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Interlanguage PragmaticDevelopment



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Interlanguage PragmaticDevelopment

The Study Abroad Context

Gila A. Schauer



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© Gila A. Schauer 2009

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Gila Schauer has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act, 1988, to be identifed as Author o this work.

Btsh Lbay Catalon-n-Pblcaton Data A catalogue record or this book is available rom the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-8470-6520-9 (Hardback)

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group



In loving memory o my grandmothers Waltraud and Wally

For my parents Doris and Gisbert Schauer



Contnts

List o Tables xi

List o Figures xiii

Acknowledgements xiv Abbreviations xvi

1 Intodcton 1

2 A Rvw o th Ltat 5

2.0 Introduction 5 2.1 Theoretical Background: Pragmatics 5

2.2 Interlanguage Pragmatics: Pragmatic Awareness 17 2.3 Request Studies 24 2.4 Studies Examining the Development o

L2 Learners’ Pragmatic Awareness 34 2.5 Interlanguage Pragmatic Development: Production 41

3 Data Collcton Tchnqs n Intlana Pamatcs 60

3.0 Introduction 60 3.1 Data Elicitation Techniques in Awareness Studies 60 3.2 Data Collection Methods in Production Studies 65 3.3 Summary 69

4 Mthodoloy 70

4.0 Introduction 70 4.1 Participants 70 4.2 Instrument 76 4.3 Procedure 82

4.4 Data Analysis 84

5 Dvlopmnt o Pamatc Awanss 94

5.0 Introduction 94 5.1 Error Recognition 94 5.2 Error Ratings 103 5.3 Participants’ Awareness o Own Rating Behaviour 111



viii Contents

5.4 SA Learners’ Awareness o Their Own Pragmatic Development 117

5.5 Summary 120

6 Dvlopmnt o Pamatc Podcton: Rqst Stats 123

6.0 Introduction 123 6.1 First Occurrence o Request Strategies 123 6.2 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Request Strategies 126 6.3 Direct Strategies 128 6.4 Conventionally Indirect Requests 141 6.5 Non-conventionally Indirect Strategies 159

6.6 Summary 1627 Dvlopmnt o Pamatc Podcton: Intnal

Rqst Modfcaton 166

7.0 Introduction 166 7.1 First Occurrence o Internal Downgraders in

the SA Learners’ Data 167 7.2 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Downgraders 169 7.3 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Downgraders

According to Contextual Variables 172 7.4 First Occurrence o Upgraders in SA Learners’ Data 176 7.5 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Upgraders 177 7.6 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Upgraders

According to Contextual Variables 179 7.7 Summary 180

8 Dvlopmnt o Pamatc Podcton: Extnal

Rqst Modfcaton 183 8.0 Introduction 183 8.1 First Occurrence o External Modifers in

the SA Learners’ Data 183 8.2 Comparison o Groups’ Use o External Modifers 186 8.3 Comparison o Groups’ Use o External Modifers

According to Contextual Variables 187 8.4 Summary 191

9 Smmay and Conclson 193

9.0 Introduction 193 9.1 Summary o Findings 193 9.2 Limitations 198 9.3 Implications 199



Contents ix

Appendices

Appendix A Awareness Study Questionnaires 204 Appendix B MET Scenarios 216

Reerences 234

Index 249



List o Tables

4.1 Background inormation on SA learners that took part inthe awareness study 72

4.2 Background inormation on SA learners that took part in

the productive study 754.3 Categorization o the 16 MET request scenarios according to

the two variables ‘status’ and ‘imposition’ 814.4 Overview o request strategies 864.5 Overview o internal modifers: lexical downgraders 904.6 Overview over internal modifers: syntactic downgraders 904.7 Overview over internal upgraders 914.8 Overview o external modifers 92

5.1 Participants’ error recognition (uncorrected) 965.2 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic andgrammatical errors (uncorrected data) 98

5.3 Participants’ error recognition (corrected) 1005.4 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and

grammatical errors (corrected data) 1025.5 Participants’ error ratings (uncorrected) 1045.6 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and

grammatical error recognition scores (uncorrected data) 1075.7 Participants’ error ratings (corrected) 1095.8 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and

grammatical error recognition scores (corrected data) 1116.1 SA learners’ frst use o individual request strategies in

the MET data 1246.2 Use o imperatives according to status and imposition 1296.3 Use o unhedged perormatives according to

status and imposition 131

6.4 Use o hedged perormatives according to status and imposition 1336.5 Use o locution derivables according to status and imposition 1366.6 Use o want statements according to status and imposition 1396.7 Use o suggestory ormula according to status and imposition 1416.8 Use o availability according to status and imposition 1436.9 Use o prediction according to status and imposition 145



xii List o Tables

6.10 Use o permission according to status and imposition 1496.11 Percentage use o willingness according to

status and imposition 152

6.12 Use o ability according to status and imposition 1566.13 Use o hints according to status and imposition 1607.1 Downgraders employed by the SA learners 1687.2 Downgraders in low imposition interactions

according to variables 1737.3 Downgraders in high imposition interactions

according to variables 1757.4 First occurrence o upgraders in SA learners’ data 177

7.5 Upgraders in low imposition scenarios according to variables 1797.6 Upgraders in high imposition scenarios according to variables 1798.1 External modifers employed by the SA learners 1848.2 External modifers in low imposition interactions

according to variables 1888.3 External modifers in high imposition interactions

according to variable 190



List o Figures

4.1 Questionnaire Scenario 7 774.2 Introductory Slide or Scenario 1 794.3 Actual scenario Slide or Scenario 1 805.1 Participants’ error recognition o pragmatic

errors (uncorrected) 955.2 Participants’ error recognition o grammatical

errors (uncorrected) 975.3 Participants’ pragmatic error recognition (corrected) 995.4 Participants’ grammatical error recognition (corrected) 1025.5 Participants’ rating o pragmatic errors (uncorrected) 1055.6 Participants’ rating o grammatical errors (uncorrected) 1065.7 Comparison o participants’ ratings based on environment 108

5.8 Participants’ ratings o pragmatic andgrammatical errors (corrected) 1105.9 The mirror eect 1106.1 First occurrence o request strategies in

individual SA learners’ data 1246.2 Comparison o groups’ request strategy use 1266.3 SA learners’ use o imperatives 1296.4 SA learners’ use o unhedged perormatives 1326.5 SA learners’ use o hedged perormatives 1346.6 SA learners’ use o locution derivables 1376.7 SA learners’ use o want statements 1396.8 SA learners’ use o availability 1436.9 SA learners’ use o prediction 1466.10 SA learners’ use o permission 1506.11 SA learners’ use o willingness 1546.12 SA learners’ use o ability 1576.13 SA learners’ use o hints 160

7.1 First occurrence o internal downgraders inthe individual SA learners’ data 167

7.2 Downgrader use by the three participant groups in per cent 1707.3 First occurrence o upgraders in SA learners’ data 1767.4 Upgraders use by three participant groups 1788.1 External modifers used by the SA learners 1848.2 External modifer use by the three participant

groups in per cen 186



Acknowledgements

I am grateul to Svenja Adolphs, Ronald Carter, Jonathan Culpeper, GraemeCunningham, Sarah Dörnyei, Zoltan Dörnyei, Val Durow, Mike Handord,Tomoko Ishii, Sung-Il Lee, Louise Mullany, Rebecca Peck, Rosanne Richardson,

Elena Semino, Mick Short and Khawla Zahran or their valuable advice andsupport. I would also like to thank Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and ZoltanDörnyei or giving me permission to use their video and questionnaire task orthe awareness part o the present study. I owe a great debt o gratitude to theparticipants in this study or their outstanding cooperation and willingnessto share their thoughts with me. I am also grateul to my ormer and present students at Nottingham and Lancaster or thought-provoking comments andinteresting discussions about study abroad, pragmatics and culture.

Last but not least, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents or their unwaver-ing support, encouragement and love. Thank you or being there every step o the way!

This research was partially supported by an Arts and Humanities ResearchBoard (AHRB) award. Parts o this book have been previously published andI would like to thank Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and the ollowing publishinghouses or allowing me to reprint material that has been extensively revisedand modifed or the present book. Thank you to: Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig or:Schauer, G. A. (2006a). The development o ESL learners’ pragmatic compe-

tence: A longitudinal investigation o awareness and production. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, C. Felix-Brasdeer & A. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning (pp. 135–163). Manoa, HI: Second Language teaching and Curriculum CenterUniversity o Hawaii.

Thank you to Blackwell Publishing or: Schauer, G. A. (2006b). Pragmaticawareness in ESL and EFL contexts: Contrast and Development. Language Learning , 56(2), 269–318. Thank you to Mouton de Gruyter or: Schauer, G. A.(2007). Finding the right words in the study abroad context: The develop-

ment o German learners’ use o external modifers in English. Intercultural Pragmatics , 4(2), 193–220. and Schauer, G. A. (2008). Getting better in getting what you want: Language learners’ pragmatic development in requests duringstudy abroad sojourns. In M. Puetz & J. Ne van Aertselaer (Eds.), Developing contrastive pragmatics: interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 403–432).Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Some very limited overlaps also exist between the



Acknowledgements xv

present volume and a very early article containing an initial and subsequently heavily revised analysis o the data published by John Benjamins: Schauer,G. A. (2004). May you speak louder maybe? Interlanguage pragmatic devel-

opment in requests. In S. H. Foster-Cohen, M. Sharwood Smith, A. Sorace &M. Ota (Eds.), EUROSLA Yearbook (Vol. 4, pp. 253–273). Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins.



Abbreviations

AH learner At home learner AHRB Arts and Humanities Research Board ANOVA Analysis o Variance

CC Conversational contract CCSARP Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project CELE Centre or English Language EducationCOPT Cartoon Oral Production TaskDCT Discourse Completion TaskEFL English as a Foreign LanguageEFL learner Learner in a country where English is a oreign language (e.g.

China, France, Germany)

ESL English as a Second LanguageESL learner Learner in a country where English is an ofcial language(e.g. Australia, Great Britain, United States o America)

FFL French as a Foreign LanguageFTA Face threatening act IFA Institut ür Fremdsprachen und Auslandskunde bei der

Universität Erlangen-NürnbergILP Interlanguage pragmatics

JSL Japanese as Second LanguageL1 First languageL2 Second/oreign LanguageMCQ Multiple choice questionnaireMET Multimedia Elicitation TaskNNS Non-native speakerNS Native speakerSA learner Study Abroad learnerSLA Second Language Acquisition

SSL Spanish as a Second LanguageSSL learner Learner in a country where Spanish is an ofcial language



Chapter 1

Introduction

Although it may be surprising, the notion that a sustained sojourn in a oreigncountry may have a positive impact on oreign language learners’ communica-tive and cross-cultural competence is ar rom a recent one. Records show that

when the German1 University o Greiswald was ounded in 1456, nine Swedishand ten Danish native speakers were among the students that commenced theirstudies in this year (Fietz, 2004). While these early study abroad sojourns2 may also have been a result o the limited availability o higher educational institu-tions in the sojourners’ home countries, student numbers rom Denmark at Greiswald did not decrease even ater the University o Copenhagen was inau-gurated in 1479 (Pinborg, 1981, in Fietz, 2004). This suggests that studentsperceived a longitudinal stay in the oreign language context to have moreadvantages than solely the transmission o academic knowledge.

The frst organization that had the explicit aim o arranging language learn-ers’ sojourns in a oreign country or the express purpose o improving theirabilities and skills in their oreign language was ounded several hundred yearslater in 1903. The Société d’échange international des eants et de jeunes gens pour l’études des langues étrangéres (society or the international exchange o children

and teenagers or oreign language studies) can be regarded as a predecessoro the European Union’s Erasmus/Socrates Programmes and arranged theimpressive number o 280 student exchanges in 1911 (Grote & Rolo, 1913).

Ater the frst and second world war, the Deutsch-Französische Jugendwerk (Franco-German Youth Ofce) was established in 1963 to help revive andpromote exchanges between German and French youths. In the ollowing

years, European governments began to recognize the potential advantageso exchanges and study abroad programmes or sojourners’ language skills,

personal development and cross-cultural awareness. This development lead tothe introduction o the European Erasmus3 programme, which has enabled1.9 million students rom 31 countries to study at a oreign university since it

was ounded in 1987 (European Commission Education and Training web-site). On the other side o the Atlantic, the Open Door Report rom the US

American Institute o International Education, a document which providescomprehensive data on the number o US American students studying abroad,



2 Interlanguage Pragmatic Development

noted that study abroad sojourns had increased by 150 per cent since 1995/96resulting in 223,534 students taking part in 2006/7. In addition to study abroadsojourns organized and supported by national or international organizations,

British, American and Australian universities in particular have also seen asignifcant increase in the numbers o oreign students enrolling on their pro-grammes in the last 20 years (Shattock, 2008).

From a second language acquisition (SLA) point o view, the impact o asustained sojourn in the target country on oreign language learners’ commu-nicative competence is o considerable interest, as study abroad participantsreceive a large amount o second language4 (L2) input and have to use theirL2 in a wide variety o contexts and with a wide variety o interlocutors on

a daily basis. Although some studies were conducted into the eect o study abroad on language learners beore the mid-1990s (e.g. Lussier, Turner &Deshairnes, 1993; Sawyer, 1992) interest in this feld only began to increasesignifcantly ater the publication o Freed’s seminal collection o papers andthe oundation o ‘Frontiers – The interdisciplinary journal o study abroad’ in1995. However, even though the study abroad context has attracted the interest o many researchers in recent years (or an in-depth review o studies accord-ing to applied linguistic disciplines, see Churchill and DuFon 2006), relatively ew investigations have examined the impact o longitudinal residence in theL2 environment on the development o language learners’ pragmatic compe-tence (exceptions being, or example, Barron 2003, 2007; Bouton, 1994; Felix-Brasdeer, 2004; Matsumura 2003; Taguchi, 2008). This is not surprising, sincedevelopmental issues have long received comparatively little attention in stud-ies examining language learners’ pragmatic skills in their L2 (Bardovi-Harlig1999a; Kasper & Rose 2002).

The present study is situated in the feld o interlanguage pragmatics – theacquisition, comprehension and production o contextually appropriate lan-

guage by oreign or second language learners – and hopes to shed some light on how the pragmatic competence o German learners o English in the study abroad context develops over the period o one academic year. More speci-ically, the aim o this study is to investigate how the receptive and produc-tive pragmatic competence o study abroad learners (hereater SA learners5)develops in the British L2 environment, and to investigate to which extent learners’ development concerning their awareness o pragmatic and gram-matical inelicities is interconnected. To obtain insights into the eect o the

L2 context, the SA learners’ data were compared with those o British nativespeakers (henceorth NSs) and German learners o English in their homecountry Germany (hereater AH learners6). The study addresses the ollowingresearch questions:

1. Does the study abroad context inuence language learners’ awareness o pragmatic and grammatical inelicities?



Introduction 3

2. Does language learners’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness develop at the same time?

3. Do language learners and native speakers perceive one type o inelicity

(grammatical/pragmatic) to be more serious than another?4. Are study abroad learners aware o their own pragmatic development in the

study abroad context?5. Does the study abroad context aect language learners’ use o request

strategies?6. Does the study abroad context aect language learners’ use o internal

request modifers?7. Does the study abroad context aect language learners’ use o external

request modifers?

The participants’ ability to identiy contextually inappropriate and incorrect language use was examined with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) video- and-questionnaire instrument as well as semi-structured interviews that provided inormation on the participants’ decision making rationales. Dataor the investigation o the participants’ productive pragmatic skills werecollected with the Multimedia Elicitation Task (MET), a data collectioninstrument that I specifcally developed or the purpose o this study and

which ocuses on request utterances. Requests have been widely examined insecond language acquisition research and interlanguage pragmatics (here-ater ILP) in the past, since they are ‘ace-threatening, and thereore callor considerable linguistic expertise on the part o the learner [and] diercross-linguistically’ (Ellis, 1994, p. 168). In addition, requests are one o themost requently perormed speech acts in everyday lie and as a result canbe observed by L2 learners in the study abroad environment in a variety o contexts. This makes them particularly interesting or a developmental inves-

tigation as they are utterances that learners cannot avoid making in the target language, in contrast to, or example, compliments, and which learners arealso exposed to on a regular basis.

In the ollowing, I will frst provide an overview o theories, concepts, prin-ciples and studies that are o particular relevance or the present study inChapter 2. Subsequent to this, I will discuss issues related to data collectionmethods in ILP research in Chapter 3. I will then introduce the participantso the investigation and explain the data collection methods and data coding

rameworks in Chapter 4. The answers to research questions 1 to 4 on learn-ers’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness will be presented and discussed inChapter 5. In Chapter 6, I will analyse and discuss the fndings o the investiga-tion concerning participants’ request strategy use that correspond to researchquestion 5. The results regarding participants’ request modifer use that cor-respond to questions 6 and 7 will be discussed and evaluated in Chapters 7(internal modifcation) and 8 (external modifcation). The fndings o the




study will be summarized in the conclusion in Chapter 9, in which I will alsodiscuss theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications arising romthe investigation.

Notes

1 When the University o Greiswald was ounded, the Federal Republic o Ger-many did not exist. Instead, the area that is known as Germany today wasgoverned by kings, dukes and archbishops belonging to the Holy Roman Empire.The language spoken in this area was German. At universities, however, Latin was used, which enabled students to study at higher educational institutionslocated in oreign environments.

2 Apart rom the University o Greiswald, other European universities ounded inthe late middle ages, such as Bologna, Paris and Oxord, also welcomed studentsrom other parts o Europe (Budke, 2003).

3 The Erasmus programme became part o the Socrates programme in 1995. In2007, ollowing a reorganization o the European Union’s programmes, Erasmusbecame part o the EU’s Lielong Learning Programme (British Council web-site, European Commission Education and Training website). At the time o writing, 90 per cent o European universities are members o the Erasmus pro-gramme (European Union Publication on Erasmus success stories).

4 The acronym L2 will be used or both second and oreign language.5 I decided to use the terms ‘study abroad learners’ in this study, as the terms

‘learners o English as a second language’ (ESL learners) and ‘learners o Eng-lish as a oreign language’ (EFL learners) are somewhat uzzy in the context o the present investigation. This is because the study abroad group had all learnedEnglish in the oreign language context Germany prior to the beginning o thisinvestigation. As a consequence, using the term ESL learners could potentially be somewhat misleading. In addition, the German learners in England needed

to be distinguished rom one o the control groups, the German learners o Eng-lish in Germany, which meant that the term EFL learners would also have beenambiguous. For this reason, the term ‘study abroad learners’ is used to reer tothe German participants attending a British university, while the German learn-ers o English in Germany will be reerred to as ‘at home learners’. (ConerColeman [2005] or a detailed explanation o terms used in study abroadresearch.)

6 The acronym ‘AH’ stands or ‘at home’.



Chapter 2

A Review o the Literature

2.0 IntroductionIn this chapter I will review theories, concepts and studies that are relevant or the present investigation. I will begin by providing a theoretical back-ground o pragmatics with a special ocus on issues o importance or inter-language pragmatics in Section 2.1. This will then be ollowed by a discussiono studies examining L2 learners’ pragmatic awareness in Section 2.2. InSection 2.3, I will address classifcation systems that have been used when

analysing requests in interlanguage pragmatics and will also review severalstudies involving German and non-German learners o English that haveexamined language learners’ production o requests. This will be ollowed by a review o studies investigating the development o L2 learners’ pragmaticawareness in Section 2.4. Finally, I will provide an overview o ILP develop-mental studies that explore L2 learners’ production o requests and otherpragmatic eatures.

2.1 Theoretical Background: Pragmatics

2.1.1 Dfnn pamatcs

Pragmatics is a relatively young linguistic discipline – compared to, orexample, phonetics and syntax – which began to establish itsel as an inde-pendent area o linguistic research only about 40 years ago. Linguistic prag-matics has its oundation in language philosophy and developed as a result o

ideas concerning the unctions and use o language by philosophers such as Wittgenstein (1953: in Bach, 2004), Austin (1962), Searle (1969, 1975, 1976)and Grice (1968, 1975). The term pragmatics itsel goes back to another phi-losopher, Peirce (1905), and his work on pragmatism.1 The frst defnitiono pragmatics that is generally quoted was developed by Morris (1938), whodefned pragmatics as ‘the study o the relation o signs to interpreters’ (p. 6).It has to be noted, however, that his defnition was based on a semiotic2 view




o pragmatics and that subsequent defnitions o linguistic pragmatics tend touse dierent terms and are oten more detailed. I have included below threedefnitions that are now commonly used to describe pragmatics rom a per-

spective that is also relevant or the present investigation:

Pragmatics is the study o language rom the point o view o users, especially o the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using languagein social interaction and the eects their use o language has on other par-ticipants in the act o communication. (Crystal, 1985, p. 240)

Die linguistische Pragmatik (von griech. Prãgma, Handlung), ist die Lehre von den Kommunikationsprinzipien, nach denen sich Menschen richten,

wenn sie in sozialen Zusammenhängen rational und efzient miteinanderinteragieren. Diesen Prinzipien olgen Sprecher/Schreiber, um Bedeutungenzu implizieren, die über die Satzbedeutung hinausgehen, und Hörer/Leser,um die im Kontext plausiblen Äusserungsbedeutungen aus der Menge dermöglichen zu erschliessen. Beschrieben werden die sprachlichen Formen,Handlungsmuster, Implikations- und Interpretationsstrategien, die ein ein-

vernehmliches Aushandeln der nicht gesagten, wohl aber gemeinten und verstandenen Bedeutungen ermöglichen. (Bublitz, 2001, p. 27)

Linguistic pragmatics (rom Greek pragma, activity/deed) is the study o communication principles to which people adhere when they interact rationally and efciently in social contexts. Speakers/writers ollow theseprinciples to imply additional meaning to a sentence, and hearer/readersollow these principles to iner the possible meaning o an utterance out o all available options in a given context. Pragmatics describes the linguisticorms, action patterns and strategies that are used to imply and interpret,

which enable interlocutors to comprehend the intended, but not utteredmeaning. (Bublitz, 2001, p. 27)

Pragmatics studies the use o language in human communication as deter-mined by the conditions o society. (Mey, 2001, p. 6)

I have selected these defnitions because together they provide a sound ini-tial starting point or the present study. Crystal (1985) emphasizes that actuallanguage use is important in pragmatics research and that pragmaticians areinterested in both the coding and decoding o utterances by speakers andhearers. Bublitz’s (2001) defnition is very similar, but also includes the under-

lying notion that there are principles speakers adhere to when communicatingeectively and rationally. Finally, Mey’s (2001) defnition explicitly mentionsthe signifcant role society plays in pragmatics.

Many o the ideas behind these defnitions are based on speech act the-ory (e.g. Austin 1962; Searle, 1969, 1975, 1976), the cooperative principle (e.g.Grice, 1975), conversational implicature (e.g. Grice, 1989) and politenesstheory (e.g. Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987; Lako, 1973, 1977; Leech, 1983),



A Review o the Literature 7

the cornerstones o pragmatics theory, which I will describe in the ollowingSections 2.1.2–2.1.4. Following on rom that, I will address the signifcance o culture or pragmatics research in Section 2.1.5, which will lead on to a discus-

sion o interlanguage pragmatics, the subfeld o pragmatics that the present study is situated in, in Section 2.1.6, and fnally to a review o acquisitional the-ories in L2 pragmatics in Section 2.1.7.

2.1.2 Spch act thoy

The oundations o speech act theory were laid by philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Austin and Searle. Although Wittgenstein (1953, cited in Bach,2004) made an important contribution to the feld o pragmatics by statingthat language was a social activity and that ‘the meaning o a word is its usein the language’ (p. 463), it is Austin who is generally regarded as the athero pragmatics (Mott, 2003) and speech act theory (Mey, 2001). Austin’s (1962)theory was based on his belie that speakers do not merely use language to say things, but to do things and that thus utterances could be regarded as speechacts. Based on this notion he developed a system which distinguished threecomponents o speech acts:

1. the locutionary act (the actual words that the speaker uses)2. the illocutionary act (the intention or orce behind the words)3. the perlocutionary act (the eect the utterance has on the hearer).

For example, in the sentence ‘It’s cold in here!’ the locutionary act is simply thestatement that the temperature in the room is rather low. The illocutionary act reers to what the speaker intended to achieve by making the utterance, in this

case that the hearer closes the window or turns up the radiator. The perlocu-tionary eect o the utterance could then be observed i the hearer interpretsthe sentence as a request and remedies the situation the speaker commentedon. O the three speech act constituents, it is the illocutionary act which hasreceived the most attention in pragmatics research. Closely associated withthe notion o illocutionary acts is the concept o illocutionary orce , ‘which is thecommunicative plan or design behind [a] s[peaker]’s remark’ (Leech, 1983,p. 200).

Searle (1969, 1975, 1976), one o Austin’s students, developed speech act the-ory urther ater Austin’s untimely death in 1960 and pointed out that the illo-cutionary orce o an utterance and the perlocutionary eect an utterance hason the hearer depends on the words and expressions that the speakers choosein their utterance. He noted that ‘the illocutionary point o requests is thesame as that o commands: both are attempts to get hearers to do something.But the illocutionary orces are clearly dierent’ (1976, p. 3).




With regard to the illocutionary orce o an utterance, Searle (1975, 1976)argued that polite sentences were requently ormulated without the explicit use o an illocutionary-orce indicating device, such as the verb request in the

sentence ‘I request you to pass me the salt ’ . Instead, speakers oten employedother less direct ways to ask their interlocutor to perorm the desired action,such as ‘Can you pass me the salt?’, which he proposed were more character-istic o actual language use than the direct alternatives, and which he termedindirect speech acts . This distinction between direct and indirect speech acts wasalso employed by Labov and Fanshel (1977) in their taxonomy o speech acts.They emphasized that indirect requests inquiring about the speakers’ ability to perorm the desired action such as the above mentioned ‘Can you pass me

the salt?’ were more conventional than direct ones. The aspect o convention-ality in request utterances was subsequently urther developed by Blum-Kulka,House and Kasper (1989) and orms the basis o the request strategy type cat-egorization scheme used in the present study.

A review o speech act theory would not be complete without a mention o the classifcation systems o speech act types. Although Austin had developedsuch a system,3 it is Searle’s that is most widely used (Barron, 2003). Searle(1976, p. 10) distinguishes fve speech act classes:

representatives (speakers commit themselves to something being true, or

example, to boast or to deduce)directives (attempts by speakers to get hearers to do something, or example,

to request or to beg)commissives (speakers commit themselves to some uture course o action,

or example, to promise or to threaten)expressives (speakers express their psychological state, or example, to

thank or to apologize)

declarations (speakers bring about correspondence between propositional

content and the reality, or example, to christen or to appoint).

Even though both Austin’s and Searle’s classifcations o speech act have beencriticized or not being based on clear principles (Leech, 1983; Levinson,1983; Wierzbicka, 1991), their impact on the discipline should not be underes-timated, as much research in the feld has been conducted based on distinc-tions concerning the dierent aims o utterances (e.g. requests, expressions o

gratitude, apologies, complaints).

2.1.3 Th coopatv pncpl and convsatonal mplcat

Also instrumental in the development o pragmatics as a discipline wasthe philosopher Grice, whose theories, together with those o Austin’s and




Searle’s, inspired much o the research conducted in pragmatics (Davies,2007). Grice argues that generally conversations between two or more inter-locutors are not just a number o disconnected utterances that are made

without any reerence to each other, but are instead ‘cooperative eorts’ ora specifc purpose, such as the exchange o inormation. This assumptionunderlies his cooperative principle : ‘make your conversational contributionsuch as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted pur-pose or direction o the talk exchange in which you are engaged’ (1975,p. 45). Grice then distinguished our subcategories or maxims o the cooperative principle :

maxim o quantity (‘say as much as is required’)maxim o quality (‘try to make your contribution one that is true’)maxim o relation (‘be relevant’)maxim o manner (‘be brie and avoid ambiguity’).

In everyday conversation, however, the maxims o the cooperative principleare oten aunted, which is where Grice’s concept o conversational implicature comes in. I a speaker says something which does not seem to have any relationto their interlocutor’s preceding utterance, one or more maxims are aunted.However, since the cooperative principle works at a somewhat deeper level,hearers will attempt to iner meaning rom their interlocutor’s utterance.Levinson (1983, p. 102) gives the ollowing example:

A: Where’s Bill?B: There’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s house.

Interlocutor B’s utterance appears to be unrelated to the question asked by

interlocutor A and at a literal level aunts the maxims o relation and quantity. Yet according to Grice’s concept o conversational implicature, interlocutor A will still attach meaning to B’s utterance based on their shared contextualknowledge, that is, that Bill owns a yellow VW. The concept o conversationalimplicature can thus also be used to explain why interlocutors are able todecode conventionally indirect utterances such as ‘Can you pass me the salt?’as a request to actually pass the salt to the requester and not as a questionabout their physical ability to pass the salt.

Grice’s work which suggested that the meaning o an utterance is not always transparent without the appropriate contextual knowledge and that conversation is based on the cooperation o the interlocutors has madean important contribution to pragmatics (Leech, 1983). Although aspectso his work have been criticized,4 Levinson (1983) stated that ‘the notiono conversational implicature is one o the single most important ideas inpragmatics’ (p. 97).




2.1.4 Poltnss thoy

This section ocuses on politeness theories that are o particular relevance or

interlanguage pragmatics in a Western European/Anglo-American context and the present investigation. For a general overview o key issues in linguisticpoliteness see Eelen (2001), Fraser (1990) and Watts (2003). For politeness the-ories in Asian contexts see, or example, Chen (1993), Gu (1990), Ide (1982),Mao (1994) Pizziconi (2003) and Fukada and Asato (2004).

Like speech act theory, the cooperative principle and the concept o conversational implicature, politeness theory is generally regarded to be one o the cornerstones o pragmatics research. The question o what constitutes apolite utterance has been a ocal point o pragmatic investigations since thelate 1970s (Kasper, 1990). One o the frst scholars who concentrated on lin-guistic politeness in a pragmatic sense was Lako (1973, 1977), who ‘could

well be called the mother o modern politeness theory’ (Eelen, 2001, p. 2). Sheargued that ‘the pillars o our linguistic as well as non-linguistic interactions

with each other’ are to ‘(1) make yoursel clear and (2) be polite’ (1977, p. 86). With regard to the frst pillar, ‘make yoursel clear’, her argument is inuencedby Grice’s work and his maxims o the cooperative principle. Concerning thesecond pillar, ‘be polite’, she proposes three rules o politeness :

1. Formality: Don’t impose/remain aloo.2. Hesitancy: Allow the addressee his options.3. Equality or camaraderie: Act as though you and addressee were equal/

make him eel good. (Lako, 1977, p. 88)

Other than Grice’s maxims o the cooperative principle, Lako’s rules o politeness are to some degree mutually exclusive. Thus, while the rule o or-

mality involves addressing hearers by their last name and the V-orm o you (inlanguages that make this V/t-orm distinction), the rule o equality/camarad-erie postulates using the interlocutors’ frst name and the t-orm o you.

Lako stresses that the appropriate rules o politeness have to be selectedby the speaker depending on the contextual conditions o the conversation.Knowledge o contextual conditions was also a major actor in Grice’s coopera-tive principle and conversational implicature. However, while he concentratedmore on contextual components such as shared background knowledge,

Lako ocuses on issues such as status dierences between interlocutors,degree o amiliarity between speaker and hearer, and the culture in which theutterance is made. She argues that these three actors5 are crucial in determin-ing what constitutes a polite utterance or not. For example, in many westernsocieties it would be regarded as impolite, i a lower status speaker addresseda higher status hearer by their frst name when they had not previously beeninvited to do so by the higher status hearer.




The importance o actors such as status dierences between the interlocu-tors and the relative power o the speaker and the hearer were also stressedby Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) in their investigation o linguistic polite-

ness. In addition to the two aorementioned actors they included a urtherelement in their study which then ormed the third actor o their investiga-tion o linguistic politeness, namely the degree o imposition involved in theutterance directed at the hearer. The interlocutors’ status and the degree o the imposition involved in the individual request will provide the basis or theour contextual conditions that will be explored in the chapters on the partici-pants’ productive competence.

Brown and Levinson also introduced the distinction o interlocutors’ posi-

tive and negative ace in politeness research. The term ace was based onGoman’s (1967) notion o ace as the ‘positive social value a person eectively claims or himsel by the line others assume he has taken during a particularcontact’ (p. 5). Thus, ace is ‘something that resides not within an individual,but rather within the ow o events in an encounter’ (Holtgrave, 2001, p. 39)and ‘something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained,or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction’ (Brown andLevinson, 1987, p. 61). According to Brown and Levinson a person’s negative

ace then reerred to a person’s ‘reedom o action and reedom rom impo-sition’ and their positive ace reerred to a person’s desire that their desires areappreciated and approved by at least some other people (1987, p. 61).

Brown and Levinson suggested that it was to the mutual interest o inter-locutors to maintain their respective aces and not to use language that

would lead to the loss o ace o either o the parties. They also consideredsome speech acts, such as requests, to be intrinsically impolite and thereoreace-threatening, which lead them to label them ace-threatening-acts (FTAs).

Acts that all into this category, such as complaints and reusals, have been one

o the key research areas in interlanguage pragmatics. Brown and Levinson’sconcept o ace is not regarded as uncontroversial6 in pragmatics research.Nevertheless, their ideas have inspired much research on politeness and prag-matics and helped to establish terminology, such as ace, ace-threat and ace-loss, which has been useul or pragmatics as a discipline.

Another important contributor to politeness theory was Leech (1983) whodeveloped his Politeness Principle as a component o his interpersonal rhetoricramework. The Politeness Principle contains six maxims (1983, p. 132):

1. Tact (Minimize cost to other; maximize beneft to other)2. Generosity (Minimize beneft to sel; maximize cost to sel)3. Approbation (Minimize dispraise o others; maximize praise o other)4. Modesty (Minimize praise o sel; maximize dispraise o sel)5. Agreement (Minimize disagreement between sel and other; maximize

agreement between sel and other)




6. Sympathy (Minimize antipathy between sel and other; maximize sympathy between sel and other).

Although Leech’s politeness principle has been also been criticized (see, orexample, Bublitz, 2001 or Mey, 2001), his tact, approbation and sympathy maxims are helpul in explaining why speakers employ certain strategies andmodifers to ormulate their request utterances. Also o particular relevanceor the present investigation o learners’ productive pragmatic development in requests is Leech’s observation that indirect requests are regarded as morepolite than direct requests in English, because they appear more tentative. Heexplained that the reason or this was that their illocutionary orce is dimin-

ished and they provide the hearer with a higher degree o optionality.Fraser’s (1990) view o politeness approaches the issue rom a somewhat di-erent angle. His conversational contract (cc) view o politeness is based on thebelie that interlocutors are conscious o their rights and obligations whichaects their communication with each other. With regard to the present inves-tigation, this would mean that students are aware that proessors have a higherstatus than they do in the institutional context, which in turn would normally result in students using a higher amount o deerential strategies towards theirproessors than vice versa. Although not specifcally related to the academiccontext in Fraser’s article, he illustrates deerential behaviour as ollows:

The sentence ‘Would you mind helping me today’, used to indirectly convey a request, is certainly more deerential than ‘Help me today’. The ormerconveys to hearers, i only symbolically, that they have a choice in deciding

whether or not to comply, hence that they are more highly ‘appreciated’ inthe estimation o the speaker. (Fraser, 1990, p. 233)

Importantly, he also argues that polite behaviour is the expected norm in conversation and that thus rational participants in a conversation are expected toadhere to the norms o the conversational contract (i.e. should behave accord-ing to their rights and obligations as an interlocutor based on the contextualconditions). This notion is signifcant or this study, as it points towards thepotential problems students in the study abroad contexts may encounter. AsSA learners generally are perceived as rational adults, the expectation that they would be able to act accordingly when communicating is not unjustifed.

However, what may not be taken into consideration by all interlocutors they may be encountering in the study abroad context is that they may not be ully aware that a) the pragmatic norms o their L2 can dier rom their frst lan-guage (L1) and/or that b) their pragmatic competence in the L2 is not yet ully developed. In the ollowing section I will discuss the signifcance o cultureor pragmatics research ocusing on the study abroad context and will thenaddress issues related to interlanguage pragmatics in Section 2.1.6 and 2.1.7.




2.1.5 Clt

Interlocutors’ amiliarity with the pragmatic norms and rules o a particular

language and culture is highly important or successul communication. Thisdoes not mean that speakers using a particular language automatically have toor may want to adhere to these norms at all times, but even i speakers wish toreact in an impolite or inappropriate manner towards their interlocutors, they

would still need to be aware o what actually constitutes appropriate behaviourin order to violate it. What is considered appropriate/polite or not by speakerso a particular language is closely related to their cultural norms. The ollow-ing quotation by Gudykunst and Kim illustrates the relationship between cul-ture and language well:

The development o human culture is made possible through communi-cation, and it is through communication that culture is transmitted romone generation to another. Culture and communication are intertwinedso closely that Hall (1959) maintains that ‘culture is communication’ and‘communication is culture’. In other words, we communicate the way we dobecause we are raised in a particular culture and learn its language, rules,and norms. Because we learn the languages, rules and norms o our cultures

by a very early age (between 5 and 10 years old), however, we generally areunaware o how culture inuences our behavior in general and our commu-nication in particular. (Gudykunst & Kim, 2003, p. 4)

Gudykunst and Kim (2003) emphasize that culture always aects the way inter-locutors communicate because competent speakers know what is acceptableand appropriate in a given context or not. They know this, because they havebeen socialized into a particular culture and have been made aware o therules and expectations rom an early age. In England or example, small chil-dren are requently told to ‘mind their p’s and q’s’ (i.e. to remember to say please and thank you), while in Germany parents tend to prompt their chil-dren ‘Wie sagt man? ’ (‘What do you say?’) in order or them to say ‘thank you’.However, because the process o L1 socialization starts at a very early age andis continuous, involving a large number o diverse rules (e.g. whispering incertain contexts, such as in church or at the theatre; addressing certain inter-locutors by ‘Sir’, ‘Miss’ or ‘Dr’; apologizing or doing something wrong, suchas stepping on someone’s oot), members o a particular culture tend not to

think o these rules as being culture specifc but oten assume that these rules will be universally applicable.

A second defnition by Kachru makes the link between pragmatics and cul-ture even clearer:

By culture, I mean ‘the pattern o meanings embodied in symbolic orms,including actions, utterances and meaningul objects o various kinds, by




virtue o which individuals communicate with one another and share theirexperiences, conceptions and belies’ (Thompson, 1990, p. 132). Culture isnot static; it evolves as people conduct their daily lives. Nevertheless, cul-

ture also denotes a body o shared knowledge, that is, what people ‘must know in order to act as they do, make the things they make, and interpret their experience in the distinctive way they do’ (Quinn & Holland, 1987,p. 4). ‘Act’ in this sense includes verbal acts – whether in the spoken or inthe written mode. The shared knowledge in verbal behavior reers to theamiliar conventions ollowed in using language, which makes it easier orus to ‘interpret’ (5) or ‘make sense’ or one another’s utterances and actions.(Kachru, 1999, p. 77)

According to Kachru (1999), speakers and hearers o a particular languageneed to have access to some kind o shared knowledge to correctly encode anddecode the meaning o spoken or written acts. Thus, i someone does not haveaccess to this knowledge and is thereore unamiliar with the norms o that particular language, it may be difcult or that person to express what they intend to communicate in a manner that enables their interlocutors to under-stand it in the way that it was intended. Wierzbicka (2003) provides a goodexample or an utterance that may be difcult to decode correctly or native

speakers o English:

At a meeting o a Polish organization in Australia a distinguished Australianguest is introduced. Let us call her Mrs Vanessa Smith. One o the Polishhosts greets the visitor cordially and oers her a seat o honour with these

words:

Mrs Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit!

The word Mrs is used here as a substitute or the Polish word pani , which(unlike Mrs) can very well be combined with frst names. What is more inter-esting about the phrasing o the oer is the use o the short imperative Sit! ,

which makes the utterance sound like a command, and in act like a com-mand addressed to a dog. (Wierzbicka, 2003, p. 27)

According to Wierzbicka (2003), Polish native speakers requently use impera-tives in contexts in which English native speakers would use more indirect orms. The example above shows that speakers presupposing that rules rom

their L1 also apply to their L2 may produce utterances that violate the normso their second/oreign language.7 Likewise interlocutors, such as Mrs Smith,and other non-native speakers o Polish witnessing this incident, may not beamiliar with Polish pragmatic norms and thereore interpret the utterance ina way that was not intended. (The use o one’s L1 pragmatic norms in one’s L2is called pragmatic transer and will be discussed in the Section 2.1.6 below.)This provides a glimpse o potential difculties native speakers and non-native




speakers may encounter when communicating with each other. Languagelearners’ ability to produce and comprehend language appropriately is theocus o interlanguage pragmatics, which will be discussed in the ollowing

section.

