Iraqi Parents‘ Instructions to Their Teens: A Pragma-Stylistic Approach

Abstract

Parents are supposed to be responsible for the education of their children. However, other sources of information participate in this challenging mission. Technological advancements, media, friends, and schoolmates have a significant effect on how our sons think or behave. Hence, it becomes crucial for parents to consider how to approach or deal with them. The way parents give instructions to sons concerning their daily routines of educational, moral, and health care practices is of great importance. This paper aims to find out how educated Iraqi parents give instructions to their sons. The study identifies the pragma-stylistic devices that characterize Iraqi parental instructions. It attempts to specify which speech act is most dominant in parental instructions and if politeness strategies are adhered to or not. Twenty Iraqi parents who have a degree in the English language participated in this research work. A questionnaire of ten different scenarios concerning some basic daily instructions that are often likely to be given to sons or daughters who are between the age of 12 to 16 is delivered to those parents. The responses to this questionnaire are scrutinized in terms of the pragma-stylistic perspective following Black (2006) by activating three pragmatic theories, namely; Searle’s (1969) theory of speech acts, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness as well as Culpeper’s (1996) theory of impoliteness. It is found that educated Iraqi parents prefer the indirect way of giving instructions to their teens concerning the daily practices regardless of the importance of these instructions in life. Analysis reveals that most Iraqi parents use the speech act of advising when giving daily instructions to their teens. Direct instructions are rare. If found, they are softened with polite expressions.