Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure in English Language Classrooms: Development of a Multi-Dimensional Model Based on EFL Teachers’ and Learners’ Perceptions

The present study aimed at investigating the perceptions of English language teachers and learners towards cross-cultural pragmatic failure in Iranian EFL contexts. To elicit the information for the construction of Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure Questionnaire, besides reviewing the related literature, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 12 university instructors in the field of applied linguistics. Employing an exploratory sequential mixed methods design, the researchers developed and validated the Questionnaire with 25 items on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree with 220 EFL teachers and learners. Principal component analysis extracted 6 factors: semantic inappropriacy, insufficient pragmatic instruction, social interaction deficiency, interlingual transfer, cross-cultural illiteracy, and grammatical inadequacy via SPSS Software. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed this multi-dimensional model using structural equation modeling via LISREL software. The constructed questionnaire was then administered to the target population comprising 165 Iranian EFL instructors and students from different state universities and language institutes in Tehran, to investigate their perceptions towards cross-cultural pragmatic failure. The findings of the study indicated that EFL teachers perceived insufficient pragmatic instruction as the most substantial factor leading to cross-cultural pragmatic failure in EFL classrooms, followed by social interaction deficiency, cross-cultural illiteracy, semantic inappropriacy, grammatical inadequacy, and finally interlingual transfer as the least important factor while EFL learners perceived semantic inappropriacy as the most and interlingual transfer as the least contributing factors to cross-cultural pragmatic failure. The study’s implications for EFL teachers and learners, educators, and materials developers are discussed and suggestions for further research are provided.