2.1.6 Intlana pamatcs

Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) is, as the name suggests, a subfeld o bothinterlanguage8 studies, which belong to the domain o second language acqui-sition research, and pragmatics. ILP is a relatively young area in linguisticsthat originated rom pragmatics theory and developments in L2 pedagogy 9 and research in the 1970s. It uses pragmatic theories, principles and rame-

works to examine how oreign/second language learners encode and decodemeaning in their L2. ILP research is also heavily inuenced by Hymes’s (1971,1972) concept o communicative competence which triggered a development away rom a more grammar-centred L2 pedagogy. Hymes argues that a speakers’communicative competence consists o our types o linguistic knowledge

which involve their ability to assess whether and to what extent an utterance is(1) ormally possible, (2) easible, (3) appropriate and (4) done and actually

perormed. His model o communicative competence10 as well as subsequent ones by Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983) and Bachman (1990) contrib-uted to a shit in L2 pedagogy towards communicative language learning andteaching, which in turn resulted in an increased interest 11 in pragmatic studiesocusing on language learners in the mid 1980s.

The ollowing defnition by Kasper and Rose (2002) illustrates the interdis-ciplinarity or ‘hybrid’ nature (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993, p. 3) o interlan-guage pragmatics as belonging both to pragmatics and SLA well:

As the study o second language use, interlanguage pragmatics examineshow nonnative speakers comprehend and produce action in a target lan-guage. As the study o second language learning, interlanguage pragmaticsinvestigates how L2 learners develop the ability to understand and perormaction in a target language. (Kasper & Rose, 2002, p. 5)

Kasper and Rose’s (2002) defnition highlights two important aspects o inter-

language pragmatics research. First, it emphasizes that both production andcomprehension are part o language learners’ pragmatic competence in theirL2. Thus, second/oreign language learners do not only have to be able to pro-duce utterances that are regarded as contextually appropriate by their target audience, they also have to be aware o what constitutes appropriate linguis-tic behaviour in a variety o social situations in their L2. This shows the linkbetween culture and pragmatic competence in a second/oreign language.




As learners o a particular L2 are always also native speakers o another lan-guage, they may think that certain norms, strategies and phrases that are usedin their native language to achieve a certain purpose can also be employed

in a translated orm in their L2 to achieve the same purpose. Coulmas (1981)described this behaviour as transer . According to Kasper (1992, 1998a) twotypes o transer should be distinguished: positive transer (where the prag-matic norms/orms/strategies o the L1 and L2 match and L1 knowledge canthereore be transerred to the L2) and negative transer (where the pragmaticnorms/orms/strategies o the L1 and L2 do not match and can thereore not be transerred to the L2). Since the notion o transer is also central to theterm interlanguage, it is not surprising that the concept o negative transer in

particular is requently ocused on interlanguage pragmatics research. I willalso reer to it in my analysis and discussion when highlighting instances o possible L1 transer.

The second part o Kasper and Rose’s defnition o interlanguage pragmaticsstresses that interlanguage pragmatics is also concerned with the development o

pragmatic competence , which is the ocus o the present study. In the next section,I will review theories that have been used to explain ILP development.

2.1.7 Acqstonal thos n L2 pamatcs

Although interlanguage pragmatics is a hybrid discipline situated at the inter-section o pragmatics and second language acquisition research, ILP studiesin the 1980s and most o the 1990s ocused almost exclusively on comparingnative speakers’ and language learners’ production and comprehension o speech acts. In act, the number o developmental studies published in the frst 20 years o ILP research was so small that Bardovi-Harlig concluded in 1999

that ‘not only was interlanguage pragmatics not undamentally aquisitional,but it was, undamentally not acquisitional’ (1999a, p. 679).

Due to the relative scarcity o developmental research in ILP in the early years o the discipline, it is not surprising that the two inuential cognitivepsychological models that addressed acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics

were only published in the 1990s.The frst model is Schmidt’s (1990, 1993) noticing hypothesis. He argues that

pragmatic strategies, such as how to end telephone conversations in a second

language, or example, frst have to be noticed by the learner beore they canbe processed, understood and fnally appropriately implemented. Noticing inthis context is defned as the ‘conscious registration o the occurrence o someevent’, while understanding reers to ‘the recognition o some general prin-ciple, rule or pattern’ (Schmidt, 1995, p. 29). Schmidt also emphasizes theimportance o motivation, acculturation and other aective actors on learn-ers’ pragmatic development. He suggests that learners who are interested in




getting to know speakers o the target language and in establishing relation-ships with them may ocus more on pragmatic norms conveyed through the L2input than learners who are not motivated by aective actors.

The second cognitive psychological model that is requently reerred to ininterlanguage pragmatics was developed by Bialystok (1991, 1993) and is closely related to children’s acquisition o pragmatic norms in their L1. Her model orlinguistic processing divides the elements that are necessary or the analysiso linguistic systems into three levels o representation: conceptual, ormaland symbolic. Conceptual representation is the frst access stage to a new lan-guage. Although learners can convey their intentions at this level, they ocuson ‘the intended meaning and not on the orms being selected to express that

intention’ (Bialystok 1993: 51). Thus, learners do not have the ability to recog-nize that a specifc orm is unctioning as a request. They are only able to makethis connection in the next stage, ormal representation. Symbolic represen-tation then entails the learner’s ability to identiy the ormal-unctional map-ping o linguistic eatures in a request as well as the illocutionary unction o these eatures.

Both models have been used in previous studies to explain how and why L2learners acquire pragmatic norms/structures and orms. As Schmidt’s modelplaces a somewhat higher emphasis on aective actors and acculturation, twoactors that may help to explain the development o the learners in the present study, I will mainly reer to his model in this investigation.

2.2 Interlanguage Pragmatics: Pragmatic Awareness

In the literature, the terms pragmatic comprehension (e.g. Kasper, 1984; Taguchi,2008; van Dijk, 1977), pragmatic awareness (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998;

Garcia, 2004) and receptive pragmatic competence (e.g. Rinnert, Nogami & Iwai,2006) have been used to reer to a hearer’s ability to correctly iner an inter-locutor’s intended meaning. In one o the frst papers on this issue, Van Dijk(1977) argues that to comprehend an illocutionary act correctly, interlocutorsneed to analyse the context in which the utterance is made. Kasper (1984,pp. 4–5, author’s italics) summarizes the fve phases o the contextual analysis

van Dijk proposes as ollows:

The identifcation o the general social context (ormal/inormal, public/private)The identifcation o the specifc social context (e.g. opening a ormal meet-ing, introducing somebody at a party)The identifcation o the relevant actors in the given context, or example,participants’ social status, their positional and situational roles, and theirrole relationship




The identifcation o conventions (social norms) pertaining to the givencontext The identifcation o the overall ongoing action and the sequence o acts pre-

ceding the speech act under comprehension.

The list shows that inerring the intended meaning o an utterance is a com-plex process. To be able to correctly interpret what is being said, hearers needto have a good understanding o the cultural and pragmatic norms o thespecifc language and context. For example, in an English university context a proessor is regarded to be o higher status than an undergraduate student and the use o imperatives is not considered to be appropriate towards higher-

status interlocutors in non-emergency contexts. Consequently, it would gen-erally be considered inappropriate12 i undergraduate students were to use animperative to ask their proessor or a avour in an ofce hour.

For L2 language learners, inerring the intended meaning o a particularutterance is particularly demanding, as they are still in the process o acquir-ing the pragmatic norms o their L2 and relevant cultural background knowl-edge, while also having to reconcile all o this with their existing L1 pragmaticnorms and own cultural background. Thus, the more indirect and L2 culturespecifc a particular L2 utterance is and the less it overlaps with the pragmaticnorms o the learners’ L1 and a similar L1 utterance, the more difcult it willbe or L2 learners to iner the intended meaning correctly.

Thomas (1983) argues that as a result o pragmatic ailure which she defnes as‘the inability to understand “what is meant by what is said” ’ (p. 91) communica-tion may break down between interlocutors o dierent cultural backgrounds.She provides a variety o reasons or why utterances may be incorrectly inerred:

a. H[earer] perceives the orce o S[peaker]’s utterance as stronger or weaker

than S[peaker] intended s/he should perceive it;b. H[earer] perceives as an order an utterance which S[peaker] intended s/he

should perceive as a request;c. H[earer] perceives S[peaker]’s utterance as ambivalent where S[peaker]

intended no ambivalence;d. S[peaker] expects H[earer] to be able to iner the orce o his/her utter-

ance, but is relying on a system o knowledge or belies which S[peaker]and H[earer] do not, in act, share. For instance, S[peaker] says ‘Pigs might

y!’ to an H[earer] unaware that they do not, or S[peaker] says, ‘He’s mad-der than Keith Joseph’, to an H[earer] who believes Joseph to be perectly sane.

(Thomas, 1983, p. 94)

Given that L2 learners need to be able to comprehend what is being said andhow it is intended in order to communicate eectively and successully in their




second/oreign language, it is somewhat surprising that pragmatic awarenesshas not been explored more extensively in ILP research. To date only a ratherlimited number o investigations have examined L2 learners’ pragmatic aware-

ness. In the ollowing, I will frst review studies that ocus on comparing L2learners’ and native speakers’ pragmatic awareness in Section 2.2.1. I will thenconcentrate on studies that address learners’ and native speakers’ pragmaticand grammatical comprehension in Section 2.2.2.

2.2.1 Stds compan lans’ andnatv spaks’ pamatc awanss

Studies ocusing on a particular speech act

In one o the earliest studies in ILP awareness research, Carrell and Konneker(1981) employed a rank-ordering task to explore dierences in native speak-ers and L2 learners’ judgements o politeness in requests. Their English as asecond language (ESL) students represented a range o frst languages, suchas Spanish, Farsi and Arabic. Their task involved our sets o cards consist-ing o nine cards each, o which one card contained a brie description o ascenario, such as purchasing shoes in a shoe shop, and eight utterance cardsthat contained eight possible request strategies. The strategies ranged romconventionally indirect interrogative sentences containing past tense modals,to direct elliptical imperative sentences. The participants were supplied withthe cards and were then asked to put them into a specifc order accordingto the perceived politeness o the individual utterances. Tanaka and Kawade(1982), in a subsequent investigation also ocusing on politeness in requestsand employing a rank-ordering task, aimed to replicate Carrell and Konneker’sstudy. In contrast to Carrell and Konneker, they used only one set o cards and

provided their participants with 12 request cards instead o 8. In addition, allo their ESL learners were native speakers o Japanese.

The results o the two studies were very similar. Both ound a high corre-lation between the native and learner judgments o politeness in the request utterances, which they attributed to the eect o the learning environment.Interestingly, their data also showed that the L2 learner groups recognizedmore distinct levels within the request hierarchy than the native speakers,either seven and fve (Carrell & Konneker, 1981) or seven and six (Tanaka &

Kawade, 1982). Carrell and Konneker suggested that this ‘may be due to a kindo “over-sensitivity” to semantic/syntactic orm distinctions’ (1981, p. 27).Kitao (1990) also employed a rank-ordering task to compare how language

learners and native speakers judged politeness in requests. His ESL learn-ers in the target context and English as a oreign language (EFL) learnersin Japan were all native speakers o Japanese. In contrast to the two previousstudies, Kitao used a questionnaire instead o cards to obtain his participants’




judgements on request strategies. On the questionnaire, his learners andnative speakers were asked to rate the politeness level o 61 requests on 10-part scales ranging rom very polite to very rude. Similar to Carrell and Konneker

(1981) and Tanaka and Kawade (1982), Kitao ocused on direct and conven-tionally indirect requests, but also included a limited number o modifers,such as ‘please’ and ‘possibly’. While he ound no signifcant dierences in theperception o politeness between his American native speakers and his two

Japanese learners groups, the ESL learners’ scores correlated more highly withthe native speaker scores than the EFL scores. Kitao attributed this result tothe ESL learners’ exposure to the L2 in the target context.

Not ocusing on requests, but on advice utterances, Hinkel (1997) used

a multiple choice questionnaire (MCQ) to investigate which level o direct-ness (direct/hedged/indirect) was considered appropriate by her ChineseESL learners and American English native speakers. The participants in herstudy frst read a written description o a scenario (e.g. advising a ellow stu-dent on where to take their car or a repair) and then selected one o threepossible options representing a specifc degree o directness, or opted out.Hinkel’s results showed signifcant dierences in the learners’ and nativespeakers’ selection o appropriate utterances in the advice scenarios. HerESL learners perceived direct or hedged advice to be appropriate signif-cantly more requently than the native speakers. The native speakers, incontrast, most requently considered indirect comments to be the appropri-ate choice.

Thus, whereas Carrell and Konneker (1981), Tanaka and Kawade (1982) andKitao (1990) ound no signifcant dierences between learners’ and nativespeakers’ perceptions o politeness in requests, Hinkel’s (1997) investigationo advice utterances did show signifcant dierences in the appropriacy per-ception o the two groups. There are a number o possible explanations or

this. One reason or the dierent results could be the speech act investigated.However, it seems unlikely that the speech act choice may have aected theresults because developmental awareness studies examining requests (e.g.Cook & Liddicoat, 2002; Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985) have shown signifcant dierences between L2 learner and native-speaker groups.

Another explanation could be that the rank-ordering tasks employed by Carrell and Konneker (1981), Tanaka and Kawade (1982) and Kitao (1990)examined request utterances that were more distinctly dierent than the

fner advice nuances investigated by Hinkel (1997). The three ormer stud-ies ocused more on the broad distinction between direct and conventionally indirect orms, whereas the latter study examined direct, indirect and hedgedorms. A urther reason or the discrepancies could lie in the selection o theparticipants. As studies investigating the development o pragmatic aware-ness such as those by Olshtain and Blum-Kulka (1985), Bouton (1988, 1994),Cook and Liddicoat (2002), Koike (1996), and Matsumura (2003) have shown,




results o learner groups can vary based on their length o stay in the target environment and their profciency level.

Because only very limited inormation is provided on both issues in the

rank-ordering tasks, the dierent fndings might have been the result o pos-sible dierences in the participant groups that took part in the studies, such asa signifcantly greater amount o time spent in the target environment in thecase o the rank-ordering groups.

Studies ocusing on more general pragmatic issues

The studies discussed in the previous section investigated L2 learners’ andnative speakers’ perceptions regarding a particular speech act. In this section,I will review two studies that address more general issues: L2 learners’ ability to understand conversational implicature (Bouton, 1988) and English learn-ers’ awareness o pragmatic norms and perception o politeness in their L2(Hinkel, 1996).

The aim o Bouton’s study was to examine whether the cultural and L1 back-grounds o learners o English would aect their ability to understand theimplied meaning o an utterance in English. The ESL learners in his investi-gation, who had just commenced their study at an American university, repre-sented six dierent groups (Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Mainland Chinese,Spanish/Portuguese, Taiwan Chinese). The instrument used in this study wasa multiple choice questionnaire containing detailed descriptions o particularscenarios. Each scenario violated one o Grice’s maxims (e.g. Joan: ‘Do youhave a lot o relatives?’ Fran: ‘Does a dog have eas?’ 1988, p. 91) and was ol-lowed by our possible interpretations o the utterance, one literal, two distrac-tors and the correct meaning.

Bouton’s fndings showed that the results o all learner groups diered sig-nifcantly rom those o the American English native speakers. Thus, all o the L2 learners encountered difculties when interpreting implied mean-ing. Interestingly, the statistical analysis also revealed signifcant dierencesbetween the learner groups, which indicates that L2 learners o dierent lan-guage backgrounds may experience difculties in interpreting utterances in

varying degrees. Bouton later conducted a second study on conversationalimplicature which had a developmental aspect and will thereore be discussed

in Section 2.2.3.Focusing on a variety o pragmatic norms, Hinkel (1996) employed a ques-tionnaire to examine L2 learners’ awareness o politeness and appropriatenessin their L2 host country. Her ESL learners were enrolled at an American uni-

versity and spoke fve dierent native languages: Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. Participants in this study were asked to rate a numbero statements included in the questionnaire, such as ‘In the US, when you




need inormation, it is more appropriate to say “Tell me . . .” than “Could you/ Would you tell me . . .”.’ (1996, p. 57). Hinkel ound that, although the individ-ual L1 group scores or the questionnaire items tended to vary somewhat, her

ESL learners generally were aware o the pragmatic norms o the L2. She sug-gests that a possible reason or this result could be a combination o languagelearners’ motivation to succeed in their L2 at a oreign university and theirexposure to the target language in the L2 context.

The impact o exposure to the second language in the host environment could also explain why Bouton’s learners experienced difculties when inter-preting implied meaning. While Hinkel’s (1996) learners had lived in theUnited States or more than 2 years on average, Bouton’s learner participants

had only recently moved to their host country. It could also be argued that identiying implied meaning based on the more abstract examples in Bouton’smultiple choice task is inherently more difcult than deciding whether it isnecessary to apologize to a teacher ater missing their class.

The review o studies comparing L2 learners’ and native speakers’ pragmaticawareness has shown that while some studies reported signifcant dierencesbetween learners and native speakers (Bouton, 1988; Hinkel, 1997), others didnot (Carrell & Konneker, 1981; Tanaka & Kawade, 1982; Kitao, 1990; Hinkel,1996). Possible reasons or these dierent fndings may be task difculty, di-erences in learners’ profciency levels and/or amount o exposure to the L2in the target environment.

2.2.2 Stds compan th ntlatonshp o L2 lans’ and natv spaks’ pamatc andammatcal awanss

Only a very small number o studies have examined the pragmatic and gram-matical awareness o L2 learners in an integrated paradigm. Bardovi-Harligand Dörnyei’s (1998) investigation is o particular importance or the pre-sent study, as I used their video-and-questionnaire instrument to examineparticipants’ awareness o pragmatic and grammatical inelicities. In theirstudy, Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei investigated the recognition and ratingo grammatical errors and pragmatic inelicities by ESL and EFL learners as

well as teachers o English. Their participants frst watched a video comprising

20 scenarios, some o which contained either grammatical or pragmatic errors(see 4.2.1 or a detailed description o the instrument), and were subsequently asked to evaluate the severity o the perceived problems in a questionnaire.The speech acts examined in this study were apologies, reusals, requests andsuggestions.

The authors ound that the ESL learners in the United States recognized aconsiderably higher number o pragmatic than grammatical errors, whereas




the EFL group in Hungary was more aware o grammatical violations than o pragmatic ones. The severity ratings or the two error types also indicated adierence in the participants’ perceptions across the two learning environ-

ments: The ESL and EFL students’ severity scores or pragmatic and gram-matical errors were almost exactly the inverse o each other. ESL learnersconsidered the pragmatic inelicities to be more serious, whereas EFL learnersperceived the grammatical errors to be more salient.

Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) urther subdivided their EFL and ESLsamples according to the learners’ profciency level. They ound that mem-bers o the high-profciency set in Hungary scored both the pragmatic andthe grammatical items higher than the low-profciency EFL participants. In

the United States, the high-profciency group perceived the pragmatic inelic-ities to be more severe than the low-profciency group, but at the same time,they rated the grammatical errors less severely. In addition, the results showedthat the ESL participants who had only recently arrived in the United Statesassigned lower severity scores to the pragmatic items than those ESL learners

who had spent at least 3 months in the target environment prior to taking part in the research.

The fndings o this study indicated that three actors play an important rolein the learner’s linguistic awareness: the profciency level, the learning envi-ronment, and the students’ access to authentic L2 input. Thus, the results sup-ported both Bialystok’s (1991, 1993) processing model and Schmidt’s (1993,1995) noticing hypothesis.

The Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) study admittedly had some limita-tions, the most salient o which was that the researchers had to assume that

when the participants indicated that there was an inelicity in a scenario, they had in act detected the one planted by the researchers rather than identiy-ing a ‘alse error’. Because the study was designed to assess a large number o

participants in a questionnaire ormat using rating scales, it had no interviewor error correction component.

Niezgoda and Röver (2001) replicated Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998)study with EFL learners in the Czech Republic and ESL learners in Hawaii.They employed the same video and questionnaire that had been used in theoriginal research design. In contrast to Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s results,the EFL learners in their sample recognized a higher number o pragmaticinelicities than the ESL participants. The students in the Czech Republic also

assigned higher severity ratings to both the pragmatic and grammatical viola-tions than did the participants in the United States.Contrary to the fndings o the original study, Niezgoda and Röver’s (2001)

data thereore suggest that their EFL students were more aware o pragmaticinelicities than their ESL participants and also perceived them to be moreserious than the learners in the United States did. One fnding o their study,however, is in agreement with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) results:




Like the ESL learners in the original study, their ESL group also consideredpragmatic errors more salient than grammatical violations.

A possible explanation or the somewhat surprising results o Niezgoda and

Röver’s (2001) study might lie in the sampling o the participants. Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) examined relatively ‘average’ language learnersin both the Hungarian and the American contexts. Niezgoda and Röver, onthe other hand, intentionally concentrated on a highly select group o Czechstudents that had already passed a number o rigorous language examinationsand were enrolled in an intensive English programme and compared them toESL learners rom a variety o backgrounds who were attending a languageschool in Hawaii.

2.3 Request Studies

Although a number o dierent speech acts and other pragmatic phenom-ena have been investigated in interlanguage pragmatics research in the past three decades, such as apologies (e.g. Kasper, 1981; Rintell & Mitchell 1989;Trosborg 1987, 1995), compliments (e.g. Billmeyer, 1990; Rose, 2000; Rose &Kwai-un, 2001), complaints (e.g. Cohen & Olshtain, 1993; Ellwood, 2008;

House & Kasper, 1981; Kasper, 1981; Olshtain & Weinbach, 1993), and conver-sational implicature (e.g. Bouton 1988, 1994), requests remain one o the most requently examined speech acts according to Kasper (1997a) and Hendriks(2008). Following House and Kasper (1987, p. 1252) requests will be defnedas directives, with the ollowing interactional characteristic: ‘S (speaker) wantsH (hearer) to do p/p is at cost to H’ in the present investigation.

In the next section, I will frst outline the reasons or studying requests ininterlanguage pragmatics in Section 2.3.1, as this will help to explain why this

particular speech act has attracted a large amount o attention in ILP research.I will then discuss inuential request classifcation rameworks or request strategies and internal and external modifers in Section 2.3.2. Subsequent tothis, I will review the results o request studies ocusing on German learnerso English in Section 2.3.3 and discuss request studies involving non-Germanlearners o English in Section 2.3.4. Developmental studies examining requests

will be discussed in Section 2.5.2 and 2.5.3.

2.3.1 Rasons o stdyn qsts n ntlana pamatcs

Fraser’s description o the attributes o requests provides a number o reasons that explain why this particular speech act has attracted a large amount o interest:

Requests are very requent in language use (ar more requent, or example,than apologizing or promising); requests are very important to the second




language learner; they have been researched in more detail than any othertype o speech act; they permit a wide variety o strategies or their peror-mance; and fnally, they carry with them a good range o subtle implications

involving politeness, deerence, and mitigation. (1978, p. 6)

As Fraser notes, requests are requently perormed in everyday lie. In contrast to other speech acts, such as complimenting or complaining, learners cannot avoid making requests during their stay in the study abroad context as they willneed to ask or inormation (e.g. when fnding accommodation or looking orclarifcation on a particular point in a seminar), or goods (e.g. in a caeteria)and possibly also or avours (e.g. rom a atmate or help with moving into

their lodgings). Since the desired aim o the request utterance can involve a very diverse number o actions or things, the illocutionary orce o requestscan also vary greatly. The very act that requests can involve a high number o dierent desired actions and also varying degrees o illocutionary orce cer-tainly contributed to the interest in this speech act.

In addition, the pool o potential interlocutors that speakers may need tomake a request to is also rather large and may range rom equal status indi-

viduals (e.g. riends, atmates) to higher status individuals (e.g. landlady, pro-essor). Thus, speakers frst o all need to correctly judge the social distancebetween themselves and their hearers and then decide which linguistic ormsare appropriate in each individual context beore deciding on the wording o the actual request. Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989a, p. 11) reer to the‘high social stakes involved or both interlocutors in the choice o linguisticoptions’ in that respect and also note that ‘requests are ace-threatening by defnition (Brown & Levinson, 1978): hearers can interpret requests as intru-sive impingements on reedom o action, or even as a show in the exercise o power’.

Consequently, making a high imposition request to a higher status interlocu-tor can be a rather complex endeavour or L2 learners, as they will need tocorrectly assess the contextual conditions o the situation and then choose theappropriate linguistic orms to express their request. Even i L2 learners makethe right judgements with regard to the context, selecting suitable linguisticorms to express themselves can be difcult or L2 learners because o theirown cultural background and possible L1 transer (Omar, 2006; Woodfeld,2008), and the range o orms that can be used to ormulate a request.

All o the actors mentioned above (e.g. requency o requests in everyday lie; diversity o desired actions/things; variety o interlocutors; cross-culturaldierences in linguistic orms or ormulating requests) help to explain why a considerable amount o studies have ocused on requests in interlanguagepragmatics research. Examining learners’ ability to use suitable linguisticorms in their L2 when making requests can provide insights into languagelearners’ pragmatic skills and their ability to express themselves appropriately




and sensitively in ace threatening contexts in their L2. This is why the pro-ductive part o this study ocuses on request utterances that dier with regardto the degree o imposition and status o the interlocutor.

2.3.2 Classfcaton systms o qsts nntlana pamatcs

Request strategies

Due to the high requency with which requests are made by language learnersand native speakers on a daily basis and the various contexts in which they can

occur, it is not surprising that this speech act has not only received much atten-tion in ILP research in the past three decades, but was also one o the speechacts that researchers in interlanguage pragmatics ocused on when the disci-pline began to establish itsel. In two o the earliest studies, House and Kasper(1981) and Kasper (1981) investigated requests by German learners o Englishand developed an eight-part classifcation scheme or request strategies. Thisscheme was based on previous work on request categorizations in speech act andpoliteness theory, such as Searle (1975, 1976), Ervin-Tripp (1976, 1977), Labov and Fanshel (1977), Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) and Leech (1983).

House and Kasper’s (House & Kasper, 1981; Kasper, 1981) original taxonomy or requests was later slightly modifed by them as well as other researchersin subsequent papers (House & Kasper, 1987; House & Vollmer, 1988) andormed together with Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s research (Blum-Kulka 1982,1987; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984) the basis o the classifcation scheme that

was used in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (1989b, hence-orth CCSARP) led by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper. As their categoriza-tion system o request strategies has been requently employed in ILP request

research, the names o the individual strategies as well as corresponding exam-ples are included below:

1. Mood derivable Clean up that mess2. Perormative I am asking you to clean up that mess3. Hedged Perormative I would like to ask you to clean up that mess4. Obligation Statement You’ll have to clean up that mess5. Want Statement I really wish you’d clean up that mess

6. Suggestory Formula How about cleaning up?7. Query Preparatory Could you clear up the kitchen, please?8. Strong Hint You have let the kitchen in a right mess9. Mild Hint I wanted to cook tonight

(slightly modifed and abbreviated rom Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper,1989a, p. 18)




Requests ormulated according to strategies 1 to 5 are called direct requests in the CCSARP’s scheme, while requests employing strategies 6 and 7 arereerred to as conventionally indirect requests and requests based on strategies 8

and 9 are classifed as non-conventionally indirect requests . The three directnesslevels that are distinguished in the CCSARP manual also signiy the lengtho the hearer’s inerential process to identiy the utterance as a request (i.e.direct requests are usually identifed as a request more quickly than non- conventionally indirect requests).

A second request strategy ramework which has also had a considerableimpact on studies examining L2 learners’ and native speakers’ request strategy use was developed by Trosborg (1995). As the coding system used in the pre-

sent investigation is based on both the CCSARP and Trosborg’s taxonomies(see Chapter 4 or the coding scheme used in the present study), Trosborg’sramework (1995, p. 205) is also included here:

Cat. I Indirect request Str. 1 Hints (mild)

(strong)

I have to be at the airport in hal anhour.My car has broken down. Will you be

using your car tonight?Cat. II Conventionally indirect

(hearer-oriented conditions)Str. 2 Ability

WillingnessPermission

Str. 3 Suggestory ormulae

Could you lend me your car? Would you lend me your car?May I borrow your car?How about lending me your car?

Cat. III Conventionally indirect

(speaker-based conditions)Str. 4 WishesStr. 5 Desires/needs

I would like to borrow your car.I want/need to borrow your car.

Cat. IV Direct requestsStr. 6 ObligationStr. 7 Perormatives

(hedged)

(unhedged)Str. 8 Imperatives

Elliptical phrases

You must/have to lend me your car.

I would like to ask you to lend me your car.

I ask/require you to lend me your car.Lend me your car.

Your car (please).

Although Trosborg’s taxonomy is similar to that o the CCSARP in severalrespects (e.g. both include a directness scale – in the CCSARP rom the most




to the least direct strategy and in Trosborg’s scheme rom the least to the most direct; the terms conventionally indirect and direct are used in both schemes),there are also some dierences. For example, the equivalent o the CCSARP

direct strategy want statements is classifed as conventionally indirect anddivided into two separate categories (wishes and desires/needs) in Trosborg’sscheme. This indicates that even though there may be some consensus on theclassifcation o several categories, there is no general agreement on a defn-ite categorization system or request strategies. For the present investigation,I thereore used a combination o both rameworks that seemed to represent my data best.

Request modifcation

In addition to the individual request strategies that speakers can use to or-mulate their requests, a considerable amount o research has also been con-ducted on L2 learners’ ability to urther modiy the illocutionary orce o theutterance with internal and external modifers . The CCSARP’s coding manualcontains a classifcation scheme or internal and external request modifcationthat was based on earlier work by the researchers involved in the project (e.g.

Blum-Kulka, 1987; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984: House & Kasper, 1981, 1987;Kasper, 1981) and was also partly inuenced by literature on speech acts andpoliteness (e.g. Brown & Levinson, 1978; Lako, 1973).

Internal modifers are defned as linguistic and syntactic devices that mod-iy the illocutionary orce o the request, such as the politeness marker ‘please’or the downtoner ‘maybe’. Internal modifers can be urther dierentiated asupgraders , which increase the illocutionary orce o the request, and downgraders , which decrease the illocutionary orce o the request. In contrast, external modifers , which are also called supportive moves , are defned as additional state-

ments which support the request proper. For instance, an explanation why thedesired action should be perormed is called grounder .

Although the CCSARP coding scheme or internal and external request modifcation has ormed the basis o many subsequent studies on requests,researchers such as Trosborg (1995) and Achiba (2003) modifed the CCSARPcategories in some respects and/or added new modifer categories based ontheir data. For example, Trosborg included three dierent types o syntacticembedding in her taxonomy (tentative ‘I wonder i . . .’, appreciative ‘I’d really

appreciate i . . .’ and subjective ‘I think . . .’) and Achiba devised the externalmodifer option giver by the use o which ‘a speaker expresses explicitly that car-rying out a request is let to the addressee’s own volition’ (2003, p. 152).

New additions to existing request modifcations rameworks show that thisagain is an area that is still developing. Due to the large number o dierent internal and external modifers that have been included in the various request modifcation taxonomies, dierences between the dierent rameworks cannot




be discussed here. However, the classifcation system that was used or the pre-sent study and that is based on the CCSARP coding system and Trosborg’s (1995)taxonomy, will be discussed in detail in Section 4.4 o the methodology chapter.

2.3.3 Rqst stds nvolvn Gman lans o Enlsh

In this section I will review studies that have examined how German learnerso English ormulate requests in their L2. As my investigation ocuses on thepragmatic development o learners without any pedagogic intervention, I haveonly included studies in this and the ollowing sections that also did not pri-marily aim to establish whether certain teaching methods or teaching materi-

als promote learners’ pragmatic ability regarding requests (see or example Alcon Soler, 2005; House 1996; Saont Jordà, 2003; Usó Juan & Martinez Flor,2008 on the eect o instruction).

Kasper’s (1981) study is one o the frst ILP investigations ocusing on Germanlearners o English. Data were elicited with role-play interactions involving Englishnative speakers, German learners o English studying English at university, andGerman native speakers. Kasper ound that although the query preparatory strat-egy was the most requently used category or both learners and English nativespeakers, generally her German learners o English tended to preer more dir-ect strategies compared to the English native speakers. The results also showedthat her learners used ewer internal modifers than the English native speakers.

House and Kasper’s (1987) examination o requests by German and Danishlearners o English and English native speakers is part o the CCSARP andused a discourse completion task (DCT) to collect data. The fndings o thisstudy were based on fve request scenarios and showed that the query prepara-tory strategy was again the most requently used strategy by all learner groupsand the native speakers. In addition, both learner groups also displayed an

awareness o contextual conditions o individual scenarios and tried to choosetheir strategies in accordance with the demands o the particular contexts.However, both learner groups also diered rom the English native speakersby using higher directness levels in two situations and by using more support-ive moves than the native speakers.

Regarding the latter, House and Kasper suggest that the overuse o exter-nal modifers could be a sign o learners ‘being unsure o their linguistic andsocial competence’ in English and reacting ‘sensitively to ace-threatening situ-

ations and thus overdo[ing] the hearer-supportive strategies’ (1987, p. 1283).The higher employment o external modifers in requests by L2 learners incontrast to native speaker controls was also ound in subsequent studies (e.g.Cenoz & Valencia, 1996; Hassall, 2001; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2003; Yu, 1999)and was termed ‘wae phenomenon’ by Edmondson and House (1991).

In a subsequent study that was also part o the CCSARP, House (1989) exam-ined the use o the internal modifer ‘please’ by German learners o English




and English native speakers. With the exception o one o the eight scenariosin which a higher number o learners employed the politeness marker ‘please’,dierences in the employment o ‘please’ by the two groups were so small that

had a statistical analysis been conducted, they would most likely not have beenstatistically signifcant.

Focusing on requests in written communication, Hutz (2006) investigatedhow German learners o English, German native speakers and native speak-ers o American English used requests in e-mails. He ound that while there

were no considerable dierences between the German and American Englishnative speaker groups, the German learners o English employed signifcantly ewer external modifers than both native speaker groups. This is an inter-

esting fnding, as House and Kasper’s (1987) research had shown that theirGerman learners o English used more external modifers than the nativespeakers. Hutz provides a number o possible reasons that could explain why his learners used ewer supportive moves than the native speakers: a) time con-straints, as some o his learners wrote the e-mails in their work environment,b) lack o linguistic means and c) lack o amiliarity with English request pat-terns. An alternative explanation could be that due to the relative novelty o e-mails as a medium o communication, learners were unsure about the prag-matic conventions o making requests in their L2 in an e-mail, and thus usedewer supportive moves (c. also Biesenbach-Lucas 2006 on pragmatic normsin e-mail communication).

With regard to learners’ and native speakers’ use o request strategies, Hutz(2006) ound that nearly 90 per cent o his learners who wrote their e-mailsin their work context used direct requests, whereas only 19.4 per cent o hisEnglish native speakers, 16.7 per cent o his German learners o English in anon-work context, and 9.2 per cent o his German native speakers employedthem in their e-mails. Hutz notes that ‘this requency o imperatives can largely

be explained by the act that the requests oten involved urgency and imme-diate compliance’ and also adds that requests ormulated with an imperativeoten included the internal modifer ‘please’ (2006, p. 223). This fnding high-lights the importance o the contextual conditions in which the data were col-lected and the possible eect certain variables such as lack o time can have onL2 learners’ choice o request strategies.

In a recent study comparing requests made by German learners o English, Japanese learners o English and British English native speakers, Woodfeld

(2008) employed written DCTs and verbal reports to collect data on partici-pants’ use o request strategies and internal modifers. All o her participants were postgraduate students at a British university. Woodfeld ound that allo her German learners o English and the majority o her Japanese learn-ers o English mainly used the query preparatory strategy to ormulate theirrequests. This fnding thus supports the results o previous studies by Houseand Kasper (House, 1898; House & Kasper, 1987; Kasper 1981) and suggests




that Hutz’s fndings may have been a result o the data collection techniqueemployed.

Interestingly, two o Woodfeld’s (2008) Japanese learners o English did not

employ any query preparatory requests at all and instead only used direct strat-egies. Woodfeld suggests that there may be a variety o reasons or this ratherunexpected result, such as lack o practice in Japanese classrooms (see alsoLoCastro 1997), overgeneralization o directness in western languages (Tanaka,1988) or L1 specifc eects o the data collection instrument (Rose 1994).

Regarding her learners’ use o internal request modifcation, Woodfeldound that her English native speakers and German learners employed modif-ers in more than 50 per cent o their requests (69.23 per cent and 56.52 per cent

respectively), while her Japanese learners o English only used them in43.58 per cent. Thus, although both learner groups used ewer internal modi-fers than the NSs, the data suggest that the native languages o the two groupsmay have aected their employment o request modifers. The German learn-ers o English came closer to the British English NS norm, probably becauseo similarities between the two languages. However, even though the Germanlearners o English used more internal modifers than the Japanese learnerso English, the dierence between the two percentage fgures or the EnglishNSs and the Germans indicates that the German learners would also need toincrease their employment o internal modifers in requests.

Concerning the three groups’ use o individual internal modifers, Woodfeld’s data clearly show that her NS group employed a wider variety o lexical and syntactic modifers than either o her two learner groups. O par-ticular interest or the present study is that syntactic internal modifers wereused considerably less requently by the learners than lexical ones, which sug-gests that syntactic modifers may be acquired later than lexical internal mod-ifers. Dierences in the use o the politeness marker were negligible between

the NSs and the German learners o English, a fnding which is similar toHouse’s (1989). However, the Japanese learners o English employed consid-erably ewer politeness markers than the other two groups. This result showsthat not all learners o English know how and when to use ‘please’ – a request modifer that is generally considered to be rather easy to learn and use.

Summary

Based on the review o studies in this section, German learners o English arelikely to do the ollowing when ormulating requests:

display an awareness o contextual conditions (e.g. House & Kasper, 1987)

mainly use query preparatory requests in non-e-mail communication (e.g.

House & Kasper, 1987; Kasper, 1981; Woodfeld, 2008)




employ more direct strategies than English native speakers (e.g. House &

Kasper, 1987; Hutz, 2006; Kasper, 1981)use more external modifers than English native speakers in non-e-mail

communication (e.g. House & Kasper, 1987)use ewer external modifers than English native speakers in e-mail commu-

nication (e.g. Hutz, 2006)use ewer internal modifers than English native speakers (e.g. Kasper, 1981;

Woodfeld, 2008).

The aim o this section was to highlight possible dierences between therequests ormulated by German learners o English and English native speak-

ers. In the ollowing section, I will review request studies that do not involveGerman learners o English and instead ocus on a variety o dierent L1-L2combinations to establish whether some o the fndings above are also char-acteristic o the interlanguage o other language learner groups. Request studies that have a developmental ocus will be reviewed in Sections 2.5.2and 2.5.3.

2.3.4 Rqst stds nvolvn non-Gman lans o Enlsh

In this section, I will provide a brie overview o request studies involvingnon-German learners o English to examine whether some o the interlan-guage eatures established in the previous section or German learners o English are specifc or this L1 group or are eatures that can be ound inother learner populations as well. My review will ollow a geographical journey rom Western Europe over Arica to the Eastern parts o Asia. Although only a small number o studies could be included here due to space constraints,

it is hoped that this review will help to provide a clearer picture o commonproblems L2 learners o English experience when ormulating requests.

Spanish learners o English

Cenoz and Valencia (1996) investigated Spanish second language (SSL) andEnglish oreign language (EFL) learners’ request perormance and comparedthem with native speaker controls o the two languages. Their data were col-

lected with a DCT. They ound that both learner groups used dierent request strategies based on the context o the request scenarios and thus demonstratedan awareness o situational actors on their linguistic choices which had alsobeen ound in a previous study by House and Kasper (1987).

Like the German learners o English in House and Kasper’s (1987) study,the EFL learner in this study also employed more external modifers thanthe native speakers, which suggests that this might be a typical characteristic




o interlanguage use or these three languages. The SSL learners, however,used ewer external modifers than the native speaker participants. Cenoz and

Valencia (1996) suggest that the SSL learners’ considerably lower profciency

level meant that they lacked the linguistic resources necessary to ormulatelonger utterances, thereby making the important point that learners with a lowor intermediate profciency in the L2 may sometimes not be able to perorm ina pragmatically appropriate way due to linguistic constraints and not due to alack o contextual sensitivity or awareness.

Arican learners o English

Kasanga (1998) explored the request perormance o Arican learners o English. His data consisted o DCT data and feld notes that were based onobservations o interactions. He ound that while the majority o the observedrequests employed direct strategies, such as the explicit perormative or themood derivable, the most requently used strategy in the elicited data was thequery preparatory. Kasanga suggests that a possible explanation or this result may be that the learners preerred the more direct strategies that resembledstrategies in their Arican L1s in interactions, while the learners who com-

pleted the DCT might have elt that they had to appear more ‘sophisticated’(1998, p. 140) and thereore tended to use more indirect strategies. Thiscould point towards a possible method eect suggested by Rose (1994) and

Woodfeld (2008) concerning the suitability o DCTs or Asian learners o English. Thus this fnding also highlights the signifcance o selecting a datacollection method that not only fts the research purpose but also the researchparticipants.

Chinese learners o English

Yu (1999) analysed English requests made by Chinese ESL learners, which shecompared with requests made by American English and Chinese native speak-ers. All o her data were gathered with DCTs. She ound, similar to Kasper(1981) and House and Kasper (1987), that all groups used conventionally indirect requests with the highest requency. The results also revealed that her learners employed more external modifers than the Chinese or Englishnative speaker participants, which is again in agreement with the fndings o House and Kasper’s (1987) and also Cenoz and Valencia’s (1996).

