This book is an original empirical study which contributes to the knowledge and scholarship in the fields of variational, interlanguage and cross-cultural pragmatics on a number of important levels. It highlights the potential influence of individual, regional and contextual variations, on the language use of native speakers and pragmatic performance of English as a Foreign Language learners, arguing that factors such as gender (operationalised via sex, e.g., female and male) and native culture should be considered in one single study. The book discusses the complexity of the influence of gender on language use, given that its influence may manifest in different ways in different cultures and contexts. Thus, researchers should focus on gender, culture and contextual variation when analysing language use conventions of native speakers and language learners with data highlighting the role of gender in learners’ first and second languages and cultures. The book also introduces findings which show the importance of cross-cultural comparison of Western Anglo-Saxon and Middle-Eastern Persian cultures in a single study and through a cross-culturally comparable data collection method.
