exploring and assessing pragmatic aspects of l1 and l2
TRANSCRIPT
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International Conference
Exploring and Assessing Pragmatic Aspects of L1 and L2 Communication:
From Needs Analysis through Monitoring to Feedback
Dept. of Linguistic and Literary Studies University of Padua, Italy
25-27 July 2018
Abstracts
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WORKSHOP
Andrew Cohen (University of Minnesota, USA; [email protected])
Exploring ways in which being a native or a non-native teacher may influence the teaching of target-language pragmatics
The workshop will start by pointing out that the research literature has downplayed the
significance of whether target-language (TL) instructors are native or non-native speakers of the
language they are teaching. The case will be made that there are advantages to being non-native
and that there are also advantages to being native with regard to pragmatics instruction. Examples
of both will be provided, drawing largely on an international survey of both groups of teachers.
In the hands-on part of the workshop, participants will discuss first in small groups and then with all
workshop participants their responses to a 20-item questionnaire which they will be requested to
fill out before the workshop. (There are slight differences between the native- and non-native
versions of the questionnaires.)
The aim of the workshop will be to heighten teachers’ awareness as to how their level of TL ability
may influence their pragmatics instruction. Numerous suggestions will be offered as to how to
compensate for areas in which teachers may feel that they lack the knowledge to provide accurate
instruction in the area of TL pragmatics.
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GUEST LECTURES
Piotr Cap (University of Łódź, Poland; [email protected])
On the implementation of pragmatic awareness in teaching English as a foreign language
In this talk I make a small-range and tentative attempt to show that a genuinely successful explanation of certain lexico-grammatical phenomena occurring in the English language needs going beyond the traditional approaches rooted in the form-focused conception of language (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985), and assuming a pragmatic perspective instead. By ‘pragmatic perspective’, I understand an explanatory approach that draws on a broad idea of all language being analyzable in context and thus all the grammatical structures being functionally anchored in speaker’s intention to realize a particular goal by the use of specific linguistic constructs (Verschueren 1999). I present neither an exhaustive nor a rule-bound catalogue of cases; the goal is to make a heuristic preproposal for inclusion of a pragmatic mind-set in the ELT classroom.
The argument in the talk builds on the feeling that certain structural phenomena receive unsatisfactory treatment in relevant ELT literature and, second, that there is a socially motivated connection between pragmatics and the classroom teaching process as such. Evidently, pragmatics is doubly applicable to language teaching, as all classroom language instruction involves using language in a social context to promote the learning and teaching of language for use in other social contexts. As a discipline that considers why communication often fails on the grounds of contextual, social and cultural differences, pragmatics is also a central competence to teach students who will use language outside the classroom and to teach teachers who will mediate its use for learning inside the classroom. It is important to note that these days English language teaching necessarily involves recognition of a growing variety of social as well as professional contexts in which speakers around the world are learning and using English. Theories of practice that shed light on how language is used in its discourse context and how people negotiate understanding are thus essential to our professional understanding.
The talk consists of five sections, in which selected ‘problem areas’ are first identified within larger grammatical categories, and then ideas proposed for facilitating the teaching process by adopting a pragmatic standpoint. The areas addressed are, respectively, the passive transformation, the inversion of subject and verb in simple declarative clauses, the so-called ‘should for impropriety’ in the English modality system, the ‘pleonastic it’ construction, and, finally, cleft sentences.
Andrew Cohen (University of Minnesota, USA; [email protected])
Considerations in assessing pragmatic appropriateness in spoken language The plenary will deal with some of the thorny issues associated with assessing the pragmatics of spoken language. A critical look will be given to various measures that assess directly and indirectly oral output from a pragmatics point of view. We will consider oral role-plays, written discourse as if spoken, multiple-choice and short-answer completion items, and the dialogue production task. Research on the rating of oral production tasks will be provided, since assessment of oral output involving pragmatics is subject to rater bias. In closing, a set of strategies for assessing pragmatics will be offered.
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J. César Félix-Brasdefer (Indiana University, USA; [email protected])
Developing Intercultural Competence: Learning Context, Assessment, and Instruction
The construct of intercultural competence has been analyzed from a multidisciplinary perspective such as international business and marketing, anthropology, sociology, social and organizational psychology, applied linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and foreign language education. This talk begins by reviewing the main tenets of intercultural competence with a focus on communicative interaction. Adopting a pragmatic-discursive approach, I take a fresh look at five key areas of intercultural interaction: negotiation of meaning, emergent context, markers of extended discourse, formulaic language, and multilingual resources to express pragmatic meaning. I will present my analysis with examples from intercultural service encounters. I will end this talk with teaching and assessment considerations to promote intercultural communicative competence.
Karen Glaser (University of Leipzig, Germany; [email protected])
Assessing and fostering the pragmatic competence of non-native English speaking primary EFL teacher candidates
The teaching and assessment of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language is usually
investigated and discussed with regard to language learners ‘on the receiving end,’ but rarely with regard to language instructors who are non-native speakers of the target language and thus both (advanced) learners and teachers of the L2 at the same time. With regard to English as the target language, this is a true research gap as non-native English speaking teachers (non-NESTs) constitute the majority of English teachers world-wide (Kamhi-Stein, 2016, p. 180). What is more, English teacher education programs rarely include pragmatic aspects – neither with regard to enhancing the teacher’s own pragmatic skills nor with regard to training them to teach pragmatic aspects of the L2 (Eslami & Eslami-Rasekh, 2008, p. 179; Glaser, under review). This is especially true for teacher candidates who are studying to become primary school teachers and who will thus for the most part teach young beginning learners.
