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

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