Gender-oriented Commonalities among Canadian and Iranian Englishes: An Analysis of Yes/No Question Variants

Abstract

This study investigatesvariability in English yes/no questions as well as the commonalities among yes/no question variants produced by members of two different varieties of English: Canadian English native speakers and Iranian EFL learners.Further, it probes the role of gender in theEnglish yes/no question variants produced by Canadian English native speakers and those produced by Iranian EFL learners. A modified version of the Edinburgh Map Task was used in data collection. 60 Canadians and Iranians performed the task and made English yes/no question variants considering the informal context. Based on the results, the same types of yes/no question variants were produced by both groups. However, with respect to quantity, Canadians made more variants while the context of use was similar. Another difference noticed was the most frequent variant: Iranians’ frequent variant coincided with the informal context, yet the Canadians’ frequent variant did not. Regarding gender, Iranians did not produce any gender-based variant; while Canadians showed that their production of yes/no question variants was gender-oriented. These findings revealed that both Canadians and Iranians from two different varieties of English syntactically behaved similarly, but their sociolinguistic behavior was not the same.

Keywords

• world englishes
• standard English
• Variation
• Gender