The talk will start by sharing some authentic observations of how future non-native English speaking primary teachers (non-NESPTs) handle pragmatic phenomena in the target language, and of (problematic?) attitudes towards the role of pragmatics in primary English language teaching (PELT). It will then present a modified replication of Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) renowned study on the identification of grammatical vs. pragmatic violations, carried out with non-NESPT candidates. While the original study asked the participants for a global indication of appropriateness/correctness and to rate the severity of the perceived violation on a six-point scale, the participants in the present study were asked to indicate whether the item was problematic in terms of correctness OR appropriateness, or unproblematic. If the respondents reported a problem, they were asked to identify and/or correct it to see whether their perceptions matched the inbuilt violation. Inspired by Pfingsthorn and Flöck (2017), the data was analyzed by means of the basic four categories employed in Signal Detecting Theory (Hit, Miss, False Alarm and Correct Rejection) to gain a more detailed insight into the participants’ perceptions and response behavior. The talk presents the results of this metalinguistic judgment test and derives implications for English language teacher education that are (not only) relevant for the training of future primary school teachers.
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References Eslami, Z. R., & Eslami-Rasekh, A. (2008). Enhancing the pragmatic competence of non-native English
speaking teacher candidates (NNESTCs) in an EFL context. In E. Alcón-Soler & A. Martínez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 178-197). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Glaser, K. (under review). Enhancing the role of pragmatics in primary English teacher training. Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (2016). The non-native English speaker teachers in TESOL movement. ELT Journal,
70(2), 180-189. Pfingsthorn, J., & Flöck, I. (2017, October).’ Die Bemessung pragmatischer Sprachbewusstheit:
Precision und recall im metalinguistischen Beurteilungstest [Assessing pragmatic awareness: Precision and recall in a metalinguistic judgment test]. Paper presented at the 27th Conference of the DGFF [German Association for Foreign Language Research], Jena, Germany.
Jesús Romero-Trillo (Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain; [email protected])
Corpus pragmatics and prosody in L1-L2 interaction … or how to avoid misunderstanding, if you want …
The present talk proposes the absolute need to incorporate prosody to the pragmatic analysis of
language and defends that the study of context is incomplete without the careful analysis of the acoustic elements that compose the kaleidoscope of speech. In some way, this approach is a return to the origins of discourse analysis in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when revered functional grammarians and discourse analysts like Halliday (1967, 1970) and Brazil (1975), inter alii, demonstrated the inextricable relationship between prosody and language functions.
The way an utterance is pronounced belongs to the realm of prosody, and based on the acoustic performance of language, pragmatics can identify the intentions with which utterances are pronounced and how they may help to clarify the meaning behind some grammatical structures that do not render ‘transparent’ pragmatic force on the basis of their constructions.
Although nowadays it is possible to obtain a good acoustic description of prosody with the aid of computer programmes, pragmaticians have rarely approached the study of meaning from a prosodic perspective. Moreover, sometimes it seems as if speech were the subject matter for the study of meaning, in a written script, but without the realisation of that script in a spoken context. The present talk will try to bridge the gap between corpus pragmatics and prosody, will identify the main prosodic theories that can be useful for pragmatic research, and will present some of the current research with specific emphasis on the prosody of pragmatic markers in native and non-native speakers of English. The relationship between pragmatic competence and prosody is especially significant in intercultural communication. In this sense, the pragmatic-cum-prosodic interface plays an essential role in the cognitive transmission of meaning due to its multiplicity of patterns and functions. The present investigation delves into the relationship between pragmatics and prosody from a corpus pragmatics perspective (Romero-Trillo 2017), with especial reference to corpus pragmatics. It compares the performance of feedback elements in conversations between native and non-native speakers of English by applying the notion of Adaptive Management (Romero-Trillo 2007) to show that the description of the acoustic features of pragmatic markers realising feedback in conversation is essential to avoid digressive requests for clarification and repair.
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References Brazil, David (1975). Discourse Intonation 1/2. Birmingham: Birmingham University Press. Halliday, MAK (1967) Intonation and Grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton. Halliday, MAK (1970) A Course in Spoken English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Romero-Trillo, J. (2007) Adaptive management in discourse: The case of involvement discourse
markers in English and Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6: 81-94. Romero-Trillo, J. (2017) Editorial. Corpus Pragmatics 1: 1-2.
