Information technology students’ involvement in in-class debates: Speech acts and modification of the illocutionary force

Information technology (IT) professionals are a specific discourse community whose oral communication in English as a second language (ESL) predominates at all levels of workplace activities in the multinational IT sector. Since IT students’ pragmatic competence in performing communicative functions is essential for their effective communication in an academic setting and a global work environment, it is important to investigate this aspect of their language systematically and carefully. This paper focuses on IT students’ speech acts and the ways they modify the illocutionary force while participating in in-class debates. The analysis revealed that students used a wide range of speech acts and different metadiscourse markers for both increasing and reducing the illocutionary force. The ways IT students used boosters and hedges also reflect how they assume and share their professional knowledge and experience in their discourse community.