Investigating Pragmatic Competence, Metapragmatic Awareness and Speech Act Strategies among Turkmen-Persian Bilingual and Persian Monolingual EFL Learners: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effect of bilinguality on pragmatic production and metapragmatic awareness in third language learning. Thus, 59 Turkmen-Persian bilinguals (using Turkmen as their L1 and Persian as their L2) learning English as a third language and 55 Persian monolinguals learning English as their second language were selected and given a WDCT and a metapragmatic awareness questionnaire. The results showed that bilingual EFL learners outperformed monolingual EFL learners in pragmatic production and metapragmatic awareness. The findings also confirm the pragmatic differences among the three languages and the bilinguals’ advantage over monolinguals concerning the appropriate use of speech act strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Monolingualism
• bilingualism
• cross-cultural pragmatics
• metapragmatic awareness
• speech act strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amir Zand-Moghadam

Amir Zand-Moghadam is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Literature and also Department of Linguistics at Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran, where he teaches Discourse Analysis, Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Pragmatics, and English for Academic Purposes courses. He has published in many national and international journals of the field. His areas of interest are cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics, discourse analysis, EAP and task-based language teaching.

Aylar Adeh

Aylar Adeh is currently a PhD candidate at Kharazmi University, Iran. Her areas of interest are cross-cultural pragmatics and teacher education.