Cross-cultural Productions of Speech Act of Wish: The Case of Native English Speakers, Native Persian Speakers, and EFL Learners

The current study investigated native English speakers’ (NES), native Persian speakers’ (NPS), and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners productions of the speech act of wish. The participants in this study comprised ninety people, 30 native English speakers from Britain and 60 non-native English speakers from Iran who were asked to complete a discourse completion task (DCT) consisting of eight scenarios in real life situation. Content analysis of the respondents’ comments revealed five “wishing” strategies such as: (a) admiration then offering good wish or wishes, (b) expressing happiness then offering good wish or wishes, (c) making an inquiry, (d) an indirect wish, (e) offering direct wish or wishes. The result of content analysis indicated that although all groups utilized similar “wishing” strategies, the degrees of the frequency of the strategies were found to be different among them. Nevertheless, the analysis of frequency counts illustrated significant differences among these three groups in their preferred wishing strategies. Furthermore, the analysis of frequency counts in the case of gender, as another variable in this research did not display any significant difference between male and female participants’ comments uncovering that native and non-native males and females express their emotions similarly through employing the speech act of wish. The results of this study can have significant implications for EFL teachers to create a pragmatic awareness in the class in order to make the EFL learners aware of pragmatic aspects and appropriateness in language learning process.