Japanese learners o English

Focusing on Japanese learners, Tanaka (1988) investigated the use o requestsby Japanese ESL learners and compared them with requests ormulated by




Australian English native speakers. The data were elicited with role-plays. Sheound that her learner participants, similar to Woodfeld’s (2008) Japaneselearners o English, employed more direct request strategies than her control

group which she attributed to the complexity and inherent difculty o moreindirect request utterances. Her data also revealed that her learners used morespecifc explanations or their requests, such as naming the places where they had looked or a book, than her native speakers.

Summary

The results o the studies reviewed in this section suggest that an overuse o

external modifers when ormulating requests is a typical eature o inter-language English that is not solely restricted to German learners o English.The query preparatory strategy or conventionally indirect requests in generalappear to be requently used and oten avoured by learners o English andEnglish native speakers. However, when learners o English do not employ conventionally indirect strategies they tend to preer direct over indirect strategies, resulting in them employing higher directness levels than nativespeakers.

2.4 Studies Examining the Development o L2 Learners’ Pragmatic Awareness

Two types o developmental study are commonly distinguished in interlan-guage pragmatics: those that are based on a longitudinal design and thosethat are based on a cross-sectional design. Longitudinal studies ollow the pro-

gress o a particular group o learners over a certain period o time, whereascross-sectional studies compare data collected rom two distinct learner groupsthat dier according to their profciency in the target language or the lengtho time spent in the L2 environment (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999b; Kasper & Rose,2002). In the ollowing I will frst review studies that ocus on individual speechacts (e.g. Cook & Liddicoat, 2002; Garcia, 2004; Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985)in Section 2.4.1, and will then discuss investigations on assertiveness (e.g.Kerekes, 1992) and implied meaning (e.g. Bouton, 1994, Taguchi, 2005) inSection 2.4.2.

2.4.1 Stds ocsn on spch acts

In a study that ocused on requests and apologies, Olshtain and Blum-Kulka(1985) administered a pragmatic judgment test to native speakers and threegroups o learners o Hebrew in Israel who varied according to their length




o residence in the target environment. Although Olshtain and Blum-Kulka’sstudy is not strictly cross-sectional, since, or instance, the amount o timespent in Israel diered rom two to 10 years or members o group 2, whereas

members o group 1 and 3 had spent less than 2 years and more than 10 years,respectively, in the target context, their fndings provide some interestinginsights into the temporal eect o a sojourn in the L2 context on learners’pragmatic awareness. The instrument used contained eight scenarios, which

were ollowed by six possible apologies or requests that could be made by thespeaker. The participants were asked to assess the appropriateness o the sixutterance options by rating them as ‘appropriate’, ‘more or less appropriate’,or ‘not appropriate in the particular context’.

The results revealed that the ratings o those learners who had lived in Israelor more than 10 years were similar to those o the native speakers, whereasthere were signifcant dierences between the scores o native speakers andlearners who had spent less than two years in the L2 context. For example,learners who had spent more than 10 years in the target environment tendedto accept more direct strategies, which was similar to the native-speaker par-ticipants, whereas learners with less than two years experience tended to reject those strategies. Based on their fndings, Olshtain and Blum-Kulka (1985)noted that ‘changes over time o nonnatives’ response patterns reect a pro-cess o approximation o target language norms’ (1985, p. 321).

In a study on Spanish as a oreign language, Koike (1996) examined thepragmatic development o learners o dierent profciency levels rom a cross-sectional perspective. Her learners were frst-year, second-year, and advanced-level (either in their third or ourth year) students o Spanish. The participants

were shown videotaped scenarios perormed by a Spanish native speaker.Following each o the seven scenarios, the students were asked to ormulate anappropriate answer to the speaker, identiy the type o speech act, and describe

the speaker’s mood. The latter was done with the help o a Likert scale that measured dierent levels o the speaker’s characteristics (e.g. strength/weak-ness, riendli-/unriendliness). The statistical comparison o the three learnergroups revealed that although the results o the frst- and second-year learners

were not signifcantly dierent, the advanced group’s results were signifcantly better than those o the two ormer groups. Based on her fndings, Koike con-cluded that the comprehension o speech acts, such as suggestions, was dif-cult or beginner-level language learners, even when they were expressed in a

similar way in the L1 and the L2.Cook and Liddicoat (2002) employed a cross-sectional design in their study that compared high- and low-profciency ESL learners’ pragmatic awarenesso requests with that o Australian English native speakers. Their instrument

was a multiple choice questionnaire that ocused on direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect requests. Similar to Bouton’s (1988)MCQ, their questionnaire contained a description o the scenario including




one o the three aorementioned request types. This was ollowed by our pos-sible interpretations o the request or each o the scenarios o which the par-ticipants were asked to select the one they thought appropriate.

Cook and Liddicoat’s (2002) statistical analysis o the request interpreta-tions selected by the three participant groups revealed that there were sig-nifcant dierences in the interpretation o conventionally indirect andnon-conventionally indirect requests between the native speakers and thelearner groups o both profciency levels, with the native speakers correctly identiying the meaning o requests with a higher requency than the learn-ers. In addition, low-profciency learners also interpreted a signifcantly lower number o direct requests correctly than the native speakers, whereas

there was no signifcant dierence between the native speakers and the high- profciency learners.The results also showed signifcant dierences in the correct identifcation

o requests between the two learner groups. The high-profciency learners cor-rectly identifed the meaning o conventionally and non-conventionally indirect requests with a signifcantly higher requency than the low profciency learners.This suggests that increasing profciency levels might result in a greater ability to correctly interpret request utterances. Based on their fndings, it seems that direct requests might be the frst request strategy that learners become expli-citly aware o, as there was no signifcant dierence between the native speak-ers’ and high-profciency learners’ interpretation o these request types.

Matsumura’s (2003, 2007) investigations o Japanese study abroad learners inCanada are one o the ew longitudinal developmental studies in interlanguagepragmatics that include data that were elicited prior to, during and ollowingL2 learners’ study abroad sojourn. The ocus o both studies was learners’ per-ception o appropriateness in advice situations. The data or the ormer study

were gathered in 3-month intervals, with the frst data collection session tak-

ing place beore the learners let Japan, ollowed by a second session about 1 month ater their arrival in Canada, and a third session ater they had spent 4 months in the target environment. The second study also includes data col-lected 1 month, 6 months and 1 year ater the students’ return. Due to attritionover time, the number o learner participants in both studies dier consider-ably. While 137 Japanese learners o English took part in the 2003 investigation,only 15 learners took part in all sessions examined in the 2007 study. All learnerresponses were compared to native-speaker controls.

The instrument used by Matsumura in both studies was a judgment tasksimilar to Olshtain and Blum-Kulka’s (1985) in which participants were pre-sented with 12 advice scenarios and then asked to select the most appropriateadvice utterance rom a choice o our options or each scenario. In addition tothe data elicited with this task, the researcher also provided the learners witha sel-report questionnaire about their degree o exposure to the L2 in theirdaily lie, obtained inormation on their profciency levels rom their TOEFL




scores, and conducted a group interview in the fnal data collection sessionone year ater learners’ return to Japan.

The statistical analysis o the 2003 investigation showed that the amount o

exposure to the target language was the one single actor in the study that deter-mined the pragmatic development o the learners; that is, those learners whohad a greater exposure to English displayed a greater amount o competence.The results urther revealed that even the amount o exposure in the learners’home country inuenced their pragmatic development abroad, as those learn-ers who had received a greater amount o exposure in Japan became more prag-matically competent early on in their time in Canada. Concerning the learners’dierent profciency levels in the L2, the study showed that profciency on its

own did not have a signifcant eect on the learners’ pragmatic development.Instead, the fndings suggested that profciency only had an indirect eect onpragmatic development when interlinked with exposure to the L2.

This means that those Japanese learners who reached higher levels o pro-fciency when they were in Japan sought more opportunities to be exposedto English in the target speech community, and as a consequence o greaterexposure, they could become more pragmatically competent. (Matsumura,2003, p. 485)

In his subsequent study, Matsumura (2007) ocused primarily on L2 learn-ers’ development ollowing their study abroad sojourn. He ound that hislearners’ pragmatic competence concerning appropriate ways o giving advicetowards equal and lower status interlocutors increased. However, his data alsoindicated a decrease in learners’ ability to select appropriate advice strategiesin interactions with higher status interlocutors because o a higher numberso learners deciding to opt out. Interestingly, the interview responses by the

L2 learners revealed that their preerence or the opting out strategy ollowingtheir study abroad sojourn was not due to pragmatic regression, but instead adeliberate choice based on their reassessment o what constitutes appropriatelanguage towards a higher status interlocutor. These changes in the learn-ers’ perception o appropriate behaviour are explained by one o Matsumura’s

Japanese learners o English as ollows:

Beore I let or Canada, I chose not to give advice in all items relating to a

proessor, because I didn’t know what to say. In Canada, I realized that unlike Japanese proessors, Canadian proessors were very riendly. They allowedme to address them on a frst name basis. So I elt it was OK to talk to themthe way I did to my roommates. (. . .) As time has gone by ater returning to

Japan, I have started to think that my way o talking to Canadian proessorsmight have been wrong. You know, a proessor is a proessor. (Matsumura,2007, pp. 179–180)




Matsumura also examined how his learners had succeeded in increasingtheir pragmatic competence in their FL context ollowing their study abroadsojourn. He ound that although his learners’ exposure to English in the

university context was limited, they had all sought out opportunities to usetheir L2 skills in other contexts, or example, by staying in contact with theirCanadian riends, teaching Japanese to oreign students or attending socialgatherings requented by English native speakers. Thus, as the results o hisprevious study had also indicated, a high amount o exposure to the target language is one o the key actors that helps language learners maintain andincrease their pragmatic competence in their L2.

Also ocusing on learners o English, but using a cross-sectional design,

Garcia (2004) examined whether high profciency learners were better at identiying the unctions o speech acts than low profciency learners. Herhigh profciency learners were postgraduate students enrolled in TeachingEnglish as a Second Language or Applied Linguistics courses, while her lowprofciency learners were undergraduate students in an intensive English pro-gramme. Learners rom both groups represented a variety o L1 backgroundssuch as Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. Their data were contrasted withthat o American English native speakers studying or a postgraduate degree.Garcia used a pragmatic listening comprehension task that was ollowed upby a multiple choice questionnaire and ocused on our speech acts: requests,suggestions, corrections and oers. Participants frst listened to fve authenticdialogues and were then asked to identiy the types o speech acts that wereincluded in the dialogues.

Garcia (2004) ound that the low profciency learner group identifed ewerspeech acts correctly than the high profciency group or the native speakers.Interestingly, however, the low profciency group also had the largest standarddeviation, which indicates that the low profciency group was not as homoge-

nous as the other two groups. In addition, the native speaker group was out-perormed by the high profciency group in the identifcation o some speechacts, which suggests that some o the utterances were not unambiguous andshould probably have been excluded rom the investigation.

2.4.2 Stds ocsn on lnstc asstvnss andmpld mann

Focusing on L2 learners’ and native speakers’ perceptions o assertiveness,Kerekes (1992) conducted a cross-sectional investigation involving low, inter-mediate and high profciency learners o English. The L2 learners had beenassigned to the profciency groups based on their TOEFL scores and internaluniversity tests. Although the learner groups represented 18 dierent nation-alities, the majority o the students were rom Asian backgrounds. The control




group consisted o mainly North American English native speakers also study-ing at the same university. Data or the study were gathered with a listeningtask consisting o 20 short two-turn dialogues in which participants were asked

to rate the degree o assertiveness o an utterance on a 7-point Likert scale.The linguistic eatures that determined the level o assertiveness were, orexample, the use o qualifers/hedges and tag questions.

Kerekes (1992) ound that the learners’ profciency level inuenced theirassertiveness rating o qualifers, as the least profcient group ound qualiferssignifcantly more assertive than the high profciency group and the nativespeakers. However, no dierences were ound in native speakers’ and learnergroups’ assessment o tag questions. Thus, L2 learners’ level o profciency

seems to have aected their assessment o some o the linguistic eaturesexamined, but not all. Again examining conversational implicature, Bouton (1994) readminis-

tered his multiple-choice questionnaire, which he had also used or his earlierstudy (Bouton, 1988; see review in Section 2.1.1), to a group o participants

who had lived in the United States or 4.5 years and who had taken part inhis original investigation. In addition, he also examined the comprehensiono conversational implicature o another group o learners shortly ater theirarrival and ater they had spent 17 months in the target environment. Becausehe compared the data o two groups o ESL learners at the beginning o theirsojourn and at one specifc point in time o their stay in the L2 environment,his research might be regarded as a combination o cross-sectional and longi-tudinal design.

Bouton (1994) ound that the responses rom both learner groups whohad spent 17 months and 4.5 years in the target country diered rom thoseo the native speakers in a number o scenarios. On a positive note, how-ever, the results also indicated that the students’ ability to correctly iden-

tiy the implied meaning o utterances had increased compared to the frst data collection session shortly ater their arrival in the United States. Theresults showed that the 17-month group signifcantly improved their under-standing o conversational implicature, although they had not been able tomaster the types o implicature that they had difculty with at the begin-ning o their stay. In contrast, those students who had spent 4.5 years in thetarget environment had improved their understanding o these implicaturetypes. In addition, a comparison o the data o the 4.5 years group and that

o the native speakers also no longer revealed any signifcant dierences inthe interpretation o the utterances or the majority o the scenarios. Thissuggests that the amount o time spent in the target environment positively correlates with language learners’ pragmatic awareness regarding conversa-tional implicature.

Like Bouton, Taguchi (2005) also ocused on L2 learners’ ability to under-stand implied meaning in her study. Her instrument was a computerized




listening task that examined her participants’ ability to comprehend indirect requests and reusals. Her Japanese EFL learners and American English nativespeakers frst listened to a constructed conversation on a computer and then

similar to Bouton’s study, selected one o our possible interpretations o thefnal utterance. However, while Bouton’s study had ocused on violations o Grice’s maxims, Taguchi was interested in exploring L2 learners’ ability tocomprehend more conventional implicatures (e.g. ‘Jane: Do we have time togo over my paper? Dr White: Oh, ah, do you mind i we talk about it tomor-row?’ p. 549) and less conventional implicatures (‘John: How was the wedding?I bet it was exciting. Mary: Well . . . the cake was OK.’ p. 549).

Her statistical analysis o the results showed that her learners were signif-

cantly better at comprehending the meanings o more conventional implica-tures than less conventional implicatures. Her study is included here, as it alsohas a developmental dimension, since the EFL learners in Taguchi’s study wereo dierent profciency levels. Concerning the eect o higher profciency lev-els on L2 learners’ pragmatic comprehension, she ound a ‘moderate to mod-erately strong eect o profciency on accuracy’ (2005, p. 553). Unortunately,however, the results o the dierent profciency groups are not reported exten-sively in her paper.

In her next study, Taguchi (2008) ollowed a longitudinal design and ocusedon the development o L2 learners’ pragmatic awareness in the study abroad con-text. She investigated the ability o learners o English to comprehend indirect meaning over a 4-months period. Her learners were native speakers o Japanese,

who were enrolled on an intensive English programme that was mainly attendedby Japanese students at an American higher education institution. Similar toher earlier study, Taguchi employed a computerized listening task designed toexamine learners’ comprehension o indirect reusals and opinions. To obtain abetter understanding o her learners’ profciency levels and amount o exposure

to English in the target environment, she also administered a lexical access test and a language contact survey (both adapted rom Segalowitz & Freed, 2004).The data or the pragmatic listening task and the lexical access test were admin-istered three times during the 4-months period in weeks 3, 8 and 19, whereas thelanguage contact survey was only administered in the latter two sessions.

Taguchi (2008) ound that rom the frst session on, her learners were betterand quicker at understanding conventional, indirect reusals than less conven-tional, indirect opinions. The analysis o learners’ comprehension o indirect

meaning over time showed only signifcant changes with regard to accuracy rom Session 1 to Session 3 and only or indirect reusals. This suggests that indirect reusals are easier to identiy than indirect opinions. The data alsoshowed that learners became aster in the lexical access test rom session tosession, thus indicating that ability to comprehend implied meaning and theability to make correct semantic judgements do not develop at the same speed.

With regard to exposure to the L2, the results o the language contact survey




revealed that the amount o language contact diered considerably or thegroup with very large standard variations. This points towards the importanceo individual learner dierences in SLA research.

2.4.3 Smmay

The results o the studies examining the development o L2 learners’ prag-matic awareness suggest that two actors play an important role in learners’ability to comprehend utterances: the length o stay in the target environment and L2 learners’ profciency level, although the latter was only a signifcant ac-tor when combined with a high level o exposure in Matsumura’s (2003) study.The profciency actor appears to provide evidence or Bialystok’s (1991, 1993)processing model, whereas the length o stay in the target environment seemsto confrm Schmidt’s (1993, 1995) noticing hypothesis. Regarding the amount o exposure to the L2 in the study abroad context, the fndings o Matsumura’s(2003) and Taguchi’s (2008) studies indicate that the amount o exposureto the L2 may dier rom learner to learner based on their individual pre-erences regarding interpersonal interaction and probably also motivation tolearn the L2. This suggests that individual learner dierences can have a con-

siderable impact on L2 learners’ progress in their second language. Finally,Matsumura’s (2007) investigation on L2 learners’ pragmatic development ollowing their study abroad sojourns suggests that a high level o pragmaticcompetence can be maintained or even increased in the home context whenlearners reect on their pragmatic choices and continue to seek out opportu-nities to be exposed to the target language.

2.5 Interlanguage Pragmatic Development: Production

In the ollowing sections, I will frst review ILP developmental studies in thestudy abroad context that do not ocus on requests. I decided to include theseinvestigations, as they provide valuable insights into the eect o the study abroad environment on L2 learners’ pragmatic development. Subsequent to thereview o the non-request studies in Section 2.6.1, I will discuss developmentalrequest studies that employed a cross-sectional design in Section 2.6.2 and will

then review developmental request studies that ollowed a longitudinal designin Section 2.6.3. As mentioned previously, since the aim o my investigation is toexamine the pragmatic development o L2 learners without specifc L2 teach-ing interventions, my ocus here will again be on studies that ollowed a similardesign (or investigations that examine the eect o L2 teaching interventions,see, or example, Alcon Soler & Martinez Flor 2005; Cohen, 1998; Cohen &Shively, 2007; Kim & Hall, 2002; Martinez Flor, Uso Juan & Guerra 2003).




2.5.1 Dvlopmntal stds condctd dn oat stdy aboad not ocsn on qsts

In this section I will review studies that provide insights into learners’ prag-matic development during or ater their stay in the study abroad context. I willfrst discuss studies that explore L2 learners’ development over a long period(i.e. 10 months and more), then studies examining language learners’ prag-matic development in the study abroad environment over shorter periods (i.e.less than our months). This will be ollowed by a review o Felix-Brasdeer’s(2004) study that compared the pragmatic competence o L2 learners wholived in the target environment or dierent lengths o time.

Long-term studies

In one o the earliest studies ocusing on the eect o the study abroad con-text on language learners’ pragmatic development, Sawyer (1992) examinedthe use o the Japanese sentence-fnal particle ne by adult second-languagelearners o Japanese (JSL). According to Sawyer the sentence-fnal particle ne that invites the agreement or confrmation o the listener occurs ‘extremely

requently, and because it is stressed and oten ollowed by a pause, it is alsorelatively salient. Yet it is mastered by ew learners o Japanese as a second lan-guage’ (1992, p. 85). Sawyer studied the pragmatic development o 11 begin-ner level learners over a period o 1 year. The data were gathered with elicitedinterviewed that were conducted by Japanese native speakers. The data col-lection took place in 3-monthly intervals apart rom the last data collectionsession, which took place six months ater the third interview.

Sawyer (1991) ound that the requency with which ne was used in relationto the total word types increased steadily rom interview to interview. However,

although the learners made considerable gains in their employment o ne , they still underused it at the end o the observation period compared to the Japaneseinterviewers, who employed ne our times as requently as the JSL learners. Thedata also showed that the individual learner participants’ pragmatic profciency concerning the use o ne varied considerably. Based on the results, Sawyer dividedthe learners into three profciency groups. Only one o his JSL learners wasable to use ne in all interview responses and was thereore assigned to the highprofciency group. Three learners who individually employed ne 12–15 times in

the data in at least three dierent contexts were allocated to the intermediategroup, and seven participants who used ne fve times or less in 0–3 dierent con-texts were categorized as belonging to the least profcient group. Sawyer’s resultsshow that even when learners live in the target environment or the same lengtho time, their gains in L2 pragmatic skills may dier considerably.

Barron’s studies (2003, 2007) are one o the ew investigations availableapart rom Matsumura (2003), that include data collected rom study abroad




learners while they were still in their home environment prior to their study abroad sojourn. In her publications, Barron analysed the pragmatic develop-ment o 33 Irish learners o German over a 14-months period, with the frst

data collection taking place in Ireland and the subsequent two taking placein Germany, one in the middle o the L2 learners’ stay and one towards theend o their sojourn. The learners’ data were elicited with a DCT and werecompared with native speaker controls. As I will discuss her fndings concern-ing requests in Section 2.5.3, I will ocus on her results regarding upgradersin reusals here.

Barron (2003, 2007) ound that during their sojourn in the target environ-ment, her Irish learners o German tended to increase their employment o

upgraders in initial reusals and became more native-like. Interestingly, how-ever, this positive development only applied to situations involving strangersand not riends. She suggests that this may be the case because conversationsbetween riends involve more ‘ad hoc utterances’ that make the use o upgrad-ers ‘overly cognitively demanding or learners’ (2007, p. 159). Conversationsbetween strangers, in contrast, tend to rely more on ormulaic language whichis easier to process.

O particular interest to the present investigation is Barron’s fnding that her learners’ preerences regarding individual upgrader types were similarto those o the German native speakers beore their study abroad sojournand did not change much over time, with both learners and native speakersmainly using intensifers and time intensifers in all o the scenarios. However,although both groups employed the same upgrader types, they showed dier-ences in the their use o the actual lexical items; whereas the German nativespeakers preerred viel (‘many’) ollowed by wirklich and sehr (‘really’ and‘very’), the learners mainly used sehr ollowed by viel and ganz (‘completely’)in all three o the data collection sessions. Thus, Barron’s studies indicate that

the study abroad context can help to promote L2 learners’ use o certain prag-matic eatures in some contexts (e.g. use o upgraders in initial reusals withoreigners), although a 10-months sojourn in the target environment may not be sufcient or all L2 learners to consistently employ pragmatic eatures in anative-like manner in all contexts (e.g. use o upgraders with riends).

That a study abroad sojourn o 10-months may not improve all aspects o L2 learners’ pragmatic competence concerning a certain pragmatic eature

was also noted by Warga and Schölmberger (2007), who examined apologetic

utterances o seven Austrian learners o French in Canada. Data or their study was elicited with a DCT in 2-monthly intervals resulting in fve data collectionsessions. The L2 learners’ data were subsequently compared to native speakercontrols. The researchers ound that their learners mainly used the upgradertrés (‘very’) throughout their stay, although this upgrader was employed witha very low requency by the French native speakers, who predominantly usedvraiment (‘really’).




Unortunately, Warga and Schölmberger did not provide an analysis o thedevelopment o their individual learners. This would have been helpul, sincethe profciency levels o their learners ranged rom intermediate to advanced

and also because some o their participants had never lived in a French speak-ing country beore, whereas others had already spent 11 months in the tar-get context. As the developmental studies reviewed here and in Section 2.4have indicated, a sojourn o several months in the L2 environment can havea considerable impact on learners’ pragmatic competence and it would havebeen highly interesting to see how a previous sojourn may have impacted onL2 learners’ pragmatic development in the study abroad context.

Short-term studies

Focusing on the application o pragmatic norms in authentic interactions withacademic members o sta, Bardovi-Harlig and Hartord (1993) examinedthe use o suggestions by ten learners o English in academic advising ses-sions. The learners represented six dierent frst languages (Arabic, Catalan/Spanish, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese) and were enrolled in gradu-ate programmes at a higher educational institution in the United States. Inaddition to the ESL learners, six graduate students who were native speakerso American English also participated in the study. The data were collectedduring advising sessions that took place within a period o 7 to 14 weeks romthe initial session.

Bardovi-Harlig and Hartord (1993) ound that the learners’ pragmatic com-petence improved within a period o less than 4 months in the target environ-ment. Whereas learners had used ewer suggestions than the native speakersat the beginning o their stay, which put them into a reactive position, they increased their use o suggestions considerably in later sessions. The research-

ers attributed this improvement to the high amount o explicit input providedby the advisor in the session, which showed the learners that a more active role

was expected, and also to subsequent discussions with ellow students, whichprovided the learners with urther insights.

However, Bardovi-Harlig and Hartord (1993) also noted that althoughthe learners increased their use o suggestions, they still displayed some non-native like use o aggravators and mitigators at the end o the observationperiod. Due to the rather private nature o academic advising sessions, learn-

ers generally cannot observe interactions between advisors and NS students inthis context. Thus, ollowing Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis it is rather difcult or them to obtain relevant input in these conditions. Similar to Warga andSchölmberger’s (2007) study, Hartord and Bardovi-Harlig did not providedevelopmental results or their individual participants. This is again regret-table, as it would have been interesting to see i and how the dierent L1s o their learners aected their pragmatic choices.




The in-depth analysis o the pragmatic development o one learner in theL2 context was the ocus o Hassall’s (2006) diary study in which he analysedchanges in his use o leave taking ormulae in Indonesian during his 3-months

sojourn13 in the target environment and also during previous sojourns in theIndonesia. In his investigation, Hassall primarily concentrated on his use o the strategy permisi (‘excuse me’) and the dulu statement (Hassall, 2006, p. 34),

which indicates an interlocutor’s intention to take leave and contains the worddulu (‘or now, or the time being’). Hassall noted that prior to his sojourn, hesometimes used permisi , but never dulu . During the frst 2 weeks o his 3-monthsstay, he used both permisi and dulu , although he was not sure about the prag-matic rules concerning their use. Following week 2 up to and including week 6,

he only employed permisi as he considered it to be universally applicable anddid not use dulu as he did not consider it suitable or many contexts. His useand views regarding the use o both ormulae then changed drastically rom

week 7 onwards, when he started employing dulu much more requently andused permisi considerably less requently.

Hassall’s study is particularly interesting, as it indicates that pragmatic devel-opment may proceed in a non-linear ashion and that learners may decide todeliberately change their use o pragmatic eatures early on during their study abroad sojourn. As a consequence, even short sojourns o 3 months can result inchanges in L2 learners’ pragmatic ability. However, as Cohen and Shively (2007)point out ‘leave taking may have been a relatively easy speech act to learn, incomparison to other acts such as complimenting’ (p. 192). Consequently, con-siderable development in the learners’ perormance o more complex speechacts may only occur ater a longer period o time in the study abroad context,

which ties in with the results o studies examining the development o L2 learn-ers’ pragmatic awareness (e.g. Bouton, 1994; Taguchi, 2008).

Sojourns o dierent lengths

Felix-Brasdeer’s (2004) investigation is one o very ew studies that examinethe eect o dierent lengths o sojourns in the L2 context on learners’ prag-matic abilities ater the learners have returned to their home country. A groupo 24 advanced learners o Spanish took part in his investigation. All o themhad previously lived14 in a Spanish speaking country in South America and

were assigned to our dierent groups based on their length o residence in

the target context (group 1: 1–1.5 months; group 2: 3–5 months; group 3: 9–13months; group 4: 18–30 months).

The researcher ound that although some limited beneft o shorter study abroad sojourns could be observed

[i]n general, the results o the present study consistently showed that thelearners’ ability to negotiate a reusal (sequential organization) and their




ability to mitigate a reusal (lexical and syntactic mitigation) approximatedNS levels (L1 Spanish) ater 9 months o residence in the target community.(Felix-Brasdeer, 2004, pp. 634–635)

Similar to Hassal’s (2006) study, Felix-Brasdeer’s fndings also indicate that prag-matic development in an L2 may ollow a non-linear sequence, as his learners ingroup 2 and 3 were more verbose than the Spanish NSs, while members o group4 were less verbose and approximated the NS norm. Felix-Brasdeer, however,also notes that although his learners who resided in the L2 country or 9 monthsor more produced reusals that generally resembled those produced by hisSpanish native speaker controls in a variety o aspects, there were still instances

in which even those learners deviated in their pragmatic choices rom those o the native speakers (e.g. the content and orm o two indirect apology strategies).This supports the fndings o previous studies (e.g. Barron, 2003, 2007).

Summary

The review o non-request studies examining learners’ productive pragmaticdevelopment in the study abroad context suggests that changes in L2 learners’pragmatic behaviour can occur relatively early and in a relatively short period

o time (e.g. Hassall, 2006). These changes, however, may not result in a com-plete acquisition o the pragmatic norms under investigation and thus inter-language specifc behaviour may still remain (e.g. Hartord & Bardovi-Harlig,1993). A sojourn o 9 months or more in the study abroad country, in contrast,is likely to lead to a higher pragmatic competence in learners’ L2, especially concerning more complex pragmatic norms and strategies, although someinterlanguage eatures may remain even ater this period (e.g. Barron, 2003,2007; Felix-Brasdeer, 2004).

2.5.2 Coss-sctonal dvlopmntalstds ocsn on qsts

Similar to Section 2.3.4, my review o cross-sectional studies will again ollow ageographical route rom the frst cross-sectional study involving Arabic learnerso English in the United States (Scarcella, 1979) to Hill’s (1997) investigation o

Japanese learners o English in Japan. This will be ollowed by a review o two

cross-sectional studies examining L2 learners development in the Romancelanguages French (Warga, 2003, 2004) and Spanish (Felix-Brasdeer, 2008), which have been included as they show interesting similarities to English.

Arabic learners o English

Scarcella’s (1979) cross-sectional investigation o requests is one o the earli-est developmental studies in interlanguage pragmatics. She compared requests




made by beginner and advanced level learners o English, who all shared Arabicas their L1, with those o American English native speakers. The data were elic-ited with three role-play situations. The results o the study showed that, similar

to Tanaka’s (1988) and Woodfeld’s (2008) Japanese learners, both o Scarcella’slearner groups used more direct strategies than her native speakers.

With regard to her participants’ use o internal and external modifers,Scarcella suggests that some eatures such as the use o alerters (e.g. ‘Excuseme’) or politeness markers (e.g. ‘please’) emerge early in the L2 acquisitionalprocess, whereas others such as the use o the inclusive ‘we’ or more inor-mal language are indicative o a later stage in the learning process. Althoughthere were marked dierences between the requests made by beginner and

advanced level learners o English, with the latter displaying more character-istics o native-like language use, Scarcella noted that ‘L2 perormers are lim-ited in both their range o politeness eatures and their capacity to vary theiruse according to the social context’ (1979, p. 286).

Danish learners o English

Nearly two decades ater Scarcella’s (1979) study, Trosborg (1995) conducted across-sectional investigation in which she examined requests made by DanishEFL learners o three dierent profciency levels. Participants in the intermedi-ate group (group I) had studied English or 5–6 years, members o the lowerlevel advanced group (group II) had studied English or 7–8 years and learn-ers in the higher advanced level (group III) had undergone ormal Englishlanguage education or 10 years. In addition, a group o British English nativespeakers provided controls. As in Scarcella’s study, the data were elicited withrole plays.

Trosborg’s analysis revealed that the three learner groups and the native

speaker avoured conventionally indirect strategies, which is in agreement withprevious non-developmental request studies (e.g. House & Kasper, 1981, 1987).Concerning the use o internal modifers, the results showed that althoughgroup II used more downgraders than group I, thereby moving towards theNSs’ scores, members o group III used ewer downgraders than members o group II, which indicates that some request eatures, similar to eatures o otherspeech acts such as, or example, leave-taking (Hassall, 2006), may develop in anon-linear ashion. Regarding external modifers, Trosborg (1995) ound that

these modifers increased steadily rom group I to group III, thereby indicat-ing a linear development towards the native speakers’ use o external modi-fers in Trosborg’s sample.

Dutch learners o English

Hendriks (2008) compared requests produced by Dutch school pupils, whohad received 4–5 years o ormal English tuition at school, with those made by




Dutch university students, who had received at least 6 years o English tuitionat school and university. The L2 learner data were subsequently compared todata elicited rom Dutch and English native speakers who were o a similar

age as the L2 learners and attended either secondary school or university. Thedata collection instrument was a DCT.

Hendriks ound that similar to previous studies (e.g. House & Kasper, 1987;Trosborg, 1995), the majority o her learners and native speakers employedconventionally indirect request strategies. The analysis o external request modifers revealed that although there were no signifcant dierencesbetween the two learner groups, the English native speakers employed signif-cantly more syntactic downgraders than the L2 learners or the Dutch native

speakers. This again suggests that syntactic downgraders may be acquiredat a later stage than lexical/phrasal downgraders. Concerning lexical modi-fers, both learner groups employed more politeness markers (75.8 per cent)than the English NSs (42.8 per cent) and the Dutch NSs (9.4 per cent). Thisindicates that the high requency with which ‘please’ is used by the learnersis not due to transer rom their L1, but may be a eature o Dutch learners’interlanguage English.

Turkish learners o English

Otçu and Zeyrek (2008) examined request utterances made by Turkish lowerintermediate and upper-intermediate learners o English and compared themto native speaker controls. Their learner data were collected with role-plays,

while their American English data were elicited with DCTs. As the data elici-tation methods or learners and native speakers are dissimilar, possible methodeects on the participants’ utterances cannot be disregarded. In addition, the

Turkish EFL learners were all undergraduate students with an age range rom17 to 20, whereas the American English native speakers were master and doc-toral students between 25 to 46 years o age.

Otçu and Zeyrek ound that similar to Trosborg’s (1995) and Hendrik’s(2008) results, the majority o their learners and native speakers employedconventionally indirect strategies. Concerning external modifcation, theresearchers ound that their lower-intermediate group used slightly moreexternal modifers than their upper-intermediate group, although the highest

amount o external modifers was employed by the native speakers. Thus, theirfndings do not support the presence o the wae phenomenon in their data.Their analysis o internal modifers showed that their upper-intermediategroup used more lexical/phrasal downgraders than their lower-intermediategroup, with the highest amount o lexical/phrasal downgraders again beingused by the NSs. Their data thereore suggest a linear development towardsthe native speaker norm.




Compared to lexical/phrasal downgraders, syntactic downgraders wereused considerably less requently by the three participant groups. The high-est number was employed by the native speakers, ollowed by the upper-

intermediate and the lower-intermediate learners. This again shows a linearincrease towards the native speaker norm. Their fndings also indicate that syntactic downgraders may be acquired later than lexical downgraders, which

was also suggested by Hendrik’s (2008) results.

Chinese learners o English

In an investigation ocusing on Chinese learners o English, Rose (2000) stud-ied young L2 learners in Hong Kong o dierent profciency levels. His learnerparticipants were three groups o primary school pupils attending dierent levels: participants in group P-2 attended primary level two with an average ageo 7 years, participants in group P-4 attended year our with a average age o 9 years and participants in group P-6 attended grade six with an average age o 11 years. The data were elicited with a Cartoon Oral Production Task (COPT)containing ten request scenarios. In his analysis o requests, Rose ound that the two higher profciency groups used conventionally indirect requests withthe highest requency, with the highest level group employing conventionally indirect strategies most requently. The lowest profciency group in contrast preerred to not perorm the request in the majority o cases.

Rose also examined the learners’ employment o external modifers andound that their use increased rom group P-2 to group P-6. Unortunately,however, the data were not compared to native speaker controls and it is there-ore not possible to assess whether English native speakers o a similar age

would have used more modifers or ewer modifers than the L2 learners.

Japanese learners o English

Hill (1997) examined requests made by Japanese learners o English whichrepresented three dierent profciency levels: low, intermediate and advanced.The data or his investigation were elicited with a DCT containing eight highimposition requests. The learner data were subsequently compared to English

controls. Hill ound that similar to Tanaka’s (1988) and Woodfeld’s (2008) Japanese learner participants, his learners also employed more direct strat-egies than the native speaker group. However, the use o direct strategiesdecreased considerably rom the lowest to the highest profciency groupthereby showing development towards the native speaker norm and indicatingthat a high use o direct strategies may be typical or beginner level learn-ers still struggling with the complexities o producing grammatically correct




utterances in their L2. Concerning his groups’ use o indirect request strat-egies, Hill’s results revealed that their use increased relative to L2 learners’profciency level, thus again showing development towards his native speakers’

use o indirect strategies.Regarding external request modifers, Hill ound that his learners again

increased their employment o them relative to their profciency level towardsthe native speaker scores. However, similar to Trosborg’s (1995) Danish EFLlearners and Otçu and Zeyrek’s (2008) Turkish EFL learners, his learnersused ewer external modifers than his NS participants. This fnding there-ore does not support the presence o the wae phenomenon and is in dis-agreement with previous request studies that had confrmed the existence o

the wae phenomenon (e.g. Cenoz & Valencia, 1996; House & Kasper, 1981,1987).The analysis o his learners’ employment o internal downgraders revealed

a variety o developments such as a linear increase towards the native speakerscores (e.g. consultative device), a linear decrease towards the native speakerscores (e.g. politeness marker), as well as non-linear developments towards (e.g.understater) and away rom the native speaker scores (e.g. adverbial inten-sifer). These fndings suggest that both linear and non-linear developmentsmay be typical or learners’ acquisition o pragmatic eatures.

A second cross-sectional study on Japanese learners o English was con-ducted by Kobayashi and Rinnert (2003), who examined requests made inrole-plays by high and low profciency learners. The researchers do not pro-

vide detailed general comments on the request strategies employed by theirlearner groups, but emphasized that one pervasive strategy used by bothgroups were the direct want statements that occurred very requently in theirdata. Kobayashi and Rinnert suggest that the high amount o want statementsis probably the result o the data elicitation method which leaves the learners

little time to plan their utterances thus resulting in them using well-knownand easier strategies. Alternatively, their learners’ preerence or direct strat-egies could also be caused by other reasons that Woodfeld (2008) suggestedregarding her Japanese learners’ results (c. 2.3.3). Concerning external modi-fers, Kobayashi and Rinnert ound that their use increased in relation to theirlearners’ profciency level, which supports Hill’s (1997) fndings. Regrettably,their data were not compared to that o a native speaker controls and it isthereore not clear whether the learners moved towards or away rom English

native speakers’ use o external modifers.

Austrian learners o French

In contrast to the studies discussed so ar, which all centred on L2 learnerso English, Warga (2003, 2004) examined the requests produced by Austrianlearners o French (FFL) in her cross-sectional investigations. Three dierent




learner groups, all o them students at an Austrian secondary school, tookpart in her research. The members o group I had studied French or 4 years,

while the learners in groups II and III, had learned French or 5 and 6 years

respectively. Their data were compared to that o French and Austrian Germannative speakers. The instruments used in her investigation were a DCT androle-plays.

The results showed that similar to Trosborg’s (1995) learner participants, Warga’s (2003, 2004) three learner groups employed conventionally indirect requests with the highest requency. Although her learners tended to preerconventionally indirect request strategies, her data also shows that her learnergroups employed more direct strategies than the French native speakers. The

development concerning direct strategies tended to be o a non-linear natureeither away rom or towards the native speakers’ use. Regarding her learners’external modifer use, Warga ound a steady increase rom group I to groupIII. Like previous studies mentioned above (e.g. Cenoz & Valencia, 1996;House & Kasper, 1987), however, all three learner FFL groups used more exter-nal modifers than the French native speakers, which supports Edmondsonand House’s (1991) notion o the wae phenomenon and is in disagreement

with Trosborg’s (1995), Hill’s (1997) and Otçu and Zeyrek’s (2008) results.Concerning internal modifers, Warga’s FFL o all three groups used ewerlexical/phrasal modifers than syntactic ones, which is in disagreement withHendrik’s (2008) and Otçu and Zeyrek’s (2008) studies.

American English learners o Spanish

Also investigating L2 learners’ request production in a Romance language,Felix-Brasdeer (2008) examined requests made in Spanish by AmericanEnglish university students representing three dierent profciency levels. His

beginner level learners were studying Spanish in their frst year at university, while his intermediate learners and advanced learners were in their third andfnal year respectively. The data were collected with role-plays. His analysisshowed that learners’ use o direct request strategies decreased signifcantly

with rising profciency levels (beginners: 84 per cent; intermediate: 36 per cent;advanced: 18.5 per cent). This fnding is thereore in agreement with previousstudies by Hill (1997) and Rose (2000). Concerning conventionally indirect requests Felix-Brasdeer’s data showed an inverse trend to the direct requests,

as learners signifcantly increased their use o conventionally indirect strat-egies relative to higher profciency in Spanish (beginners: 10 per cent; inter-mediate: 59 per cent; advanced: 78.5 per cent).

Regarding external modifers, the results revealed that all three learnergroups avoured the grounder, while the beginner level learners used somewhat ewer preparators than the intermediate or advanced learners. Regrettably,the learner data were not compared with native speaker controls, which could




have shown to what extent learners’ requests developed towards or away romrequests produced by Spanish native speakers o a similar age range.

