Learners’ Email Requests: Exploring Cultural, Gender, and Politeness Dynamics
Abstract
In academic settings, communicative competence is a foundation stone of successful interactions as it brings learner’s linguistic and sociocultural awareness into prominence. The current research investigates the request strategies applied by Kurdish EFL learners in their emails to instructors, with an emphasis on gender-based interaction patterns and strategies of politeness. The study employs a mixed method approach to explore 126 authentic email requests gathered from male and female undergraduate learners. The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) was adopted to evaluate the emails. This framework was developed by Blum-Kulka et al., highlighting modifiers and levels of directness. The results demonstrate moderate level of pragmatic awareness among students, based on strategies of direct request, particularly among male learners, whereas female students preferred conventionally indirect approaches, signaling a stronger movement towards politeness. The study reveals notable gender-related differences in crafting requests, with female students showing more significant variability in the use of strategies. All of these provide strong justification for the integration of pragmatic instruction in EFL programs intended to foster students’ communicative skills.