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FULL PAPERS
Fiona Dalziel (University of Padua, Italy, [email protected])
“Try to say things straight, without being offensive, obviously”: the pragmatics of online peer review
The aim of this paper is to explore the pragmatic strategies adopted by university language students in online comments on their peers’ written production in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. The paper poses the following research questions: to what extent do learners temper the criticism in their peer review messages with praise for their peers’ work; do students tend to use more positive or negative politeness strategies in their comments; do students transfer the use of hedging expressions from their academic writing to their peer reviews; what kinds of messages do the learners themselves wish to receive from their peers in terms of pragmatics. In order to answer these questions, I will analyse a corpus of 300 online peer review messages collected between 2015 and 2017 along with a number of replies to a task in which students were required to define “good” peer review. The results of the study will be useful in order to suggest pedagogical interventions which can help academic writing instructors to address the issue of the pragmatic features of online peer review. This may help to allay some of the students’ fears in commenting on their peers’ work.
Anna De Marco (University of Calabria, Italy; [email protected]); Emanuela Paone (University of Calabria, Italy; [email protected])
Apologies and politeness strategies in native and non-native speakers of Italian:
prosodic and pragmatic aspects
The present study examines the relationship between prosodic cues and politeness strategies employed by native and non natives speakers of Italian to convey apologies. The choice of these strategies will be analyzed with regard to sociolinguistic variables (see Brown, Levinson 1987). 15 Spanish learners of Italian as L2 and 5 native speakers of Italian participated in the study. Participants were required to enact the 3 role plays and to perform the apologies in accordance with the given context (which varied in each situation). Their performances have been recorded by means of a professional audio recorder. Sequences containing speech acts and politeness strategies have been analyzed, taking into account morphosyntactic, lexical and prosodic features. Acoustic analysis has been carried out by using PRAAT, considering intonational and temporal parameters, as well as intensity values. To determine the degree of perceived politeness by native speakers of Italian with regard to participants' performances, a perception test has been submitted to a sample of 50 native speakers of Italian. These were supposed to listen to the dialogue, knowing the context and the purpose of the speaker, and to judge the perceived politeness on a Likert scale from 0 (impolite) to 3 (very polite).
Preliminary results have revealed that learners produced a number of speech acts characterized by grammatical and phonological errors, including intonational and morpho-syntactic transfers from their L1. Furthermore, learners experienced difficulties in modulating their intonation in accordance with different social contexts. Indeed, their productions were less variable if compared to native speakers' performances and were characterized by a narrower pitch range. The perception experiment has revealed that Italian listeners perceived learners' performances as more impolite than native speakers' productions.
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Isabel Margarida Duarte (University of Porto, Portugal; [email protected])
Ângela Carvalho (University of Porto, Portugal; [email protected]) Salomé Girard (University of Porto, Portugal; [email protected])
Developing pragmatic skills in Portuguese as Foreign Language A level groups:
A case study in Porto (Portugal) With the aim of improving oral interaction skills of different levels of formality of beginner levels’
learners in linguistic immersion context, we administered a questionnaire to around fifty students
of Portuguese as Foreign Language (PFL) (A1 and A2 levels) of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of
the University of Porto, Portugal. The results of this questionnaire guided us to the preparation of a
proposal of pedagogical activities for a group of A2 level students, which include authentic
documents as well as original didactic materials (e.g., comic stripes). From the preliminary results
obtained, it is possible to conclude that introducing explicitly pragmatic aspects of informal oral
interactions already at beginner levels has a positive impact on PFL learning.
Barbara Eizaga-Rebollar (University of Cádiz, Spain; [email protected]) Cristina Heras-Ramirez (University of Cádiz, Spain; [email protected]
Assessing the pragmatic competence for the oral production at the C1 level with the new CEFR
descriptors Pragmatic competence allows hearers to infer the speaker’s attitude and intentions conveyed by
speech or texts, departing from their linguistic meaning. This gradually acquired ability relies on
different competences such as pragmatic awareness and metapragmatic awareness (Ifantidou
2011; Ifantidou & Tzanne 2012; Tzanne et al. 2009). However, we hypothesise that the new CEFR
descriptors (2017) mostly focus on the pragmatic awareness, overlooking the metapragmatic
awareness. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to analyse how the descriptors propose to
assess the pragmatic competence for the oral production at the C1 level providing examples from
the most popular examinations – CAE and Trinity ISE III; second, to show which aspects of the
pragmatic competence have not been accommodated yet to develop further the descriptors. The
conclusions from our study are that most of the scales offer some explicit guidelines to assess the
pragmatic awareness at a C1 level though the application of these guidelines still depends upon
individual interpretations of the CEFR descriptors; and that how specific linguistic cues achieve the
intended effects in the judges and are used to assess the pragmatic competence still needs to be
explicated.
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Daniele Franceschi (University of Pisa, Italy; [email protected])
Conducting a lawyer-client interview: the case of Italian EFL University learners
This paper provides a corpus-based multimodal investigation of spoken learner English produced
by Italian mother-tongue University students simulating lawyer-client interviews as part of their in-
course assessment tasks. The study intends to examine the features of learner language in this
particular area of ESP with respect to the choices that students make both at a verbal and at a wider,
non-verbal level.
The analysis was conducted on a database containing video-recorded conversations, which have
been fully annotated both for linguistic features and para-linguistic/extra-linguistic elements, thus
offering an in-depth description of spoken legal English interlanguage, which may be useful for the
improvement of teaching materials that still today focus almost exclusively on written legal
language.
