A comparative study of perception of politeness of American reprimands by Iranian EFL learners and Americans

Abstract

Reprimand is a significant speech act in the daily communication. All speech acts are subject to the conventions of the particular culture with no exception of the speech act of reprimand. This study presents the results of an exploratory empirical study into the perception of reprimand speech act in American English and Iranian culture. As an initial step, open role-play situations were performed by 10 Americans in order to elicit reprimands and responses to reprimands in 4 different situations. Second, politeness rating questionnaire constructed based on the role plays was given to 25 Americans and 35 Iranian EFL learners to measure the perceived politeness of reprimands. Subject's perception of politeness was compared according to their native language. The study suggests that there are indeed some differences between the two cultures regarding the politeness perception. The findings indicate that learners should be taught the appropriate use of pragmatic reprimand proficiency. © Medwell Journals, 2010.