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ANALYZING THE SPEECH ACT OF DISAGREEMENT PRODUCED BY IRAQI EFL LEARNERS: A GENDER STUDY
Corresponding Author(s) : Mushtaq A. Sharqawi
Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews,
Vol. 7 No. 2 (2019): March
Abstract
Purpose of study: This is a pragmatic study dealing with the speech act of disagreement at the production level. The aim of the study is to investigate whether gender (the independent variable) affects the production of disagreement strategies (dependent variables) used by Iraqi EFL learners. The study is meant to help educators through diagnosing the learners’ pragmatic abilities which were reported by Iraqi scholars as weak and underdeveloped. The study also intends to enrich the
speech act literature which lacks gender consideration in the Iraqi context.
Methodology: The study is limited to the analysis of the pragmatic strategies of disagreement within the theory of speech act in relation to gender. The study adopts a descriptive quantitative approach using a Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) as a tool for collecting data. The tool consists of 10 open-ended situations to elicit data from 80 fourth-year Iraqi English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who equally were split into 40 males and 40 females. The study utilized MS Excel 2016 for statistical analyses of directness strategies with their dependent explicitness strategies.
Results: It was revealed that both males and females employed similar amounts of explicit disagreement strategies but as far as the indirect strategies are concerned, females significantly used more indirect disagreement strategies than their male counterparts.
Novelty/Originality: The current study is gender-based dealing with the speech act of disagreement at the directness and explicitness levels at the Iraqi EFL learners context. It revealed the learners’ current state of affair in terms of their pragmatic ability in the production of disagreements. It acted as a call for educators and syllabus designers to consider the teachability of the indirect aspect inherent in the act under study.
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- Ali, S. (2016). Authority relations and pragmatic strategies in disagreement between ESL learners. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS) ISSN 2356-5926, 1(3), 471-480.
- Al-Shafie, R., & Al-Jubbory, F. (2015). Iraqi EFL learners’ use of the speech acts of warning and threatening in situational dialogues. Adab Al-Kufa, 1(24), 11-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36317/0826-008-024-014
- Arista, S. D. (2014). Language functions used by the main character in Sherlock Holmes II: a game of shadows movie. Doctoral dissertation, UNIMED.
- Austin, J. L. (2000). Performative-constative†contemporary analytic and linguistic philosophies. Ed. ED Klemke.
- Ballmer, T., &Brennstuhl, W. (2013). Speech act classification: A study in the lexical analysis of English speech activity verbs (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media.
- Beechy, T. (2016). The poetics of old English. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315554563
- Behnam, B., &Niroomand, M. (2011). An investigation of Iranian EFL learners’ use of politeness strategies and power relations in disagreement across different proficiency levels. English Language Teaching, 4 (4), 204-220. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n4p204
- Best, J. W., & Kahn, J. V. (2016). Research in education. Pearson Education India.
- Blundell, J., Higgens, J. &Middlemiss N. (1996). Function in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Choyimah, N & Latif, M. (2014). Disagreeing strategies in university classroom discussions among Indonesian EFL learners. International Journal of Linguistics, 6 (2), 132-152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i2.5417
- Christoffersen, K. (2015). Mitigation of disagreement in peer review among L2 learners and native speakers in a college. Gist Education and Learning Research Journal, 11 (11), 45-62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26817/16925777.285
- Coates, J. (2015). Women, men and language: A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315835778
- Cottrell, R., & McKenzie, J. F. (2011). Introduction to research and the research requirement. London: Jones and Bartlett publishers.
- Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. New Jersey: Pearson.
- Darweesh, A. D., & Al-Aadili, N. M. (2017). Investigating Iraqi EFL learners’ performance in utilizing the speech acts of advice and suggestion. International Journal of English Linguistics,7(4), 179-190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v7n4p179
- Ebadi, S. &Pursiah, F. (2015). The effect of social class on Persian EFL learners’ pragmatic performance of speech act of compliment responses. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. 5(2), 157-170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v5i2.189
- Edstrom, A. (2004). Expressions of disagreement by Venezuelans in conversation: Reconsidering the influence of culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (8), 1499-1518. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.02.002
- Farrokhi, F., &Arghami, M. (2017). An investigation of the use of politeness strategies in refusal among characters with different power relations in English and Farsi novels. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 6 (7), 180-191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.7p.180
- Goddard, C., &Wierzbicka, A. (2019). Direct and indirect speech revisited: Semantic universals and semantic diversity. In Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages (pp. 173-199). Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_9
- Hameed, W. Q. (2010). The impact of gender in determining politeness strategy with reference to Iraqi students of English. Journal of the College of Arts, 2(54), 38–56.
- Heidari, A., Rasekh, A. &Simin, S. (2014). Speech act disagreement among young men in Iran. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (ILSHS), 37, 97-109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.37.97
- Khomeijanifarahani, A. A., &Molkizadeh, A. P. (2013). An investigation of Iranian advanced EFL learners’ application of politeness strategies in disagreement between two genders. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 5(5), 628–633.