Tuuli Holttinen (University of Helsinki, Finland; [email protected])
Daring to refer to the addressee: Finnish speakers’ requests in L2 French
In this paper, I study how native and non-native speakers refer to their addressee when making a
request. The study focuses on elicited requests in L2 French (beginner, intermediate, and advanced
levels of acquisition), L1 Finnish, and L1 French, and these are analyzed from the points of view of
request perspective (Can I… / Can you… / Can we… / Is it possible to…) and pronouns of address (T
and V forms, constructions without pronominal addressing). The data have been collected using an
Oral Discourse Completion Test. Differences between L2 French, L1 Finnish, and L1 French are
studied to see how native and non-native ways of referring to the hearer differ in these languages,
and to find out possible transfer effects. Developmental patterns from a beginner to an advanced
level in L2 French are also observed: the results show that advanced learners “dare” to refer to their
addressee more explicitly than less advanced learners.
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Mathieu Lecouvet (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium; [email protected])
Ferran Suner Munoz (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium; [email protected])
The interplay between grammar beliefs and L2 proficiency at the syntax-discourse interface Current trends in linguistic research share the general consensus that grammar not only stands for
form, but also for meaningfulness and communicative efficiency. The present study investigates the
German L2 competence of French-speaking learners at the syntax-discourse-interface, focusing on
the link between L2 proficiency and learners’ beliefs and perceptions about the target-language
system. As a morphologically rich language (i.e. a language in which case marking provides for the
labelling of grammatical functions), German allows for a high degree of constituent order flexibility
to adjust to information packaging instructions. This configuration, which distinguishes German
from Romance and other West Germanic languages (Dutch, English), poses particular difficulties to
French-speaking learners. Assuming this may be due to a limited awareness of the linearization
patterns at work in the L2 to encode pragmatic constraints, the present paper reports on an
empirical study concerned with the interplay between L2 writing proficiency and learners’
metalinguistic skills. The comparison to German L1 data shows a significant underuse of L2 syntactic
patterns of information packaging, being learners’ misconceptions and beliefs about syntax-
discourse a good predictor for lower performance compared to L1 text production.
Rhia Moreno-Kilpatrick (University of Georgia, USA; [email protected])
No Need to Reinvent the Wheel: Applying Dewey’s Theory of Experience to the Study Abroad Foreign Language Syllabus
Incorporating Dewey’s (1938) theory of experience (TE) into curriculum design, this study
restructured a study abroad beginning foreign language course to use the host city as a living
language laboratory. Grounded in Dewey’s TE and a pragmatic focus on meaning-making through
contextualized practice, students engaged in active language learning through ethnographic and
culturally contextual tasks. They completed guided observations, interviews, field notes, and
reflective exercises based on linguistic objectives and cultural inquiry. Framed in TE and case study
methodology, data collection included focus group interviews, observations, and artifacts. Following
thematic analysis, themes of creativity in expression, confidence, engagement, and increased
language production emerged. Students also reported increased attention to how the language was
used by local speakers. Additionally, a theme of culture as dynamic came to the forefront. As a result
of their ethnographic interactions, students began to notice and question the concept of culture.
Critical reflection and guidance from the teacher helped students begin to problematize the notion
of culture as static and group-centric. The findings strongly suggest that the incorporation of
Dewey’s TE significantly impacted students’ language learning experience in the study abroad
context and contributed to their communicative proficiency while also expanding cultural
awareness.
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Maria Teresa Musacchio (University of Padua, Italy; [email protected])
From L2 communication awareness to L1 text production: assessing students’ acquisition of
pragmatic competence in translating texts on the GMO debate Considering the both writers and translators as text users pre-suppose, implicate and infer meaning
in text, this paper investigates the ways in which argumentation – both through- and counter-
argumentation – is dealt with in English and Italian by comparing and contrasting a
comparable/parallel corpus of GMO texts. Discourse connectives and ellipsis of junction were
investigated qualitatively and quantitatively together with attendant issues of informative
markedness of presence or absence of connectives in the comparable corpus of GMO texts and in
the translations students made in preparation and as part of a virtual exchange or tele-collaboration
project. The project involved students in a US university writing argumentative texts on GMOs and
students at an Italian university translating them. Corpus data suggest that – faced with unfamiliar,
culturally different arguments about GMOs in the second set of texts – trainee translators had some
problems in rendering discourse connectives and turning what were often through-argumentation
US texts into counter-argumentation texts in Italian, using a cultural filter to produce covert
translations that read like target language originals and met target language expectations. In the
second set of translations improvements were detected in students’ awareness of L2
communication strategies.
Paolo Nitti (University of Insubria, Italy; [email protected])
Competenza pragmatica e insegnamento della lingua italiana. Un’indagine sulle pratiche glottodidattiche (Pragmatic competence and Italian language teaching: An investigation into
teaching practices) On the basis of communicative approach for language education, pragmatic competence is shaped
as a subskill characteristic of a wider communicative competence. Considering the role of the
pragmatic competence, made explicit by the greater part of the academic contexts of teachers, it
has been necessary to interrogate on the models of teaching and the effective presence of the
pragmatic dimensions within the materials utilized in language courses, narrowing the research to
Italian language education. The research involved a sample of 600 teachers of Italian as first and
second language, of all orders and degrees of education starting from primary school and was
conducted in the second part of the 2016/2017 academic year. The sample was asked to fill in a
questionnaire composed of 20 questions related to the presence and the modalities of pragmatic
competence development, according to the language education objectives and the evolution of
interlanguages. The results show that pragmatic competence, contrary to what the outcomes of
scientific research establish, is often subordinate to linguistic one and, in a few cases, is realized
within sociolinguistic or cultural competence.
