Investigating Iraqi EFL learners' use of sarcasm

Abstract EN

This research is concerned with investigating Iraqi EFL learners' use of sarcasm in terms of recognition and production.

First, theoretical survey is presented about sarcasm and some related attitudes such as irony, lying and prosody.

Then, a model of sarcastic strategies is adopted for the analysis.

A test is carried out on fourth stage students in the Islamic university and the analysis is done afterwards.

The results show that the performance of the learners on the recognition part is questionable as they are unable to differentiate sarcasm from other attitudes.

On the production part, the learners used some strategies more than others in addition to using a strategy which is not found in the model.