A Pragmatic Study of Requestive Speech Act by Iranian EFL Learners and Canadian Native Speakers in Hotels

This study was an attempt to shed light on the use of requestive speech act by Iranian nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English and Canadian native speakers (NSs) of English to find out the (possible) similarities and/or differences between the request realizations, and to investigate the influence of the situational variables of power, distance, context familiarity, and L1’s (possible) influence. Participants were 4 different groups: Canadian NSs of English, Persian NNSs, Iranian hotel staff, and Iranian English learners. Data were obtained by a discourse completion test (DCT) including 12 situations and was translated into Persian to elicit the data from the Persian NNSs. Then, data were analyzed and codified based on the cross-cultural speech act realization pattern (CCSARP; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984). Findings indicated that the Persian culture is more direct and positive-politeness oriented, whereas the Canadian culture tends to be indirect and negative-politeness oriented. The Iranians revealed more variations in their request performance and were more sensitive to power differences. The Canadians were fixed and used conventionally indirect strategies in most situations.