Pragmatic Awareness of the Request Speech Act in English as an Additional Language: Monolinguals or Bilinguals?

Abstract

This study attempted to investigate the effect of bilingualism on pragmatic<br />awareness and development among Iranian Turkish/Persian EFL learners. Data were<br />collected through a personal profile questionnaire with questions about the<br />participants' language background and a WDCT with 10 situations to determine the<br />extent to which the bilinguals demonstrated their pragmatic awareness of requests.<br />They were to read the situations and assess whether they realized the<br />(in)appropriateness of the speech acts. For inappropriateness, they were also asked<br />to explicate their selections and provide appropriate alternatives. Responses were<br />analyzed according to 3 social factors of power, distance, and degree of imposition<br />with the assumption that the more references to these factors, the more<br />pragmatically aware the participants. Alternatives were coded according to the<br />coding scheme of CCSARP. Results showed that none of the groups outperformed<br />the others in their perception of the (in)appropriate acts and in the realization<br />patterns of request acts in trilingual education. This failure may be due to their lack<br />of cultural awareness, literary skills, and insufficient L2/L3 pragmatic input.