Summar y

The review o cross-sectional studies ocusing on L2 learners’ production o request utterances has shown the ollowing:

L2 learners with lower profciency levels tend to use more direct strategies

than native speakers (e.g. Rose, 2000; Scarcella, 1979). With increasing profciency levels L2 learners tend to decrease their use o

direct strategies and increase their use o conventionally indirect strategies(e.g. Felix-Brasdeer, 2008; Hill, 1997).L2 learners who have studied their second/oreign language or several

years requently use conventionally indirect strategies and thus display abehaviour similar to that o native speakers (e.g. Hendriks, 2008; Otçu &Zeyrek, 2008; Trosborg, 1995).

While some studies ound that L2 learners’ use o external modifers

increased in a linear manner relative to the years learners had been study-

ing the language (e.g. Hill, 1997; Rose, 2000; Trosborg, 1995; Warga, 2004),Otçu and Zeyrek (2008) ound that their lower profciency group employedmore external modifers than their higher profciency group.

Although Warga’s (2004) study confrmed the presence o the wae phe-

nomenon, the results o other studies revealed that the native speaker con-trols employed the highest amount o external modifers (e.g. Hill, 1997;Otçu & Zeyrek, 2008).Concerning internal modifers, Otçu and Zeyrek (2008) ound that their

learners employed ewer syntactic than lexical/phrasal downgraders andHendrik’s (2008) results showed that her NSs employed more syntacticdowngraders than her learners which indicates that syntactic downgradersmay be acquired later than lexical/phrasal ones.

This concludes the review o cross-sectional developmental studies ocusingon requests. In the ollowing section I will review longitudinal developmentalstudies that examined L2 learners’ request perormance over time.

2.5.3 Lontdnal dvlopmntal stds ocsn on qsts

In this section, I will review our longitudinal developmental studies that explore L2 learners’ development in the target environment. Only one o theour studies (Barron, 2003) that I will discuss here addresses the pragmaticdevelopment o L2 learners in the study abroad context. This again shows the




relative scarcity o research in this particular area. Schmidt’s (1983) investiga-tion ollowed the development o an adult learner o English in Hawaii, whorelocated there or personal and business reasons. Schmidt’s and Barron’s

study will be discussed frst as they examined adult learners’ development that is also the ocus o the present investigation. Following that I will reviewtwo studies examining the ILP development o child learners in Great Britain(Ellis, 1992) and Australia (Achiba, 2003) that provide urther insights intoacquisitional sequences in requests.

Adult learners

While Scarcella (1979) is one o the earliest cross-sectional examinations intothe production o requests by L2 learners, Schmidt’s (1983) examination o a Japanese learners’ development over a 3-year period in the target context isone o the frst longitudinal studies in the feld. The participant in this casestudy was a male adult, Wes, who frst visited Hawaii as a tourist in 1977, spent an increasing amount o time there in the ollowing years, and achieved per-manent resident status in 1981. During this period, Schmidt examined hisuse o requests in a number o situations by making feld notes and analysingmonologues recorded by the participant.

At the beginning o the observation period, Wes’s ability to communicate inEnglish was only minimal, since he had not received ormal English instruc-tion in his home country Japan. He employed short requests mainly relyingon the conventionally indirect permission strategy ‘Can I . . .?’ and the sug-gestory ormula ‘Shall we . . .?’. The latter, however, was only used with the

verb ‘go’ and thus was not yet employed as a ormulaic expression. Wes alsoused non-conventionally indirect hints to achieve the desired outcome in aninteraction, which he seemed to have transerred rom this native language.

His use o this strategy was not always eective, as some o his expressionsseemed to have been transerred rom Japanese, or example, prompting aperson to move over by asking ‘You like this chair?’ As a consequence, hishints were oten not comprehensible or his American interlocutors. Similarto Scarcella’s (1979) learners, Wes also used the politeness marker ‘please’ at this early stage.

By the end o the observation period, Wes used ‘shall we’ and ‘let’s’ ormulas with a variety o dierent verbs or a wide range o requests. In addition, his

utterances had become more elaborate. However, some pragmatic norms o his native language also continued to inuence the way Wes expressed himsel in his second language, as at times his speech tended to display more char-acteristics o Japanese norms than o American English ones. For example,he still tended to express his gratitude or a recently rendered service at thebeginning o telephone conversations, which is not commonly done by Englishnative speakers. Although, as Schmidt (1983) noted his ability to vary request




orms increased during the three years, he did not have complete control overthe use o appropriate request orms in dierent situations and with dierent interlocutors, which is again similar to Scarcella’s (1979) fndings.

The second longitudinal developmental study that examined adult L2 learn-ers’ request utterances was conducted by Barron and published 20 years aterSchmidt’s in 2003. The large gap between these two studies shows the scarcity o longitudinal developmental studies investigating adult learners’ requestsin their L2 and indicates how underexplored the eect o the study abroad/target context on L2 learners’ pragmatic development is at the time o writing.Barron ollowed the pragmatic development o 33 Irish learners o Germanin her investigation o requests and other speech acts (see Section 2.6.1 or a

review o her results concerning reusals). Her learner participants were univer-sity students who spent one year in a study-abroad programme in Germany.The data were gathered at three distinct points, with the frst collection tak-

ing place in the learners’ home country, the second collection occurring aterthe learners had spent 2 months in the target environment and the last col-lection taking place 7 months later at the end o their stay. In addition, data

were also collected rom English and German native speakers. The elicitationinstruments used were production questionnaires and interviews. Focusing oninternal modifers in her analysis, Barron ound that her learners increasedtheir use o lexical/phrasal modifers towards that o the German NSs duringtheir stay. However, the results also revealed that this development did not always proceed in a linear ashion. Concerning syntactic modifers, the fnd-ings did not indicate a marked development towards the native speaker norm.Thus, her results like Hendrik’s (2008) and Otçu and Zeyrek’s (2008) suggest that syntactic downgraders are likely to be learned later than lexical/phrasaldowngraders.

Child learners

Ellis (1992) investigated the pragmatic development o two immigrant boys,aged 10 and 11, who were observed in a British English classroom context.Both boys, J and R, attended an English Language Unit which had the aim topromote ‘basic interpersonal communication skills in English’ and to develop‘the profciency to use English or studying school subjects’ (Ellis, 1992,pp. 7, 8). J could not speak English with the exception o ‘yes’ and ‘no’. He was

able to understand simple instructions, though he relied on the context. J wasliterate in his native language Portuguese and knew the rules o speaking in aclassroom context. R was neither able to understand nor to speak English and

was not literate in his mother tongue Punjabi or Urdu. Although both boys attended the same institution, they were not in the same

class. Ellis visited their classrooms at regular intervals and studied their prag-matic development over a period o 4 school terms in J’s case and 6 school




terms in R’s case. He collected the data by sitting next to his participant and by noting down the requests uttered and the turn-taking sequences. In addition,he audio-taped a number o lessons, which he later transcribed.

When Ellis began his study, the majority o J’s requests already contained a verb, while all o R’s requests were initially verbless. By the end o the learn-ers’ second term, however, both boys had begun to requently use verbs andalso objects. The majority o the requests made by the two learners duringthe observation period were direct. However, the number o conventionally indirect strategies increased considerably in the J’s third and R’s ourth term.This inverse development is in agreement with the fndings o cross-sectionalstudies that also reported a decrease o direct strategies and an increase o

conventionally indirect strategies relative to L2 learners’ profciency levels(e.g. Felix-Brasdeer, 2008; Hill, 1997; Rose, 2000).Not only did the number o conventionally indirect requests used by both

J and R increase during the time they were observed, they also extended theirproductive repertoire o conventionally indirect strategy types and strategy-

verb combinations rom the ormulaic permission strategy ‘Can I have . . .?’ tothe ability strategy ‘Can you . . .?’ and the permission strategy with other verbs,such as ‘Can I take . . .?’. The latter variation o ormula-verb combinations hadalso been noted by Schmidt (1983) concerning Wes’s expansion o the ‘Shall

we . . .?’ ormula.Like Scarcella (1979) and Schmidt’s (1983) learners, Ellis’ learners also used

the internal modifer ‘please’ rom a very early stage, although both boys didnot employ a high number o either internal or external modifers. The resultsappear to suggest the presence o individual learner dierences in the use o these modifer types, since R used signifcantly more than J. However, as theboys also displayed similarities in their acquisition o request ormulas andpreerence or the politeness marker ‘please’, it appears that both general pat-

terns as well as individual dierences inuenced the pragmatic development o both learners.

Similar to Ellis (1992), Achiba (2003) conducted a longitudinal study o a child L2 learner o English. The participant was her 7-year-old daughter,

Yao, whom she observed over a period o 17 months during their stay in Australia. The data used or the study consists o recordings made o Yao at her home in Melbourne with a variety o interlocutors mainly during play-time. These recordings were supplemented by observational data noted in

a diary. The data that were analysed or the study were taped in 5 to 6 weekintervals.During the frst phase, Yao used direct strategies, such as imperatives ‘Colour

in here’ or ‘Keep going’, or the suggestory ormula ‘Let’s . . .’, as well as theconventionally indirect permission and ability strategies ‘Can I . . .?’ and ‘Can

you . . .?’. During the second phase, the data reveal an increase in the useo conventionally indirect ability questions as well as o want statements. Yao




urther expanded her repertoire o other strategies, such as the suggestory or-mula ‘Why don’t you . . .?’. In phase three, the learner increased her employ-ment o obligation statements, such as ‘You have to . . .’, and urther expanded

her repertoire o conventionally indirect strategies, such as the willingnessstrategy, ‘Will you . . .?’. The fnal phase again saw an expansion o conven-tionally indirect strategies and also a high requency use o past tense modals

within them, such as ‘Could you . . .?’ or ‘Would you . . .?’. Thus, compared toEllis’s (1992) child learners, Yao seems to have acquired considerably morerequest strategies during her stay in the target language environment.

A reason or this may be the act that she did not attend a specialist schoollike Ellis’s learners and that her mother encouraged her to spend a large

amount o time with English native speakers. This high level o exposureto native speakers and the resulting wealth o opportunities to observe andnotice native speakers’ language use may have been responsible or her goodprogress in the acquisition o L2 pragmatic strategies and norms. An alter-native explanation or Ellis’s (1992) and Achiba’s (2003) fndings might bethe dierent contexts in which the data were elicited. It is unlikely that theclassroom context in which Ellis collected his data provided him with as many opportunities to observe his learners as Achiba who observed her daughterat home.

Regarding Yao’s development concerning request modifcation it is inter-esting to note that although she employed more internal and external modi-fers than J and R overall, in the majority o cases her modifer use does not show a linear increase relative to her rising profciency in her second language.Similar observations regarding non-linear developments were also made incross-sectional studies by Trosborg (1995) and Hill (1997) and in longitudinalstudies by Ellis (1992) and Barron (2003).

Summary

The review o longitudinal developmental studies ocusing on learners’ ability to produce request utterances has revealed the ollowing:

Child L2 English learners in the target environment frst use mainly direct

strategies (Achiba, 2003; Ellis, 1992).Conventionally indirect strategies seem to be acquired later than direct

strategies by child L2 English learners in the host environment (Achiba,2003; Ellis, 1992).Individual learner dierences seem to also aect child L2 learners’ prag-

matic development (Ellis, 1992). Adult L2 learners in the host country may use non-conventionally indirect

requests, but may not be able to use them according to the norms o the L2(Schmidt, 1983).




L1 transer may aect adult L2 learners’ production o requests (Schmidt,

1983). Adult L2 learners may progress concerning their request use but may still

diverge rom NSs’ request perormance ater several months in the L2 con-text (Schmidt, 1983).The politeness marker ‘please’ is used relatively early by L2 learners o

English (Schmidt, 1983; Ellis, 1992).L2 learners’ pragmatic skills may develop in a non-linear manner (Achiba,

2003).

This concludes the review o longitudinal request studies in the target environ-

ment. In the next section, I will discuss the implications o the review o devel-opmental studies examining L2 learners’ productive pragmatic skills.

2.5.4 Implcatons

The studies discussed above have signifcantly contributed to our understand-ing o L2 learners’ productive pragmatic development. The number o devel-opmental studies published in recent years also indicate that interest in thisarea o ILP is increasing and more research is being conducted on what L2learners can do at various profciency levels and on what eect a longitudinalsojourn in the L2 context may have on language learners’ pragmatic skills.

However, the review o the studies has also revealed that ILP development –and in particular learners’ pragmatic development in the study abroad context –still remains underexplored. This is particularly evident in the area o request studies, where only very ew studies have investigated L2 learners’ pragmaticskills rom a longitudinal perspective. As learners have to perorm requests

very requently in an L2 environment, it is important that their developmental

stages and potential transer issues are explored to obtain better insights in what steps can be taken to help them communicate better in their L2. The pre-sent investigations hopes to help shed light on how German learners o Englishmay develop in the L2 context and what eect a sustained sojourn in the study abroad context may have on their pragmatic abilities.

As the choice o data collection technique plays a highly important role inILP research and also inuenced the development o the MET, I will reviewdata elicitation techniques employed in interlanguage pragmatics research in

the ollowing chapter.

Notes

1 Peirce (1905) defned pragmatism as the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purport o a word or other expression, liesexclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct o lie; so that, since




obviously nothing that might not result rom experiment can have any dir-ect bearing upon conduct, i one can defne accurately all the conceivableexperimental phenomena which the afrmation or denial o a concept

could imply, one will have therein a complete defnition o the concept, andthere is absolutely nothing more in it . [original italics ]2 Semiotics is the study o linguistic and non-linguistic signs and symbols. One o

the ounding athers o semiotics is the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, whose pragmatic maxim inuenced Morris’s distinction o the components o semiotics as syntax (relationship between linguistic signs), semantics (relation-ships between linguistic signs and the entities they designate) and pragmatics(relationship o signs to interpreters).

3 Austin distinguished the ollowing speech acts: verdictives (utterances giving a

verdict, or example, to estimate or to reckon), exercitives (utterances that areused to exercise power, or example, to order or to advise), commissives (utter-ances that are used to promise or to commit the speaker to something, orexample, to promise or to intend), behabitives (utterances having to do withattitudes and social behaviour, or example, to apologize or to congratulate) andexpositives (utterances that show how a speaker is using words, or example, toreply or to concede). Searle (1976) criticized Austin’s (1962) classifcation ramework or speech acts which he considered to contain a number o aws, such asnot having resulted rom clearly defned principles and displaying a high degree

o heterogeneity in some o the categories. His major criticism, however, was that Austin’s categories did not in act contain dierent illocutionary acts, but dier-ent English illocutionary verbs. This was also noted by Leech who summarizedthe problems o Austin’s classifcation under the term ‘Illocutionary-Verb al-lacy’ (1983, p. 176).

4 Wierzbicka (2003) criticized that Grice’s categories were solely based on the Eng-lish language and did not apply to other languages. Brown and Levinson (1978,1987) argued that adhering to the conversational maxims would result in unnat-ural speech. Concerning the latter point, Levinson (1983) and Thomas (1995)

pointed out that Grice did not suggest that speakers always behaved according toall the maxims, but that people believed that certain rules o interaction werebeing adhered to in normal conversation.

5 These actors are also regarded as crucial components in Fraser’s (1990) andFraser and Nolen’s (1981) notion o a conversational contract (CC) which isbased on their view that interlocutors are aware o each others’ status, power,their relationship towards each other, their cultural expectations/rules, as wellas other actors which play a signifcant role in the way the conversation isstructured and which linguistic means are used to achieve the aim o theconversation.

6 Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) concept o positive and negative ace hasbeen criticized by scholars, such as Matsumoto (1988), Ide (1989), Mao (1994)and Bharuthram (2003) who argue that their theory o politeness does not apply to non-Western languages such as Japanese, Chinese and South Arican IndianEnglish. However, recent studies on Japanese by Pizziconi (2003), Fukada and Asato (2004) have disagreed with this assessment and shown that Brown and




Levinson’s ramework can be o use with Asian languages. See also Spencer-Oatey (2008) or a more recent ace ramework.

7 See also Wierzbicka (2008) or examples involving politeness in Russian.8

The term ‘interlanguage’ was coined by Selinker (1972) and is generally under-stood to reer to ‘a transitional system reecting the learner’s current L2knowledge’ (Ellis, 1994, p. 16).

9 The development here reers to a move away rom Chomsky’s (1965) distinc-tion between linguistic competence and perormance that ocused ongrammatical language use and was based on an ideal native speaker andtowards more communicatively oriented L2 pedagogy. See also Savignon(2005) and Edmondson and House (2006) or a detailed description o thispedagogical shit.

10

The majority o the communicative competence models (i.e. Canale 1983;Canale & Swain, 1980; Hymes 1971, 1972) do not explicitly reer to pragmaticcompetence in their models, but instead do so implicitly. Bachman (1990) is thefrst who uses the term pragmatic competence as a major component o his model.

11 Up until the early 1980s only very ew studies had been published in interlan-guage pragmatics (e.g. House, 1979, 1984; House & Kasper, 1981; Kasper, 1981,1982).

12 To evaluate and assess how inappropriate the use o an imperative is in this par-ticular context, listeners should also be aware o any mitigating circumstances,

such as the imperative being used as an illustrative example o the student’s work on pragmatics.13 In contrast to the studies discussed here so ar, Hassall did not attend university

courses during his stay in Indonesia. His sojourn was thereore not a study abroad sojourn according to a narrow defnition that involves links with highereducational institutions. I decided to include his study, as his reason or stayingin Indonesia was to improve his language and also because his study containssome very interesting fndings regarding pragmatic changes over relatively short periods o time.

14

Similar to Hassall’s investigation, some o Felix-Brasdeer’s L2 learners had not attended university courses during their sojourn abroad. However, as this study provides insights into how long a sojourn in the target context needs to be tohelp learners’ develop their pragmatic skills, I decided to include it. Data or thestudy which examined reusals were elicited with role plays and verbal protocolsand compared to native speaker controls.



Chapter 3

Data Collection Techniques in Interlanguage Pragmatics

3.0 Introduction

In this chapter I will discuss various data collection techniques that havebeen used in interlanguage pragmatics research to investigate learners’ andnative speakers’ pragmatic awareness and their productive pragmatic skills. InSection 3.1, I will review data collection methods that have been used to exam-ine participants’ pragmatic awareness. Data collection techniques employed

to obtain insights into participants’ productive pragmatic skills will then bediscussed in Section 3.2.

3.1 Data Elicitation Techniques in Awareness Studies

In the ollowing, I will discuss three dierent types o data elicitation tech-niques that have been employed in ILP research to examine learners’ andnative speakers’ pragmatic awareness. I will begin my review with diaries and

verbal reports in Sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 respectively. Subsequent to this I willdiscuss rank-ordering tasks in Section 3.1.3. This will be ollowed by a reviewo multiple choice questionnaires in Section 3.1.4 and multimedia instrumentsin Section 3.1.5.

3.1.1 Das

Diary studies allow participants to record their actions, thoughts, experiencesand eelings either in written or oral orm. Kasper and Röver (2005, p. 329; my emphasis) distinguish two types o diary studies:

the sel-study diary , in which the diarist and the researcher are the same personand the commissioned diary , in which the researcher requests participants (. . .)to keep a journal that is then submitted to and analysed by the researcher.



Data Collection Techniques 61

Examples or the ormer are Cohen (1997) and Hassall (2006), while exam-ples or the latter are DuFon (2006) and Crawshaw, Culpeper and Harrison(orthcoming). This data collection method enables researchers to examine

both introspective processes as well as the participants’ recollection o theirutterances in the L2 and thereore also provides insights into L2 learners’ pro-ductive pragmatic competence, which is one o the advantages o this method.Further benefts are that diaries can be used or longitudinal developmentalstudies and that the entries may expose phenomena that may be difcult toobserve with other methods.

Disadvantages o this data collection technique include that it may be di-fcult to retain commissioned participants or a longer period o time and to

ensure that the commissioned participants record their experiences, thoughtsand actions in sufcient detail and in a truthul manner. While these disadvantages are unlikely to apply to sel-study diaries, the very act that these dia-ries are written by the researcher and thereore by proessionals in the areao investigation can be a disadvantage, as ‘they [the researchers] constitute ahighly specialized population and the insights rom these studies cannot otenbe extended to other contexts’ (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p. 178).

3.1.2 Vbal potocolsTwo types o verbal protocols, which are also reerred to as ‘think aloud pro-tocols’ in the literature, are commonly distinguished: concurrent verbal protocols , which are employed to obtain insights into learners’ thought processes

while completing a research task (e.g. Woodfeld, 2008), and retrospective verbal protocols that are elicited ater the research task has been completed (e.g.Cohen & Olshtain, 1993; Felix-Brasdeer, 2004). Although verbal protocols areprimarily used to obtain insights into participants’ internal thought processes

and consequently their pragmatic awareness, they are employed in conjunc-tion with techniques that collect participants’ productive data. This combinedmethod approach is one o the advantages o this data collection technique, asit provides researchers with deeper insights into learners’ pragmatic awarenessas well as their productive skills.

Further advantages o verbal protocols are that they can provide researchers with inormation on what other possible answers the participants may haveconsidered and what made them select their fnal choice. Thus employing sel-

reports can help to answer whether learners rejected certain options becauseo non-pragmatic considerations such as grammatical complexity o certainstructures or because o specifc pragmatic considerations.

The main disadvantage o concurrent verbal protocols is that as Kasperand Röver (2005, p. 329) point out they ‘may produce reactivity, that is, they may interere with doing the task’. This potential problem does not arise withretrospective verbal protocols, where participants reect on their choices ater




they are reminded o their original answer oten with the use o recordings.However, one o the disadvantages o retrospective verbal protocols is that par-ticipants need to give up additional time ater the original task is completed

in order to share their thoughts with the researchers. The semi-structuredinterviews employed in the present investigation into participants’ pragmaticand grammatical awareness also included a retrospective report element.This increased the length o the data collection sessions (see Chapter 4 or adetailed discussion o the research methodology) and may have contributed tothe attrition o participants in the longitudinal study.

3.1.3 Rank-odn tasks

One o the earliest methods used to investigate participants’ pragmatic aware-ness were rank-ordering instruments which were employed in two ormats. Thefrst ormat involved the sorting o cards, while the second involved flling ina questionnaire. Card-sorting entails putting sets o cards in a sequence, most commonly into an order rom least to most polite. Typically a set o cards con-sists o various utterances that can be used to achieve the same purpose (e.g.asking or something) but represent varying degrees o directness with which

the speech act may be perormed. The set is oten accompanied by an add-itional card that briey describes the situation in which the utterances might bemade, such as purchasing shoes in a shoe shop (Carrell & Konneker, 1981). Theparticipants are supplied with the cards and are then asked to put them intoa specifc order according to the participants’ assessment o politeness. Card-sorting was employed in two o the earliest studies into learners’ pragmaticawareness by Carrell and Konneker (1981) and Tanaka and Kawade (1982).

Card-sorting has two main advantages: frst, it is a very inexpensive methodand secondly, it can be administered relatively quickly which allows researchers

to collect data rom a large number o participants. However, the main limitationo this method is the extent to which contextual inormation can be provided onthe cards, as the situational circumstances in which the utterances are to be eval-uated can only be briey summarized due to the size and number o the cardsthat participants have to spread out on a table. In addition, the dierent cardsets need to be easily distinguishable (e.g. colour-coded), since otherwise the riskincreases that individual cards are mixed up and learners become conused.

Rank-ordering tasks can also take the orm o questionnaires as in Olshtain

and Blum-Kulka’s (1985) and Kitao’s (1990) studies, in which participants were asked to rank order request and apology utterances. Instead o physi-cally putting the utterances into a sequence, participants in these studies wereasked to either score the appropriacy o the utterance on ten-part-scales rang-ing rom very rude to very polite printed next to the utterances in questions(Kitao), or to assign them a score rom one to three (Olshtain & Blum-Kulka).Questionnaire rank-ordering tasks share the same advantages as card-sorting




while allowing researchers to investigate a higher number o scenarios and toprovide more detailed contextual inormation. However, as both are paper-based methods, the contextual inormation is restricted to this medium and

cannot provide participants with audiovisual clues.

3.1.4 Mltpl Choc Qstonnas

Another instrument that has been used in pragmatic awareness research isthe Multiple Choice Questionnaire (MCQ) which was, or example, employedby Bouton (1988, 1994), Hinkel (1997) and Cook and Liddicoat (2002). MCQstypically contain a number o scenarios which are ollowed by several sen-

tences that are either interpretations o an utterance that is contained in thescenario’s description, or possible responses to the scenario. The advantageo the MCQ is that like rank-ordering questionnaires, this method is relatively inexpensive, can be administered quickly to a large number o participantsand allows researchers to describe scenarios in detail.

However, although a greater amount o contextual inormation can be provided, participants only receive written instructions, which, even i they are very precise, rely on a high degree o imagination on the participants’ part,

since they can neither hear nor see the conversation in its context. As a con-sequence, participants have to imagine the speakers’ tone and acial expres-sions, which might lead to dierent assessments o the scenarios based on theindividual participants’ ideas o how an utterance was intended by the speaker,or example, as riendly teasing between riends or as an insult. It is thereoreessential that contextual issues are addressed by the instrument. This can bedone by providing detailed instructions that inorm the participants that noneo the interactions contain instances o riendly banter, or example. In recent

years, computerized versions o multiple choice instruments (e.g. Taguchi’scomputerized listening task, 2005, 2008) have been used to provide learners with audio input, thereby enabling participants to also make judgments basedon the speakers’ prosody. This is a very encouraging development that showshow existing instruments can be modifed to address their limitations.

3.1.5 Mltmda nstmnts

As the example o Taguchi’s computerized listening task (2005, 2008) aboveshows, advances in technology have lead to the development o new data col-lection instruments in ILP research. With the increasing availability o multi-media technology in the 1990s, instruments were designed by researchers that enabled them to provide their participants with audiovisual contextual inor-mation, thereby ensuring that the participants were indeed presented the inter-action in the way the researchers had intended them to. Instruments developed




during these years were Koike’s (1996) and Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998)1 combined video-and-questionnaire tasks. These video-and-questionnaire tasksconsist o a video, which contains a number o dierent scenarios that were

developed and flmed by the researchers, and a questionnaire. In the latterparticipants are asked to assess various issues o the interaction, or example,by rating on scales the severity o an inappropriate utterance (Bardovi-Harlig &Dörnyei) or the riendliness/unriendliness o the speaker (Koike).

Disadvantages o methods employing media such as video recordings are that they are more expensive to develop than card or paper based instruments, andthat the researchers are more restricted in the eventual data collection locations,

which have to contain the acilities needed or the instrument, such as a television

set and a video recorder or a computer. However, compared to paper-based rankordering tasks and MCQs, pragmatic awareness instruments using audiovisualmedia have the clear advantage that they provide participants with a higherdegree o careully controlled contextual inormation. Thus, they considerably decrease the probability that utterances might be assessed dierently based onthe individual participants’ imagination/perception o the scenario. Althoughparticipants may still interpret video-recorded situations in a slightly dierent

way based on their own personal background and experiences, rich contextualinormation can limit the opportunities in which this might happen.

Based on the merits and shortcomings o the dierent instruments usedin pragmatic awareness research, I decided to employ Bardovi-Harlig andDörnyei’s (1998) video and questionnaire task or the ollowing reasons:

The video provides participants with detailed, careully predetermined

audiovisual inormation thereby allowing the participants to observe thespeakers’ tone o voice and acial expressions.The interactions portrayed in the video are all based on situations my tar-

get participant group was likely to experience in their everyday lie as youngadults attending a university and thus ollow Bonikowska’s (1988) call orbasing instruments on situations that are amiliar to the participants.The inclusion o both pragmatic and grammatical errors in the video-and-

questionnaire task enabled me to not only examine which error type theparticipants are more aware o, but also which error type they perceive tobe more serious. This meant that the eect o the study abroad and at homelearning environment on participants’ error severity perception could also

be investigated.The structure o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s instrument also allowed me

to add an additional data collection method, semi-structured interviewsincluding verbal report elements, which had not previously been employedin combination with the video-and-questionnaire task. This enabled me toalso investigate whether learners and native speakers are conscious o their




rating behaviour, that is, whether they deliberately assigned one o the twoerror types, pragmatic or grammatical, higher severity scores.

3.2 Data Collection Methods in Production Studies

Data collection methods in production studies can be distinguished accordingto whether the data collected is naturally occurring or specifcally elicited orthe purpose o research. In Section 3.2.1, I will frst discuss the observationo naturally occurring data. This will be ollowed by a review o elicited datacollection techniques, such as production questionnaires in Section 3.2.2, elic-

ited conversation and role-plays in Section 3.2.3 and fnally multimedia instru-ments in Section 3.2.4.

3.2.1 Obsvaton o natally occn data

Studies that examine naturally occurring data are based on the researchers’observation o their participants’ productive pragmatic skills, which can berecorded in feld notes and/or with audiovisual equipment. Researchers that employed this method were, or example, Schmidt (1983), Ellis (1992), Bardovi-Harlig and Hartord (1990, 1993) and Achiba (2003). The obvious advantage o using naturally occurring data is that the L2 learner’s ability to communicateappropriately can be examined in real situations in the participants’ naturaleveryday environment. It would thereore seem to be the ideal data collectionmethod. Yet very ew studies in the feld have actually employed this method(Kasper & Dahl, 1991).

There are a number o possible reasons why only a rather limited amount

o research is based on the observation o authentic discourse in interlan-guage pragmatics. One o the main disadvantages o relying on naturally occurring discourse is Labov’s (1972) observer’s paradox. Labov questioned

whether it is in act possible to observe ‘authentic’ interactions as the pres-ence o the researcher or the recording equipment might have an eect o the participants’ discourse. In addition, it may not always be possible to eas-ily gain access to institutional research sites (Kasper & Rose, 2002). This canlimit the locations rom which recordings o a particular participant can be

obtained.However, even i recording is permitted, data collected in the languagelearners’ natural environment can, according to Beebe (1992, cited by Beebe &Cummings, 1995), oten be unsystematic since essential inormation, such asthe interlocutors’ status, age, ethnicity and so on may not be reported or di-fcult to determine. Also, i researchers solely rely on feld notes, these might




not be sufciently accurate as Yuan (2001) points out. In addition, contextual variables such as dierent degrees o imposition in request studies, are also very difcult to examine in a structured way.

3.2.2 Podcton qstonnas

Various production questionnaires (see Kasper, 1998b, 2000 or an in-depthdiscussion o dierent types) have been used to gather participants’ writtendata in ILP research. These questionnaires, which are also oten reerred to asDiscourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), typically contain a written description o

a scenario and may also include the initial turn or turns o a conversation. Thisis then ollowed by a blank in which the participants write what they would say i they were in the situation. Some production questionnaires also contain thehearer’s response to the participants’ utterance called rejoinder2 (Johnston,Kasper & Ross, 1998) or a urther blank or the participants to fll in the otherinterlocutors’ response (c. Barron, 2003).

In contrast to the observation o naturally occurring data, production ques-tionnaires are requently used in interlanguage pragmatics research (Kasper,2000; Kasper & Rose, 2002). They have achieved this popularity because they allow the researcher to control the context o the scenarios which the par-ticipants are asked to fll in, are inexpensive, easy to administer and make it possible to quickly gather a large amount o data. However, they also have sev-eral limitations. One o them concerns the suitability o certain scenarios orspecifc participant groups, or example, asking students to imagine being abusinessperson asking or a pay rise (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999b). It is debatable i participants can provide answers that are representative o authentic speech incontexts they themselves are unamiliar with, or example, i they have never

held a particular position in their working lie or have not experienced certainlie events, such as becoming a parent, as they may not be aware o the lan-guage used in these circumstances.

A urther limitation o production questionnaires concerns the dieringdegrees o contextual inormation provided in the scenario descriptions.Dierences in these descriptions have been shown to inuence the fndingso DCT studies, with limited inormation resulting in less elaborate utter-ances (Billmyer & Varghese, 2000). In addition, a number o researchers

have examined whether written production questionnaire data are similarto spoken data collected with other methods, such as role-plays and observation o naturally occurring talk. The results revealed that while many pragmatic speech act strategies occurred in both questionnaire and otherdata types, the learners’ strategy use was oten more limited in the writ-ten data (e.g. Beebe & Cummings, 1996; Hartord & Bardovi-Harlig, 1992;Sasaki, 1998).




The results also showed that written responses tended to be shorter than oralones (Beebe & Cummings, 1996; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989 in case o the learnerparticipants; however, see Golato, 2003, who ound more elaborate written than

oral utterances) and that written data did not contain the repetitions, inversionsand omissions, that can be observed in naturally occurring data (Yuan, 2001).

3.2.3 Elctd convsaton and ol-plays

Considering the advantages and disadvantages o the observation o natu-rally occurring data and written production questionnaires, the elicitation o

oral discourse can be a good alternative data collection method, as it allowsresearchers to have a high level o control over the context and type o prag-matic phenomena they are intending to elicit, while also enabling them tostudy oral data. Two types o orally elicited data are typically distinguished, elicited conversation and role-plays (Kasper & Rose, 2002). Examples or the ormercategory are studies by Billmyer (1990) and Sawyer (1992). In Billmyer’s study learners were asked to talk to native speaker participants and exchange com-pliments, while Sawyer’s learners were interviewed by native language instruc-tors about specifc issues, such as their weekend routine, to examine their useo sentence fnal particles in Japanese.

Although elicited conversations have the advantage o providing oral data,they do not allow researchers to investigate pragmatic phenomena, such ascomplaints or requests, in the same way as written production questionnaires.I the aim o the investigation is to determine which linguistic elements andormulae are employed by learners in dierent situational conditions and

with dierent types o interlocutors, or example, those o equal or higherstatus, role-plays can be a very useul alternative. Two types o role-plays are

common ly distinguished in ILP research: closed and open role-plays .In closed role-plays , participants respond to a description o a situation, and,

depending on the speech act or pragmatic phenomena under investigation,to an interactant’s standardized initiation. Studies ollowing this design3 were,or example, Cohen and Olshtain (1981), Rintell and Mitchell (1989) and

Warga (2004). In open role-plays , in contrast, participants are given details o the situation, such as the purpose o the interaction and their relationship tothe other interlocutor, but the course and outcome o the interaction is not

predetermined. Researchers employing this method were, or instance, Houckand Gass (1996) and House (1996). As mentioned above, the advantages o role-plays are that researchers predetermine the context and elicit oral data.

The disadvantages are, however, that ‘role plays can be quite taxing even or very uent speakers because in absence o an external supporting context, roleplay participants have to create a context ongoingly’ (Kasper, 2000b, p. 17).

A urther limitation concerns the comparability o data that were elicited in




role-play interactions with human actors. Bardovi-Harlig (1999b) notes that interlocutors employed by researchers or the purpose o acting the parts o riends or teachers in interactions with the target participants, can get atigued

i they have to perorm the same scenarios numerous times. In a similar vein, while proessionally trained actors will be able to give highly comparablerepeat perormances, this might not be the case or laypeople whose attitudetowards individual interlocutors might dier and whose eelings may there-ore inuence the way in which conversations develop. This could potentially result in very dierent conversations that may be difcult to compare.

3.2.4 Mltmda nstmnts

As had been the case with ILP data collection instruments or the elicitation o data on participants’ pragmatic awareness, advances in technology have alsoresulted in the use o these technologies or research purposes in ILP produc-tion studies. In the 1990s, Kuha designed the Computer-Assisted InteractiveDCT (IDCT) which ‘combines the written questionnaire’s potential or control-ling variables with some o the interactive aspects o role-plays’ (Kuha, 1997, p.99). Her computer based instrument provided participants with a description

o a situation and then asked them to key in their response. Based on keywordsin the participant’s answer, the programme then generated an interlocutor’sreply, which again prompted the participant to continue the conversation.

Unortunately, the IDCT did not allow participants to actually produce aspoken utterance. In addition, the description o the scenarios, as is the casein the majority o elicited production questionnaire studies, did not provideparticipants with audiovisual contextual inormation.

Ater having considered the advantages and disadvantages o the existing datacollection methods in interlanguage pragmatics, I decided to develop my owninstrument, the Multimedia Elicitation Task (MET),4 which is computer based,shares similarities with role-plays and elicits oral data. The reasons or this were:

Focusing on elicited data allowed me, in contrast to observing naturally

occurring speech, to predetermine the contextual conditions that I aimedto investigate.By using a computer-based instrument, the participants could be provided

with a high amount o audiovisual inormation, which made it easier or

them to imagine being in the situation.The MET allowed participants to virtually ‘meet’ a variety o dierent inter-

locutors, without putting them in a stressul situation o having to converse with a number o dierent native speaker actors in role-plays.Since the instrument is computer-based, it ensures a high degree o com-

parability, as the situations and the tone o voice o the speaker are the sameor each participant.




The MET allowed me to work independently, that is, without native speak-

ers taking the part o actors in role plays, while still providing the partici-pants with native speaker input.

The act that the MET allowed the repetition o the data elicitation pro-

cedure with exactly the same computerized contextual conditions o thescenarios made it an ideal choice or a developmental investigation.

Like all data collection techniques, the MET also has limitations. Due todesign restrictions, it was not possible to extend the participants’ productiono a request to more than one turn. This means that turn taking behaviourcould not be observed.

3.3 Summary

The review o the data collection techniques in interlanguage pragmaticawareness and production studies has revealed that a wide variety o dataelicitation methods have been used in the discipline. The discussion o thestrengths and weaknesses o the dierent data collection methods has shownthat multimedia instruments like Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) vid-eo-and-questionnaire instrument and the new Multimedia Elicitation Taskhave a number o advantages: They provide participants with rich context-ual inormation that has been careully predetermined by the researcher.In addition, these instruments oer a high degree o reliability due to theirstandardization and also allow non-native speaker researchers to work inde-pendently o native speakers, while still providing the participants withnative speaker input. Based on these advantages the video-and-question-naire task and the Multimedia Elicitation Task were chosen or the present

investigation.

Notes

1 Since Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) instrument was used or the investiga-tion o the participants’ awareness in the present study, it will be discussed inmore detail in the Methodology Section 4.2.1.

2 The eects o the presence or absence o rejoinders in production studies havebeen examined by Rose (1992), Bardovi-Harlig and Hartord (1993b) and Johnston et al. (1998). The results o these investigations suggest that dierent speech acts are aected in a dierent way by the inclusion o rejoinders.

3 Rose’s (2000) Cartoon Oral Production Task may also be regarded as a closedrole-play. Instead o written instructions, he provided his young participants with cartoons depicting the scenarios and tape-recorded their utterances.

4 The MET will be discussed in detail in Section 4.2.3.



Chapter 4

Methodology

4.0 IntroductionThis chapter presents the methodology used in the present study to answer theresearch questions. First, I will provide background inormation on the par-ticipants that took part in the investigation in Section 4.1. This will be ollowedby a description o the two data collection instruments and the interviews inSection 4.2. Subsequent to this, the procedure or the data collection will beoutlined in Section 4.3. The chapter concludes with a description o the tran-scription techniques employed or the interviews and an overview o the cod-

ing categories used or the request strategies and modifers in Section 4.4.

4.1 Participants

The present study examines two aspects o learners’ pragmatic development in the study abroad context, (a) the development o their pragmatic aware-ness and (b) the development o their productive pragmatic abilities. The

ormer was investigated with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) video-and-questionnaire task as well as post hoc semi-structured interviews, while thelatter was explored with the Multimedia Elicitation Task (MET) that I hadspecifcally designed or this study. A total o 71 participants took part in thepresent investigation. In addition to the 19 SA learners whose development inthe study abroad context was examined, controls were provided by 22 BritishEnglish native speakers and 30 AH learners.

The study was conducted over a period o 2 years, with the investigation into

participants’ pragmatic awareness taking place in both years and the investi-gation o participants’ production o requests taking place in the second yearonly. Consequently, none o the SA learners who participated in the frst yearprovided data or the productive part o the study in the second year, as thoselearners had already returned to their home country. Regarding the nativespeakers, 13 o the 20 participants who took part in the awareness investiga-tion also participated in the investigation o participants’ request production.



Methodology 71

Since the study ocused on AH learners in their fnal year, none o the AHlearners took part in both investigations.

All SA and AH learners who participated in this study were native speakers

o German. I had decided to ocus on German learners o English, as beingGerman mysel and having been educated in Germany, I am amiliar withteaching strategies, methods o assessment, and curricula that are commonly used in this country, which would acilitate my understanding o the learners’interview responses concerning their educational background. Another rea-son or choosing SA and AH learners with whom I shared an L1 was that thisenabled me to conduct the interviews and explain questions about the instru-ment in the learners’ native language. I hoped that being able to communicate

with me in their L1 would make it easier or the participants to ask questionsabout the video-and-questionnaire task and to reely and openly share theirthoughts in the interviews with me.

In Section 4.1.1, I will introduce the participants that took part in the inves-tigation o participants’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness. Learners andnative speakers that took part in the investigation ocusing on participants’production o requests will be introduced in Section 4.1.2.

4.1.1 Patcpants n th awanss stdy

SA learners

Sixteen German SA learners participated in this part o the study. At thebeginning o the academic years 2001/2002 and 2002/2003, I contacted allGerman native speakers enrolled at the University o Nottingham by e-mailand invited them to take part in my research. To be eligible to participate inthis study, SA learners had to meet three criteria: First, they had to have been

brought up in a monolingual German environment in Germany. Secondly,the sojourn in Nottingham had to be their frst long-term stay 1 in an Englishspeaking environment. Finally, they had to be enrolled at the University o Nottingham or the period o 1 academic year. Since only a very small numbero students who met these criteria responded to the e-mail, an invitation let-ter was sent out to those that had not previously responded 2 weeks ater theinitial e-mail. Following attrition o participant numbers rom about 30 to 16due to a variety o circumstances (e.g. students returning to Germany earlier

than planned or alling ill), seven German SA learners took part in 2001/2002and nine in 2002/2003. Their data were subsequently merged or the present study. Table 4.1 contains background inormation on the individual SA learn-ers that took part in the awareness study.