- Koczogh, H. V. (2012). The effects of gender and social distance on the expression of verbal disagreement employed by Hungarian undergraduate students. Doctoral dissertation, University of Debrecen, Hungary. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10320-012-0042-5
- Leech, G. (2014). Language in literature: Style and foregrounding. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315846125
- Leech, G. (2016). Principles of pragmatics. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315835976
- Levinson, S. C. (2017). Speech acts. In Oxford handbook of pragmatics (pp. 199-216). Oxford: OUP. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697960.013.22
- Liew, T. S. (2016). Comparison of agreement and disagreement expressions between Malaysian and New Headway Course Books. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 12, 20-36.
- Malamed, L.H. (2010). Disagreement. In Alicia, M. and Usó-Juan, E. (Eds.), Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Moradi, R. (2017). A review on gender linguistics studies. Language Art, 2(2), 55-68.
- Parvaresh, S. &Rasekh, A. (2009). Speech act of disagreement among young women in Iran. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 11 (4), 2-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1565
- Parvaresh, S., Rasekh, A., &Simin, S. (2015). A Cross-cultural study of disagreement strategies to suggestions between Persian EFL learners and American native English speakers. International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning, 4 (4), 93-105. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2015.1085
- Pishghadam, R., &Sharafadini, M. (2011). A contrastive study into the realization of suggestion speech act. Canadian Social Science, 7 (4), 230–239.
- Pomerantz, A. (1978). „Compliment Responses: Notes on the Co-operation of Multiple Constraints‟. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the Organization of Conversation Interaction. Academic Press. pp. 79-112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-623550-0.50010-0
- Sadrameli, S. M. H., &Haghverdi, H. R. (2016). A comparative study of the use of disagreement strategies among Iranian EFL learners and native speakers of English. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 3 (6), 230-251.
- Sattar, H. Q. A., Lah, S. C., & Suleiman, R. R. R. (2010). A study on strategies used in Iraqi Arabic to refuse suggestions. The International Journal of Language Society and Culture, 30, 81-95.
- Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. Syntax and Semantics, 3, 59–82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368811_004
- Shabaka,S.F. (2013). The Linguistic Realization of Disagreements by EFL Egyptian Speakers. Master Dissertation. Madrid: Faculty of English Philology, Universidad Complutense.
- Shum, W., & Lee, C. (2013). (Im)politeness and disagreement in two Hong Kong Internet discussion forums. Journal of Pragmatics, 50, 52-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.01.010
- Sifianou, M. (2012). Disagreements, face and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 44, 1554– 1564. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.03.009
- Sofwan, A., &Suwignyo, E. (2011). The realization of disagreement strategies by non-native speakers of English. RagamJurnalPengembanganHumaniora, 11 (2), 69-81.
- Taqim, A. (2016). Politeness in speech act of disagreement by English learners of Lampung university. Master’s Thesis, Lampung University. Bandar, Indonesia.
- Thomas, J. A. (2014). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315842011
- Ugla, R. L., &Abidin, M. J. Z. (2016). A study of the apology strategies used by Iraqi EFL university students. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE),5, 32-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v5i1.4519
- Wellington, J. (2015). Educational research: Contemporary issues and practical approaches. Bloomsbury Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474236966
- Yan, C. (2016). A contrastive pragmatic study of politeness strategies in disagreement between native speakers of English and Chinese EFL learners. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 39 (2), 231-245. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-2016-0015
References
Ali, S. (2016). Authority relations and pragmatic strategies in disagreement between ESL learners. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS) ISSN 2356-5926, 1(3), 471-480.
Al-Shafie, R., & Al-Jubbory, F. (2015). Iraqi EFL learners’ use of the speech acts of warning and threatening in situational dialogues. Adab Al-Kufa, 1(24), 11-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36317/0826-008-024-014
Arista, S. D. (2014). Language functions used by the main character in Sherlock Holmes II: a game of shadows movie. Doctoral dissertation, UNIMED.
Austin, J. L. (2000). Performative-constative†contemporary analytic and linguistic philosophies. Ed. ED Klemke.
Ballmer, T., &Brennstuhl, W. (2013). Speech act classification: A study in the lexical analysis of English speech activity verbs (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media.
Beechy, T. (2016). The poetics of old English. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315554563
Behnam, B., &Niroomand, M. (2011). An investigation of Iranian EFL learners’ use of politeness strategies and power relations in disagreement across different proficiency levels. English Language Teaching, 4 (4), 204-220. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n4p204
Best, J. W., & Kahn, J. V. (2016). Research in education. Pearson Education India.
Blundell, J., Higgens, J. &Middlemiss N. (1996). Function in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Choyimah, N & Latif, M. (2014). Disagreeing strategies in university classroom discussions among Indonesian EFL learners. International Journal of Linguistics, 6 (2), 132-152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i2.5417
Christoffersen, K. (2015). Mitigation of disagreement in peer review among L2 learners and native speakers in a college. Gist Education and Learning Research Journal, 11 (11), 45-62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26817/16925777.285
Coates, J. (2015). Women, men and language: A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315835778
Cottrell, R., & McKenzie, J. F. (2011). Introduction to research and the research requirement. London: Jones and Bartlett publishers.
Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. New Jersey: Pearson.
Darweesh, A. D., & Al-Aadili, N. M. (2017). Investigating Iraqi EFL learners’ performance in utilizing the speech acts of advice and suggestion. International Journal of English Linguistics,7(4), 179-190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v7n4p179
Ebadi, S. &Pursiah, F. (2015). The effect of social class on Persian EFL learners’ pragmatic performance of speech act of compliment responses. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. 5(2), 157-170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v5i2.189
Edstrom, A. (2004). Expressions of disagreement by Venezuelans in conversation: Reconsidering the influence of culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (8), 1499-1518. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.02.002
Farrokhi, F., &Arghami, M. (2017). An investigation of the use of politeness strategies in refusal among characters with different power relations in English and Farsi novels. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 6 (7), 180-191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.7p.180
Goddard, C., &Wierzbicka, A. (2019). Direct and indirect speech revisited: Semantic universals and semantic diversity. In Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages (pp. 173-199). Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_9
Hameed, W. Q. (2010). The impact of gender in determining politeness strategy with reference to Iraqi students of English. Journal of the College of Arts, 2(54), 38–56.
Heidari, A., Rasekh, A. &Simin, S. (2014). Speech act disagreement among young men in Iran. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (ILSHS), 37, 97-109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.37.97
Khomeijanifarahani, A. A., &Molkizadeh, A. P. (2013). An investigation of Iranian advanced EFL learners’ application of politeness strategies in disagreement between two genders. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 5(5), 628–633.
Koczogh, H. V. (2012). The effects of gender and social distance on the expression of verbal disagreement employed by Hungarian undergraduate students. Doctoral dissertation, University of Debrecen, Hungary. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10320-012-0042-5
Leech, G. (2014). Language in literature: Style and foregrounding. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315846125
Leech, G. (2016). Principles of pragmatics. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315835976
Levinson, S. C. (2017). Speech acts. In Oxford handbook of pragmatics (pp. 199-216). Oxford: OUP. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697960.013.22
Liew, T. S. (2016). Comparison of agreement and disagreement expressions between Malaysian and New Headway Course Books. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 12, 20-36.
Malamed, L.H. (2010). Disagreement. In Alicia, M. and Usó-Juan, E. (Eds.), Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Moradi, R. (2017). A review on gender linguistics studies. Language Art, 2(2), 55-68.
Parvaresh, S. &Rasekh, A. (2009). Speech act of disagreement among young women in Iran. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 11 (4), 2-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1565
Parvaresh, S., Rasekh, A., &Simin, S. (2015). A Cross-cultural study of disagreement strategies to suggestions between Persian EFL learners and American native English speakers. International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning, 4 (4), 93-105. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2015.1085
Pishghadam, R., &Sharafadini, M. (2011). A contrastive study into the realization of suggestion speech act. Canadian Social Science, 7 (4), 230–239.
Pomerantz, A. (1978). „Compliment Responses: Notes on the Co-operation of Multiple Constraints‟. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the Organization of Conversation Interaction. Academic Press. pp. 79-112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-623550-0.50010-0
Sadrameli, S. M. H., &Haghverdi, H. R. (2016). A comparative study of the use of disagreement strategies among Iranian EFL learners and native speakers of English. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 3 (6), 230-251.
Sattar, H. Q. A., Lah, S. C., & Suleiman, R. R. R. (2010). A study on strategies used in Iraqi Arabic to refuse suggestions. The International Journal of Language Society and Culture, 30, 81-95.
Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. Syntax and Semantics, 3, 59–82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368811_004
Shabaka,S.F. (2013). The Linguistic Realization of Disagreements by EFL Egyptian Speakers. Master Dissertation. Madrid: Faculty of English Philology, Universidad Complutense.
Shum, W., & Lee, C. (2013). (Im)politeness and disagreement in two Hong Kong Internet discussion forums. Journal of Pragmatics, 50, 52-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.01.010
Sifianou, M. (2012). Disagreements, face and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 44, 1554– 1564. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.03.009
Sofwan, A., &Suwignyo, E. (2011). The realization of disagreement strategies by non-native speakers of English. RagamJurnalPengembanganHumaniora, 11 (2), 69-81.
Taqim, A. (2016). Politeness in speech act of disagreement by English learners of Lampung university. Master’s Thesis, Lampung University. Bandar, Indonesia.
Thomas, J. A. (2014). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315842011
Ugla, R. L., &Abidin, M. J. Z. (2016). A study of the apology strategies used by Iraqi EFL university students. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE),5, 32-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v5i1.4519
Wellington, J. (2015). Educational research: Contemporary issues and practical approaches. Bloomsbury Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474236966
Yan, C. (2016). A contrastive pragmatic study of politeness strategies in disagreement between native speakers of English and Chinese EFL learners. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 39 (2), 231-245. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-2016-0015