As the role of context and culture are important in the semantic variation in the English language, this study aimed to investigate the how meaning shifts with social setting, discourse goals, and cultural norms. Hence, this study employs a mixed-methods design to examine how context and culture shape semantic variation in English among 100 Iraqi EFL learners. Participants, drawn from higher education institutions and English language programs in Baghdad, were selected to capture regional variation. A stratified sampling approach ensured representation across proficiency levels (elementary, intermediate, and advanced) and exposure types (classroom-only vs. high exposure to English in media/online). Data were collected using two questionnaires—assessing the relationship between context and lexical/pragmatic meaning, and between culture and lexical/pragmatic meaning—and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative analyses revealed a positive and relatively strong correlation between context and semantic variation in lexical and pragmatic meaning, whereas the correlation between culture and semantic variation was positive but relatively weak. Qualitative findings from interviews indicated that pragmatic interpretations of utterances vary across cultural contexts along several interrelated factors, including formality and social distance, purpose and setting of the conversation, politeness, directness, and modality, role relations and social hierarchies, directness versus indirectness, nonverbal cues and eye contact, contextual cues and expectations, dialects and linguistic variation, and the use of role-playing and feedback as learning tools. The analysis identified key predictive factors: audience/addressee (e.g., teacher/professor, advanced EFL learner, age of interlocutors), relationship and social hierarchy (power dynamics between teacher/professor and student; age differences), interaction purpose, politeness norms and face concerns (balancing brevity, directness, or elaboration to maintain respect and clarity), dominant norms of directness vs. indirectness in formal and informal contexts, tone and formality indicators, language formality and lexical choices, and situational cues and expectations (classroom vs. social environments). Overall, the study highlights the prominent role of contextual factors in shaping semantic interpretation and the more nuanced influence of culture on lexical and pragmatic meaning among Iraqi EFL learners.