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Elena Nuzzo (Roma 3 University, Italy; [email protected])
Diego Cortés Velasquez (Roma 3 University, Italy; [email protected])
Last-minute cancellation as a (non) refusal strategy: A cross-cultural comparison of Colombian and Italian sociopragmatic norms
This study is part of a larger cross-cultural research project, which aims at investigating the speech
act of declining an invitation among native speakers of different languages. For this paper we focus
on Italian and Colombian Spanish. Refusals are dispreferred reactions that usually include face
saving strategies. A pre-planned last-minute cancellation might be a strategy to avoid an immediate
refusal and save positive face. In fact, a last-minute cancellation can easily be attributed to an
unforeseen event that cannot be controlled, nor anticipated. Based on the idea that South-American
cultures are preferably oriented towards positive politeness, we hypothesised that in Colombian
Spanish this strategy is more widely used than in Italian. Quantitative analysis shows that
Colombians tend to use and expect the pre-planned last-minute cancellation strategy slightly more
often than Italians. To confirm this tendency, we deepened our investigation by analysing
qualitatively the cancellations. In particular, we addressed the following research question: do
Colombian and Italian cancellations differ in terms of structure and distribution of internal and
external modifiers of the illocutionary force? 753 cancellations were analysed, and results confirm
that pre-planned last-minute cancellation tend to be a routinized strategy for Colombians, less so
for Italians.
Eva Ogiermann (King’s College London, UK; [email protected]) Spyridoula Bella (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; [email protected])
Teaching requests – what and how?
This paper presents the results of an interlanguage pragmatic study of requests, a highly
recurrent and well-researched but, at the same time, very complex speech act. The findings are
based on a total of 900 requests elicited by means of a discourse completion task (see Ogiermann
2009) produced by native speakers of English (the target language), German, Greek, Polish and
Russian, as well as German, Greek, Polish and Russian advanced learners of English.
While some of the identified interlanguage features of the analysed requests point to divergent
understandings of the interpersonal implications of requesting, reflecting different systems of
values and beliefs (Thomas 1983), others are more amenable to explicit instruction. The paper will
therefore conclude by making suggestions as to how the findings can be incorporated into, and the
available data can be used for, the teaching of English pragmatics.
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Philip, Prinz (San Francisco State University, USA; [email protected])
Developing Bilingual Pragmatic Competence in a Natural Signed Language and Majority Written
Language: Evidence from Deaf Children Acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) and English The research targeted 30 bilingual Deaf children (8-14 years) developing pragmatic competence in
both a natural signed language (American Sign Language—ASL) and a majority written language
(American English). The research questions: (1) Is there evidence of typical and atypical pragmatic
language usage on measures of ASL and written English? (2) Do teachers’ perceptions of Deaf
students’ ASL and written English pragmatic skills correspond to students’ pragmatic performance
on tests of ASL and English literacy? We assessed the Deaf children’s ASL pragmatic abilities using a
norm-referenced test of ASL. Written English discourse proficiency was measured using (a) subtests
from two standardized tests of English literacy and (b) the students’ signed and written narrative
discourse abilities in ASL and English based on the Frog, Where Are You? story (Mayer, 1969). Results
indicated a significant correlation in typical and atypical discourse strategies for achieving coherence
and cohesion in ASL and written English. Teachers’ perceptions of Deaf students’ ASL and written
English abilities corresponded to students’ performance on ASL and English literacy tests. We discuss
theoretical and practical implications for assessing pragmatic abilities and providing bilingual
instruction in a natural signed language and a majority written language.
Giuliana Salvato (University of Windsor, Italy; [email protected])
Assessing the effectiveness of “immediacy” in university classes in Canada and in Italy
The concept of “immediacy” refers to verbal and nonverbal behaviour used by interlocutors to
decrease physical and psychological distance between them. For example, maintaining closer
proximity to the listener, establishing eye contact, are traits defining high, as opposed to low,
immediacy. Within educational settings, studies have inquired about the verbal and nonverbal
characteristics that define the relationship between instructors and students, and that may
consequently increase students’ motivation and learning. Our study explores the concept of
immediacy within a Canadian and an Italian university setting and it assesses its pragmatic
effectiveness and implications in multilingual education.
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Ariadna Sánchez-Hernández (Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany & University Jaume I Spain; [email protected])
Exploring L2 pragmatic development during study abroad through a mixed-methods approach
This study employs a mixed methods research approach to investigate the effect of sociocultural
adaptation on the development of pragmatic production in a study abroad context. It focuses on
the ability to produce pragmatic routines, and whether sociocultural adaptation experiences by
learners of different cultural backgrounds predict pragmatic gains. Eighty-seven college students
participating in study abroad programs in the United States completed a pre-test and a post-test
version of a sociocultural adaptation scale and of a written discourse-completion task that measured
their ability to use prototypical routines. Supplementary interviews to a subset of 2 students
provided further insights on the nature of their adaptation experiences. A quantitative analysis
revealed that sociocultural adaptation development had a partial effect on pragmatic gains, due to
the mediation of learners’ background culture, which had a direct influence on routine production.
