attributed to the use of common (refers to the familiarity and commonality of the expressions) and neutral (i.e. they are not gender or status based expressions) expressions by students when responding to the test items. The pragmatic failure committed by students refer to lack of linguistic competence (i,e, pragnalinguistic failure), socio-cultural differences and pragmatic transfer (i.e. sociopragmatic failure) Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v7n1a7