investigating the structural patterns and pragmatic functions of compliments made by iranian efl learners

this study aims to delve into the unobservable dimensions of deciding and acting in a pragmatically significant speech event. utilizing a discourse completion test questionnaire, it seeks to find out the structure and pragmatic functions that lie behind efl learners’ choice of specific wording while engaged in performing a recurrent speech act in iran i.e. compliments. to this aim, 30 efl learners were requested to self-assess their performance in a number of presumed situations in which they were required to make compliments to different addressees. the participants were adult intermediate efl learners in 18-35 range of age. they were of both sexes and studied english between 1.5 to 5 years. to complete the tasks, they both made notes of their responses and uttered out simultaneously why they complimented in a certain way. their responses along with transcriptions of their recorded think-aloud protocols were subsequently analyzed in this paper as for their structures and pragmatic functions according to manes & wolfson (1981), and brown & levinson (1987).