A Cross Cultural Study of Violation of Gricean Maxims in Social Network between Iranian EFLs and Native American Students

This study accounted for the application of Gricean four maxims of conversational implicatures on social network. It could be considered as an attempt to find out how much the maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner were followed throughout the written posts of the users on social network. Cases of violation were given considerable importance in this study especially the violation of quantity maxim, which was considered the core of briefness of any conversation. Observing ethical issues, participants’ written posts were gathered, classified, and analyzed in terms of frequency and percentages. Two hundred and forty Iranian and American students were the participants of the study, one hundred and twenty for each group. The written posts of the participants were gathered for six months during 2013. The findings revealed that, not only cultural differences had an unquestionable effect on the results but also participants’ nationality was an effective variable. The results showed that students in both groups were in favor of violating quantity maxim. Both groups had near percentages for quality and manner violations, but Iranian students violated relation maxim more than American students. The study showed that that cultural knowledge had central importance in pragmatic competence and that such knowledge can be acquired through language-mediated social interactions. The study suggested that l2 pragmatic competence can be discussed in terms of intercultural competence that involves the learner’s attitude formation toward L2, rather than the acquisition of prescribed behavioral rules.

کلیدواژه ها:

Gricean maxims ، Iranian EFL learner ، Social Network ، Cultural differences