Eight o the SA participants were emale and eight were male. Their meanage was 23 years. They came rom various regions in Germany, both in theormer eastern and western parts. Six o the SA participants in this awareness



72 Interlanguage Pragmatics Development

study were reading a subject related to English language at their home univer-sity, while the remaining ten read a variety o dierent subjects ranging romBusiness Studies to Psychology. None o the group members had lived in anEnglish speaking country prior to taking part in the research.

All the participants had received ormal English language instruction inGerman primary and secondary schools or an average o 8 years. Two o the

participants had attended special primary schools that had oered Englishclasses, resulting in them receiving 11 years o ormal English instruction. Allother participants had frst received English instruction in their secondary schools. Eight o the students had studied English or their Leistungskurs (equiva-lent to the British A-levels or US-American advanced placement courses) at their grammar schools, while the other hal had specialized in other subjects.Nine o the 16 participants in this group also took part in the investigation o learners’ productive pragmatic development in the MET study. Regrettably, it

was not possible to obtain standardized data on learners’ English profciency,such as the IELTS or TOEFL test, as none o the learners had taken these tests.

AH learners

Seventeen German students studying in Germany took part in the video-and-questionnaire task and the subsequent interviews. All o them were in

Tabl 4.1 Background inormation on SA learners that took part in theawareness study

A

Enlsh 1st on

lana

FomalEnlsh

dcaton(yas)

EnlshLeistungskurs at

school

Enlshhonosdcos

Also patcpatdn MET stdy

Andreas* 24 yes 11 yes yes yesBernd 21 yes 8 yes yes yesChristoph 23 yes 9 no no yesDaniel 24 yes 9 yes no yesEva 22 yes 9 no yes yesFranziska 27 yes 9 no no yes

Greta 22 no 5 no no yesHendrik 23 yes 9 yes no yesIris 20 no 7 yes yes yesNatalie 23 yes 9 no yes noOliverPeter

2322

yesno

117

no yes

nono

nono

Richard 22 no 7 no no noTamara 23 no 6 yes yes noUlrike 23 yes 8 no no no Viktoria 26 yes 9 no no no

Note : * All names are pseudonyms.



Methodology 73

their fnal year o a 3 -year course in English translation studies at the Institut ür Fremdsprachen und Auslandskunde bei der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Institute or Foreign Languages and Culture Studies at the University o

Erlangen-Nürnberg), henceorth IFA. I had decided to approach studentso this particular higher education institution or a two reasons: frst, I wasamiliar with the curriculum, the teaching methods and the academic sta as I had graduated rom it mysel. Secondly, I was interested in fnding out

whether students o mixed profciency levels who spend 1 year in an English-speaking context have a higher degree o pragmatic awareness at the endo their stay than proessional language learners who study English in anintensive course in a typical oreign language context, such as at the IFA in

Germany.I contacted the IFA’s Head o the English Department in December 2001and asked him or permission to conduct the study in January 2002, which hegranted. I then explained that I needed a participant group o at least 16 learn-ers who were o similar age to my SA participants. Based on these require-ments, he selected one o his seminar groups or me and allowed me to attendone o his classes to meet the students.

One o the participants in this group was male and 16 were emale. Thisuneven distribution is due to the popularity o the translation/interpretationdegree among emale students in Germany.2 The average age o this group

was 24 years and was thereore similar to that o the SA learners. None o the AH participants had lived in an English speaking country prior to taking part in the research. Like the German SA participants in England, they had alsolearned English or an average o 8 years at German secondary schools. Ten o the students in this group had studied English or their Leistungskurs at school.In addition to English, all o the students in this group had also been studyinganother European language (French, Italian or Spanish) or 2.5 years prior to

taking part in the research.Members o this group attended 19 classes per week lasting 45 min each

that were taught by American, British and Australian English native speak-ers as well as by German lecturers. The classes concentrated on dierent aspects o their English programme such as grammar, vocabulary, culture,or translation techniques. Although the main aim o this 3-year course wasto provide students with the necessary means to work as translators, the cur-riculum also placed a considerable emphasis on the development o learn-

ers’ verbal skills. This meant that all students had to take 3 hours o oralclasses per week or 3 years. Regrettably, however, the curriculum did not contain a specifc pragmatic component, such as pragmatic awareness rais-ing or the teaching o ormulaic sequences or specifc pragmatic routines(e.g. Alcon Soler, 2005; Martinez-Flor & Fukuya, 2005; Rose & Kwai-un,2001; Schauer & Adolphs, 2006; Tateyama, 2001) at the time o the datacollection.




In contrast to degrees in English at many other universities or collegesin Germany that do not specialize in translation or interpreting, the 3-yearcourse at this particular institution had a considerably higher number o semi-

nars and lectures because vacation periods were signifcantly shorter than at most other higher education institutions. The vacation times were short toallow students to graduate ater 3 years, which at the time the data was col-lected was still rather uncommon3 in Germany. Thus, as the AH learners inthe present sample had a large amount o input and had studied two modernEuropean languages or 2.5 years at the time the data were collected, they canbe regarded as proessional language learners.

Native speakers

Twenty British English native speakers participated in the study as controls.They were enrolled in various undergraduate and postgraduate degree coursesat the same university as the SA learners. Four o the students in this sample

were male and 16 emale. Their average age was 22 years. The three partici-pant groups that I have introduced so ar provided data or the investigationinto learners and native speakers’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness. In

the ollowing section, I will introduce the participants that took part in theproductive part o the present study.

4.1.2 Patcpants n th podcton stdy

SA learners

Nine German learners o English participated in the investigation o learners’

productive pragmatic development in the study abroad context. All o the stu-dents in this group also took part in the investigation o SA learners’ develop-ment o pragmatic awareness. The selection method and criteria was the same orall SA learners taking part in either or both the awareness and production study (see 4.1.1 or a detailed description). All members o this group were enrolledat the University o Nottingham or the period o 1 academic year. Four o themstudied a subject related to English at their home institution, while the remainingfve read various subjects, mainly in the Sciences or the Business School.

None o the participants in this group had lived in an English speaking envi-ronment prior to taking part in the research. Four o the learners were emaleand fve male. Their mean age was 23 years. They had received ormal Englisheducation in German schools or an average o 8 years and came rom a variety o German states. Five o the participants in this group had studied English ortheir Leistungskurs at school. Table 4.2 contains background inormation on theindividual SA learners that took part in the productive study.



Methodology 75

AH learners

Like the AH participants that provided the controls in the investigationo learners’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness, all 13 members o this group were in their fnal year o a 3-year translation course at theIFA, when I collected their data in January 2003. They were selected andapproached in the same way as the AH learner participants o the previ-ous year, who had taken part in the awareness study. The AH group that participated in this part o the study was very similar to the AH group that provided data or the investigation o pragmatic awareness, as they were

both taught according to the same curriculum, by the same aculty andhad never lived in an English speaking environment beore. Their averageage was 24 years. Since the AH learner data collection or the two studiestook place in two subsequent years, none o the AH learners participated inboth investigations.

Although both AH groups had been selected based on the same methodand criteria, the group o AH learners that provided data or the product-ive study diered rom the group o AH learners that provided data or the

awareness study in two respects: First, the number o AH learners in the pro-ductive study was smaller than that o those in the awareness study, 13 and17 respectively. Secondly, although I specifcally approached the 3 male stu-dents who were also in their fnal year at the IFA, they declined to take part in the research. As a result, all 13 learners in this group were emale, whereasthere had been 1 male participant in the AH group that provided the dataor the awareness study.

Tabl 4.2 Background inormation on SA learners that took part in theproductive study

A

Enlsh 1st on

lana

FomalEnlsh

dcaton(yas)

EnlshLeistungskurs at

school

Enlshhonosdcos

Also patcpatdn awanss

stdy

Andreas* 24 yes 11 yes yes yesBernd 21 yes 8 yes yes yesChristoph 23 yes 9 no no yesDaniel 24 yes 9 yes no yesEva 22 yes 9 no yes yesFranziska 27 yes 9 no no yes

Greta 22 no 5 no no** yesHendrik 23 yes 9 yes no yesIris 20 no 7 yes yes yes

Note : * All names are pseudonyms

** See note 2 at the end o this chapter.




Native speakers

Fiteen British English native speakers provided controls, o whom 13 had also

taken part in the investigation o participants’ pragmatic and grammaticalawareness. The native speakers in this group were undergraduate or postgradu-ate students at the same university the Germans in England were enrolled at.Similar to the SA learners, the students in this group were studying a variety o subjects, mainly in the Arts and Sciences. Six o the participants were male and9 emale. Their average age was the same as that o the German SA learnersin England, namely 23 years. This section concludes the introduction o thelearner and native speaker participants that took part in the present investiga-tion. The ollowing section ocuses on the research instruments and interviewtechniques used to elicit the data.

4.2 Instrument

4.2.1 Vdo-and-qstonna task

The video-and-questionnaire task with which the data concerning the par-

ticipants’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness was elicited was developed by Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998). The video contained 20 scenarios eatur-ing interactions that students are amiliar with and experience on a regularbasis in an educational context. They showed either Anna, a emale student,or Peter, a male student, interacting with ellow students, teachers or memberso sta. All conversations took place with same-sex interlocutors, which elimi-nated any cross-gender variables. Eight o the scenarios were pragmatically inappropriate but grammatically correct, eight were grammatically incorrect but pragmatically appropriate and our were appropriate and grammatical

(controls).The scenarios were arranged in a random sequence in our blocks o fve

with each block containing two scenarios eaturing a pragmatic inelicity,two scenarios containing a grammatical violation and one control scenario.The 20 situations were based on actual observed interactions or data elicited

with Discourse Completion Tasks (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig & Hartord 1990, 1991,1993; Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Cohen & Olshtain, 1993; Hudson,Detmer & Brown, 1995) and included our dierent speech acts: apologies,

reusals, requests and suggestions.The accompanying questionnaire4 contained the targeted utterance oreach scenario in bold and two questions next to it as Figure 4.1 illustrates.

The frst question reers to the appropriateness/correctness o the targetedutterance. This question was answered by all participants, while the secondquestion was only answered by those who thought that the targeted utterance

was inappropriate/incorrect. I the participants thought that the utterance



Methodology 77

was problematic, they rated the severity o the perceived inelicity on a six-point-scale ranging rom ‘not bad at all’ to ‘very bad’.

To aid the participants’ recollection o the individual scenarios during theinterview, I included the sentence that immediately preceded the targetedutterance in the questionnaire and also indicated who the interlocutor was,or example, a teacher in scenario in Scenario 7. I urther modifed Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) questionnaire by translating the assessment sec-tion o the individual scenarios (i.e. the questions on the right hand side) into

the L1 o the SA and AH learners, thereby ollowing the original research-ers’ methodology or learner questionnaires as they had also provided theirHungarian participants with questionnaires in their native language (see

Appendix A or the English and German versions o the questionnaire). Inkeeping with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s study, the frst block o scenariosand Scenario 20 were excluded rom the data analysis in the present paper,the ormer because it was considered a warm-up phase, the latter because themistake was not sufciently unambiguous.

4.2.2 Sm-stctd ntvws

The post hoc semi-structured interview constituted an important addition toBardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) research methodology as it enabled meto fnd out whether the participants had actually identifed the ‘correct’ errortype in the scenarios and also provided me with insights into their decision

7. Teacher: Anna, it’s your turn to give

your talk.

! I can’t do it today, but I will do it

next week.

Was the last part appropriate/correct?

Yes No

If there was a problem, how bad do you think

it was?

Not bad Very

____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Figure 4.1. Questionnaire Scenario 7




making rationales. Conducting one-to-one interviews that included elicitedretrospective verbal protocols with the students ater they had watched the

video and assessed the scenarios on the questionnaire gave me the oppor-

tunity to hear what they had perceived to be the problem in the scenariosthat they had scored as inappropriate/incorrect. To make the conversations asnon-threatening as possible, they were conducted in the L1 o the participant.The scenarios were discussed in the order o the questionnaire and my input as interviewer was as limited as possible so as not to restrict or inuence theparticipants (Gass & MacKey, 2000).

Since the interview had not been part o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s(1998) original research design, I conducted a pilot study with an English

native speaking student at the University o Nottingham at the beginning o November 2001. The interview technique that I used in the pilot was based onthe stimulated recall technique (Gass & Mackey, 2000). This technique is pri-marily employed by researchers interested in the cognitive aspects o languageuse to investigate the individual’s reaction to a task or scenario. The inter-

view itsel is intended to stimulate the recall o this reaction and thus restrictsthe researcher to a limited number o basic questions without allowing any ollow-up questions concerning remarks made by the participant.

The participant in the pilot study and I both elt that this technique wastoo restrictive and did not allow us to venture into a more detailed discussiono specifc eatures, or example, whether it would make a dierence i theactors had been native speakers or not. Moreover, when I transcribed the pilot interview I realized that the conversation sometimes sounded very stilted andunnatural, as the technique only allows the researcher to respond to what hasbeen said by back-channelling cues and non-responses. I thereore decidedto modiy the interview technique in a way that retained the verbal report element but also allowed me to ask urther and more general questions and

conduct the interviews as semi-structured interviews. All subsequent interviews were conducted in the semi-structured ormat in

which I stated how the participants had evaluated a scenario, or example, ‘Youticked the box marked “No” and then put the x in the middle o the scale. Can

you tell me what you did not like in this scenario?’ and asked them to remedy the grammatical or pragmatic error that had caused them to rate the scenarioas inappropriate/incorrect. I employed this question structure throughout theinterview or the 20 scenarios.

I the participants made more general observations regarding pragmat-ics or their use o English, these were ollowed up as well to obtain a betterunderstanding o participants’ perceptions o linguistic/pragmatic eaturesin English. In addition, I also encouraged the SA learners to talk about otherissues, such as changes in their perceptions o British people, common stere-otypes, the amount o contact they had with English native speakers, precon-ceptions o the British way o lie that they had had prior to coming to Britain



Methodology 79

and the realities o lie in England. I also asked them about their own assess-ment o their linguistic development and their own observations regarding theuse o grammar and politeness by English native speakers.

4.2.3 Th Mltmda Elctaton Task

Data or the investigation into the learners’ productive pragmatic ability werecollected with the Multimedia Elicitation Task (MET) that I had specifcally developed or the present study (see Appendix B or written instructions,images used and transcriptions o the audio cues). The MET is a 16-scenariomultimedia instrument ocusing on requests. It is computer-based and thus

addresses one o the disadvantages o role-plays: the issue o standardization. As role plays involve the presence and participation o two interlocutors, most commonly a learner and a second person taking on dierent roles, it is import-ant that researchers try to ensure that their data have indeed been collectedunder comparable circumstances without the intererence o actors such aschanges in the second person’s mood or tone o voice. The MET attempts tocontrol or these actors by regulating the timing and the nature o the audio-

visual input through a computerized presentation ormat. Thus, it is designed

to provide equal conditions or every participant, while at the same time alsoproviding rich audiovisual contextual inormation. A urther eature o theMET is that it elicits oral rather than written data, which, according to Rintelland Mitchell (1989) and Yuan (2001), display more eatures o naturally occur-ring talk than written production questionnaires.

Participants are asked to sit down in ront o a computer, receive audio and visual contextual inormation on a series o slides and ormulate their requests which are recorded. Each MET scenario is preceded by an introductory slide

(see Figure 4.2) that briey tells the learners what to expect in the actual sce-nario (e.g. ‘Asking a proessor to open a window’). Ater 10 seconds, the intro-ductory slide switches to the actual scenario slide (Figure 4.3) that providesthe participants with audiovisual inormation in the orm o a photographicimage depicting the situation as well as an audio description o the scenario.

Visual input Audio input

(1) Asking a professor to open awindow

Figure 4.2. Introductory Slide or Scenario 1




The introductory slides were included in the MET because I elt like Harada(1996) that it was important to allow the participants ‘to think about what they were going to say beore the perormance, since it would be common ina real lie situation’ (p. 50), especially since requests are deliberate acts andnot reactive utterances towards an interlocutor’s preceding turn that haveto be produced without previous planning. In order to provide the SA learn-ers and native speakers with an accessible and authentic context in the METscenarios that was amiliar to them, all pictures were taken with the helpo sta and students o the University o Nottingham in numerous campuslocations in summer 2002. To ensure that the audio input would be easily understood by all participants, it was provided by an English native speaker

who had worked on a similar linguistic project beore and had a clearpronunciation.

As discussed earlier, the MET concentrates on requests and tries to reect

the diversity o request interactions by investigating two dierent status andimposition conditions: The participants were asked to make our high impo-sition and our low imposition requests to equal status interlocutors (riends),as well as our high and our low imposition requests to higher status interlocu-tors (proessors). Four o the scenarios were taken rom existing questionnairesand modifed or the present study: Scenario 1 and Scenario 7 rom Kitao(1990), Scenario 11 rom Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) and Scenario 12rom Kasanga (1998). The remaining 12 scenarios were developed by mysel

and ollow Bonikowska’s (1988) and Bardovi-Harlig’s (1999b) call or consider-ing the context o the participants. Thus, all o the scenarios depict situationsstudents are likely to encounter during their time at an English university.

The eight requests that are directed at an equal status interlocutor andthe eight requests towards a higher status interlocutor are based on the samerequest situations, but were modifed to obtain contextually appropriate sce-narios that are not too similar to each other. Thus, the high-imposition request

Visual input Audio input

Scenario (1)

You are attending a seminar. It is a verysunny day and the class room is hot. The

professor is standing near the window.You ask him to open it.You say:

Figure 4.3. Actual scenario Slide or Scenario 1



Methodology 81

‘asking someone to postpone a meeting’ is ranked as being high-imposition inthe equal status scenario on the basis that the riend had to cancel anothermeeting to see the participant. The same level o imposition is achieved inthe higher-status scenario by stating that the interlocutor is a visiting proes-sor who is extremely busy. The scenarios were arranged in our blocks o our,each containing two high and two low imposition requests to equal and higherstatus interlocutors. The sequence o the our scenarios varies in each blockand was determined randomly. Table 4.3 shows the distribution o the 16 sce-narios with regard to the two variables.

To ensure that the scenarios were representative o typical students’ requests,they were checked by two English native speakers employed in the Centre orEnglish Language Education (CELE) at the University o Nottingham. Thesetwo tutors were also asked to comment on the level o imposition, that is, whetherthey perceived the requests to be o high or o low imposition. One o them sug-gested slight changes in one scenario to emphasise the high level o imposition.

The request scenario in question was subsequently modifed accordingly.The MET was piloted with fve German native speakers o dierent prof-

ciency levels in English in September and October 2002. Prior to taking part,the participants received an oral explanation o the Multimedia ElicitationTask. For the frst participant, the transition rom the introductory slide tothe actual scenario slide was timed to 30 seconds or the sample scenario andurther eight scenarios and 20 seconds or the remaining eight scenarios. Theparticipant remarked that the transition time was too long and should be

reduced. Thus the transition time was reduced to 20, 15 and 10 seconds orthe second participant. The second participant commented that she preerredthe 10 seconds transition timing and suggested an additional written explana-tion o the MET.

The slide transition was then timed to 10 seconds or the remaining three par-ticipants and additional written instructions5 were also provided to them. Thethree participants stated that they elt comortable with the 10-seconds-transition

Tabl 4.3 Categorization o the 16 MET request scenarios according to the two variables ‘status’ and ‘imposition’

Low mposton Hh mposton

equal status Scenario 7 ‘speak louder’Scenario 9 ‘open window’Scenario 12 ‘give directions’Scenario 14 ‘move away rom door’

Scenario 3 ‘fll out questionnaire’Scenario 6 ‘postpone sth.’Scenario 10 ‘borrow sth.’Scenario 15 ‘arrange meeting’

higher status Scenario 1 ‘open window’Scenario 2 ‘give directions’Scenario 5 ‘move away rom door’Scenario 16 ‘speak louder’

Scenario 4 ‘borrow sth.’Scenario 8 ‘arrange meeting’Scenario 11 ‘fll out questionnaire’Scenario 13 ‘postpone sth.’



Methodology 83

When the reasons the participants gave or their decisions showed that they had detected two dierent kinds o problems, namely those due toeither grammatical or pragmatic inelicities, I asked them about their gen-

eral eelings regarding these two error types. (Pragmatic inelicities werediscussed using the term ‘politeness6 errors’ because all participants wereamiliar with this term.) In addition, as mentioned in 4.2.3, I also encour-aged the SA learners to tell me about issues related to their L2 development and to share their eelings and observations regarding British culture withme. As much as possible I tried to touch on these more general topics whenthe participant talked about a related issue so as not to break the ow o theconversation.

The length o the answers to the aorementioned questions varied rom par-ticipant to participant. Some students expressed their opinions and sharedtheir thoughts very reely and elaborated on a number o points, others weremore reserved and only provided very short answers or preerred not to discuss

various issues at all. In contrast to the high participant numbers in the orig-inal Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) study, which prevented one-to-oneconversations with each participant, my participant group sizes allowed meto dedicate as much time to every individual student as they elt they neededto express their thoughts and opinions. In keeping with their individual di-erences regarding their willingness to share their views and experiences, theinterview lengths ranged rom 10 to 30 minutes. The interviews were tape-recorded and subsequently transcribed.

Data or the combined video-and-questionnaire task and interview wereelicited rom the SA learners in two sessions. The frst session took place about 1 month ater they had arrived in Britain, in late October, early November andthe second session occurred shortly beore they let in May. Due to the low par-ticipant numbers ater the frst year 2001/2002, the research was conducted a

second time in 2002/2003 again in late October, early November and May o the ollowing year. The data o the German students in Germany or this part o the study were gathered in January 2002 and the data o the English nativespeakers were collected either in 2002 or 2003.

4.3.2 Mltmda Elctaton Task

As in the combined video-and-questionnaire task and interview sessions, dataor the Multimedia Elicitation Task were elicited in one-to-one sessions withthe participants in the same locations as described in the previous section.Like the language learners and native speakers who participated in the study that ocused on pragmatic and grammatical awareness, the participants that took part in the MET also received the task instructions in two ways, orally and in written orm. They then watched and responded to a sample scenario




in which they were prompted to ask a riend or the time. The participants’request utterances in this scenario were excluded rom the subsequent anal-

ysis. Ater the participants had made their frst request, I enquired i they had

any questions about the instrument and adjusted the volume settings o thecomputer i they indicated that these were either too high or too low. Thenative speakers and learners then completed the 16 scenarios in the standard-ized, preset sequence. Each MET session lasted about 30 minutes dependingon the individual participants’ talkativeness. The requests made by the partici-pants were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed.

In contrast to the combined video-and-questionnaire task and interviews,the data or the MET were elicited not at two, but at three distinct points o

the SA learners’ sojourn in the target environment: shortly ater their arrivalin Great Britain in late October, early November 2002, in the middle o theirstay in February 2003 and shortly beore their return to Germany in May 2003. Thus, the intervals between the sessions were roughly three months.Since the learners were asked to actively produce utterances based on situa-tions that they were likely to experience in their everyday lie at a British uni-

versity, I had decided on this more requent elicitation sequence as it wouldallow me to better detect when certain pragmatic eatures frst occurred orceased to occur, thereby helping to determine the salient periods or theseeatures.

The AH group’s data were gathered in January 2003 and the English nativespeakers’ data were collected in spring and early summer 2003. In those sessionsin which data or both studies were elicited, the participants always frst com-pleted the productive Multimedia Elicitation Task so as not to inuence theirutterances by the request scenarios o the video. Thus, in these combined ses-sions, participants took part in the video-and-questionnaire task and the inter-

views ater they had completed the MET.

4.4 Data Analysis

4.4.1 Tanscpton o ntvws and lctd qsts

I used two dierent transcription techniques or the data obtained in theinterviews, the transcription in keywords and the complete transcription o a partici-

pant’s comment. The participants’ answers to my questions concerning theirevaluation o the scenarios were transcribed in keywords and not in completesentences, or example, ‘I think that the person is impolite in this scenario.

What she says is too short.’ was transcribed with the keywords: ‘impolite ’, ‘too short ’. These keywords were then used to determine whether the participantsthought there was a grammatical or pragmatic error in the scenario and thusorm the basis o the error recognition analysis in Section 5.1.



Methodology 85

The complete transcription method was used when the participants mademore general observations regarding their assessment o pragmatic and gram-matical errors that were not based on a specifc scenario or when the SA learn-

ers reected on their own L2 development. Remarks made by the SA learnersabout personal experiences with English native speakers and views on theEnglish language were also transcribed entirely, as these provided insightsinto the SA learners’ decision-making rationales. All interviews with the learn-ers were translated and transcribed concurrently.

The participants’ requests that were elicited with the Multimedia ElicitationTask were also transcribed in their entirety. This included alse starts, hesita-tors, repetitions and slips o the tongue.

4.4.2 Codn catos qst stats

The analysis o request strategies that were employed by the participants inthe productive part o the study ocuses on the degree o directness o therequest’s head act, that is, the request’s utterance that contains the requestive

verb. In the Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project, Blum-Kulka, Houseand Kasper defned request strategies as ‘the obligatory choice o the level o

directness by which the request is realized. By directness [original emphasis] ismeant the degree to which the speakers’ illocutionary intent is apparent romthe locution’ (1989a, p. 278). The directness/strategy categories o my clas-sifcation scheme are based on Blum-Kulka (1989), Blum-Kulka, House andKasper (1989a) and Trosborg (1995) and Van Mulken (1996) and have beenslightly modifed to better clariy the data in the present study. Based on thedirectness o the locutionary act, a request utterance can be assigned to oneo three major categories (rom most to least direct requests): direct requests,

conventionally indirect requests and non-conventionally indirect requests, that is, hints .Table 4.4 provides a brie overview o the dierent request strategies which willbe discussed in more detail below.

Direct requests

The speaker’s intent is very obvious and transparent in the direct request category, thus the length o the hearer’s inerential process needed or iden-

tiying the utterance is short (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989b). Strategies in this cat-egory include: Imperatives , perormatives , want statements and locution derivable .Imperatives are the most direct orms o requests, since they leave little roomor misunderstanding and show that the speakers eel they are in a positiono not having to persuade their interlocutor or state reasons, or example,‘Hey, move out o the way ’ (native speaker, Scenario 14) or ‘Speak up , please’ (SA learner, Scenario 7). As the latter example indicates, imperatives can be part




o a request utterance that also contains elements which downtone the orce o the request, such as the politeness marker ‘ please ’.

Perormatives are the second direct request strategy in my data and consist o two subcategories, unhedged perormatives and hedged perormatives . Unhedged

perormatives explicitly state the illocutionary orce o the request by includinga perormative verb, or example, ‘I ask you to fll out this questionnaire orme’ (SA learner, Scenario 3) or ‘I’m asking you i you could give me some more,more advice where to search’ (SA learner, Scenario 4). The second exampleshows that unhedged perormatives can be sotened by past tense modals suchas could . Like imperatives, unhedged perormatives that are not modifed by

the inclusion o downtoning elements in the request utterance are generally regarded as impolite outside ormal contexts in which they are commonly used, or example, the military.

Hedged perormatives also contain a perormative verb, however, their illo-cutionary orce is sotened by a verb immediately preceding the perormative

verb, or example, ‘So I want to ask you i we could maybe arrange a meet-ing during the holidays’ (SA learner, Scenario 8) or ‘Sorry, I’ve difculties infnding material or my essay, so I thought I could ask you to bring an article? ’

(AH learner, Scenario 4). Both utterances show that speakers can reduce theillocutionary orce o the request by employing past tense modals like could ordowntoners such as maybe or possibly .

The next category o the direct request in my coding scheme, locution derivable requests,7 is defned in the CCSARP as utterances which ‘illocutionary intent isdirectly derivable rom the semantic meaning o the locution’ (p. 279). In my datathe majority o requests in this category are requests or directions, such as ‘Erm,

Tabl 4.4 Overview o request strategies

Direct requests Imperatives Tell me the way to X!

Perormatives unhedged

hedgedI’m asking you to tell me the way to X.I want to ask you the way to X.

Want statements I wish you’d tell me the way to X.Locution derivable Where is X?

Conventionally Indirect requests Suggestory ormula How about telling me the way to X? Availability Have you got time to tell me the way to X?Prediction Is there any chance to tell me the way to X?Permission Could I ask you about the way to X? Willingness Would you mind telling me the way to X? Ability Could you tell me the way to X?

Non-Conventionally indirect requests Hints I have to meet someone in X.



Methodology 87

excuse me, Bob, where is the Portland Building?’ (SA learner, Scenario 12) or‘Erm, which way is the Portland Building, please?’ (native speaker, Scenario 12).

By using want statements , the speakers explicitly state their desire, wish or

need that the interlocutors carry out the requested action. The utterances inthis category were classifed as direct strategies in the CCSARP (Blum-Kulkaet al., 1989a) and as conventionally indirect in Trosborg (1995). I categorized

want statements as direct strategies and thus ollow the CCSARP. Examples orthis category are: ‘Erm, excuse me, I would like to enter , erm, the, the room? ’ (SA learner, Scenario 5) or ‘I really like you to complete it i you could fnd the time.’(native speaker, Scenario 11).

Conventionally indirect requests

Conventionally indirect requests contain, as their name indicates, a conven-tionalized linguistic element that is commonly used to make a request, but theinclusion o which makes the illocutionary orce less transparent and thereoresotens the impact o the request on the interlocutor. Consequently, the hearerneeds to be aware that modal verbs such as ‘can’ are commonly employed inrequest utterances to trigger some kind o action on the hearer’s part and not

just to enquire about the hearer’s ability to perorm a certain task. FollowingTrosborg (1995) and Warga (2004), the subcategories o conventionally indi-rect requests used in this study are: Suggestory ormula , availability , prediction ,

permission , willingness and ability .Suggestory ormulae can be realized through dierent structures, some o

which may be specifc to a certain language. What these structures have incommon, however, is that the illocutionary intent o the request utterance isphrased as a suggestion. There is only one example or this strategy in my data,namely ‘I can’t come today. Let’s meet tomorrow.’ (AH learner, Scenario 6).

Other suggestory ormulae commonly used in English are ‘How about lendingme some o your records? ’ and ‘Why don’t you come with me? ’ (Trosborg, 1995,p. 201; my emphasis).

Conventionally indirect requests in the availability category address theinterlocutors’ possible other commitments by enquiring about their temporalavailability. Examples ound in the data are ‘So, erm, have you still , er, time beore you y to explain it to me maybe?’ (SA learner, Scenario 15) and ‘Have

you got any time over the next two days to get together with me?’ (native speaker,

Scenario 15). By choosing this strategy, speakers also show considerationtowards their interlocutors, since they provide them with a possible reason toreject the request – lack o time.

Request utterances in the prediction category are requently employed by speakers to distance themselves rom the request by ormulating the utter-ance in an impersonal way, or example, ‘Excuse me, is it possible to see you

within the holidays? ’ (SA learner, Scenario 8) or ‘Is there any chance that we




can meet another time? ’ (native speaker, Scenario 6). Requests in this cat-egory are oten used by lower status interlocutors towards higher status inter-locutors, as their content signals that the hearer is in a position to predict

probabilities.Utterances that employ permission draw the attention to the speakers them-

selves since they are the ocus o the request, or example, ‘Erm, excuse me,sorry, could I get through , please?’ (SA learner, Scenario 5) and ‘Could I borrow those books that you are using, please? ’ (native speaker, Scenario 10). Thespeakers soten the illocutionary orce o the request by clearly conveying tothe interlocutors that they are in the position o power to grant permission. Ascan be seen in the examples, the illocutionary orce can be urther reduced by

including downtoning devices, such as the politeness marker.By using conventionally indirect requests that ocus on the interlocutor’swillingness , speakers indicate that they are aware that no obligation exists onthe hearer’s part to carry out the desired act, or example, ‘Would you mind moving our meeting a bit?’ (SA learner, Scenario 6) and ‘Would you mind flling in a questionnaire or me?’ (native speaker, Scenario 11). In keeping withTrosborg’s (1995) coding scheme, request utterances in this category may alsobe embedded in expressions o appreciation, hope and so on, or example, ‘It would be great i you could bring them in tomorrow or me.’ (native speaker,Scenario 10).

Requests concentrating on the hearers’ ability address their mental or phys-ical capacity to perorm the action reerred to in the utterance, or example,‘Lucy, I’m sorry, could you please, erm, fll in, erm this questionnaire or com-plete it or me?’ (SA learner, Scenario 3) or ‘Neil, can you open the window orme please? ’ (native speaker, Scenario 9). As the examples show the illocution-ary orce can again be decreased by the use o downtoning devices, such aspoliteness markers or past tense modals.

Non-conventionally indirect requests

Non-conventionally indirect requests constitute the least direct category o request utterances. Although they were originally divided into two subcategor-ies, mild and strong hints, my coding scheme ollows later studies on hints inrequests (Achiba, 2003; Warga, 2004; Weizmann, 1993) and combines all thehints into one category. Examples ound in the data include ‘ Erm, guys? Sorry ?’(SA learner, Scenario 14) and ‘ Excuse me ’ (native speaker, Scenario 5). As hintsare the least transparent orms o requests, they can take the interlocutorlonger to decode than the more direct and obvious strategies, such as hedgedperormatives or locution derivable requests. Compared to direct and conven-tionally indirect requests, hints are also more likely to be misinterpreted or not recognized as a request.



Methodology 89

4.4.3 Codn catos qst modfcaton

In the previous section I have introduced the request strategies that I have

used in the present study to examine participants’ request utterances. Theclassifcation o these request strategies according to the dierent directnesscategories makes it possible to determine how the learners and native speak-ers decreased – i at all – the illocutionary orce o their requests’ head acts.

Apart rom the selection o a particular request strategy, speakers can urtherdecrease or increase the orce o their requests by using internal and/or external modifers . The categories o my classifcation scheme or internal and externalmodifcation are based on House and Kasper (1987), Blum-Kulka, House andKasper (1989b) and Trosborg (1995).

Following the aorementioned rameworks, I distinguish two types o internalmodifers, downgraders , which are employed to soten the illocutionary orce o the requests, and upgraders , which are used to increase the impact o the request.Modifers belonging to the ormer type can urther be subcategorized as lexical orsyntactic . Table 4.5 contains descriptions and examples o the lexical downgradersthat were ound in the participants’ data, while Table 4.6 comprises defnitionsand examples o syntactic downgraders that were employed by the participants.

While the lexical downgrader categories in Table 4.5 tended to ollow more the

CCSARP’s (1989) ramework, the ollowing syntactic categories in Table 4.6 arebased to a larger extent on Trosborg’s (1995) taxonomy. As a result o Trosborg’sintroduction o the categories tentative and appreciative embedding , it has to benoted that instances included in my category o ‘conditional clause’ are morerestricted than in the CCSARP coding manual. This means that conditionalclauses that orm part o embedded structures such as ‘I wonder i’ or ‘I wouldappreciate it very much i’ are not counted in the conditional clause category.

While Tables 4.5 and 4.6 contain descriptions o internal modifers that

were used to decrease the illocutionary orce o a request, Table 4.7 providesdefnitions and examples o internal modifers that were used by the partici-pants in the present study to increase the illocutionary orce o the request by emphasizing certain elements o their request utterances.

The second modifer category that I will be investigating in the current study is that o external modifcation. External modifers are supporting state-ments that are used by speakers to persuade the hearer to carry out thedesired act, while internal modifers are lexical and syntactic devices that areemployed by the speakers to modulate their request utterance (Trosborg,1995). In addition to the external modifers employed in Blum-Kulka, Houseand Kasper’s (1989a) and Trosborg’s (1995) rameworks, I introduced andadded three urther external modifers in this study, as none o the exist-ing categories seemed to ft the modifers used by my participants’ request

which I categorized as appreciator , smalltalk and considerator (see Table 4.8 ordetailed description).




Tabl 4.5 Overview o internal modifers: lexical downgraders

Nam FnctonExampla (op, lanntal, scnao/ssson)

Downtoner sentence adverbial that is used toreduce the orce o the request

Could I maybe have some o them or could you bring acopy or something?

(SA, G, 4/1)Politeness

markeremployed by the speakers to bid or

their interlocutors’ cooperationCould you open the window a

little bit, please ?(SA, F, 1/1)

Understater adverbial modifer that is employed todecrease the imposition o the

request by underrepresenting theproposition o the request

Can you speak up a bit , please?(SA, A, 7/3)

Past TenseModals

past tense orms such as could insteado can make the request appear morepolite

Proessor Jones, could you showme the direction to the Trent Building?

(SA, C, 2/1)Consultative

Deviceused to consult the interlocutor’s

opinion on the proposition o therequest

Erm, Lucy, would you mind flling in this questionnaireor me?

(SA, C, 3/2)

Hedge adverbial that is used by the speaker tomake the request more vague Is it possible i we can arrange ameeting during the holidayssomehow ?

(SA, M, 8/1) Aspect progressive orm o verb that is used

deliberately by the speakerI was wondering i maybe you

could give them to metomorrow?

(SA, H, 10/2)Marked

Modality might and may make the request

appear more tentative.Excuse me, may I just pass? (SA,

C, 5/2)

Note : a All examples are taken rom participants’ requests made as a response to various MET scenarios.

Tabl 4.6 Overview over internal modifers: syntactic downgraders

Nam FnctonExampl (op, lan ntal,scnao/ssson)

ConditionalClause

employed by speakers todistance themselves rom the

request

I would like to ask, i you could maybefll in the questionnaire?

(SA, B, 11/2) AppreciativeEmbedding

used by the speakers topositively reinorce the request internally by stating theirhopes and positive eelings

Excuse me, it would be really nice i you would fll out this, that questionnaire.

(SA, I, 11/3)

TentativeEmbedding

employed by the speaker tomake the utterance appear

Sorry, Lucy, erm, I really got problems with this questionnaire and I

Continued



Methodology 91

Tabl 4.6 Continued


less direct and to showhesitation

wondered i you might fnd some timeto help me flling it in?

(SA, D, 3/3)

Tag question used to downtone the impact o the request by appealingto the interlocutor’s consent

I don’t suppose you could point me inthe direction o some suitable ones,could you ?

(Native speaker, scenario 4)

Negation employed by speakers todowntone the orce o the

request by indicating theirlowered expectations o therequest being met

Phil, you couldn’t open the window orme, please?

(Native speaker, scenario 9)

Tabl 4.7 Overview over internal upgraders

Nam Fncton

Exampl (op, lan ntal,

scnao/ssson)Intensifer adverbial modifer that

stresses specifcelements o the request

I don’t eel like I could, erm, have ameeting with you now because I’ve got such a high ever and I really need to goto bed.

(SA, B, 13/3)

TimeIntensifer

employed to emphasizethe temporal aspect o the speakers’ request

Erm, hello, I’m sorry but I have a urgent appointment at my dentist. Can wemeet tomorrow?

(SA, I, 6/1)

TimeIntensifer +Intensifer

used to urther heavily reinorce the urgency o the request

So, could you please, erm, give me somearticles that you may have? It’s very urgent .

(SA, C, 4/1)

Expletive used by the speakers tocommunicate theirrustration with anelement o the request

Erm, sorry, Owen, I can’t or the lie o me understand this bloody postmodernism in art article. Could you, do you think you could explain it to me beore you go home?

(SA, A, 15/2)Overstater exaggerated utterances

that orm part o therequest and are employedby the speakers tocommunicate their needo the request being met

Um, I’m in desperate need o material ormy essay. Would you be so kind as tocollect some articles or me?

(AH, Scenario 4)




Tabl 4.8 Overview o external modifers


Alerter linguistic device that is used to get the interlocutor’s attention;precedes the Head

Er; excuse me; hello; Peter (various)

Preparator short utterance that intends toprepare the interlocutor or therequest; can ollow or substitutethe Alerter

May I ask you a avour? (SA, F, 3/3)

Head the actual request Do you know where the Portland Building is?

(SA, E, 12/3)Grounder provides an explanation or therequest

Erm, unortunately, I really don’t understand this topic here

(SA, E, 15/3)Disarmer used to pre-empt the

interlocutor’s potentialobjections

I know you are really busy but maybe you’ve got some minutes or me.

(SA, B, 11/3)Imposition

Minimizeremployed to decrease the

imposition o the request I will return them immediately, the

next day. (SA, B, 10/3)Sweetener employed to atter the

interlocutor and to put theminto a positive mood

I think you are the perect person to

do it (SA, G, 3/1)

Promise o Reward

the requester oers theinterlocutor a reward orulflling the request

I would fll in yours [the questionnaire] as well, i you need one, one day

(SA, G, 3/3)Smalltalka short utterance at the beginning

o the request that is intended toestablish a positive atmosphere

Good to see you (SA, B, 12/2)

Appreciatorb usually employed at the end o the

request to positively reinorce it

That would be very nice (SA, H, 6/1)

Consideratorc employed at the end o therequest; intends to showconsideration towards theinterlocutor’s situation

Only i you’ve got the time o course (SA, A, 15/2)

Notes : a Coner also Malinowksi’s (1949) concept o ‘phatic communion’.b The appreciator is quite closely related to the internal modifer appreciative embedding, but is used

external to the head act whereas appreciative embedding is used within the head act.c This category is similar to Achiba’s (2003) Option givers, which is, however, not defned or its

location.

