E-Requests in an Iraqi EFL Academic Context

Requests are frequently used in e-mails to facilitate communication between students and faculty in academic contexts. The speech act of request is face-threatening by its nature, and an inappropriate request can cause offence to interlocutors particularly when they are of an unequal authority. This study examines the interlanguage pragmatics of requests used by Iraqi EFL learners when communicating with their faculty via e-mails. To fulfill the aims of this study, the pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics of Iraqi EFL learners have been investigated. Results reveal that Iraqi EFL learners have pragmatic deficiency when they make status-unequal requests via e-mail.