Pragmatic Transfer in L2 Speech Behaviors: A Cross-cultural Study

This study is an investigation into the speech act of suggestion utilized by Iranian learners of English. To this end, 150 Persian natives and 150 Iranian English learners were asked to complete a Discourse Completion Task of six situations. The Iranian EFL learners’ suggestion performances were compared to those of Persian natives and English native speakers to detect whether language transfer had occurred. Percentage and Chi-square tests were utilized to analyze the research data. The study results indicated slight similarities and more noticeable variations between Iranian and English groups in terms of linguistic and cultural issues. Moreover, Iranian EFL learners transferred their L1 norms in production of several suggestion devices. Finally, the results were discussed in the context of language learning and teaching.