La intersecció entre la pragmàtica i l'adquisició de segones llengües

This article provides a review of research in the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge by second language learners. It begins with a definition of pragmatics and second language acquisition that emphasizes the complex relationship between the acquisition of grammar and language use. After examining four possibilities of relationships between pragmatics and language development, the author reviews past and current research focusing on the following topics: the study of pragmatic development, the identification of speech acts, the influence of host and foreign environments, the role of the first and second languages, and speaker interaction

The acquisition of pragmatic competence: compliment response strategies in learners of Spanish

The areas of Pragmatics and Second Language Acquisition have existed separately in the field of Linguistics for some time. Their connection, however, has more recently seen a great deal of study by researchers like Scarcella and Brunak (1981), Rintell (1981), Brown and Levinson (1987), Koike (1992, 1996), Saito, Beecken (1997), Félix-Brasdefer (2003, 2006) and Huth (2006). A common thread in these studies is the effect of language transfer or cross-linguistic influence that the first language has while learners are attempting to acquire the pragmatic and politeness principles that are central to the target language and culture. One speech act that is particularly of interest to researchers is compliment responses because they require a great deal of pragmatic insight by the speaker and therefore are often rich with data. The present study attempts to bring together the research that has been done on this speech act and clarify it using data from American learners of Spanish in a foreign language classroom at the university level. Although collecting data from learners is not a new concept, this cross-sectional study of learners at three (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) stages of learning will help to fill a void in the research that exists on the role of language transfer in pragmatic acquisition, as well as the correlation between grammatical competence and pragmatic competence. Results from a compliment response survey administered to American native English-speaking learners of Spanish at a large American university from varying levels will be analyzed and compared to control data from native English and Spanish speakers. This research will illustrate that in the second language classroom, pragmatic accuracy in the second language often does not simply emerge with grammatical instruction. Instead, these data will show that explicit instruction might be a better tool for pragmatic accuracy in compliment responses. Results will indicate that with more Spanish instruction, students will be able to produce more grammatically correct compliment responses, but there will be little variation in their pragmatic content through the levels. These results have pedagogical implications since pragmatic competence largely remains an overlooked aspect of second language acquisition in the language classroom

The Crosslinguistic Influence of First and Second Language on Third Language Acquisition

This paper explores the crosslinguistic influences of first and second language on third language acquisition. While it has earlier been argued that Universal Grammar is lost with subsequent language acquisition, some studies indicate that Universal Grammar is not lost and is also applied when acquiring other languages. By drawing on two studies of third language acquisition where the third languages are V2, it is shown that when it comes to acquiring a third language, transfer can happen from both the first and second languages. One study showed that both the first and second languages can influence the acquisition of a third language while another argued in favor of the second language being the most dominant influence. On the basis of an examination of different theoretical approaches to language transfer, this paper argues that the Typological Primacy Model provides the most convincing and pragmatic explanation in that language transfer depends on linguistic circumstances

Investigating the Impact of Interlanguage on Adult EFL Learners in Indonesia: Strengths and Weaknesses

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) concerns not only the way to learn a second language (L2), but also the unique language system created by language learners (interlanguage). This qualitative study analyzed EFL learners’ interlanguage by focusing on their strengths and weaknesses in speaking English, especially on phonological, grammatical and pragmatic competence in speaking English. The language data were obtained from a recorded conversation between two non-native English speakers from Indonesia. The data were analysed by referring to contrastive analysis, error analysis and the socio-cultural perspective in SLA. The results indicated that although both learners had a strong L1 accent, the learners did not face any difficulty in constructing English sentences in the right sentence order (SVO). In addition, when facing difficulties in speaking English, the learners were seen to ask and provide support to each other, as well as to talk to themselves (private speech). In terms of weaknesses, the study found that the learners often mispronounced the letter “t” in English as the sound of “t” in Indonesian, made grammatical errors in subject and verb agreement, and applied Indonesia’s pragmatic concepts when speaking English. The study suggests that it is necessary to have a positive view on learners’ interlanguage as it can be used as a tool to learn a second language. Keywords: Contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage, second language acquisition, socio-cultural perspective in SLA

La intersecció entre la pragmàtica i l'adquisició de segones llengües

This article provides a review of research in the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge by second language learners. It begins with a definition of pragmatics and second language acquisition that emphasizes the complex relationship between the acquisition of grammar and language use. After examining four possibilities of relationships between pragmatics and language development, the author reviews past and current research focusing on the following topics: the study of pragmatic development, the identification of speech acts, the influence of host and foreign environments, the role of the first and second languages, and speaker interaction

Pragmatic perspectives on the second language acquisition of person reference in Japanese : a longitudinal study