In this chapter, I have introduced the participants (in Section 4.2) and thedata collection methods and procedures (in Sections 4.3 and 4.4). I have alsodescribed the transcription techniques that I employed and the coding cat-egories that I used or the analysis o the request utterances. In Chapter 5, I

will analyse and discuss the results o the investigation o learners’ and native



Methodology 93

speakers’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness. The fndings o the study examining participants’ productive pragmatic ability will be analysed and dis-cussed in Chapters 6, 7 and 8.

Notes

1 This meant that students who had taken part in previous student exchange pro-grammes that lasted several weeks while they were at grammar school, or thosethat had worked as au pairs were excluded rom the present study.

2 According to data gathered by the German Bundesagentur ür Arbeit (FederalEmployment Agency ) or 2006, the percentage o women enrolled in translation/interpreting degrees programmes ranged rom 58 to 76 per cent (Bundesagenturür Arbeit, 2006, p. 5).

3 As a result o the Bologna declaration o 1999 signed by 29 European countriesincluding Germany, the German higher education sector is at the time o writingundergoing a signifcant change. The aim o the Bologna declaration is to‘creat[e] convergence’ in European higher education, thus making it easier tocompare degrees across countries. The introduction o new distinct undergradu-ate and postgraduate qualifcations is a cornerstone o the declaration. As aconsequence, many German universities are introducing Bachelor and Master

degrees to meet the requirements o the declaration. Whereas it previously tookstudents on average about 5–6 years to obtain their frst degree in Germany (Egeln and Heine, 2006), the new Bachelor degrees will enable students to obtaintheir frst qualifcation ater three years, thus making the length o the transla-tor/interpreter programme at the IFA college the norm rather than theexception.

4 Two complete versions o the questionnaire can be ound in Appendix A.5 The written MET instructions can be ound in Appendix B.6 For an in-depth linguistic discussion o the term ‘Politeness’ as lay concept

(‘Politeness 1’) and abstract academic term (‘Politeness 2’) see Eelen (2001) and Watts (2003).

7 Request utterances assigned to this category can dier somewhat rom one clas-sifcation scheme to another (c. or example, Woodfeld, 2008).



Chapter 5

Development o Pragmatic Awareness

5.0 IntroductionThis chapter presents the results o the investigation into participants’pragmatic and grammatical awareness. The fndings o the investigation intolearners’ productive pragmatic abilities in requests will be analysed and dis-cussed in Chapters 6, 7 and 8. The data or the present chapter were elicited

with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) video-and-questionnaire task andsubsequent semi-structured interviews. In order to examine the development o the pragmatic and grammatical awareness o the study abroad learners,

their data were collected twice: at the beginning o their stay and shortly beore they returned home.

In the ollowing, I will investigate the eect o the SA learners’ sojourn instudy abroad context on the development o their pragmatic and grammat-ical awareness by comparing their error recognition scores (i.e. whether they correctly identifed pragmatic and grammatical errors in scenarios that con-tained these inelicities) and their error rating scores (i.e. how they scored theerrors on the scale), to that o the AH learners and English native speakers.

The ormer will be analysed and discussed in Section 5.1 and the latter inSection 5.2. In Section 5.3, I will present the fndings o the interview dataconcerning participants’ awareness o their own rating behaviour. The inter-

view data that provide insights into the SA learners awareness o their own L2development will then be discussed in Section 5.4.

5.1 Error Recognition

I conducted two dierent analyses o the participants’ mean error recognitionscores. The frst analysis corresponds to Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998)and Niezgoda and Röver’s (2001) investigation and reers to the frst questionon the questionnaire, namely whether the individual scenario was appropri-ate/correct or not. Due to the large number o participants in Bardovi-Harligand Dörnyei’s study, it was not possible or the researchers to conduct post-hoc



Development o Pragmatic Awareness 95

interviews with their respondents (Dörnyei, personal communication,October, 2001). Thereore, their examination o the participants’ ability todetect a pragmatic or grammatical inelicity in the video-and-questionnaire

task had to be solely based on assuming that i participants marked an error ina scenario containing a pragmatic or grammatical violation, they had in act noticed the correct error type, that is, a pragmatic inelicity in a scenario that contained a pragmatic error.

As I was able to interview my participants about the nature o the error typein the individual scenarios, I was in a position to determine whether they hadindeed detected the errors that had been planted in the scenarios. To dis-tinguish the two investigations o the participants’ error recognition scores,

the results that are exclusively based on the questionnaire data without any verifcation (and are in keeping with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s [1998] andNiezgoda and Röver’s [2001] methodology) will henceorth be called uncorrected results , while the results that are based on the questionnaire and inter-

view data will be reerred to as corrected results .

5.1.1 Uncoctd o conton

Table 5.1 displays the participants’ uncorrected mean error recognition resultsbased on the participants’ response to the frst question o whether they per-ceived a scenario to be appropriate/correct or not. Scores close to ‘0’ indicatethat the participants thought that the scenarios did not contain an error andscores close to ‘1’ indicate that the participants thought that the scenarioscontained an error.

One-way analyses o variance (ANOVA) show that the SA learners and thenative speakers recognized signifcantly more errors in scenarios containinga pragmatic inelicity than the AH group in Germany. These results are sche-

matically illustrated in Figure 5.1.

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Pragmatic error recognition (uncorrected)

SA learners session 1 SA learners session 2 AH learners Native Speakers

Figure 5.1. Participants’ error recognition o pragmatic errors (uncorrected)



Tabl 5.1 Participants’ error recognition (uncorrected)

M F

Scnaos SA1 SA2 AH E SA1,AH,E SA2,AH,E

pragmatic 0.86 0.95 0.71 0.97 14.243*** 21.682***grammatical 0.77 0.93 0.98 0.97 9.324*** 1.586controls 0.31 0.27 0.55 0.20 9.508*** 12.879***

Note :

Groups: SA1: Study abroad learners session 1

SA2: Study abroad learners session 2

AH: At home learners

E: English native speakers

* p< 0.05, ** p< 0.01, *** p< 0.001a t-test is one-tailedb The post hoc test Gabriel was used, ‘/’ indicates signifcant dierences between the groups




A paired- sample t-test that compared the SA learners’ grammatical scores which were elicited shortly ater the learners arrival in England and shortly beore they returned home, confrmed that the score o the second data col-

lection session was signifcantly higher than the one o the frst session (seeTable 5.1). Thus, the results o the uncorrected grammatical error recogni-tion scores show an increase in the SA learners’ grammatical awareness romSession 1 to Session 2.

In order to investigate whether the participant scores or the scenarios con-taining a pragmatic and grammatical error were signifcantly dierent, I con-ducted our paired sample t-tests that are presented in Table 5.2.

The results show only signifcant dierences in the awareness o grammat-

ical and pragmatic inelicities or the AH learners who recognized consider-ably more grammatical than pragmatic errors, 0.98 and 0.71 respectively. Thissupports Håkansson and Norrby’s (2005, p. 156) fnding that ‘a high level o grammatical competence does not necessarily presuppose a high level o prag-matics.’ Dierences in the uncorrected error recognition scores or the SA group in Session 1 and Session 2, as well as or the native speaker participants

were not signifcant.The results o the analyses o variance or the control scenarios (i.e. those

scenarios that contained neither a pragmatic nor a grammatical inelicity) ur-ther indicate that the learning environment has a considerable impact on thelearners’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness. The AH group marked a sig-nifcantly higher amount o errors in scenarios that did not contain an erroro either type than the English native speakers and the SA learners in both,the frst and the second data collection session (Session 1: F (2,50) = 9.508,p = 0.000; Session 2: F (2,50) = 12.879, p = 0.000). The SA learners’ scoresor the control scenarios in Sessions 1 and 2 were not signifcantly dierent (t = 0.899, d = 15, p = 0.192).

Tabl 5.2 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and grammatical errors(uncorrected data)

MPamatc scnaos

MGammatcal scnaos

t a

Pamatc and ammatcal os

SA1 SA2 AH E SA1 SA2 AH E SA1 SA2 AH E

0.86 0.95 0.71 0.97 0.77 0.93 0.98 0.97 1.029 0.567 5.775*** 0.192

Notes :





* p< .05, ** p< .01, *** p< .001;a t-test is one-tailed




5.1.2 Coctd o conton

The analysis so ar has ocused on the uncorrected error recognition scores,

that is, the scores that are solely based on the questionnaire data, which I com-puted in order to contrast the results o my participants with those o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) and Niezgoda and Röver’s (2001) ESL and EFLlearners. Table 5.3 shows the ‘corrected’ results, that is, those results that alsocontain the participants’ explanations about which o the two error types,pragmatic or grammatical, they had detected in the individual scenarios. Inthis table ‘1’ is the good answer, thereore values close to ‘1’ show that a highnumber o participants identifed the correct error type in scenarios contain-ing an error or in the case o the our correct control scenarios marked that they did not contain an error.

The analysis o the corrected error recognition scores reveals that althoughthe individual item type mean scores are lower than the uncorrected meanscores, which means that some o the students mistakenly thought that a prag-matic scenario contained a grammatical error and vice versa, the one way ana-lyses o variance still show the same signifcant dierences between the threegroups. The SA learners in Session 1 (0.84) and Session 2 (0.95) and the nativespeakers (0.95) recognize signifcantly more pragmatic inelicities than the

AH learners (0.61), as shown in Figure 5.3. This is an important result withregard to the validity o the data that solely relies on the questionnaire, as it indicates that small variations o the group scores do not change or obscurethe overall picture that has emerged o how the three groups perormed inrelation to each other.

The results o the corrected error recognition analysis urther reveal that the SA groups’ recognition score or pragmatic inelicities ater about onemonth’s stay in England (0.84) is already signifcantly higher than the AH

SA learners session 1 SA learners session 2 AH learners English native Speakers

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Pragmatic error recognition (corrected)

Figure 5.3. Participants’ pragmatic error recognition (corrected)



Tabl 5.3 Participants’ error recognition (corrected)

M F


pragmatic 0.84 0.95 0.61 0.95 15.256*** 23.812***grammatical 0.69 0.89 0.96 0.96 8.704** 1.611controls 0.67 0.73 0.45 0.80 9.508*** 12.879***

Note :





* p< .05, ** p< .01, *** p< .001a t-test is one-tailedb The post hoc test Gabriel was used, ‘/’ indicates signifcant dierences between the groups




learners score (0.61) as shown by an independent t-test or both groups (t = 2.856,d = 31, p = 0.008). This is a surprising result considering that the memberso the AH learner group are proessional language learners who had studied

English intensively or more than 2 years at a higher education institution andattended a high number o language classes per week. It may seem unlikely that the SA learners, o whom only six studied a subject related to English,

would have achieved a similar or higher recognition score or the pragmaticerrors i they had taken part in the study beore coming to England. However,it has to be noted that these dierences between the AH learners and the SA learners in Session 1 could have existed beore the SA learners were exposedto the target language in the study abroad context because no test was admin-

istered to the SA learners prior to them leaving their home country.The benefcial impact o prolonged exposure to the target language onlearners’ pragmatic development is, however, shown by the fndings o apaired-sample t-test that compared the SA group’s corrected pragmatic errorrecognition scores rom the frst data collection session (in October or early November) with those o the second session (in May o the ollowing year).The results reveal that the SA learners detected signifcantly more pragmaticinelicities ater 9 months in the study abroad context than ater 1 month(0.95 and 0.84 respectively), a fnding that the t-test o the uncorrected errorrecognition scores had already alluded to in the orm o a tendency. Quiteremarkably, the SA learners’ mean score or pragmatic violations in the secondsession was the same as the corresponding native speakers’ score. Thereore,the data suggest that ater a 9-month stay in the English-speaking study abroadcontext, the SA learners have achieved a native-speaker-like awareness o prag-matic inelicities in simple, everyday interactions in an educational context asexamined by the video-and-questionnaire task.

The fndings o the uncorrected error recognition scores that compared the

grammatical scores o the SA, AH learners and the native speakers are alsosupported by the analysis o the corrected scores. The results o the correctedgrammatical analysis are schematically presented in Figure 5.4.

The SA learners recognized signifcantly ewer grammatical inelicities inthe frst session than the AH learners or the English native speakers. At theend o the SA learners’ stay in Great Britain, however, they had increased theirreceptive grammatical awareness considerably so that the one way analysiso variance no longer revealed any signifcant dierences between the three

groups. This increase in their grammatical awareness is also corroborated by the results o a paired-sample t-test comparing the SA learners’ scores romSession 1 (0.69) and Session 2 (0.89) which shows that the dierence in thisgroup’s scores is signifcant (see Table 5.3).

As or the uncorrected error recognition scores, I conducted our paired-sample t-tests to examine whether the participant groups’ corrected errorrecognition scores or pragmatic and grammatical inelicities indicated a




signifcant dierence in their ability to detect one error type over the other.The results are presented in Table 5.4.

The t-tests reveal that the dierences in the error recognition scores areonly signifcant or the AH learners. Members o this group detected signif-

cantly more grammatical than pragmatic inelicities, a result which corrobo-rates the fndings o the t-tests based on the uncorrected error recognitionscores discussed above.

The analyses o the control scenarios conducted with two one-way ANOVAs yielded the same statistical results as the control scenario analyses that werebased on the uncorrected results (Session 1: F (2,50) = 9.508, p = 0.000;Session 2: F (2,50) = 12.879, p = 0.000), since in both cases the participants had


Grammatical error recognition (corrected)

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Figure 5.4. Participants’ grammatical error recognition (corrected)

Tabl 5.4 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and grammatical errors(corrected data)

M

Pamatc scnaos

M

Gammatcal scnaos

t a



0.84 0.95 0.61 0.95 0.69 0.89 0.96 0.96 1.296 1.279 5.057*** 0.198

Notes :





* p< 0.05, ** p< 0.01, *** p< 0.001a t-test is one-tailed




correctly identifed that the scenarios did not contain an error o either typeand had thereore ticked the box or ‘yes’ on the questionnaire.

The investigation o the participants’ ability to detect the pragmatic and

grammatical inelicities that were tested by the video-and-questionnaire instru-ment has shown that both the uncorrected and corrected results corroborateBardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) fnding that a sustained sojourn in theL2 context promotes learners’ pragmatic awareness. Consequently, the resultso the German SA, AH and English native speaker group comparisons do not support Niezgoda and Röver’s (2001) study in which the Czech EFL learn-ers outperormed the ESL learners regarding the recognition o pragmaticinelicities.

5.2 Error Ratings

5.2.1 Uncoctd o atn

The investigation o the SA learners’ error recognition scores in Section 5.1 hasshown that SA learners’ ability to detect pragmatic and grammatical inelicitiesimproved during their stay in the study abroad context. This section examineshow the SA learners assessed the severity o the two error types in comparisonto the native speakers and AH learners and whether their sojourn in Englandinuenced their rating behaviour. To enable me to compare my results withthose o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) original and Niezgoda and Röver’s(2001) ollow-up study, I again frst conducted an analysis o the data based only on the questionnaire responses, that is, the ‘uncorrected’ error mean ratingscores. Table 5.5 reers to the participants’ scores on the six-part-scale rangingrom ‘not bad at all’ to ‘very bad’, with the least severely rated error coded as ‘1’,

and the most severely rated error as ‘6’. Participants who had not detected anerror in a scenario that contained one were assigned a ‘0’.

Similarly to the results o the participants’ error recognition scores, one-way analyses o variance revealed signifcant dierences in the groups’ error rat-ings. The AH learners’ mean score o the scenarios containing a pragmaticinelicity (2.72) was signifcantly lower than the scores o the SA group inSession 1 and Session 2, (3.67 and 4.25 respectively), and the native speak-ers’ score (3.59). Thus, the uncorrected error rating scores suggest that even

shortly ater their arrival in England, the SA learners perceived pragmatic vio-lations to be signifcantly more serious than the AH learners in Germany anddisplayed a rating behaviour similar to that o the native speakers.

Similar to the fndings in 5.1.2 that showed that the SA learners already identifed a signifcantly higher number o pragmatic inelicities about onemonth ater their arrival in the study abroad context than the AH learners,this result could merely indicate that the SA learner group already had a



Tabl 5.5 Participants’ error ratings (uncorrected)

M F


pragmatic 3.67 4.25 2.72 3.59 6.277** 13.318***grammatical 2.17 2.20 4.09 2.37 11.166*** 12.676***controls 0.96 0.81 1.37 0.40 8.612** 11.877***

Note :





* p< .05, ** p< .01, *** p< .001a t-test is one-tailedb The post hoc test Gabriel was used, ‘/’ indicates signifcant dierences between the groups




higher awareness o pragmatic issues beore they even let Germany. Whilethis explanation cannot be discounted, as no data were collected rom theSA learners in Germany, I do not think that it is likely that the SA learn-

ers would have outperormed the proessional language learners in the AHgroup beore coming to England.

Instead, I would suggest that the SA learners’ score is the result o an initialleap in their pragmatic awareness that was triggered by the high amount o exposure to and use o the target language in the target environment dur-ing the learners’ frst 4 weeks in England. A similar increase in pragmaticcompetence during the frst month o learners’ stay in the second languagecontext was also observed by Matsumura (2003). The frst data collection ses-

sion took place about 1 month ater the participants had arrived in England,since times, dates, access to a computer and venues had to be negotiated.This month was a linguistically intense experience or members o the SA group in which they had a very high amount o contact with English nativespeakers as they had to arrange their accommodation, set up bank accounts,register with the university, select appropriate courses and attend lecturesand seminars.

Consequently, the learners had not only been exposed to the target lan-guage by observing interactions around them or by being addressed, but werealso orced to use English to communicate. A number o studies have indi-cated that a high amount o input (Bacon, 2002; Barron, 2003; Billmyer, 1990;Ellis 2002; House 1996; Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985) and output (Freed,Segalowitz & Dewey, 2004; Swain 1993, 2000) positively inuences languagelearners’ profciency in their L2. The SA learner scores or the frst sessioncould be regarded as corroborating those fndings. The learner and nativespeaker scores or scenarios containing a pragmatic error are schematically illustrated in Figure 5.5.


Pragmatic error rating (uncorrected)

2.4

2.8

3.2

3.6

4

4.4

Figure 5.5. Participants’ rating o pragmatic errors (uncorrected)




The results o a paired-sample t-test comparing the SA participants’ uncor-rected pragmatic error rating scores in Session 1 and Session 2 show that the SA learners assigned scenarios containing a pragmatic error signifcantly higher

scores at the end o their stay than they did at the beginning. As even theirinitial score was higher than that o the native speakers, the urther increasesuggests some sort o ‘hypersensitivity’ towards pragmatic violations. A simi-lar phenomenon was also ound by Carrell and Konneker (1981) and Tanakaand Kawade (1982), whose learner participants distinguished more politenesslevels than their native speaker counterparts.

The data indicate that the sojourn in the target environment has made theSA learners aware that native speakers perceive pragmatic errors to be more

serious than grammatical ones. By recognizing this and assigning pragmaticscenarios high severity scores, the SA learners have shown that they have madeconsiderable progress.

The analyses o variance or the uncorrected ratings o scenarios containinga grammatical inelicity also reveal signifcant dierences between the partici-pant groups. These results are schematically illustrated in Figure 5.6.

Similar to the scores or scenarios including a pragmatic error, the AHlearners’ grammatical score (4.09) is signifcantly dierent rom those o theSA learners in Session 1 (2.17) and Session 2 (2.20) as well as the native speak-ers’ (2.37). This means that while the AH learners perceived the scenarioscontaining a pragmatic inelicity to be less serious than the SA learners andthe native speakers, they perceived scenarios containing a grammatical errorto be more serious than the SA learners and native speakers. Table 5.6 displaysthe results o paired-sample t-tests comparing the uncorrected pragmatic andgrammatical error scores o the participant groups.

The t-tests show signifcant dierences in the individual groups’ assessment o the severity o errors in scenarios containing a grammatical and pragmatic


Grammatical error rating (uncorrected)

2

2.4

2.8

3.2

3.6

4

4.4

Figure 5.6. Participants’ rating o grammatical errors (uncorrected)




inelicity. The English native speakers and the SA learners in Session 1 andSession 2 assigned scenarios including a pragmatic violation signifcantly higherseverity scores than those scenarios that contained grammatical inelicities. Incontrast, the AH participants perceived the errors in scenarios containing gram-matical violations to be more serious than those including a pragmatic inelicity.

These results are in complete agreement with Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s(1998) fndings, which showed that their ESL learners in the United Statesperceived scenarios containing a pragmatic inelicity to be signifcantly moreserious than scenarios containing a grammatical error. Bardovi-Harlig andDörnyei’s EFL group in Hungary also displayed the same rating behaviouras my AH group in Germany and assigned the grammatical scenarios (3.68)higher scores than the pragmatic ones (2.04), thus indicating an inverse errorseverity assessment based on the learning environment. Bardovi-Harlig and

Dörnyei have called this inverse rating behaviour o the ESL and EFL par-ticipants ‘mirror eect’ (Dörnyei, personal communication, April, 2003). Thisrelationship is schematically represented in Figure 5.7.

Similarly to Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) and my SA learners,Niezgoda and Röver’s ESL participants also rated the inelicities in the prag-matic scenarios (2.40) signifcantly higher than those in the grammaticalones (1.89). The uncorrected pragmatic (3.07) and grammatical (3.08) errorrecognition scores o their EFL learners, however, were not signifcantly di-

erent. Thus, the results o all three learner groups in the L2 context showedthat they scored scenarios containing a pragmatic violation more severely than grammatical ones. Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s and my fndings ur-ther evidence an inverse severity assessment o the ESL/SA and EFL/AHgroups based on their learning context. This supports Bardovi-Harlig andDörnyei’s notion that a prolonged stay in the target environment primesthe learners’ awareness o pragmatic inelicities. In an EFL environment,

Tabl 5.6 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and grammatical errorrecognition scores (uncorrected data)

MPamatc scnaos

MGammatcal scnaos

t a



3.67 4.25 2.72 3.59 2.17 2.20 4.09 2.37 3.215** 6.463*** 3.368** 3.741**

Notes :




E: English native speakers* p< .05, ** p< .01, *** p< .001a t-test is one-tailed




the ocus is on grammatical violations, whereas in an ESL environment, it is on pragmatic violations. This appears to be supported by Kasper’s (1982)assessment o the German educational system in which she noted that ‘or-mal correctness is given high priority in the German school context’ (p. 109).

Whether the learner groups are conscious o their rating behaviour will beexplored in section 5.3 in which the interview data regarding this question

will be examined.

5.2.2 Coctd o atn scos

The results o the uncorrected mean error rating scores have shown that there were no signifcant dierences in the SA learners’ and native speakers’ rating

behaviour o scenarios containing pragmatic or grammatical inelic ities. The AH learners, however, displayed an inverse severity assessment o the two scen-ario types. Table 5.7 presents the results o the corrected error rating scores.

As in Table 5.5, the data presented in Table 5.7 also reer to the six-point rat-ing scale in which the least serious error is coded as ‘1’ and the most seriouserror as ‘6’. In this table, however, only those errors are included that werecorrectly identifed by the students in the subsequent interviews. Participants

who detected and rated a ‘wrong’ error, or example, a pragmatic inelicity in

a scenario containing a grammatical violation were assigned a ‘0’.Similar to the results o the uncorrected error ratings, the participants showa statistically signifcant dierence in their severity assessment o pragmaticand grammatical inelicities. Even ater only about 1 month in England, thedierences between the SA learners and the AH learners are already signif-cant, which could perhaps be due to a leap in pragmatic awareness duringthe frst ew weeks or the SA learners’ stay in the L2 context as suggested

4.25

2.72

3.63

2.042.2

4.09

1.89

3.68

0

1

23

4

5

SA2(uncorrected)

AH(uncorrected)

original US original Hungarian

Pragmatic error Grammatical error

Figure 5.7. Comparison o participants’ ratings based on environment

Note : The original data represent Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) fndings.



Tabl 5.7 Participants’ error ratings (corrected)

M F


pragmatic 3.57 4.20 2.31 3.44 8.666** 17.078***grammatical 1.88 1.94 3.95 2.21 11.358*** 13.134***

Note :Groups: SA1: Study abroad learners session 1




* p< 0.05, ** p< 0.01, *** p< 0.001a t-test is one-tailedb The post hoc test Gabriel was used, ‘/’ indicates signifcant dierences between the groups




in Section 5.2.1. Regarding the pragmatic inelicities, the dierence in thegroups’ rating behaviour is even more pronounced ater the SA learners havespent 1 academic year in the target environment. Figure 5.8 shows the groups’

ratings o pragmatic and grammatical errors.The results o the one-way analyses o variance show that the SA learners and

the English native speakers perceived pragmatic violations to be more severethan grammatical inelicities, while the AH learners perceived grammaticalerrors to be more severe than pragmatic ones. Thus, like the uncorrectederror rating results, the corrected error rating scores support Bardovi-Harligand Dörnyei’s (1998) fnding o the mirror eect which reers to the inverserating behaviour o the learners in the ESL and EFL context. Figure 5.9 shows

the mirror eect or the uncorrected and corrected results o the German SA and AH participants.The fgure reveals that both – uncorrected and corrected – error rating

scores o the SA and AH learners show that the SA learners perceived thepragmatic inelicities to be considerably more serious than the grammatical

1.6

2

2.4

2.8

3.2

3.6

4

4.4

Pragmatic error ratings (corrected) Grammatical error ratings (corrected)


Figure 5.8. Participants’ ratings o pragmatic and grammatical errors (corrected)

4.25

2.72

4.2

2.312.2

4.09

1.94

3.95

0

1

2

3

4

5

SA2

(uncorrected)

AH

(uncorrected)

SA2 (corrected) AH (corrected)

Pragmatic error Grammatical error

Figure 5.9. The mirror eect




errors, whereas the AH learners perceived the grammatical violations to bemore severe than the pragmatic ones. To examine whether these dierencesin the participants’ rating behaviour were also statistically signifcant, I con-ducted our paired sample t-test or the individual groups’ error rating scores.The results are presented in Table 5.8.

The t-tests show that the dierences in their rating behaviour were signif-cant or all participant groups. This again corroborates the fndings o theuncorrected error rating analysis in Section 5.2.1. The native speakers andSA learners in Session 1 and Session 2 considered the pragmatic inelicitiesto be signifcantly more serious than the grammatical errors. The AH learn-ers, however, assigned the grammatical errors higher severity scores than thepragmatic ones.

The discussion o the participants’ uncorrected and corrected mean error

rating scores has shown that even ater about 4 weeks in the study abroad con-text, the SA learners display a similar rating behaviour as the English nativespeaker participants and perceive the pragmatic violations to be more severethan the grammatical ones. By the end o the SA learners’ stay in Great Britain,members o the study abroad group considered pragmatic inelicities to beeven more serious than at the beginning o their sojourn in the L2 context. Inthe ollowing sections I will discuss the participants’ interview data to examine

whether they were aware o their rating behaviour and whether the SA group

members were conscious o their own L2 development.

5.3 Participants’ Awareness o Own Rating Behaviour

In the frst data collection session, which took place about 4 weeks ater they had arrived in England, 11 o the 16 SA learners explicitly stated that they

Tabl 5.8 Paired sample t-tests between pragmatic and grammatical errorrecognition scores (corrected data)

MPamatc scnaos

MGammatcal scnaos

t a



3.57 4.20 2.31 3.44 1.88 1.94 3.95 2.21 3.406** 7.104*** 3.516** 3.287**

Notes :




E: English native speakers* p< .05, ** p< .01, *** p< .001a t-test is one-tailed




thought pragmatic errors, which they reerred to as ‘politeness mistakes’, weremore serious than grammatical inelicities. The remaining fve chose not tocomment on dierences in the severity o pragmatic and grammatical viola-

tions or were more vague in their responses like Tamara and Peter, who each just concentrated on one part o the question.

I think being polite is important especially when you are talking to teachers,but it is also important to observe some politeness rules with riends. I youkeep a riend waiting or hal an hour and don’t apologize he might not be

your riend or much longer. (Tamara, Session 1)

English is not my mother tongue and rom my own experience as a non-

native speaker I think that some grammar mistakes, like putting inorma-tion into the plural, are not serious mistakes. (Peter, Session 1)

Instead o contrasting the two error types, Tamara and Peter only ocused onone aspect o the question about how serious they perceived pragmatic andgrammatical errors to be. Their decision, along with that o the three otherSA learners’ whose responses were rather vague or who did not comment at all,can be interpreted in a variety o ways. Their reluctance to discuss this issue

might indicate that they were not conscious o their own rating behaviour.They might not have thought about their eelings regarding these particularerror types in a contrastive way beore and thereore decided not to answerit directly. Another possible reason why they chose not to voice their opinionmight be that they had only met me on that day, and although I had been ine-mail contact with the participants beore, they simply might not yet have elt comortable enough in my presence to open up more in the interview andshare their views with me. Since the interview replies o the AH learners, whodid not know me either beore they took part in the study, also tended to berather short, this possibility cannot be disregarded.

At the end o the SA participants’ stay in Britain, 15 o the 16 learnersstated that they perceived pragmatic errors to be more serious than grammat-ical ones. Only one did not comment at that time. The ollowing statementsregarding pragmatic and grammatical inelicities were made by SA learners

who commented on them in both sessions and give indications as to the rea-sons or their opinions. The frst extract is rom Eva’s frst interview:

I think politeness mistakes are ar more serious than grammar mistakes. Youalways make grammar mistakes, especially i you are not a native speaker o the language you are using. I believe that native speakers don’t regard gram-mar mistakes as serious, but i you make them you oten think that they areterrible mistakes to make and believe they are ar worse than they really are.So you constantly think about how to avoid these mistakes and how to say it correctly and then you still make the mistake in the end. The impression




is the important thing and quite a lot o what is communicated is actually communicated through body language and your ace anyway. So this andchoosing the appropriate words is ar more important than, or example,

saying something which is quite short and to the point, but which might beperceived as impolite, because it is so short and to the point and the wordsthat you choose are rather harsh. (Eva, Session 1)

Eva’s interview data indicate that she is conscious o her rating score assess-ment that pragmatic inelicities are more serious than grammatical violations.Her explanation on why she eels this way suggests that her attitude is basedon personal experiences. She has learned that even with careully planning,

grammatical errors cannot always be avoided and observes that while nativespeakers do not seem to pay much attention to these errors, learners tend to worry about them very much. Trying to use appropriate expressions and usingpolite body language is ar more important to her. She is even more explicit about this ater 9 months in the target environment:

I think politeness mistakes are worse than grammar mistakes. You can makegrammar mistakes, but you can remedy a lot by being polite. Even i I makegrammar mistakes, people will still be able to understand me and as long asI am polite, the communication ows nevertheless. I have experienced that English native speakers do not think that grammar mistakes are that bad.I think that exchange students who are learning the language have higherexpectations than English native speakers and think they have to be perect.(Eva, Session 2)

In her second interview, Eva’s responses are more defnite and it is obviousthat her opinion regarding the severity o pragmatic and grammatical inelic-

ities is ounded on personal experiences. She has observed that interlocutorsnot only possibly can but actually ‘will be able to understand [her]’ when shemakes a grammatical error and that they do not perceive them to be seriousmistakes. Her fnal point regarding learners’ pursuit o perection in the L2 is

very interesting since one o the other learners, Andreas, made a similar com-ment about having to realize that the expectations pertaining to one’s skills inthe L2 will not always be met:

Right at the beginning, I tried to make no mistakes but now I’m morerelaxed and say to mysel ‘well, just say what you want’. You are going tomake a ew mistakes and that’s something that you can’t avoid doing, but they [native speakers] will understand what you mean and it’s ok. And i

you don’t make mistakes, you’ll say things that do not sound idiomatic andthey will know that you are not a NS anyway. I lowered my expectations.(Andreas, Session 2)




Iris also perceived grammatical errors to be less serious than pragmatic viola-tions in both the frst and second data collection session:

I think politeness mistakes are more serious than grammar mistakes,because i I consider my own situation here at the university, i a go to a pro-essor and add an ‘-ing’ where it doesn’t belong, he will still understand me,but he might regard it as impolite i I don’t say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. So Ithink it is more o a problem i you violate politeness rules than grammarrules. (Iris, Session 1)

I think politeness mistakes are worse than grammar mistakes, because i youmake a grammar mistake the meaning will still come across and the polite-

ness will be there as well. But i the politeness is diminishing, then that’ssomething to do with the person’s character and not something to do withlearning. So, that’s worse in my opinion. (Iris, Session 2)

Similarly to Eva, Iris also mentions that grammatical inelicities do not tend toobscure the content o the message and that native speakers will still be ableto grasp the meaning o what was intended to be said. She makes a very impor-tant point in her second interview, namely that she believes that impolite or

less polite utterances reect on the speakers’ character and not on their statusas language learners. Her comment corroborates the fndings o a number o studies which have argued that pragmatic inelicities are oten attributed toa speaker’s personality or behavioural aws rather than their profciency inthe oreign language (Barron, 2003; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Harlow,1990; Kasper, 1990; Thomas, 1983). Natalie approaches the issue rom a ratherunique perspective. While an undergraduate student in Germany, she sup-ported hersel by working as a German as a Foreign Language teacher. Thisenabled her to also draw and reect on her own experiences as a languageteacher when answering the question. She observed:

Grammar mistakes don’t bother me. I think violations o a society’s rulesregarding polite behaviour are ar more serious. I worked as a teacher o German as a oreign language in Germany and grammar mistakes simply occur when you learn a oreign language. But I also fnd it important toteach students how to behave without upsetting anyone because this causesnegative reactions rom other people and that is ar worse. As a teacher or

German as a oreign language, I fnd it crucial to tell students i they violatesocial norms. It is vital to tell them what to do dierently and to make themaware that grammar is not the only important thing and that social rules are

very important, too. (Natalie, Session 1)

Natalie’s response in the frst interview does not only show that she is con-scious o the dierent severity scores she awarded pragmatic and grammatical




errors, but that she is also aware that it is the rules o the individual soci-ety which determine whether something is regarded as polite or impolite.In addition, she makes a connection between committing politeness viola-

tions and upsetting the eelings o an interlocutor, a point which the other SA learners were not as explicit about. Her response suggests that she is aware o a connection between profciency in oreign language and the ability to useappropriate expressions. Based on her experiences she is convinced that it isthe teacher’s responsibility to correct their students’ pragmatic errors and totell them how to conduct themselves in the target environment. In the secondinterview Natalie concentrates more on the profciency level o the individuallearner:

I think politeness mistakes are more serious than grammar mistakes. I thinkthat the severity o a politeness mistake increases with the profciency levelo a language learner. I you are highly profcient in a oreign language,people expect you to be able to express yoursel in the oreign languageappropriately. (Natalie, Session 2)

The increasing expectations regarding the use o appropriate expressions inthe second or oreign language were also expressed by one o the native speakerparticipants who supports Natalie’s assessment. Her statement occurred as aresult o her explanation why she had rated Scenario 10 as incorrect/inappro-priate in which Anna asks another student to show her the way to the library by saying ‘Tell me the way to the library’:

It’s nasty. You should say ‘Can you tell me how to get to the library, please?’.It’s a politeness strategy. I someone said that to me, I’d give him the answer,because you are a nice person. But you walk away thinking ‘That was really

horrible. Who do they think they are, ordering me around like that?’ I it was someone who didn’t have a very good grasp o the language, you couldget away with that, because you know, it is just a bold, simple statement. I somebody had just come over rom France last week and they were work-ing rom a phrase book, they would be alright with that. But anybody whoknows how to speak a language properly, should know to at least say ‘please’or ‘can you tell me how to get to the library’ rather then just ordering you.But you’d be inclined to give a bit more leeway to somebody who wasn’t a

native speaker, but only i they were like brand new. I it was somebody like you [the interviewer] who speaks English pretty well, than you’d still be like‘Well, that’s not very nice. That’s not very polite ordering me around a bit.’I think anybody who said something like that is a bit impolite. Unless it wassomebody you knew and they ran up to you and say ‘Hi. Tell me how to get to the library’ [participant says it in an out-o-breath way] and you couldtell, they were in a terrible rush, then you’d just send them o and later on




you would say ‘Oh, god, what was wrong with you? Where were you going insuch a hurry?’ But otherwise you can’t say it like that, it’s not polite. (Ashley,20 years)

When I asked the native speaker group whether they would assess pragmaticinelicities dierently depending on whether it was their interlocutor’s frst orsecond language, 14 o the 20 group members stated that they thought prag-matic violations by L2 learners were less serious than those by ellow nativespeakers. Molly’s statement is representative o the majority o the nativespeakers’ views. Her response reers to Scenario 11 in which Peter does not apologize to his riend or being late. She explained that she would be very

annoyed i a riend treated her like this and then went on to say:

I it were a non-native speaker I probably weren’t so annoyed, because insome languages or some cultures that wouldn’t be considered rude. I it

were a non-native speaker than I would make a lot more allowances and youknow think, dierent language, dierent culture. What strikes me as beingextremely rude might not be at all rude or someone else so i it wasn’t anative speaker I’d be a lot more relaxed. (Molly, 20 years)

Her statement shows that she is aware o dierent cultural perceptionsregarding politeness, similar to Natalie’s observation that the society deter-mines what is regarded as polite or not. This also indicates that she and theother 13 native speakers consider dierent frst languages as mitigating ac-tors in intercultural communication. O the remaining six native speakers,two were rather vague in their response, two chose not to comment and twostated that since politeness in a oreign language was taught at school, learn-ers should use it: [Regarding politeness] ‘everyone gets taught – I can say

“please” in loads o dierent languages, but I can’t say much else. So i youget taught the words to start with then I think you should use them’ (Dale,25 years).

Concerning the general severity o pragmatic and grammatical errors, 16o the 20 native speakers stated that they perceived pragmatic violations tobe more serious than grammatical inelicities, which suggests that they wereaware o their own rating behaviour. One o the native speakers did not com-ment on the two error types and three said that they elt the severity o a prag-

matic or grammatical inelicity depended very much on the context and that they thereore could not generalize. The number o AH students who com-mented on their eelings pertaining to pragmatic and grammatical errors wasquite small, only 8 out o 17 shared their views with me.

A reason or this might be that in contrast to the other SA learner par-ticipants who had been in e-mail contact with me prior to taking part in theresearch, or the members o the native speaker group who either knew me




socially or attended one o my classes, only two o the AH learners had met mebeore they took part in the study. Five o the eight learners who commentedstated that they considered pragmatic inelicities to be more salient than

grammatical ones, whereas three thought the inverse and perceived gram-matical errors to be more serious. In comparison to the other participants’replies the statements o the AH group members also tended to be very to thepoint without much – or in some cases any – additional explanations. The ol-lowing opinions represent the two dierent views expressed by the Germansin Germany:

I think politeness mistakes are more serious than grammar mistakes.

Grammar mistakes can happen i you are a language learner, but evenlanguage learners should know that politeness is important. (Hannah,24 years)

Grammar mistakes are more serious then politeness mistakes. (Katrin,24 years)

In the next section I will examine the SA learners’ observations pertainingto their own L2 development and investigate whether they became aware o cross-cultural dierences during their stay in the target environment.

5.4 SA Learners’ Awareness o Their Own Pragmatic Development

In the fnal data collection session, shortly beore their return home, I askedthe SA learners how they assessed their own development in the L2. The mem-bers o the group diered in their willingness to share their observations

regarding their own L2 development and their study abroad sojourn with me.Four chose not to comment on the issue. O the remaining 12 learners, some

were very open, commenting reely and elaborating on various points, whereasothers were more restrained and only gave a very brie response. The replieso the ormer participants indicated that they were very conscious o their lin-guistic development. Only a small number o SA learners, however, reerredto pragmatic issues in their response. This is not very surprising, since thequestion was deliberately reerring to their language development so as not to

inuence their responses. As a result, the learners predominantly ocused on those elements o thelanguage that they had been assessed on at school and were thereore amil-iar with, such as grammar, vocabulary and listening comprehension. Alllearners who commented on areas other than pragmatics reported gainsin at least on one o these areas, although not all o them thought that they had increased their profciency in the same area. For example, some elt




more competent in the use o grammar at the end o their stay, while otherselt that their vocabulary had increased. Exposure to the target languagein the study abroad context was also one o the issues that was raised by

the SA learners regarding their L2 development. Ulrike’s experiences showhow being exposed to naturally occurring talk and participating in inter-actions with native speakers in the study abroad context acilitated her L2development:

Compared to when I frst came here in September 2001, my comprehen-sion has improved. I can now even understand people who come romSouth London or Manchester. I think this is because I met and became

riends with English students in January. Beore that, I only knew otherexchange students and thought that my English was ok, as I understoodthe programmes I watched on TV and also understood everything duringthe lectures. But when you meet and make riends with English NSs, yousuddenly learn many words like ‘bird’ and ‘bloke’ that you wouldn’t learnotherwise and this increases your comprehension. I had never heard the

word ‘bloke’ beore I met the English NSs. I am now able to ollow conver-sations easily when we go out at night – as long as the music isn’t too loud.(Ulrike, Session 2)

That contact with native-speaking age peers o the learners’ L2 in the study abroad context can be benefcial or learners’ listening comprehension andacquisition o inormal vocabulary is also supported by Viktoria’s reectionson her L2 development, which in addition also contain interesting obser-

vations regarding her construction o her sel-image1 in the study abroadcontext:

I decided to come here or one academic year because I really wanted tolearn the language properly and not just understand the terminology usedin lectures, but also have conversations with English NSs in which you couldshow that you are a witty person. I think one o the saddest and most rustrat-ing things when you start communicating in a oreign language is that youlose your personality because you cannot express yoursel in the same way as

you do in your native language. That was one o the hardest things or me at the beginning, not being able to show that I am a humorous person because

I oten didn’t understand them well enough or couldn’t express mysel the way I wanted to. I am really glad that this is getting better now (. . .) At the beginning o the academic year, I had to use more basic vocabulary toexpress mysel. Since I started spending more time with English NSs, how-ever, my vocabulary increased and now I sometimes even speak English withother Germans because an English expression came to my mind. (Viktoria,Session 2)




Humour is a difcult subject or second language learners, since they not only have to decide whether a joke or humorous response is appropriate ina situation and have to have the necessary words at their disposal, they also

have to correctly determine that what they consider to be unny will also beregarded as an appropriate topic or a humours remark in the target commu-nity. Consequently, the ability to express humour involves a number o skillsin the L2. Being able to partake in humorous conversations can also have arapport building eect with native speakers (Davies, 2003).

