Iranian English Teachers’ Linguistic, Professional, and Pragmatic Identity: A Comparative Study of English Language Institutes vs. Public Schools’ Teachers

Recently, researchers demonstrate an increasing interest in identifying language identity and the role of language identity in teaching and learning English in different contexts. They postulate that identity play an indispensable role in the process of language learning and teaching. Literature is replete with studies conducted on different identities, namely linguistic, professional, occupational, etc. However, there sounds to be a dearth of research on the interplay between linguistic, professional, and pragmatic identity of language teachers. Therefore, the present study made an endeavor to bridge the gap in literature by juxtaposing the aforementioned identities. More precisely, it was an attempt to find out English language institutes and public school teachers’ attitudes towards their linguistic, professional, and pragmatic identity. Besides, it aimed to probe whether there would be any differences between male and female English teachers’ perceptions towards their identity. To this end, the participantswere 80 (60 female and 20 male) Iranian English teachers; 50 (46 female and 4 male) were from English Language Institutes and 30 (14 female and 16 male) of them were from public schools teaching in GonbadKavous, Golestan Province, Iran. To gather the data, a reliable and valid questionnaire (Fahim, 2011), consisting of 62 items covering linguistic, professional, and pragmatic identities; was distributed to the teachers. Results of the present study indicated that English language institute and public school teachers believe in high proficiency of native English teachers in their job and linguistic and grammatical features. In addition, they illustrate that a native English teacher hasbetter knowledge of authentic and real-life use of English and pragmatic rules. Conversely, the findings revealed that English teachers believe they do not ignore the pragmatic competence in their teaching.The findings of the present study also revealed that public school teachers outperformed institute teachers in linguistic identity and Professional identity, institute teachers’ mean was higher in Pragmatic identity. The present study would shed light on the teachers’ attitudes with respect to their linguistic, professional, and pragmatic identity and offer some implications for teachers and materials developers.

کلیدواژه ها:

English language teachers’ identity ، Language identity ، Linguistic identity ، Pragmatic identity ، Professional identity