The qualitative analysis revealed individual trajectories that illustrated the interplay among
sociocultural adaptation, background culture, and gains in production of pragmatic routines.
Overall, the reported findings highlight the importance of using a mixed-methods approach to
observe the effect of different factors on second language pragmatic development during study
abroad.
Milica Savic (University of Stavanger, Norway; [email protected]) Anders Myrset (University of Stavanger, Norway; [email protected])
If you don’t learn what’s wrong and what’s right, you’ll do something wrong without knowing
it.” Exploring young Norwegian EFL learners’ metapragmatic development
This paper presents a research project aimed at investigating Norwegian English as a foreign
language (EFL) learners’ metapragmatic awareness of requestive behaviour with participants aged
8, 10, and 12 (grades 3, 5 and 7). The research questions are:
- Which pragmalinguistic features are the learners of different ages aware of with regard to English
requests?
- Which sociopragmatic issues do these learners consider relevant for requestive behaviour?
Three tasks were completed by 63 pupils in groups of 3-4: a video-prompted oral discourse
completion task (DCT), an individual metapragmatic assessment task based on a selection of
requests produced in the DCT, and a group discussion followed by a ranking task.
Preliminary analysis indicates that the participants in all three age groups regarded direct
requests as less appropriate than conventionally indirect ones, regardless of context. The
metapragmatic judgments of hints were inconsistent across grades and within groups. ‘Please’ was
most commonly associated with politeness, as were intonation and prosodic features. The
presentation will also address methodological challenges regarding metapragmatic data elicitation
with young L2 learners.
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Gölge Seferoğlu (Middle East Technical University, Turkey; [email protected]) Assessment of pragmatic competence of pre-service English language teachers: appropriateness
of forms of address This study aims at analyzing the pragmatic competence of pre-service English language teachers in Turkey regarding the forms of address they prefer to use within the framework of the following research questions:
What forms of address do the pre-service English language teachers mainly prefer to use in academic and non-academic situations?
What factors influence pre-service English language teachers’ choices of forms of address?
How do pre-service English language teachers handle situations in which they are not sure how to address an interlocutor?
What are the English native speakers’ perceptions of the appropriateness of the pre-service English language teachers’ use of forms of address?
The data for the study were collected through both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools. These tools were a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) questionnaire, a Scaled Response Task (SRT) questionnaire, think-aloud protocols and interviews. The findings of the study suggest that pre-service English language teachers have a rather limited repertoire of forms of address in English and they are not pragmatically-competent enough regarding their knowledge of address forms in English, which might be suggesting the existence of a gap in language teacher education programs in Turkey.
Rebecca Stuvland (University of Stavanger, Norway; [email protected]) Silje Normand (University of Stavanger, Norway; [email protected])
I'm a bit sorry: Pragmatic features and metapragmatic awareness of apologies produced by
Norwegian primary school EFL learners through drama tableaux
This paper presents a cross-sectional research project aimed at exploring pragmatic features and metapragmatic awareness of apologies produced by Norwegian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, aged 8, 10, and 12. Apologies were elicited using the drama convention of tableaux, while metapragmatic data was obtained through thought- tracking in the tableaux, as well as through participatory data collection of the evaluation of own apology statements.
The following research questions are addressed in the paper: - Which scenarios do pupils propose when asked to create tableaux of apology situations?
- Which pragmatic features are produced by learners of different ages using tableaux?
- What metapragmatic data can be elicited using tableaux and other participatory data collection methods? The sample consisted of 65 learners (17 groups of 3-4 learners in grades 3, 5, and 7) and each
group session lasted 40 minutes. The data consists of audio-recorded material, observation notes from the sessions, as well as learners' metapragmatic assessments of selected apologies produced in the tableaux. The different stages of the tableaux work were as follows: a researcher-modelled tableau of a learner-provided scenario, learner brainstorm of scenarios, tableaux of own scenarios with thought-tracking, and tableaux of scenarios provided by the researchers.
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Farhad Tayebipour (Majan University College, Sultanate of Oman; [email protected]) Dynamic assessment embedded into pragmatic instruction: The impact of fine-tuned scaffolding
on EFL learners’ speech act production strategies This study investigated the effect of dynamic assessment on the use of strategies to produce request
and apology speech acts. Forty EFL learners were selected from four intact classes on the basis of
their scores on a general proficiency test. They were randomly assigned into two dynamic
assessment (DA) and two static assessment (SA) groups. Both DA and SA groups encompassed low
and high proficiency learners and were asked to complete 12 discourse completion tasks as the
pretest and the posttest to discover any difference in their performance in the two tests. In the
treatment phase, and following the interventionist model, DA groups were given fine-tuned
scaffolding to perform the tasks whereas SA groups performed the task on their own and
independently of the mediator’s assistance. The data collected were analyzed using Chi-square test.