O the 12 SA learners who commented on their L2 development, only twoexplicitly ocused on issues concerning politeness and pragmatics. Bernd andNatalie both concentrated on the use o polite language and commented on

changes pertaining to their pragmatic awareness and their productive prag-matic skills.

I was quite surprised that the English are so polite. They use ‘thank you’quite a lot and they hold the door open or you. So I think that’s very specifcor English people. I’ve noticed that I’ve become more polite mysel and Ialso acquired some polite phrases like ‘Cheers’ and ‘Beg your pardon’. Youacquire everyday speech that you don’t learn at school. As I worked in thecaé on campus I had quite a lot o contact with English native speakers andlearned quite a bit rom them. I guess my development would have been di-erent i I hadn’t had this job. (Bernd, Session 2)

I think I am less polite now than I was at the beginning o my stay herein England. When I frst came here, I was very cautious and did not want to oend anyone by being impolite. I think that I tended to use expres-sions like ‘Would you be so kind’ back then, but now I believe that I know

when you can be less polite or use dierent expressions. I listened to and watched English native speakers and that’s how I learned what to say and

when. (Natalie, Session 2)

Bernd’s and Natalie’s comments indicate that both o them seem to haveundergone the same learning process. First, they observed that their own out-put diered rom that o the native speakers they encountered in their every-day lie interactions in the study abroad context. Then, ater having noticedthe dierences, they modifed their own language use accordingly to adapt tothe norms o the L2. Thereore, their behaviour seems to ollow the process

outlined by Schmidt (1993, 1995) in his noticing hypothesis. Like Ulrike and Viktoria, both learners also stated that interactions with or observations o native speakers were important or their learning process. That exposure tothe target language through contact with native speakers can play a decisiverole in learners’ L2 development has also been observed in previous research(Adolphs & Durow, 2004; Dörnyei, Durow & Zahran, 2004; Lussier, Turner &Desharnais, 1993; Yager, 1998).




Ater 9 months in England, however, the SA learners’ ability to detect gram-matical inelicities had improved so drastically that dierences between thethree groups’ scores were no longer signifcant.

The results o the participants’ error rating revealed that the scores o the SA learners and native speakers were signifcantly dierent rom thoseo the AH learners in the frst and second data collection sessions. Whilethe SA learners and the native speakers considered pragmatic violations tobe more serious than grammatical ones, the AH learners rated grammat-ical inelicities to be more severe than pragmatic ones. This inverse ratingbehaviour o the SA and AH learner groups based on the learning environ-ment had frst been observed by Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998), who

had termed this phenomenon ‘the mirror eect’ (Dörnyei, personal com-munication, April, 2003). Thus, the results corroborate Bardovi-Harlig andDörnyei’s fndings regarding ESL and EFL learners’ severity perception o the two error types.

A comparison o the SA learners’ error severity ratings shortly ater theirarrival and at the end o their stay showed that their pragmatic scores increasedsignifcantly rom the frst to the second data collection session. Since the SA scores were higher than those o the native speakers, the SA learners’ rat-ing behaviour suggests hypersensitivity towards pragmatic violations, whichCarrell and Konneker (1981) and Tanaka and Kawade (1982) also noticed intheir learner groups. A comparison o the SA learners’ rating o grammaticalinelicities in the two sessions revealed no signifcant changes.

The analysis o the SA learners’ interview responses regarding their sever-ity assessment o the two error types has shown that the majority o them, 11out o 16, perceived pragmatic violations to be more serious than grammat-ical ones in the frst data collection session. Shortly beore their return home,the number o SA learners who thought that pragmatic inelicities were more

serious than grammatical inelicities increased to 15. This indicates that themajority o SA group members were aware o their rating behaviour rom thefrst session on and all but one were conscious o it at the end o their stay.

When asked about their own L2 development in the study abroad context,12 SA learners stated that they thought their L2 skills had improved duringtheir stay. The majority o them, however, mainly reerred to their vocabu-lary gains and improvements in their listening comprehension. Four learnersexplicitly talked about the positive impact that contact with native speakers

had on their L2 development. Two o those also shared observations o a prag-matic nature and explained how they had become aware o the way nativespeakers interacted and as a result had either acquired new expressions oradjusted their language use to adapt to that in the target environment. Thus,the statements o these two SA learners seem to be congruent with Schmidt’s(1993, 1995) noticing hypothesis regarding the development o pragmaticawareness.




This chapter has provided the fndings o the investigation into SA learners’development o pragmatic awareness during their sojourn in the L2 environ-ment. The ollowing three chapters will investigate SA learners’ productive prag-

matic development by ocusing on their use o request strategies (in Chapter 6)and internal and external request modifcation (in Chapters 7 and 8).

Note

1 The importance o being able to use humour or L2 learners’ sel-image in thestudy abroad context was also emphasized by Pellegrino Aveni’s (2005) SA par-

ticipants in Russia.




the dierent sections o a SA learners’ column signiy the number o strategy types that were frst employed by the learners in a data collection session. Forexample, Eva used two dierent strategies in Session 1, then employed onenew strategy that she had not used previously used in Session 1 in Session 2

and fnally employed two additional strategies in Session 3 that she had not used in either Session 1 or Session 2 beore. The individual strategies that werefrst used by the learners in the three data collection sessions are presented inTable 6.1. This section exclusively ocuses on SA learners’ initial employment o a strategy in the data. The requency with which the SA learners employeda particular request strategy type will be discussed in analysed in detail in theindividual request strategy sections (i.e. in Sections 6.3–6.5).

Tabl 6.1 SA learners’ frst use o individual request strategies in the MET data

A B C D E F G H I

Imperative 1 1

Unhedged perormative 1Hedged perormative 1 1 1 2 1 Want statement 1 3Locution derivable 1 1 2 1 3 1 2 1Suggestory ormula Availability 1 3 1 3Prediction 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1Permission 3 3 1 1 1 1 Willingness 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 Ability 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1Hint 1 2 1 3 1

Note : The individual letters o the alphabet in the horizontal line are the initials o the SA learners.

012345

678

9

A n d r e a

s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o

p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d

r i k I r i s

session 1 session 2 session 3

Figure 6.1. First occurrence o request strategies in individual SA learners’ data



Request Strategies 125

The results show that the average number o dierent strategy typesemployed by the SA learners in Session 1 was fve. By using seven strategiesHendrik employed the highest number o strategies in the frst session and Eva

used the lowest with two. This was a somewhat surprising result, as Hendrik was a Business Studies student and Eva was enrolled in an English degree andthus the reverse fnding would probably have been expected. However, whileHendrik appeared to be highly goal oriented concerning what he wanted toachieve during his study abroad sojourn and was also very interested in seekingout opportunities to communicate with ellow students, Eva seemed quieterand talked about how difcult she ound it to adjust to lie in the study abroadcontext in the interviews. Hendrik did not employ any new strategies in the

subsequent data collection sessions, which was not unexpected in view o thehigh number o strategies that he used in Session 1. Eva, however, employedat least one previously not-used strategy in Session 2 and 3. This increase instrategy use coincided with her spending more time with English age peersand starting a relationship with one o them.

Apart rom Hendrik only one other SA learner, Franziska, did not useany new strategies in the subsequent data elicitation sessions. Similar toEva, Franziska had also experienced some difculties settling in at the newuniversity and country, although she appeared more confdent and alsomore at ease with the language as she had had some American riends inGermany. In contrast to Eva, however, she did not make riends with Englishage peers.

Out o the seven SA learners that employed a request strategy in Session 2or 3 that they had not already used in the frst data collection session, our(Andreas, Bernd, Eva and Iris) were English honours degree students and one

was studying a somewhat related subject (Greta – American Studies). It couldthereore be suggested that another actor that inuences learners’ initial use

o new request strategies in the study abroad context may be whether they are studying the language o the country or their degree or not. Due to thelimited number o SA learners in either category in the present sample, any fndings in that respect would need to be considered tentative.

Concerning the individual strategy types that were used by the SA learners,the data show that the conventionally indirect strategy ability was the only strategy that was employed by all learners in the frst data collection session.This is then ollowed by the conventionally indirect strategy prediction that

was frst used by seven o the SA learners in the frst and one SA learner in thesecond data collection session. The initial occurrence o the other strategy types in the data collection sessions was more varied. For example, the direct strategy locution derivables was also used by a total o eight SA learners, but only fve o them used this strategy in Session 1.

These results suggest that individual learner dierences seem to play animportant role in SA learners’ use o request strategies, as the number and




type o strategies frst used in the three data collection sessions tended to vary rom participant to participant.

6.2 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Request Strategies

The previous section concentrated on the initial occurrence o request strat-egies in the SA learners’ data. In this section, I will compare the employment o request strategy types by the SA learners with that o the AH learners andnative speakers to examine similarities and dierences in their request strat-egy use. This analysis is intended to provide a frst broad picture o the indi-

vidual groups’ preerences with regard to individual request strategy types. A detailed analysis and discussion o the three groups’ use o individual request strategies according to the variables status and imposition and also includingexamples o the data can be ound in Sections 6.3–6.5. Figure 6.2 schemat-ically presents the total participant numbers1 that used the individual request strategies in per cent.

The results show that the conventionally indirect strategy ability, which was employed by all SA learners in the frst data collection session, is also the

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Hints

Ability

Willingness

Permission

Prediction

Temporal Availability

Suggestory Formula

Want Statements

Locution derivables

Performatives

Imperatives

SA learners AH learners English native speakers

Figure 6.2. Comparison o groups’ request strategy use




only request strategy that was used by every AH learner and native speaker.This fnding is in agreement with House and Kasper (1987), Otçu and Zeyrek(2008) and Woodfeld (2008), who noted that this strategy seems to be a very

routinized request orm, and Warga (2004) who reerred to it as the stand-ard request orm. Generally, the results reveal that request strategies belong-ing to the major category conventionally indirect requests were employed by the highest number o learners and native speakers. This fnding showingthe popularity o conventionally indirect requests supports previous researchby Kasper (1981), House and Kasper (1987), Blum-Kulka and House (1989),Trosborg (1995), Hill (1997), Rose (2000), Hassall (2001), Hendriks (2008)and Woodfeld (2008).

Locution derivables was the only direct strategy employed by more than50 per cent o the SA learners and native speakers, whereas our convention-ally indirect strategies (prediction, permission, willingness and ability) wereused by more than 50 per cent o the SA learners and native speakers.

Not surprisingly, non-conventionally indirect requests were used by a highernumber o native speakers than SA and AH learners, although the data alsoshow that the SA learners employed them considerably more than the AHlearners. This fnding corroborates the results o Hill’s (1997) and Warga’s(2004) studies and is dissimilar to Trosborg’s (1995) results, who noted anearly equal amount o non-conventionally indirect requests in the least prof-cient learners and her native speakers. A reason or this dierence in learners’and native speakers’ use o this strategy might be that or learners direct andconventionally indirect strategies may appear to be the ‘saer’ options, sincethe illocutionary orce is stronger and more transparent in these request types.

As a consequence, the ultimate aim o the utterance is thereore more likely tobe correctly inerred by the interlocutor.

Overall, the results show that the SA learners used a much wider range o

request strategies that is comparable to the range o strategies used by thenative speakers. In contrast, the majority o learners in the AH group employeda considerably more limited range. Only two strategies, willingness and ability,

were employed by more than 50 per cent o them. This is a somewhat worryingresult, as the AH learners in the present study were training to be translatorsand had studied English intensively or more than two years prior to takingpart in the research. At the same time, however, it is a positive result or the SA learners, as it suggests that the study abroad sojourn benefts learners’ prag-

matic development in that it can help them to acquire a broader repertoire o request strategies.The analysis and discussion o learners’ and native speakers’ request strategy

use so ar has only ocused on the participants’ employment o request strat-egies, without explicitly taking the context o the request situation into con-sideration. In the ollowing Sections (6.3–6.5), I will investigate participants’use o individual request strategies according to the variables status (equal




status interlocutor/higher status interlocutor) and imposition (low/high), toexplore any changes in strategy use by the SA participants during their stay inthe study abroad context.

6.3 Direct Strategies

6.3.1 Impatvs

Imperatives are the most direct orms o a request. Thus, the illocutionary orce behind the speaker’s utterance is very transparent and the aim o the

request can be decoded quickly, leaving little to no room or misunderstand-ing on the hearer’s part.Due to their high level o directness, imperatives are generally perceived to

be rather impolite and are rarely used in everyday conversations (Levinson,1983; Mey, 2001). They can, however, be regarded as appropriate in certaincontexts, such as a) in interactions between higher status and lower statusinterlocutors, or example, teacher/pupil, colonel/sergeant, mother/child,b) in interactions in which the request carries a low degree o impositionbetween interlocutors with a high degree o amiliarity such as siblings, orc) in cases o emergency (Bublitz, 2001; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989; Trosborg,1995).

Based on the aorementioned acceptable conditions in which a request may be phrased as an imperative, I expected that the majority o these direct utter-ances would be employed by the participants in interactions with equal statusinterlocutors that involve a very limited imposition on the hearer. Learners’and native speakers’ employment o this strategy in the MET is presented inTable 6.2.

As had been anticipated, all imperatives were used in equal status, lowimposition request interactions. Using an imperative in a conversation with ahigher status interlocutor or in a high imposition request directed at an equalstatus interlocutor would have violated the acceptable circumstances in whichan imperative may be used, as has been set out by Rintell and Mitchell (1989),Trosborg (1995) and Bublitz (2001). This suggests that all participants wereaware that the use o imperatives is generally only considered appropriate in arather limited number o circumstances. The results urther show that impera-

tives were not employed very requently by either the SA or AH learners or theEnglish native speakers.The analysis o the SA learners’ data reveals that the our requests contain-

ing an imperative were made by only two participants, Bernd and Iris, as illus-trated in Figure 6.3.

Iris used an imperative once in Session 1 and then employed the convention-ally indirect strategy ability in both subsequent sessions in the same scenario.




Bernd employed two imperatives in Session 1 and only one in Session 2. Hesubsequently used the conventionally indirect strategy willingness and non-conventionally indirect hints. While Iris employed an imperative in a scenario,

where none o the native speakers also used an imperative (Scenario 7), Berndemployed imperatives in scenarios in which at least one English native speakeralso used them (Scenarios 9 and 14).

Tabl 6.2 Use o imperatives according to status and imposition

Low mposton,qal stats

Low mposton,hh stats

Hh mposton,qal stats

Hh mposton,hh stats

%a Raw b % Raw % Raw % Raw

SA1 8 (3) – – – – – –SA2 3 (1) – – – – – –SA3 – – – – – – – – AH 4 (2) – – – – – –E 7 (4) – – – – – –

Notes :

Groups: SA1: SA learners session 1

SA2: SA learners session 2


AH: AH learners

E: English native speakersa The percentage fgures reer to how oten imperatives were used per scenario o a contextual condition.

Thereore they were computed by dividing the number o instances that an imperative was employedin a contextual condition, or example, low imposition + equal status, by the our scenarios that consti-tute the condition x the participant number o this group, that is, or the SA learners employment o imperatives in Session 1: 3 / 4×9 = 8%.

b The raw data scores show the number o imperatives in each contextual condition. Thus, the highest rawdata fgure that could be achieved or each o the contextual conditions was 36 (SA learners), 52 (AHlearners) and 60 (native speakers).

2

11

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

A n d r e a

s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o

p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d

r i k I r i s

Session 1 Session 2 Session 3

Figure 6.3. SA learners’ use o imperatives




With regard to SA learners’ development in the study abroad context, theresults suggest that Iris appears to have become aware that imperatives donot seem to be avoured by native speaking age peers when asking ellow

students to speak up and thus modifed her request strategy use accordingly to the more standardized strategy ability. This change in strategy use canthereore be regarded as evidence o her increasing pragmatic skills in theL2. During his sojourn in the L2 context, Bernd also decreased his use o imperatives and began employing strategies that were used more requently by native speakers and other SA learners. This also indicates that the con-tact he had with native speakers in the study abroad context had a positiveimpact on his pragmatic development (see also his own comments on this in

Section 5.4).The discussion so ar has centred on the participants’ use o imperativesaccording to the variables status and imposition and SA learners’ develop-ment. I will conclude this section by providing examples o imperatives usedby all three participant groups and by addressing very briey how the illocu-tionary orce o the imperative was soten by the participants. The ollowingutterances are requests made by participants o all three groups which arerepresentative o the data in this category:

SA learners

Speak up, please. (Iris, Session 1)

Oh, come on, let me through. (Bernd, Session 1)

Michael, open the window, please. (Bernd, Session 2)

AH learners

Hey, Mike, open the window?

Please, let me through.

Native speakers

Open the window, will ya?

Hey, move out the way.

As the examples demonstrate, the majority o the request utterances that usedan imperative contained a linguistic downtoning device, such as the polite-ness marker please or the tag will ya . Downtoners are used in conjunction withimperatives to soten the illocutionary orce o the request (Labov & Fanshel,1977). Some o the requests were also preceded by the interlocutor’s namesor a orm o greeting, which will be discussed in depth under the category




interlocutor. Neither the AH learners nor the English native speakers usedunhedged perormatives in any o the scenarios.

While Hendrik used unhedged perormatives in the frst data collection ses-sion, he rerained rom doing so in subsequent sessions, and instead resortedto conventionally indirect requests or hedged perormatives that convey alesser degree o illocutionary orce. His change o strategies suggests that herealized that unhedged perormatives are not appropriate in the scenariosexamined by the MET and that he thereore sotened the illocutionary orceo his requests in the ollowing sessions. This indicates a positive development

with regard to his pragmatic skills in the L2 and is also in-line with Hill’sfndings (1997) that with increasing pragmatic competence learners begin todispreer unhedged perormatives and use strategies with lower illocutionary orce.

In contrast to unhedged perormative requests, hedged perormative

utterances contain a mitigating verb which precedes the perormative verb,thereby decreasing the orce o the request. The results regarding the use o unhedged perormatives, shown in Table 6.4, reveal dierences in partici-pants’ use o hedged compared to the previously discussed unhedged per-ormatives. While unhedged perormatives had only been employed twice by one member o the SA learner group, hedged perormatives were used con-siderably more requently by members o both learner groups. Signifcantly,hedged perormatives were again not used by the English native speakers.

This result is not entirely unexpected, however, as previous studies ocus-ing on German native speakers learning an L2 (e.g. House & Kasper, 1987;Kasper, 1981; Warga, 2004) ound that compared to English or Frenchnative speakers, the learners used a considerable higher amount o hedgedperormatives.

It is urther interesting to note that with the exception o one request that was made by an AH learner in a low imposition, higher status scenario, all

A n d r e a

s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o

p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d

r i k I r i s


2

0

1

23

4

5

6

Figure 6.4. SA learners’ use o unhedged perormatives




other hedged perormatives were employed in high imposition scenarios andthere to a higher degree in interactions with higher status interlocutors than

with equal status ones. This may appear to be surprising, since the conditionsin which the hedged perormatives were used by the learners should warrant a more tentative approach (and indeed the vast majority o request utterancesmade by both SA and AH group members in the high imposition scenarios areconventionally indirect in nature).

However, one possible explanation or this result could simply be transer o learners’ L1 strategies to their L2. Kasper’s (1981) and Warga’s (2004) studiesrevealed that, in contrast to French and English, hedged perormatives arerequently used in German and considered to be polite. This supports Fraser’s(1978) and Larina’s (2006) notion that the use o strategies that are consid-

ered to be appropriate in the same situation may dier in two languages, eveni as Blum-Kulka (1982) points out both languages possess a similar range o possible request orms. An alternative explanation could be that the use o hedged perormatives might simply be characteristic o L2 learners’ interlan-guage, as Hill’s (1997) Japanese learners’ displayed a higher use o hedgedperormatives with increasing profciency levels in English. While the secondexplanation or the SA and AH learners’ requent use o hedged perormativescannot be disregarded, I think that negative transer rom the Germans’ L1

is the more likely reason, especially since literal translations o the requestsmade by the Germans would be considered polite in their native language.Hedged perormatives were not only used more requently than unhedged

perormatives by members o the SA group, they were also employed by ahigher number o SA learners, as illustrated in Figure 6.5. While unhedgedperormatives had only been used by Hendrik, hedged perormatives wereused by six members o the SA group (Andreas, Bernd, Eva, Greta, Hendrik

Tabl 6.4 Use o hedged perormatives according to status and imposition




Hh mposton,hh stats

% Raw % Raw % Raw % Raw

SA1 – – – – 6 (2) 14 (5)SA2 – – – – 8 (3) 14 (5)SA3 – – – – 3 (1) 22 (8) AH – – 2 (1) 2 (1) 15 (8)E – – – – – – – –

Notes :


SA2: SA learners session 2SA3: SA learners session 3

AH: AH learners





Below are representative examples o requests containing hedged perorma-tives that were made by the SA and AH in the present study and show how thelearners mitigated the illocutionary orce o this direct strategy by also includ-

ing internal and external modifers.

SA learners

Erm, excuse me, but I think I have some problems with my essay. I didn’t fnd anything in the library and so I would ask, I would like to ask you, i you have maybe some material or me and it’s, erm, very urgent, because, erm, the deadline is in one week and so it would be very nice i you have something. (Bernd, Session 1)

Erm, I’m doing this project on such and such and erm, I, or that it’s really vital that you fll in that questionnaire and I wanted to ask you i you could just complete it now,so erm, because it’s really a central part o this project and that would be really kind.(Greta, Session 2)

Er, good morning, Mr Finn. Er, I have a question. I know we had a meeting this aternoon, er, but actually I eel a little bit ill. I have a cold, I think and I got a headache and so, I want to ask you, is it maybe possible that we rearrange this appointment to another day when I eel a little bit better? (Hendrik Session 3)

AH learners

So, erm, I have difculties to fnd articles and I would like to ask you to bring me some,as urgent, it’s quite urgent actually.

Excuse me, Proessor, I know, erm, I have to do this essay and I couldn’t fnd any articles, so may I ask you to bring some or me?

Sorry, proessor, I would like to ask you i we could meet during the holidays i I have any problems with my essay.

As the examples indicate, learners always employed internal and/or externalmodifers to mitigate the illocutionary orce o this direct strategy. Modifersthat were commonly used include, or example, alerters, past tense modals, i clauses, appreciators (e.g. that would be really kind ), downtoners (e.g. maybe) , andgrounders, (e.g. I couldn’t fnd any articles) , that will be discussed in more detailin Chapters 7 and 8 on internal and external request modifcation.

6.3.3 Locton dvabls

Locution derivables are the third most direct strategy in the category o dir-ect requests used in the present investigation. This strategy is, as Warga (2004)points out, very heterogeneous, since locution derivable requests only share




the characteristic that their ‘illocutionary intent is directly derivable rom thesemantic meaning o the locution’ (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989b, p. 279). Probably due to their heterogeneous nature and dierences in coding sytems2 used by

researchers, locution derivables, as defned by the CCSARP above, are only rarely ocused on in the existing literature. Table 6.5 presents the participants’use o locution derivable requests according to the situational variables statusand imposition.

The results show clearly that the native speakers and both learner groupsemployed the majority o locution derivables in situations involving a low impo-sition request. This indicates that the learners and native speakers displayeda very similar pragmatic behaviour in their use o this strategy pertaining to

the our contextual variables. Thus, they seem to have assessed the contextualconditions o the MET situations in the same way, which is a positive fnding.The data urther reveal that locution derivables were used slightly more re-quently in low imposition requests directed at an equal status interlocutor andthere exclusively in Scenario 12, which involves asking a riend or directions.However, while 67 per cent o the native speakers employed locution derivablesin this scenario and 46 to 56 per cent o the SA learners used this strategy inany one o the three data collection sessions, only 23 per cent o the AH learn-ers employed locution derivables in equal status, low imposition interactions.

A possible explanation or this fnding could be that the SA participants arelikely to have requently observed and perormed this particular request inthe SA context, as many students tend to ask or directions at a large university such as the one the study was conducted at. Thus, the SA learners might haveelt more confdent to use a direct strategy in this situation than the AH learn-ers who did not share the SA learners’ recent experience in that respect.

Tabl 6.5 Use o locution derivables according to status and impositionLow mposton,

qal statsLow mposton,

hh statsHh mposton,

qal statsHh mposton,

hh stats


SA1 11 (4) 3 (1) – – 3 (1)SA2 14 (5) 12 (4) – – – –SA3 14 (5) 6 (2) 3 (1) – – AH 6 (3) 4 (2) – – – –

E 17 (10) 8 (5) – – 2 (1)Notes :




AH: AH learners





The individual SA learners’ use o locution derivables in the three data col-lection sessions, presented in Figure 6.6, shows that eight o the nine learnersemployed this strategy at least once in one o the three data collection sessions.Thus, the data suggest that using locution derivables in the study abroad con-text seems to be typical or German learners o English as a whole and is not just

restricted to one or two individuals. The results also clearly show that in contrast to hedged perormatives, the number o locution derivables used by the individ-ual group members is very similar, ranging rom one to two per session.

As mentioned above, the majority o requests using this strategy weremade in low imposition interactions. However, two learners, Andreas andGreta, also employed locution derivables in high imposition scenarios,

where they were not generally used by the native speakers in this investiga-tion. Andreas employed the locution derivable in the frst session and sub-

sequently resorted to the conventionally indirect ability strategy. This couldbe regarded as positive pragmatic development on his part. Greta, however,employed her locution derivable request in a high imposition scenario inSession 3, whereas she had previously used more appropriate convention-ally indirect strategies in these scenarios. This shows that occasional slip-upscan still happen to language learners, even i they are otherwise perormingquite well in their L2.

The ollowing request utterances employing locution derivables are represen-tative o the learners’ and native speakers’ data that were elicited with the MET.

SA learners

Where is the Portland Building? (Iris, Session 1)

Excuse me, Proessor Jones, erm, where is the Trent Building? (Christoph, Session 2)

Hey, excuse me, Peter, where is the Portland Building again? (Franziska, Session 3)

21 1 1 1

21

21 1

21

21 1 1

2

0

1

23

4

5

6

A n d r e a

s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o

p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d

r i k I r i s

Session1 Session 2 Session 3

Figure 6.6. SA learners’ use o locution derivables




AH learners

Proessor Jones, how can I get to the Trent Building?

Erm, which way do I go to the Portland Building?

Native speakers

Excuse me, Proessor Jones, what’s the easiest way to get to the Trent Building, please?

Hiya, whereabouts is the Portland Building? How can I get there rom here?

As the examples above show, locution derivable requests used by the three par-ticipant groups are rather similar with regard to their structure. They tend to berather short and do not contain many external or internal modifers. Indeed,only the internal modifer alerter (e.g. excuse me, hiya, erm, Proessor Jones, Peter ) isrequently used by both learners and native speakers. This, however, is not unex-pected as the low imposition o a request asking or directions combined with theinormation in the MET scenarios that the participants’ next seminar is takingplace in the building they are enquiring about, means that it would be rather

unusual to provide a very long and detailed request utterance. Even though, Iris’srequest which is not mitigated in any way does seem more direct and orceulthan the other examples. This suggests that even a very limited amount o modi-fcation can have a considerable impact on whether an utterance may be consid-ered as somewhat inappropriate in a given context or not.

6.3.4 Want statmnts

Want statements is the least direct request strategy in the category direct

requests in the present study.3 The illocutionary orce o this strategy is, likein the other direct request strategy types, transparent to the interlocutor andcan be easily inerred. Similar to imperatives and perormatives, want state-ments are generally considered rather impolite in their unmitigated orm, orexample, I want to borrow your book (constructed). They can, however, also beregarded as appropriate and polite i their illocutionary orce is sotened by internal and external modifers, or example, I would like to borrow your book

please (constructed). Table 6.6 shows the participants’ use o want statements

according to the two variables status and imposition.The results show that compared to locution derivables and hedged peror-matives want statements were not very requently used by either o the twolearners groups. They were also only employed to a small extent by the nativespeaker group. The English native speaker participants in my study employed

want statements in scenarios involving a high imposition request. The use o a direct strategy in these contextual conditions may seem surprising, but as




employed a want statement in the fnal data collection session, as illustrated inFigure 6.7. The fndings thus seem to support the results o House and Kasper’s(1987) and le Pair’s (1996) studies in which want statements was also one o the

least employed request strategies by the learners and native speakers.The ollowing are examples o requests employing want statements that were

made by the participants. As none o the SA learners used this strategy in thesecond data collection session, the SA learners’ examples below represent allo the want statements made by this group.

SA learners

Erm, excuse me, I would like to enter, erm, the, the room? (Bernd, Session 1)Hi, erm, I’m doing this project and I need you to fll that in, this questionnaire, er, in

or me because otherwise I can’t fnish and it would be really nice i you could fll it in.It is a little bit lengthy, yeah, but I hope it would be fne. (Greta, Session 3)

AH learners

Hi, excuse me, I would like to get to the door, please.

I’ll need someone to explain these things to me.

English native speakers

I’m sorry to bother you, Proessor Jones. Erm, I’ve got this, this questionnaire and I’m,I really like you to complete it i you could fnd the time.

I’ve got this really important questionnaire. I’d really love it i you could fll it in or me.

The examples show that want statements were mainly ormulated with eitherthe verb ‘need ’ or a structure containing some variation o ‘(would)like’/‘love’ . It could be argued that the illocutionary orce o requests containing ‘need’ di-ers to a certain degree rom those containing ‘would like/love ’ and that there-ore these requests should not be assigned to the same category. Trosborg(1995), or example, used two subcategories ‘wishes ’ and ‘desires/needs ’ toaddress this. In the present investigation, I decided not to urther dierenti-ate want statements, as their inrequent use in the learner data did not seem

to warrant such an approach. As was the case in most o the other direct request strategies discussed inthe previous subsections, the majority o want statements were mitigated withinternal or external modifers to mitigate the orce o the request. Again alert-ers such as excuse me , hi, erm were used and past tense modals and lexical items,or example, would like , were employed that decrease the illocutionary orceo the request. This again shows the importance o evaluating the degree o




Like the native speakers, the SA learners in this study also did not use thisstrategy type in any o the three data collection sessions. This supports thefndings o previous studies by Kasanga (1998) and Warga (2004), whose learner

groups also did not employ this strategy in any o their requests. House andKasper (1987) and Trosborg (1995) noted a ew instances o the use o this ormulaby their learner participants, while Achiba (2003) ound a non-linear decreasingdevelopment in their use which is supported by Ellis’s (1992) results.

In my data, only one member o the AH learner group employed a sug-gestory ormula and this only once, namely ‘I can’t come today. Let’s meet tomorrow.’ in Scenario 6, in which the participants are prompted to ask a riend tomeet them on another day because they are not well. The use o the suggestory

ormula in the scenario involving the riend does not seem appropriate as theriend is very busy and even cancelled another meeting to see the participant,thus making it a high imposition scenario with an equal status interlocutor.Considering this context, the use o the suggestory ormula seems rather toobrusque in this scenario. This perception is urther aided by the relative brev-ity o the utterance and the absence o mitigating external or internal modi-fers. Thus, the employment o a suggestory ormula by one o the AH learnersdoes not indicate an advanced level o pragmatic competence compared to theother learners, but rather shows an instance o inappropriate language use.

This example also demonstrates the importance o examining the use o pragmatic strategies based on contextual variables, since otherwise increases inthe employment o certain strategy types may be seen as indicative o pragmaticcompetence, whereas they may in act be indicative o the exact opposite.

6.4.2 Avalablty

Requests using this conventionally indirect strategy ocus on the interlocu-

tor’s temporal availability. They thereore instantly provide the hearer witha possible excuse or not perorming the desired act, namely lack o time. AsLeech (1983) points out indirect requests such as the ones using availability ‘tend to be more polite (a) because they increase the degree o optionality,and (b) because the more indirect an illocution is, the more diminished andtentative its orce tends to be’ (p. 108). The use o this strategy by the threelearner groups according to the variables status and imposition is shown inTable 6.8.

The results reveal, that like imperatives and want statements, availability isnot very requently used by either the learners or the native speakers in thisinvestigation. That learners and native speakers used this strategy relatively inrequently was also noted by Warga (2004) in her cross-sectional develop-mental study. The data urther show that the learners and native speakersemployed this strategy exclusively in high imposition scenarios, which indi-cates that both learner groups assessed the contextual conditions in whichthey would employ this strategy in a similar way as the native speakers. This




is a positive result. However, while both learner groups only used availability requests in equal status/high imposition scenarios, the native speaker groupalso employed this strategy in interactions with higher status interlocutors inthe MET. Due to the very inrequent use o availability requests in situationsinvolving a higher status interlocutor by the native speakers and the limited

opportunities learners have to observe native speakers when making highimposition requests to proessors, learners’ non-use o this strategy in this con-text is not very surprising. The individual SA learners’ employment o thisstrategy type is shown in Figure 6.8.

The examination o individual SA learners’ use o the availability strategy reveals that this strategy was employed by our dierent SA learners in eitherthe frst or the fnal data collection session. Interestingly, none o the SA learn-ers used this strategy in the second data collection session. Instead, Daniel and

Tabl 6.8 Use o availability according to status and imposition




Hh mposton,hh stats


SA1 – – – – 6 (2) – –SA2 – – – – – – – –SA3 – – – – 6 (2) – – AH – – – – 8 (4) – –E – – – – 7 (4) 3 (2)

Notes :




AH: AH learners


1 11 1

0

1

23

4

5

6

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p h

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Figure 6.8. SA learners’ use o availability




Hendrik who had employed availability in the frst session resorted to one o the two strategy types that were used more requently by the other SA groupmembers and also the native speakers, ability and prediction. Regarding the

impact o the SA context on learners’ use o this particular strategy, no eect appears to be discernible. The ollowing utterances are representative o thelearners’ and native speakers’ use o availability requests in scenarios involvinga high imposition on the interlocutors’ part.

SA learners

Er, excuse me Robert I have, er, some some difculties with this concept and as I hear,

er, you, er, you got this pretty good actually. Since you’re leaving in two days it’s maybe a little late or you, but i you fnd the time to meet me, maybe tomorrow or this aternoon, that would be very nice because then I could work during the holidays on my own i I get it. (Hendrik, Session 1)

Man, I really have no idea about this concept, er, you know it, don’t you? So, erm,have you still, er, time beore you y to explain it to me maybe? (Daniel, Session 1)

Hey Lucy do you have maybe a moment or, to fll in the questionnaire? That would be so cool, because I really need that. Yeah, I would fll in yours as well i you need one,

one day. (Greta, Session 3)

AH learners

Um, sorry, I know you have a lot to do, but do you still have the time to fll in the questionnaire?

Erm, excuse me, but do you have some time beore you y home to explain me, to meet

me and explain me the concept, to explain the concept to me?

Native speakers

Lucy, I know you’re busy, but do you have the time to fnish this questionnaire or me?

Erm, there is a concept that I don’t understand in this. I don’t suppose you’ve got time beore you y home to just pop, quickly go through it with me, have you?

The examples demonstrate that the majority o the participants who usedavailability requests urther sotened the illocutionary orce o their utter-ances by also including mitigating internal and external modifers such asdisarmers, or example, I know you are busy , downtoners, or example, maybe ,and sweeteners, or example, you got this pretty good . The frst example o theSA learners by Hendrik urther shows that availability requests can also beembedded in an appreciative utterance by the speaker. The learners’ and




native speakers’ use o elements that decrease the illocutionary orce o therequest and their sole employment o this strategy type in scenarios involvinghigh imposition requests indicate that the learners display a pragmatic use

o the availability strategy that is very similar to that o the native speakerparticipants.

6.4.3 Pdcton

Requests using the strategy prediction enquire about the interlocutors’ opin-ion on whether they perceive it to be possible that a certain act or state o aairs may be achieved in the near uture, or example, the hearer’s predic-

tion on whether he or she will not be too busy in the next days to meet thespeaker. Since the ocus is on the interlocutors’ prediction and not on them-selves, which is also evidenced by the impersonal wording o the request, orexample, ‘is it possible that . . .’ the illocutionary orce o the request is sot-ened and requests using this strategy are considered very polite (Van Mulken,1996; Warga, 2004). Learners and native speakers’ employment o this strategy according to the variables status and imposition is presented in Table 6.9.

The results reveal that the majority o requests employing the strategy pre-diction were used in high imposition scenarios by all three participant groups.

While none o the groups used this strategy in scenarios involving a low impo-sition request directed at an equal status interlocutor, SA learners and nativespeakers employed it in low imposition interactions involving a higher statusinterlocutor. However, compared to the scenarios including a high impositionrequest, prediction was used with a considerably lower requency in situationscontaining a low imposition request by all groups.

Tabl 6.9 Use o prediction according to status and impositionLow mposton,

qal statsLow mposton,

hh statsHh mposton,

qal statsHh mposton,

hh stats


SA1 – – 6 (2) 14 (5) 28 (10)SA2 – – – – 8 (3) 14 (5)SA3 – – 6 (2) 14 (5) 25 (9) AH – – – – 10 (5) 8 (4)

E – – 5 (3) 10 (6) 23 (14)Notes :




AH: AH learners





The data show that the AH group used prediction as requently in high impo-sition scenarios with equal status interlocutors as the native speakers. However,

AH learners employed considerably ewer requests o this strategy type than

the native speakers and SA learners in situations involving a high impositionrequest directed at a higher status interlocutor. Thus the results indicate that the two learner groups, the SA group to a larger extent than the AH one, dis-play a similar use o the strategy prediction as the native speakers. This suggeststhat the learner and native speaker participants evaluate the contextual condi-tions in which the prediction strategy can be used in a similar way.

During their sojourn in the study abroad context, the SA learners’ employ-ment o prediction in interactions with equal status interlocutors remained

relatively low, whereas their use o this strategy in scenarios with higherstatus interlocutors remained higher, even though there were deviationsin the second data collection session in both, high imposition equal statusand high imposition higher status interactions. The analysis and discussionso ar has centred on the groups’ use o prediction according to the con-textual variable status and imposition. Figure 6.9 shows how requently thisstrategy was used by the individual SA learners in the three data collectionsessions.

The fndings show that in contrast to the conventionally indirect strategy availability, which was only employed by our SA learners, prediction was usedby all but one o the SA learners. Thus, the relative high requency with whichthis strategy type was used by the SA learners is not the result o one or twoindividuals employing it, but instead is representative o the group’s use o pre-diction. Importantly, however, the results also show that just because the useo a certain strategy type seems to be typical or a specifc learner group, not all learners necessarily employ the strategy in a similar manner. For example,

A n d r e a s

B e r n d

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p h D a

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1

6

4

1 1

2

4

2

1 1

4 4

3

1

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2

3

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Figure 6.9. SA learners’ use o prediction




Andreas’, Daniel’s and Franziska’s use o prediction decreased over time, whereas Iris’s employment o this strategy increased slightly. This thus seemsto indicate the presence o individual learner dierences.

It is also interesting to note that our o the learners did not employ thestrategy at all in Session 1 and that the two learners who used prediction in allthree data collection sessions did employ the strategy less oten in Session 2than in either Session 1 or 3. While these results may seem somewhat unusual,similar sequences o slightly decreasing and increasing use o certain conven-tionally indirect request strategies were also observed by Ellis (1992) and

Achiba (2003) in their longitudinal studies o L2 learners in the target envi-ronment. Consequently, these fndings could be typical o learners’ pragmatic

development in the L2 context.The ollowing requests made by the SA learners, AH learners and nativespeakers are representative o utterances employing the strategy prediction inthe MET data.

SA learners

Excuse me, Proessor Jones, I know that we were supposed to have a meeting ater this seminar, but unortunately I’m I’m really pretty ill and I’m not eeling well. Would it be possible to postpone that? (Franziska, Session 1)

Do you think it will be possible to, to arrange a meeting because I can’t, I couldn’t understand this concept so ar and I really need your help. (Eva, Session 2)

Hi John, I’m totally sorry, but I’ve got a terrible toothache and I have to meet the dentist and he only has time today, so I wondered i it’s possible to delay our meeting or tomorrow? (Daniel, Session 3)

AH learners

Um, hello Proessor, I’m araid I’m very sick at the moment and I cannot come this aternoon to meet you. Would it be possible or you to meet me on another day?

