Pragmatic awareness of Suggestions: From (Im)Polite Mannerism to Attitudinal Appropriateness

The study seeks to provide a systematic pragmatic analysis of suggestion speech act among Iranian EFL learners. The purposes of the investigation are determining: the application of suggestion semantic formulae, the attitude of appropriateness in terms of confidence in the employment of appropriate supportive moves, polite and impolite mannerism, and the relationship between attitude of appropriateness and mannerism. To this end, an OQPT was administered as a placement test among 60 Iranian EFL learners. These participants along with 10 American native speakers then underwent a suggestion DCT addressing interlocutors with various power statuses (higher, lower, and equal) and social distances (intimate and strange). The DCT also involved attitudinal appropriateness scale and (im)politeness mannerism likert scale. The results indicated variations in the Iranian learners and American speakers’ performances in the employment of semantic formulae as well as in attitudinal appropriateness and (im)politeness manner. Moreover, the output revealed a positive relationship between the attitude and mannerism scales.