PhD ThesisThis thesis presents a longitudinal study of the acquisition of person reference in Japanese by second language (L2) learners whose first language is English. Reference to persons is of particular interest in pragmatics as an area where discourse-pragmatic (referential coherence) and social (status marking) aspects of language intersect. Previous studies have discussed L2 reference as well as politeness and status marking in second languages. However, person reference itself has rarely been the object of investigation. The original contribution of this thesis is to include both social and discourse-pragmatic theories in a longitudinal study of this area of learner language. The study uses data from six learners of L2 Japanese after two years’ classroom instruction in the UK, and after a further year’s study in Japan, as well as native Japanese data. A range of communicative tasks is used to elicit person reference while providing variation in social and discourse-pragmatic conditions. Learners’ basic route of discourse-pragmatic development thus revealed is one where initial overexplicitness in person reference reduces over time but does not disappear altogether. As they develop, learners supply null forms more readily but overuse them in certain lower accessibility contexts. Physical presence of the referent is consistently the most important accessibility-determining factor for learners; over time they become more responsive to competition for the role of antecedent. For social factors, the terms used to refer to high-status persons are generally native-like from the pre-study abroad stage onwards. In many other respects, however, learners after study abroad use a greater range of forms and strategies than they do at the earlier stage. However, the results of this are not necessarily target-like. These findings are in many respects consistent with those of previous studies, but are reached using a more detailed conception of social and discourse-pragmatic contexts than previous studies tend to. However, the often-reported overuse of informal variants is not found here, and the post-study abroad overuse of null forms found here is not reported elsewhere. I argue that these findings are consistent with a view of L2 pragmatic development as a process of gaining attentional control over pre-existing pragmatic representations (Bialystok 1994). Furthermore, accessibility theory (Ariel 1990), which is very rarely used in L2 research, is shown to provide a useful framework for analysing learners’ discourse-pragmatic development.School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

Pragmatic gains in the study abroad context: Learners' experiences and recognition of pragmatic routines

The present study investigates second language (L2) learners' pragmatic development during study abroad (SA) programs by focusing on the recognition of pragmatic routines, and how sociocultural adaptation and intensity of interaction influence pragmatic gains. It is a longitudinal investigation that employed a mixed-method approach. Thirty-one Brazilian students in their first semester of study in a US university completed a pretest and posttest version of a sociocultural adaptation questionnaire, a language contact survey, and a routine recognition test. Quantitative data were complemented with qualitative information from semi-structured interviews with 2 of the participants, who provided details about the nature of their adaptation experiences and the patterns of interaction they held during the sojourn. Findings revealed that the recognition of pragmatic routines significantly increased during a semester abroad, and that this development was influenced by both sociocultural adaptation and intensity of interaction, interaction being the main predictor of pragmatic gains. Results from this study emphasize the importance of SA programs for the acquisition of pragmatic routines, and suggest that learners' willingness to acculturate in the SA environment, and exposure to recurrent situations outside of the classroom are determinant aspects for routine recognition

Teaching of Pragmatics: Issues in a Global Age

This article reviews literature on pragmatic teaching in three domains: (1) instructional methods in interpragmatics (2) pragmatic teaching resources (3) test and assessment of pragmatic ability .It aims at providing a comprehensive perspective of the available choices for pragmatics teaching and the ways that second language learners’ pragmatic development can be enhanced in the classroom. In the area of instructional methods, this article reviews researches under the theoretical SLA framework of explicit versus implicit instruction, input processing instruction, and skill acquisition and practice. In the domain of pragmatic teaching resources, two types of pedagogical resources are reviewed: textbooks development and the possibility of the application of CA based research material and electronic corpora to the classroom pragmatics teaching and learning. In the discussion of test and assessment of pragmatic ability, two categories are reviewed. The first is the comparative study of the six types of instruments to test second language learners’ pragmatic ability which is aimed to provide statistical and practical aspects for the test developers and test users. The second reviews the teacher assessment and its related assessment instruments in the application of pragmatic teaching .Finally, this article discusses unique challenges and opportunities pragmatics teaching faces in the current era

Consciousness, Learning and Interlanguage Pragmatics

During the past decade, the study of interlanguage pragmatics has produced important empirical findings, primarily through the identification and comparison of speech act realization patterns in various languages based on data from both native and nonnative speakers. In addition to this focus on product, some attention has been paid to the processes of comprehension and production in second language pragmatics (Frerch & Kasper 1984, 1989; Kasper 1984). In contrast to these concerns, there has been little discussion of how pragmatic abilities are acquired in a second language. This paper is concerned with the ways in which consciousness may be involved in learning the principles of discourse and pragmatics in a second language. The role of conscious and nonconscious processes in the acquisition of morphosyntax has been hotly debated within the field of second language acquisition (Krashen 1981, 1983; Munsell & Carr 1981; Rutherford & Sharwood Smith 1985; Seliger 1983; Sharwood Smith 1981), but these debates have ignored pragmatic and discoursal abilities. My discussion will of necessity be speculative, drawing on current theories of the role of consciousness in human learning in general, drawn primarily from cognitive science and experimental psychology, with some suggestions for the extension of general principles to the learning of pragmatics. This is an issue with important pedagogical implications. In second language teaching, as Richards (forthcoming) points out, there are currently two major approaches to the teaching of conversation in second language programs. The first is an indirect approach, in which conversational competence is seen as the product of engaging learners in conversational interaction; the underlying assumption is that the ability to carry on conversation (which includes pragmatic ability and other factors as well) is something that is acquired simply in the course of doing it. In practice, this leads to the use of group work activities or other tasks which require interaction. The second, a more direct approach, focuses explicitly on the strategies involved in conversation and emphasizes consciousness-raising concerning these strategies

The Effect of Language Learning Experience on the Appropriate Use of Speech Act ‘Request’

Nowadays emphasizing linguistic competence is not a sufficient path to reach a target-like communicative competence. Pragmatic competence should be put emphasis on as well. The importance of learning speech acts which is one aspect in the pragmatics is clear to those who want to learn a second or foreign language. This study after investigating the interest of language learners in the acquisition of appropriate use of second language speech acts, traces the variation over time in the use of speech act of request in Iranian EFL University students and for further clarification a group of non-language University students. The results showed no effect of time on the appropriate use of speech act “request”