The Sociopragmatics of Polite Request Strategies Used by Iraqi EFL Female Learners

Abstract

The present paper conducts a sociopragmatic study of polite request strategies used by Iraqi EFL female learners. It specifically attempts to investigate the use of such strategies by conducting a comparison between females and males. It  emphasizes the notion of politeness since it constitutes the core of this research. The current study is very important because this topic has not gained enough research as far as gender is concerned. This paper tackles the problem that  polite request strategies are affected by sociopragmatic factors such as sex, status and culture. It tries to answer the questions (1) why do some Iraqi EFL female learners use certain polite requests strategies than others and (2) what are the most frequent polite request strategies used by Iraqi EFL female learners? It is hypothesized that there are certain motives and reasons behind the utilization of polite request strategies. The data for this study are fifty Iraqi EFL subjects . The model to be adopted in this study is Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) framework of Requesting Strategies which divides the request strategies into nine components distributed on three levels of directness. This paper has come with the conclusion that Iraqi EFL female learners tend to utilize such polite request strategies in order to appear more educated, prestigious and polite