Analysing Gender Effect on the Speech Act of Suggestion: A Pilot Study

Abstract

This is a pilot study on analyzing the effect of gender on the speech act of suggestion. It introduces preliminary analyses of whether gender affects the use of suggestion strategies produced and recognized by Iraqi EFL learners. The strategies are dealt with from three perspectives: structural, directness, and politeness. The purpose of this small-scale study is twofold, (1) to explore if there is a relationship between gender and suggestions and (2) to check the validity and reliability and thus the workability of the instruments in question to a large-scale study. To this end, the study sampled voluntarily, on an equal base, 10 male and 10 female fourth-year undergraduates using a name-in-box method. The study used two quantitative-based instruments to elicit suggestions: Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) and Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task (MDCT). Each of which consisted of 12 situations approximating real-like interactions. The corpus was statistically analyzed via SPSS and yielded that gender affected the use of structural and directness strategies of suggestions, but it had no effect on the politeness strategies. Results along with the feedback of the raters, who were chosen to rate the situations, have both proven that the instruments in question are valid and reliable to work on relevant further studies.

English Preparatory School Learners’ Pragmatic Motivation in a StudyAbroad Setting

“…Regarding the relationship between the participants’ pragmatic motivation and speech act-specific motivation, the study provides empirical evidence to show that the GPMQ scores of the students in the SASMQ, including requests, were found to predict the scores they obtained statistically significantly and positively. This result confirms a relationship between pragmatic motivation and speech act-specific motivation, as found in similar studies (see Liu & Qian, 2018; Sharqawi & Anthony, 2020; Yang & Ren, 2019).…”

“…Equally, some scholars noted that Motivation plays a role in developing students' pragmatic competence (Chen, 2017;Moradi, 2017). For instance, research asserts that motivated learners are more likely to engage deeply with language use in various contexts, enabling them to understand the subtle nuances, humor, and cultural implications embedded in pragmatic language (Sharqawi & Anthony, 2020;Westra & Carruthers, 2017). Also, there are suppositions that Motivation drives learners to apply their language skills in authentic situations, allowing them to practice and refine their pragmatic competence through actual communication (Baro´n & Ortega, 2018;Kecskes, 2018;Liu & Qian, 2018).…”

“…Research shows that speech acts aid language cognitive processes (Li et al, 2022; M. F. Lin et al, 2022; Panahzadeh & Asadi, 2019; Sharqawi & Anthony, 2020). A similar study noted that speech acts are the basis for effective interaction (House & Kádár, 2023).…”