The Use of English Request & Refusal by Persian & Azerbaijani Speakers

In recent years, there is an enormous improvement in the empirical studies particularly on second language acquisition and the main concentration is on the transfer of first language in learning the second one because the people with different languages and different pragmatic competences may misunderstand each other due to the fact that the same speech act may be realized differently cross cultures and languages.Therefore the study investigated a contrastive analysis of English Request and Refusal speech acts between Persian and Azerbaijani speakers of Iranian upper intermediate EFL learners.Furthermore,the study aimed to shed some light on the issue of production of direct,indirect,and polite requests and refusals by the participants. The findings of the study can provide a useful instrument for EFL teachers to make the students aware of cultural differences.In addition,it can facilitate the translation process for translators in understanding the most appropriate linguistic and pragmatic equivalents in target languages.It can also be helpful for test makers to make their tests more comprehensive.Material developers can use the finding in their instructions of foreign language.