Results showed that the frequency of speech act production strategies by both low and high
proficiency DA learners in the post-test was significantly different from the pretest while this was
not observed in SA learners.
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WORK-IN-PROGRESS REPORTS
Hessa Moetik Al-Bishi (Birkbeck College, University of London, UK; [email protected])
Assessment of pragmatic features of nonverbal behaviours: Appropriateness of nonverbal greetings by Saudi sojourners in English-speaking countries
This study extends prior analyses on intercultural communication consequences in terms of pragmatic assessments. It investigates impact of residence in English-speaking countries, culture orientation and multicultural personality traits on Saudi sojourners’ assessments of nonverbal greetings appropriateness. A total of 764 adult participants completed a web-questionnaire comprising stimuli videos involving four Saudi typical nonverbal greeting behaviours in addition to two scales: Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA), and Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), measuring culture orientation and personality profiles, respectively. Statistical analyses revealed that assessments of appropriateness of several nonverbal greeting behaviours are affected by length of stay in English-speaking countries particularly sojourners spending more than two years abroad. Furthermore, sojourners’ orientations towards heritage and mainstream cultures were associated with their assessments. Personality traits were either negatively or positively linked to appropriateness assessments. Findings are discussed with relation to acculturation literature.
Nisreen Naji Al-Khawaldeh (The Hashmite University, Jordan; [email protected])
The Linguistic Expressions of Disagreement in Jordanian Arabic: A Pragmatic Study The present study aims to explore how Jordanians perceive and express disagreement in Jordanian Arabic besides the differences between males and females in the expression of disagreement. Data were elicited from 80 speakers of Jordanian Arabic at the Hashemite University using DCTs and interview and undergone descriptive, statistical and inferential analyses. The results revealed that Jordanians employ various strategies when disagreeing with others’ prior say or opinion (i.e. “mitigated disagreement expression(s)”only (e.g.
or (my darling, as you want) ,(اياه بدك الل ,حبيبيت “strong disagreement expression(s)”only (e.g. تماما هالفكرة رافض انا ), (I totally reject the idea( which were less frequent, they employed mostly “strong disagreement expression(s) followed by mitigated disagreement expression(s) (e.g. مه رأيك بس راي بهيك معك مش انا لا mitigated ,(احت disagreement expression(s) followed by strong disagreement expression(s) ( e.g.بس ,مابدك زي
هالمحا ضر and mitigated disagreement expression(s) prior to strong disagreement )كثت مهمه expression(s) followed by mitigated disagreement expression(s) ( e.g.سيدي كويسه فكره ,
اخالفك لكتركة مرب ح من ستقلل العالية التكاليف لانه الرأي a good idea Mr., but I disagree with) ,(تشوفه الل حال كل وعل الشرyou because the high costs will reduce the company’s profitability). Jordanians exhibit a preference for using mitigated expressions of disagreement as so as to evade the sense of confrontation. Females were found to be more cautious as they employed more mitigated disagreement and opting out expressions than their male counterparts. The outcomes of the present study, although compatible with many viewpoints exist in the literature (Eelen, 2001; Terkourafi, 2005; Arundale, 2010 and Sifianou, 2012), do not lend complete support of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim that communicating disagreement is an inherently, face-threatening act.
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References Arundale, R. (2010). Constituting face in conversation: face, facework and interactional
achievement. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8): 2078–2105. Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Eelen, G. (2001). A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St Jerome Press. Sifianou, M. (2012). Disagreement, face, and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, (44)
12: 1554-1564. Terkourafi, M. (2005). Beyond the micro-level in politeness research. Journal of Politeness Research,
1(2): 237-263.
Marcella Caprario (New York University Shanghai, China; [email protected])
Pragmatic competence in English-language class discussions In the intercultural classroom, pragmatic competence can function as an entryway into full communicative competence and a sense of belonging. This study evaluates the pragmatic competence of a group of advanced English L2 Chinese tertiary students in classroom discussion events in an intercultural, English-medium institution. The study examines the students’ feelings about English-language class discussions, their self-assessment of class discussion competence, a comparison of their self-assessment with that of their instructor, and the extent to which awareness-raising and self-reflection activities lead to an increase in both competence and confidence. Ideas for teaching and evaluating pragmatic competence in class discussions will be shared.
Zofia Majda (University of Łódź, Poland; [email protected])
Pragmatic vs Grammatical Awareness: The Role of Environment and Intensity of Contact The continuously evolving nature of pragmatic field generates the need to revitalize the hitherto influential studies, whose validity may be affected by the dynamic changes of the L2 speakers' context (Taguchi, 2017). The present study is situated in the field of interlanguage pragmatics and investigates the relationship between the environment in which the learning process takes place and students' pragmatic and grammatical awareness of L2. The main aims are to test the generalizability of Bardovi-Harlig and Dornyei's (1998) claim that ESL learners are more sensitive to pragmatic errors, whereas EFL learners to grammatical ones and to examine the role of intensity of interaction in the process of the development of students' pragmatic and grammatical awareness. The instrument employed in the study is Bardovi-Harlig and Dornyei's (1998) video-judgment task, enriched with post hoc semi-structured interviews and extensive background questionnaire. The study's findings concerning the influence of environment and intensity of contact on L2 speakers awareness constitute a relevant contribution to the field of interlanguage pragmatics and may serve as the starting point for further investigation on the development of pragmatic competence.
