Iraqi EFL Learner’ Conceptions of Status of English from a Linguistic Imperialism Perspective

There have so far been several studies which have investigated the attitudes of language learners and teachers towards the English language, and, specifically, towards linguistic imperialism. In the Iraqi ELT context, however, not much research has so far been conducted regarding this topic. The present study explored and examined the educated Iraqis’ conceptions of the status of English from a linguistic/cultural imperialism perspective. To this end, the data was collected in two phases. The first phase was the interview, which was conducted with 30 Iraqi students majoring in English at different levels of education to develop the questionnaire. The interview data were used as themes for the development of the questionnaire, which comprised the second phase of the research. The questionnaire was distributed among 105 participants to fill out; then, it was analysed by using AMOS and SPSS software. The findings of the study indicated that the mean for the participants’ responses in linguistic imperialism was 3.7, which implies that the participants somehow agreed with the questionnaire items that were related more with linguistic imperialism. Besides, the mean for the participants’ responses to the items constituting cultural dominance was 2.8, which is below the middle point and shows that the students disagreed with those items forming cultural dominance. Accordingly, it could be argued that the English language, along with its cultural values, has little effect on Iraqi EFL learners. It may be concluded that the English language is preferred over other languages, but not over their mother tongue.