The Effect of Gender on the Bilingual and Bicultural Identity of the Iraqi EFL Learners' Recognition and Production of Request

Abstract

This study examines the effect of gender on students' bilingual and bicultural identity in their recognition and production of request is studied. This means that it investigates to what extent the learners’ mother tongue and culture influence their recognition and production of request in the EFL and the effect of gender on such an identity. The study aims at exploring and identifying the linguistic patterns of request in English used by Iraqi EFL learners, those patterns of request transferred from Iraqi EFL learners’ mother tongue, and the Iraqi EFL learners’ cultural patterns and cultural realization of request transferred from Arabic culture into the EFL. Some hypotheses of the study state that there is a bilingual and cultural identity in using request by Iraqi EFL learners, females are better than males in request perception and production and they are worse in Arabic monolingualism and monoculturalism, students are better in English monolingualism and monoculturalism than in the other request features, students’ English monolingual and monocultural identity is more apparent in request perception than in production. To validate or refute its hypotheses, a test comprising recognition and production has been constructed and applied to fifty Iraqi EFL learners at fourth year, Department of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Thi-Qar at the academic year (2020-2021). After data analysis, some conclusions are arrived at. The study concludes that Iraqi EFL learners are pragmatically incompetent and they have a bilingual and bicultural identity because of their mother tongue and culture interference.