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References
Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Dörnyei, Z. (1998). Do language learners recognize pragmatic violations?
Pragmatic versus Grammatical Awareness in Instructed L2 Learning. TESOL Quaterly, 32, 233-259.
Niezgoda, K., & Röver, C. (2001). Pragmatic and grammatical awareness. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper
(Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 63-79.
Schauer, G. (2006). Pragmatic awareness in ESL and EFL contexts: Contrast and development.
Language Learning, 56, 269–318.
Schmidt, R. (1993). Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. In G.E. Kasper & S. Blum-
Kulka (Eds.) Interlanguage pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. 21-42
Taguchi, N., Li, S. (2017). Replication research in contextual and individual influences in pragmatic
competence: Taguchi, Xiao & Li (2016) and Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos (2011). Language Teaching.
Elaheh Nosratirad (Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany ; [email protected])
A Cross-Cultural Study of Apology Speech Act in Persian and British English
Despite substantive claims about the universality of pragmatic principles across cultures and
languages, the literature on cross-cultural pragmatics has shown the differences in the use of speech
acts, including the speech act of apology by different cultures. The present study is an attempt to
an in-depth investigation of the differences in the use of apologies in British English and Persian as
western and non-western languages and cultures, respectively. Data for this quantitative study were
elicited from a large group of British and Persian participants, using an oral method of data collection
named Oral Multimedia Elicitation Task (OMET). The OMET included situations controlled for
type/severity of offence, social distance, and sex of the interlocutors. The results revealed a
significant difference in the type and frequency of the apology strategies which were used by the
Persian native speakers (PNSs) and the British native speakers (BNSs) of the study. Intensification
was used to a larger extent by the PNSs (63%) relative to the BNSs (31%). The preference for
performing the apology strategies and intensifications in Persian and British found to be rooted in
the different socio-cultural norms and values of the two western and non-western languages and
cultures.
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Peppoloni, Diana (University of Perugia, Italy; [email protected])
Emblematic gestures in intercultural communication: how the learning context and teaching
practice influence the coding and decoding of emblemes by foreign learners The aim of this study is to investigate the role of non-verbal language, especially that of emblematic
gestures, in intercultural communication. Non-verbal codes always combine with verbal expressions
in an inseparable way, thus being an essential component of daily communication. But being
gestures, especially emblemes, culturally determined, they can also hinder communication when
the interlocutors do not share the same cultural background, as it happens in intercultural
communication. How does the cultural background of learners influence the decoding of
emblematic gestures? Are gestures a component that can foster their communicative competence?
Is there any difference in their pragmatic competence, between SL and FL learners of a target
language? These are the research questions underlying this study, developed through the
administration of a questionnaire, about the identification and definition of 20 emblematic Italian
gestures, to 40 adult German learners of Italian as SL and FL (at least B1 level). The questionnaire
also included questions about learners’ usage of gestures and about the amount of gestures
produced in the classroom by the teachers. Data seem to confirm a discrepancy both in
comprehension and production between the two groups, probably deriving from the context of the
language course (in Italy or abroad) and from the origins of the teachers (native Italian or German
speakers).
Danijela, Šegedin Borovina (University of Split, Croatia; [email protected]) Mirjana Semren (University of Split, Croatia; [email protected])
Pragmatic awareness of EFL teacher trainees
It is often assumed that FL teacher trainees will pick up the pragmatic features of a foreign language
they are going to teach along the training process. However, different studies have shown that FL
teachers and teacher trainees feel insecure about their language proficiency and that their
pragmatic knowledge may be weaker than their grammatical competence. The present small-scale
study represents the first phase of a long-term research project the aim of which is to describe and
enhance the pragmatic awareness and production of EFL teacher trainees in Croatia. The main aim
of this study was to describe the way in which teacher trainees perceive pragmatics and pragmatic
knowledge in L2, that is, to establish the degree to which they are aware of pragmatic features of
the language they are going to be teaching in the future. The participants were 60 graduate students
in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language at a Croatian university. Data was collected
using the error recognition task and semi-structured interviews. The results have shown that the
student teachers have developed a basic degree of pragmatic awareness. Their knowledge of FL
pragmatics and FL pragmatics teaching was, however, very limited.
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Sukyun, Weaver (Maryland Institute College of Art, USA; [email protected]) Joseph, Carr (Maryland Institute College of Art, USA; [email protected])
A Language and Cultural Competency Needs Analysis for English Language Support Courses in an
Art and Design Curriculum
This study explores the language and cultural competency needs analysis for English Language Learning support courses in an art and design curriculum. We use three tools to assess graduate student language and cultural competency: an augmented course evaluation, an open-ended survey, and individual interviews. This preliminary needs analysis has already shown that students perceive that their professional development and language skills improve in tandem, whereas their experience of academic challenges do not significantly impact their perceptions of their own confidence, creativity, or professional communication skills. Our results indicate that our international students’ cultural competence is improved by their active participation and sense of belonging.