Oh, hello, Alex, I’m very sorry I can’t meet you today, because I have to go to the dentist, I’ve terrible toothache. Is it possible or you to meet me tomorrow?

Native speakers

Er, I was wondering would it be possible to schedule a meeting, er, in the next ew weeks? I’m having some problems with the assignments.

I’m really, really sorry. I’m eeling dreadul today. Erm, I know you are visiting and I know you’re really busy but be able, would it be possible to reschedule our meeting or another day when I’m eeling a bit better? I just eel that I wouldn’t get the most out o it today. I eel so poorly.




The examples show that the majority o the participants employed externaland internal modifers such as modal verbs and grounders, or example, I’ve got a terrible tooth ache , to justiy their request. The combined use o upgraders

and grounders in this strategy is particularly prevalent in Scenarios 6 and 13in which the participants were prompted to ask a riend or proessor to meet them at another date because they were ill. The data urther reveal someinstances o embedded use o prediction, or example, the SA learner Daniel’sexample in the third data collection session, that soten the illocutionary orceo the request and convey tentativeness thereby making the request appeareven more polite (Trosborg, 1995). This again shows that the illocutionary orce o conventionally indirect requests is requently urther mitigated by the

three participant groups through the use o internal and external modifers.

6.4.4 Pmsson

By using a request that is ormulated as a question or permission, speak-ers indicate that they perceive their interlocutors to be in a more powerulposition in the particular circumstances o the speech event. As Ervin-Tripp’s(1976) fndings on L1 children interactions with interlocutors o dierent agegroups has shown, the situational perception o higher power can apply toboth higher status, as well as equal status hearers. The participants’ use o permission in the MET request scenarios according to the variables status andimposition is presented in Table 6.10.

The results show that in contrast to the strategies prediction and availability,requests asking an interlocutor or permission were used in all our contex-tual conditions by the native speakers and SA learners. Compared to the strat-egy prediction, permission was employed considerably less requently by both

learners groups in situations involving a high imposition request. With theexception o SA learners’ use o permission in low imposition/high status situ-ations in Session 3, there are also notable dierences in learners’ and nativespeakers’ use o this strategy with the native speakers employing permissionmore requently than the learners. These fndings are in-line with Hill (1997)and Warga (2004) who also observed marked dierences in the employment o this strategy between their native speakers and learner participants. It couldthereore be argued that learners’ limited use o permission is indicative o

their interlanguage. A possible explanation or why learners employed per-mission less than native speakers might be that this is the only conventionally indirect strategy where the ocus o the utterance is on the speakers, as they are the subject o the request.

Woodfeld (2008) who compared requests strategies used by German and Japanese learners4 o English and English native speakers also ound that speaker-oriented requests were used less requently by her German learners




than by the native speakers. A possible reason or this may be that Germanlearners might eel less comortable with drawing attention to themselves andthereore preer strategies that are either impersonal or are hearer-oriented.

Although the hedged perormative seems to be a clear exception to that, thelearners’ very limited use o want statements and their preerence or conven-tionally indirect strategies, such as prediction, willingness and ability also sug-gest that the learners in the present investigation generally seem to preernon-speaker oriented request strategies.

With regard to SA learners’ use o permission according to the contextual variables, the data show that the SA learners employed permission less re-quently in high imposition scenarios than low imposition ones during their stay.

A possible reason or why the SA learners’ use o permission remained low or

decreased in high imposition interactions might be that the very nature o highimposition requests makes them difcult to observe between two native speakerinterlocutors as I mentioned in Section 6.3.2 with regard to hedged perorma-tives. Following Schmidt’s hypothesis (1990, 1993, 1995) this would then meanthat learners’ limited input o request strategies in high imposition interactions

would result in limited opportunities or the learners to adapt their output.That the absence or presence o relevant input may play an important role

in SA learners’ pragmatic development in the study abroad context could also

explain why the use o permission in low imposition interactions with higherstatus interlocutors increased steadily in the SA learner data. In contrast tohigh imposition interactions with proessors, SA learners will have had ampleopportunity to observe ellow students in low imposition situations. Thus, theincrease in requests in this context may show a positive eect o the study abroadenvironment on learners’ pragmatic skills. Figure 6.10 presents individual SA learners’ use o the strategy permission in the three data collection sessions.

Tabl 6.10 Use o permission according to status and imposition




Hh mposton,hh stats


SA1 6 (2) 6 (2) 3 (1) 3 (1)SA2 8 (3) 8 (3) 3 (1) 3 (1)SA3 3 (1) 14 (5) 3 (1) – – AH – – 2 (1) 2 (1) 4 (2)E 10 (6) 13 (8) 15 (9) 12 (7)

Notes :Groups: SA1: SA learners session 1

SA2: SA learners session 2SA3: SA learners session 3

AH: AH learners





The results o individual SA learners’ employment o permission show that six o the nine learners used this strategy at least once during their sojourn inthe L2 environment. Interestingly, the strategy was employed by all o the maleparticipants at one point, but was only used by one emale participant, Greta,

in Session 1 and Session 2. Due to the small participant number in this groupno general conclusions regarding gender preerences or certain request strat-egy types can be drawn. However, as gender dierences in L2 learners’ prag-matic choices and development have been underexplored to date, these issuesshould be ocused on in uture studies.

The data o the SA learners in the present investigation urther show that learners who employed permission in the frst session also tended to use thisstrategy subsequently. This is an important fnding, as it suggests that learn-

ers do not tend to employ strategies like permission and prediction randomly in the data collection sessions, but instead tend to employ them consistently but with variations regarding their overall requency in the data collectionsessions. Variations in requency concerning the employment o individualrequest strategies in dierent observational periods were also noted by Achiba(2003) and thus may be typical or longitudinal pragmatic investigations.Representative examples o learners’ and native speakers’ use o the strategy permission in the MET scenarios are included below.

SA learners

Erm, Lucy, may I borrow one o your books? I will return it to you tomorrow.(Christoph, Session 1)

Erm, excuse me? I just have to hand it in, may I pass? (Daniel, Session 2)

2 2

1 1

2 2

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3

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Figure 6.10. SA learners’ use o permission




the present study, only the more salient o the two request strategy types isincluded in the calculations due to the relatively low number o combinedstrategy use in the data and in order to ensure a degree o transparency in

the calculations.

6.4.5 Wllnnss

Requests that use the conventionally indirect strategy willingness are employedas ‘compliance-gaining strategies by conveying to the requestee that therequester does not take compliance or granted’ (Trosborg, 1995, p.199). Theillocutionary orce o this request type is thereore sotened since the speakers

make it explicit that they regard it to be their interlocutors’ decision whetheror not to perorm the desired act. The participants’ use o request strategiesemploying willingness according to the variables status and imposition is pre-sented in Table 6.11.

The results show that the strategy willingness is the frst conventionally indirect request strategy that was employed by the native speakers and bothlearner groups in all our contextual conditions examined by the MET. Thissuggests that willingness is perceived to be a more universally applicable strat-egy by the learner groups than any o the conventionally indirect strategiesdiscussed so ar. The data reveal that the native speakers used this strategy slightly more requently in high imposition scenarios. The SA and AH learn-ers also employed willingness more requently in high imposition interactions,but also used them more oten than the native speakers in low impositioninteractions involving higher status interlocutors. Thus, it appears that the

Tabl 6.11 Percentage use o willingness according to status and imposition




Hh mposton,hh stats


SA1 6 (2) 14 (5) 31 (11) 14 (5)SA2 6 (2) 11 (4) 31 (11) 11 (4)SA3 8 (3) 22 (8) 25 (9) 14 (5) AH 12 (6) 25 (13) 17 (9) 27 (14)E 5 (3) 8 (5) 17 (10) 17 (10)

Notes :




AH: AH learners





use o willingness by the participant groups seems to be inuenced by situ-ational variables. Whereas both, the higher status o their interlocutor and thehigher degree o the imposition in the request seems to determine learners’

use o willingness, the native speakers’ use o this strategy seems to be deter-mined more by the degree o imposition. However, as the eect o contextual

variables on learners’ and native speakers’ request strategy use is still ratherunderexplored, urther studies involving larger participants groups would beneeded to explore the aect o status and imposition on participants’ request strategy choices in more detail.

With regard to the SA learners’ employment o willingness over time inthe study abroad context no clear pattern can be observed. The SA learners

only display a slight development towards the native speakers’ requency con-cerning the use o willingness in high imposition/higher status scenarios. Inthe remaining three request conditions the SA learners use willingness moreoten than the native speakers. One reason or the requency with which thisstrategy was employed by the SA and also AH learners could be learners’ pre-erence or two request ormulae, namely ‘Would you be so kind as to . . .’ which ismore prevalent in the AH learners’ data and ‘Would you mind . . .’ which is moreprevalent in the SA learners’ data.

That the fxed ormula ‘Would you be so kind as to . . .’ is requently used by German learners o English was also noted by House and Kasper (1987). They observed that their German learners o English employed this ormula consid-erably more requently than their Danish learners o English or English nativespeakers. Based on their participants’ interview responses pertaining to theuse o the ormula, House and Kasper suggested that it was overrepresented inEnglish teaching materials used in Germany. Due to the number o dierent textbooks and textbook editions used in German grammar schools it is unor-tunately not possible to determine whether the SA and AH learners in the pre-

sent investigation might also have encountered a high number o willingnessstrategies using specifc ormulae in their secondary English education. Theresults concerning individual SA learners’ use o the strategy willingness arepresented in Figure 6.11 below.

The fndings reveal that the strategy willingness was used by eight o the nineSA learners and was used very requently by fve o those. This shows that therelatively high requency with which this strategy was used by the SA learnersin the present investigation is a group phenomenon and not due to one or two

individual learners’ preerence or this strategy. Importantly, the data revealthat SA learners’ employment o this strategy generally tended not to be a one-o event, but that instead learners who used this strategy in either Session 1or Session 2 continued to do so subsequently. Interestingly, willingness is alsothe most popular strategy with the emale SA learners o the all strategiesexamined so ar. It has to be noted though that three o the male participantsalso used it rather requently and dierences in strategy use based on gender




thereore are not as pronounced as in the case o the strategy permission. Again, due to the limited participant number in the present SA learner sampleany observations regarding gender need to be considered tentative.

The data urther seem to indicate that learners’ employment o willingness isalso inuenced by individual learner dierences. Although the majority o theSA learners already used this strategy in the frst data collection session, Berndfrst employed it in Session 2 and then increased his use o it slightly in Session3 and Eva employed it or the frst time in Session 3. The requency with which

willingness was used by those learners that frst employed it in Session 1 var-ied and was generally non -linear. Based on the present results, it is not quiteclear i the sojourn in the SA context may have had an impact on individualSA learners’ use o this strategy; although it could be argued that the sojournin the L2 environment may have triggered Bernd and Eva’s frst use o this

strategy in Session 2 and 3 respectively. The requests using willingness beloware representative samples o this strategy in the participants’ data:

SA learners

Hi, did you understand that concept? Because I didn’t get it at all! And I have to write this exam. Would you mind explaining it? I mean we could have a dinner, or something together and you explain it to me? That would be so nice, I would get so lost in

the exams. (Greta, Session 1) Excuse me, Proessor Duncan, would you mind flling in this questionnaire or me. It may take some time and I know you are busy but it is very important or me.(Christoph, Session 2)

Hey Lucy, excuse me, may I ask you a avour? We still have a couple o questionnaires to fll in or our project, would you mind flling one in? I know you have your own

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Figure 6.11. SA learners’ use o willingness




projects to do but, you know, we just have to help each other, otherwise we never complete our stu. (Franziska, Session 3)

AH learners

Um, Lucy, would you be so kind to complete this questionnaire or me, please?

Would you mind opening the window?

Native speakers

I know you’re really busy at the moment, but I’m running a project and we need some people to answer some questionnaires and I eel that it would be really useul to get your input in. Would you mind flling in a questionnaire or me?

I’m having real trouble fnding, erm, any inormation or my essay. Would you mind bringing in any articles? It’s quite urgent ‘cause I haven’t got much time let.

Similar to the majority o the other strategies discussed so ar, the requests

made by the learners and native speakers show that the participants generally tended to urther soten the illocutionary orce o their request utterancesby employing internal and external modifers, such as the politeness marker,

please , the disarmer, or example, I know you are really busy but , and grounders,or example, it is very important or me . The examples urther show that theuse o modifers is generally higher in high imposition scenarios than in lowimposition ones. The examples o the AH learners are also representative o the act that the AH learners requests tended to be shorter than those by the

SA learners, which suggests that the SA context has a positive eect on learn-ers’ ability to mitigate their utterances with modifers.

6.4.6 Ablty

By using the strategy ability, the speakers reer to their interlocutors’ capacity to perorm the desired act. The hearers’ ability might concern two dierent actors ‘1) the inherent capacities o the requestee, both physical and men-

tal, 2) the external circumstances related to time, place, etc. o the action’(Trosborg, 1995, p. 198). The conventionally indirect strategy ability is otenregarded as a very standardized orm or realizing requests (Bublitz, 2001).The participants’ use o ability in the MET scenarios according to the variablesstatus and imposition is presented in Table 6.12.

The results show clearly that like the strategy willingness discussed inSection 6.4.5 above, ability was used by all participant groups in all o the our




contextual conditions. This indicates that the native speakers and the learnersconsidered this strategy to be appropriate in interactions with equal and higherstatus interlocutors regardless o the degree o imposition involved. Importantly,

ability is also the most requently used request strategy by the learners andnative speakers in the present investigation. This fnding is in agreement withle Pair (1996) and Warga (2004), whose learners and native speakers also usedability with the highest requency o the request strategies, and in disagreement

with Hill (1997) whose learners employed a higher number o requests ocus-ing on their interlocutors’ willingness. As Hill’s learner participants’ native lan-guage was Japanese, while the participants in le Pair’s, Warga’s and my study arenative speakers o either Germanic or Italic languages, the L1 background o the learners might be responsible or the dierent fndings.

Based on learners’ and native speakers’ requent use o ability in all ourcontextual conditions in this study, it seems that employing this strategy whenormulating a request in English is likely to be a sae and unmarked optionin a wide variety o circumstances. Thus, i learners o English in the Englishspeaking study abroad context were to exclusively rely on this strategy in inter-actions involving requests, the likelihood that their request strategy use wouldbe considered appropriate is probably very high.

Although ability was the most requently employed conventionally indirect

strategy type by all three participant groups, there are considerable dier-ences regarding how oten this request strategy was used by the three groups.The AH learners, or example, used ability in 75 per cent o situations withequal status interlocutors that involved a low imposition request, while theEnglish native speakers only employed it in 40 per cent o this contextual con-dition. The requency dierence o these two groups or this strategy rangesrom 6 per cent (higher status, high imposition) to 35 per cent (equal status,

Tabl 6.12 Use o ability according to status and imposition




Hh mposton,hh stats


SA1 61 (22) 61 (22) 39 (14) 36 (13)SA2 64 (23) 64 (23) 50 (18) 56 (20)SA3 64 (23) 50 (18) 47 (17) 36 (13) AH 75 (39) 62 (32) 58 (30) 44 (23)E 40 (24) 48 (29) 47 (28) 38 (23)

Notes :




AH: AH learners





2008) that had also ound that this strategy was very requently used. From adevelopmental perspective, it needs to be noted that ability was also the only strategy that was already employed by all SA learners in the frst data collection

session. This and the consistent high requency with which it was employednot only by the SA learners and AH learners, but also by the native speakerssuggests that ability is the one core request strategy that all learners o Englishshould be able to perorm and comprehend as early as possible in their L2learning career.

The ollowing requests are representative examples o the participants’ useo the strategy ability in the present investigation:

SA learners

Excuse me, can you tell me the way to the Trent Building, please? (Andreas, Session 1)

Hey, excuse me, Peter, I got a big problem. I know that we were going to meet up now,but the point is that I have a terrible toothache and the only appointment that I could get with the dentist is right now. So I’m araid I won’t make it. Could we meet up tomorrow instead? I know this is not ideal and I know that you cancelled other meet- ings, but I simply don’t know what to do. (Franziska, Session 2)

Er, hello, Miss Finn, or a project I’m doing in another course I need some proessors to fll in a questionnaire and, er, it would be very kind o you i you could do one o these questionnaires. I know it’s pretty long but er, it’s very important or our coursework so,it would be very kind o you i you could help us here. (Hendrik Session 3)

AH learners

Harry, I’m sorry, but I’ve got a bad toothache and I need to see my dentist. Could we

please meet tomorrow? Could you please complete the questionnaire or me?

Native speakers

Hi, Lucy, erm, I know you are busy at the moment but could you spare fve minutes,to do, to complete this questionnaire or my work, please?

Er, excuse me, er, I need to complete an essay about this and I’m having a lot o trouble fnding some reerences in the library. Do you think you could bring in some relevant articles, please?

The participants’ requests utterances show that the illocutionary orce o arequest using the strategy ability is requently mitigated by internal and exter-nal modifers such as politeness markers, please, grounders, or example,




the only appointment that I could get with the dentist is right now , and impositionminimizers, or example, could you spare fve minutes . The data also reveal sev-eral instances o embedded strategy use, such as in the SA learner Hendrik’s

request in the third session in which the question regarding the hearer’s abil-ity is enclosed in an appreciative structure. The length o some o the request utterances urther illustrates that the use o the relatively simple, standardizedrequest strategy ability does not automatically translate into a short utteranceand instead can be part o a longer explanation and reasoning surroundingthe actual request. This concludes the analysis and discussion o the individ-ual conventionally indirect request strategy types used in this investigation.In the next section, the ocus will be on learners’ and native speakers’ use o

non-conventionally indirect requests, that is, hints.

6.5 Non-conventionally Indirect Strategies

Non-conventionally indirect hints are the least direct request strategy typesince they demand a high degree o inerential ability rom the interlocutor.By using a hint or the realization o a request ‘the speaker intends to get thehearer to carry out some (implied) requested act in such a way that the recog-nition o his or her intention will not be grounded in the utterance meaningo the hint’ (Weizman, 1989, p. 71). The very act that the desired action onthe interlocutor’s part is only implied means that the illocutionary orce o therequest is low. Similar to the conventionally indirect strategies, requests inthe orm o hints give the hearer the opportunity to not perorm the act, orexample, by eigning to not have understood the request utterance as such.The participants’ use o hints according to the situational variables status andimposition is presented in Table 6.13.

The results show clearly that neither the native speakers nor the learnersemployed hints in scenarios that involved a high imposition request. Instead,the participants only used hints in situations which put a low imposition ontheir interlocutor. This fnding is in agreement with Blum-Kulka and House(1989) and Weizman (1989, 1993) whose learner and native speaker partici-pants also employed hints in situations involving a low degree o imposition,regardless o the level o amiliarity and dierences in status. Thus, partici-pants’ use o hints seems to be inuenced by their assessment o the situational

variable imposition. That the learners’ and native speakers’ use o hints wasrestricted to low imposition scenarios is not surprising, as a higher degreeo clarity combined with the use o internal and external modifers, such asgrounders, disarmers and sweeteners, would probably be preerred by inter-locutors in the higher imposition situations investigated.

Regarding the requency with which learners’ and native speakers’ usedhints in the present study, the data show that neither the SA nor the AH




learners employed hints as requently as the native speakers did. In low impos-ition request scenarios directed at an equal status interlocutor, the dierenceo 19 per cent between the native speakers’ and AH learners’ employment o hints is particularly noteworthy. A possible explanation or why hints are not

used as much by learners could be that learners may be unsure about theirability to encode their intent in the L2 in a way that will be inerable by a mem-ber o a dierent speech community and culture. Thus, they might eel moreat ease with using strategies such as the conventionally indirect ones whichensure that their communicative intent will be received and understood by their hearer. Figure 6.13 shows individual SA learners’ use o hints in the threedata collection sessions in the study abroad context.

Tabl 6.13 Use o hints according to status and imposition




Hh mposton,hh stats


SA1 9 (3) 9 (3) – – – –SA2 6 (2) 6 (2) – – – –SA3 12 (4) 3 (1) – – – – AH 2 (1) 4 (2) – – – –E 21 (13) 15 (9) – – – –

Notes :




AH: AH learners


A n d r e a

s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o

p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d

r i k I r i s

2 2 2

1 1

22

1

2

0

1

2

3

4

5

6


Figure 6.13. SA learners’ use o hints




The results show that hints were used by fve o the nine SA learners. O those fve, Iris is the only SA group member who consistently employed hintsin all three data collection sessions. Andreas and Christoph, who used hints in

the frst and in Andreas’s case also second data collection section, subsequently employed the conventionally indirect strategies willingness, permission andability instead. A possible explanation or why they resorted to conventionally indirect requests could be that that some o the hints they used in the study abroad context may not have been decoded as requests by their interlocutors.I they had encountered problems in this respect, choosing a somewhat moredirect strategy such as willingness or ability which is easier or the hearer toiner would have been a good solution.

While Andreas and Christoph discontinued their use o hints, Bernd and Danielfrst employed them in the second and third data collection session respectively.Bernd even increased his use o this strategy slightly in the fnal data collectionsession. His employment o hints is particularly interesting, as he employed themin a scenario in Session 2 and 3 in which he had previously used an imperative.Since imperatives and hints are at the exact opposite ends o the directness scaleused in this study, with imperatives being the most direct and hints the least dir-ect strategy, this is a considerable change in strategy use or him and seems to beindicative o a positive development o his pragmatic abilities in the study abroadcontext. A possible reason or this development could be his contact to nativespeakers while working in a caeteria on campus, which he himsel mentioned ashaving a positive impact on his L2 development in Section 5.4.

Daniel used a hint in Scenario 14 (‘move away rom the door’) in which hehad previously employed the strategy permission. Both permission and hintsare appropriate in this particular scenario and thus his use o a hint was not assignifcant as Bernd’s. Nevertheless, his employment o this non-conventionally indirect strategy suggests that he believes a hint to be sufcient or hearers to

iner his intended meaning. This could be indicative o an increase in conf-dence in his L2 pragmatic abilities. Representative examples o the hints madeby the native speakers and learners in the MET scenarios are included below.

SA learners

Excuse me. (Andreas, Session 1)

Excuse me? (Bernd, Session 2)

Sorry? (Iris, Session 3)

AH learners

Excuse me.

Sorry. Excuse me, please.




Native speakers

Excuse me, please.

Er, sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.

The examples illustrate that the majority o hints by all participants were madein Scenarios 5 and 14 in which either two proessors or two students block thedoorway o an ofce the participants needed to enter. The hints used in thesesituations were mainly based on the excuse me ormula the equivalent o whichis also used in the participants’ L1 German in similar situations. The examplesalso show that internal and external modifers were not requently used by the

learners or native speakers. As hints are already the least indirect strategy typeand were only used in low imposition scenarios, this fnding was not unex-pected. Indeed, the only modifer that was used by several learners and nativespeakers was the politeness marker please .

This section concludes the discussion and analysis o the individual request strategies employed by the learners and native speakers in the present study.In the ollowing I will summarize the fndings in Section 6.6 and will then ana-lyse and discuss SA and AH learners’ and native speakers’ use o internal andexternal modifers in Chapters 7 and 8.

6.6 Summary

This chapter began with an initial general analysis and discussion o the frst occurrence o individual request strategy types in the SA learners’ data inSection 6.1. The results suggested that individual learner dierences suchas amount o contact with age peers and difculties adjusting to the new

environment seem to play a role in SA learners’ initial employment o spe-cifc strategy types, as the types and number o strategies used by the indi-

vidual participants tended to vary somewhat rom participant to participant.Generally, however, conventionally indirect strategies were used by a largernumber o SA learners than direct or non-conventionally indirect ones. Thedata urther showed that the conventionally indirect strategy ability was theonly strategy that was employed by all SA learners in the frst data collectionsession.

The comparison o the SA learners’, AH learners’ and native speakers’ use o individual request strategy types in Section 6.2 revealed that the convention-ally indirect strategy ability was also the only strategy that was employed by allnative speakers and AH learners. This supported fndings o previous request studies (e.g. House & Kasper, 1987; Otçu & Zeyrek, 2008; Woodfeld, 2008) that this strategy was a requently used, standardized way o ormulating a request.The data urther show that, with the exception o the direct strategy locution




derivables, a higher number o SA learners, AH learners and native speakersemployed conventionally indirect than direct request strategies. Overall, theresults showed that the SA learners and native speakers used a much broader

range o request strategies than the AH learners.The discussion and analysis o direct request strategies in Section 6.3

revealed that the only direct request strategy type that was used relatively requently by the native speakers and both learner groups was the aore-mentioned locution derivable that was employed when asking or directions.Imperatives were rarely used by learners and native speakers and only inequal status, low imposition scenarios. The two SA learners who employedimperatives in the frst session either stopped doing so in the second or the

third session and instead began to use more appropriate indirect strategies.This suggests that the study abroad environment had a positive impact ontheir pragmatic abilities.

That stopping to use a particular strategy can be indicative o increasingpragmatic competence in the L2 appears to also be evidenced by Hendrik,

who stopped using unhedged perormatives ater the frst data collection ses-sion and instead resorted to conventionally indirect strategies or hedged per-ormatives. With regard to the latter, the data seems to suggest that the useo this strategy type in English by German native speakers may be a result o negative pragmatic transer rom the learners’ native language, as none o the English native speakers employed this strategy. Want statements were alsoused very inrequently by the native speakers, but also by the AH and SA learners. Due to the extremely low number o want statements used by the SA learners, it is not possible to discern any impact o the study abroad context on learners’ use o this strategy type.

Another strategy that was even less requently used than want statements, was the conventionally indirect suggestory ormula. Suggestory ormula was

employed in one situation by one o the AH learners. As the use o this strategy does not seem contextually appropriate in the context it was used in by the AHlearner, the employment o this strategy does not indicate an advanced levelo pragmatic competence on the AH learners’ part compared to the other SA and AH learners, but rather shows the exact opposite. This example thereoredemonstrates the importance o examining the use o pragmatic strategiesbased on contextual variables, since otherwise increases in the employment o certain strategy types may be seen as indicative o higher levels o pragmatic

competence when this is not the case.The next conventionally indirect strategy investigated, availability, wasalso not very requently used by the native speakers and both learner groups.

Although the employment o this strategy by learners and native speakers indi-cated that their assessment o the situational conditions in which this strategy could be used was similar, the data do not suggest that the study abroad sojournaected SA learners’ use o this strategy. Similar to their use o availability,




native speakers and learners also generally tended to employ prediction inthe same contexts. Compared to availability, prediction was employed consid-erably more requently and more specifcally in high imposition interactions.

The requency with which this strategy was used by SA learners and nativespeakers in high imposition scenarios is particularly notable as it is markedly dierent rom that o the AH learners.

In contrast to the strategies prediction and availability, requests asking aninterlocutor or permission were used in all our contextual conditions by thenative speakers and SA learners. Permission tended to be used more requently by the native speakers than the learners; a fnding that is in line with previousstudies (e.g. Hill, 1997; Warga, 2004). However, SA learners’ use o permis-

sion in low imposition interactions with higher status interlocutors increasedsteadily rom Session 1 to Session 3, which could be indicative o a positiveeect o the study abroad context on learners’ pragmatic skills.

Willingness was the frst conventionally indirect request strategy that wasemployed by the native speakers and both learner groups in all our contextualconditions examined by the MET. This suggests that willingness is perceivedto be a more universally applicable strategy by both learner groups than any o the conventionally indirect strategies discussed so ar. The data urther showthat willingness was employed more requently by both learner groups thanby the native speakers in three o the our contextual conditions. A possiblereason or this is SA and AH learners’ requent use o ‘Would you be so kind as to . . .’ and ‘Would you mind . . .’ With regard to the SA learners’ employment o willingness over time in the study abroad context no clear pattern can beobserved.

Like willingness, the conventionally indirect strategy ability was used by allparticipant groups in all o the our contextual conditions. O all request strat-egy types investigated in this study, ability is the one that was used with the

highest requency by the native speakers and both learner groups. Althoughability was the most requently employed conventionally indirect strategy typeby all three participant groups, there are considerable dierences regardinghow oten this request strategy was used by the three groups. The AH learn-ers, or example, used ability in 75 per cent o situations with equal statusinterlocutors that involved a low imposition request, while the English nativespeakers only employed it in 40 per cent o this contextual condition. This, andthe AH learners’ limited use o other strategies discussed in Section 6.2 and

above, suggests that overall their request strategy repertoire is more limitedthan the SA learners’. With regard to the SA learners, the results reveal that by the end o their stay in the study abroad context the requency with whichthey employed ability was similar to the native speakers’ in three o the ourcontextual conditions that were examined.

The analysis o non-conventionally indirect hints in Section 6.5 revealed that this strategy was used more requently by the native speakers than the learners.




A possible reason or this could be that learners may preer strategies that aremore easily inerable by the hearer to avoid misunderstandings and explana-tions. The results show clearly that neither the native speakers nor the learners

employed hints in scenarios that involved a high imposition request, which indi-cates a shared evaluation o contexts in which the use o hints is appropriate.Concerning SA learners’ use o this strategy over time, Bernd’s employment o hints is particularly interesting, as he began to use them in a scenario inSession 2 and 3 in which he had previously used an imperative. As imperativesand hints are at the exact opposite ends o the directness scale, this is a consid-erable change in strategy use or him and seems to be indicative o a positivedevelopment o his pragmatic abilities in the study abroad context.

The majority o direct and conventionally indirect requests made by thelearners and native speakers in the present investigation were sotened withinternal and external modifers. Participants’ use o these modifers accordingto the contextual conditions will be examined in detail in Chapters 7 and 8.

Notes

1 In the case o the SA learners this means that all SA learners that employed aparticular strategy in any o the three data collection sessions were added up andthen converted into per cent, that is, one SA learner employed a Want statement in Session 1 and one in Session 3, which means that 22 per cent o the SA learn-ers used this strategy.

2 As I mentioned in Chapter 3, coding systems or requests tend to dier somewhat based on whether the CCSARP (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989b), Trosborg (1995)or other taxonomies are ollowed. It is thereore possible that individual codingsystems that use a combined taxonomy and data based approach, such as thepresent one, dier rom other coding schemes.

3 The coding schemes or request categories devised by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989b)and by Trosborg (1995) dier with regard to this particular request strategy type. While Blum-Kulka et al. coded want statements as direct requests in theCCSARP, Trosborg assigned them to the conventionally indirect category. I havecoded want statements as direct strategies and thus ollow the CCSARP and also Warga’s (2004) coding system.

4 Interestingly, Woodfeld’s Japanese learners o English employed more speaker-oriented strategies than her German learners o English, which she howeverattributes to the higher number o want statements used by her Japanese

participants.



Chapter 7

Development o Pragmatic Production: Internal Request Modifcation

7.0 Introduction

The previous chapter investigated participants’ use o request strategies andshowed that the learner and native speakers employed a variety o dierent strategies based on the situational conditions o the request scenario. Theanal ysis o the participants’ request utterances also showed that they modu-lated the illocutionary orce o the request not only by selecting a specifcstrategy type, but also by employing internal and external modifers . That theuse o these modifers plays an important role in the overall impact o therequest on the hearer has also been noted in a number o previous studies, orexample, House and Kasper (1987), Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989a),Trosborg (1995), Hill (1997), Hassall (2001), Achiba (2003), Barron (2003)and Warga (2004). The present chapter ocuses on participants’ use o internalmodifers, which can be urther subcategorized as downgraders (i.e. modifers

that decrease the illocutionary orce o a request) and upgraders (i.e. modifersthat increase the illocutionary orce o a request). Participants’ employment o external modifers will be examined in Chapter 8.

In this chapter, I will frst analyse and discuss the initial occurrence o internal downgraders in individual SA learners’ data in Section 7.1. This willbe ollowed by a comparison o the internal downgraders used by the twolearner groups and the native speakers in Section 7.2. In Section 7.3, I willexamine learners’ and native speakers’ use o internal downgraders accord-

ing to the contextual variables status and imposition. The frst occurrence o individual internal upgraders in the SA learners’ data will be analysed anddiscussed in Section 7.4. Subsequent to this, I will compare the groups’ use o internal upgraders in Section 7.5. This will be ollowed by the discussion andanalysis o learners’ and native speakers’ use o upgraders according to thecontextual conditions status and imposition in Section 7.6. I will then summa-rize the fndings o this chapter in Section 7.7.



Internal Request Modifcation 167

7.1 First Occurrence o Internal Downgraders in the SA Learners’ Data

Internal modifers are linguistic or syntactic devices that are used by speakersto modulate the illocutionary orce o their request. Internal modifers that downgrade the orce o the request utterance can be urther subcategorizedas lexical and syntactic downgraders. Lexical downgraders ound in the partici-pants’ data in this study include: downtoners , politeness markers , understaters , past tense modals , consultative device , marked modality hedge and aspect . Syntactic downgraders comprise: conditional clause , appreciative embedding , tentative embedding ,tag question and nega tion . The latter two internal modifers were, however, only

used by the native speakers. Figure 7.1 and Table 7.1 illustrate the frst occur-rence o lexical and syntactic downgraders in the SA learners’ data.

The results suggest that a sustained sojourn in the study abroad context seems to have a positive eect on all learners in the SA group, as every one o them employed at least one internal modifer that they had not used in the ini-tial data collection session in subsequent sessions. The data urther indicatethat all learners already employed at least our internal modifers in the frst data collection session and that on average the SA learners employed six di-

erent internal modifers in Session 1. Concerning the individual downgradertypes that were used by the SA learners, the results show that the lexical down-grader downtoner (e.g. ‘maybe ’) was used by all SA learners in the frst data col-lection session and that our other lexical downgraders (consultative device,politeness marker, understater, past tense modals) were already used by morethan 78 per cent o the SA learners in the frst data collection session.

The syntactic downgraders, in contrast, were used by ewer SA learnersin the frst session, but were then used by several SA learners in subsequent sessions. Thus, the fndings suggest that learners may frst acquire and use

6 6 64

7 75

86

1

2

1

1

2

1 11

1 1

0

2

4

6

8

10

A n d r e a s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d r i k

I r i s


Figure 7.1. First occurrence o internal downgraders in the individual SA learners’ data




lexical downgraders, beore acquiring the more complex syntactic downgrad-ers which would support Hendrik’s (2008) and Octu and Zeyrke’s (2008)fndings.

The highest variety o dierent internal downgraders was employed by Hendrik, a Business student, who seemed very at-ease with communicating

with interlocutors in a way that was riendly, goal-oriented and convincing.The second highest variety o internal downgraders in the frst session wereemployed by Franziska, a psychology student, and Eva, an English major, whoeach used seven dierent internal downgraders. Based on these fndings it could perhaps be argued that studying a subject in which good communicative

skills are important may prime learners to use a variety o dierent internalmodifers in their L2 relatively early on in their study abroad sojourn.

However, due to the small participant sample and the relatively small intra-group dierences in SA learners’ internal downgrader data in the frst datacollection session, this possible inuencing actor clearly needs to be consid-ered tentative. Franziska and Eva employed one new internal downgrader eachin Session 3, while Hendrik used two new internal downgraders in Session 2.This suggests that a relatively high variety o downgraders used in the initial

data collection session does not automatically result in learners then addingthe same number o new downgraders to their repertoire at the same time. Thefndings urther suggest that the frst use o strategies and internal modifersmay not be interrelated, as Eva used a limited number o request strategies inthe frst data collection session, but made more gains during her study abroadsojourn, while Franziska’s strategy repertoire remained restricted throughout her stay.

Tabl 7.1 Downgraders employed by the SA learners

A B C D E F G H I

Lexical downgraders Downtoner 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1Past tense modals 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1Consultative device 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1Politeness marker 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1Understater 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1Marked modality 1 3 1 1 3 Aspect 2Hedge 1

Syntactic downgraders Appreciative embedding 3 1 1 3 1 3Tentative embedding 2 1 3 1Conditional clause 1 1 1 1 2 1 1

Note : The numbers 1, 2, 3 reer to the data elicitation sessions in which the particular downgraders werefrst used.




Interestingly, three o the English honours students (Andreas, Bernd andIris) employed six dierent internal downgraders in the frst data collectionsession and employed one new internal downgrader each in Session 3. This

suggests that with respect to the frst occurrence o internal downgraders dur-ing a sojourn in the L2 context in the SA learner data, English honours stu-dents do not appear to make more and aster progress than students o othersubjects. However, due to the small sample size, this notion clearly has to beconsidered tentative. The highest number o internal downgraders that werefrst used by learners (Daniel, Greta, Hendrik) in Session 2 or Session 3 wastwo. Interestingly, the three learners did not seem to share any specifc char-acteristics; Hendrik was the learner who had used the most internal modifers

in the frst session, whereas Daniel had employed the least at that time. Oneactor which might have acilitated the pragmatic development o these SA learners is the large amount o contact they had with English native speakers.Daniel was enrolled in a Masters programme which provided him with re-quent contact with ellow native speaker students. Hendrik had joined a sportssociety to make riends and in addition had to collaborate with several nativespeakers or projects in his course. Greta spent more time with English nativespeakers prior to the fnal data collection session, as her German speakingriends had returned to their home universities ater one semester abroad.

Thus the large amount o contact o these our learners with native speakers, which would have resulted in an equally large amount o input and thereoreopportunities or them to notice internal downgraders, appears to support Schmidt’s (1990, 1993) noticing hypothesis. However, a large amount o con-tact does not necessarily result in learners noticing and producing exactly thesame modifer at the same time. As the discussion o external modifers inChapter 8 will show, Andreas and Bernd, who had requent contact with nativespeakers and only employed one additional internal downgrader in a subse-

quent session, used considerably more external modifers in Sessions 2 and 3than Daniel, Greta and Hendrik.

Thereore, L2 learners’ development o pragmatic skills in an uncontrolledenvironment, such as the study abroad context, will probably be inuenced by a variety o actors, such as the learners’ willingness and motivation to commu-nicate with native speakers, the situations and contexts the learners fnd them-selves in, the type and requency o the input they receive and urther actorsto do with individual learner dierences, such as their individual language

learning histories, their aptitude and their use o learning strategies.

7.2 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Downgraders

The previous section ocused on the frst occurrence o downgraders in theSA learners’ data. In this section, I will compare what types o downgraders




were employed by the learners and native speakers. Figure 7.2 shows how many members o the participant groups employed the dierent lexical and syntac-tic downgraders in the 16 MET scenarios. Due to the dierent group sizes the

data are presented in per cent.The data show that the politeness marker ‘ please ’ and past tense modals are

the downgraders that are used by all members o the three participant groups.This is not unexpected, since these lexical downgraders are not difcult toincorporate into a sentence and are taught very early in the language classroom.Even beginner level learners requently use the politeness marker (Scarcella,1979; Schmidt, 1983; however, see Woodfeld, 2008, or diering fndings).The results urther reveal that those lexical downgraders that were used by

more than eighty per cent o the SA learners (downtoner, politeness marker,understater, past tense modals, consultative device) were also employed by more than 80 per cent o the native speakers, with the lowest percentage being

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Negation

Tag Question

Tentative Embedding

Appreciative Embedding

Conditional Clause

Hedge

Aspect

Marked modality

Consultative Device

Past tense modals

Understater

Politeness Marker

Downtoner


Figure 7.2. Downgrader use by the three participant groups in per cent




87 and the highest 100. This suggests that these internal modifers are indeedcommonly used in requests o the type tested by the MET.

It should be noted, though, that interestingly, marked modality (i.e. ‘may ’ or

‘might ’) was exclusively used by the SA and AH learners and hedge (e.g. ‘some- how ’) was only employed by one SA learner and again none o the native speak-ers. As the discussion o participants’ use o internal downgraders according tothe variables status and imposition in Section 7.3 will show, hedge and markedmodality were only employed in situations involving a high imposition inter-locutor or high imposition request. Thus, an explanation or this result may bethat SA learners tried to show a high degree o deerence to their proessors,probably similar to the one they would show to proessors in their home coun-

try, and also tried to display a deerential attitude to equal status interlocutors who could do them a considerable avour. Aspect, which in contrast to hedgeand marked modality was employed by more native speakers than SA learners,

was also only used in high imposition scenarios by the SA learners.Concerning the eect o the study abroad sojourn on learners’ pragmatic

choices and skills, the data show no considerable dierences in SA and AHlearners’ use o three lexical downgraders (politeness marker, understater,past tense modals). However, the consultative device is used by more SA learn-ers and native speakers, 89 and 87 per cent respectively, than AH learners,o whom only 62 per cent employed this particular downgrader. Particularly surprising in this respect is also that the downtoner was used by a very smallpercentage o AH learners, namely 31, compared to 100 per cent o the SA learners and 93 per cent o the native speakers. As the downtoner was the only downgrader that was employed by all SA learners in the frst data collectionsession, this result could suggest that the SA context has an impact on learners’acquisition and use o this modifer in the early weeks o their sojourn. In con-trast, other internal lexical downgrader, such as the understater or past tense

modals can also be easily acquired in the AH context.Since there are hardly any developmental studies available in interlanguage

pragmatics – let alone longitudinal ones – ocusing on English that provide anin-depth analysis o the internal modifers investigated in the present study, noother longitudinal data seem to be available that could help to shed some light on whether the above mentioned temporal eect on certain modifers hasalso been observed beore. However, Trosborg’s (1995) and Hill’s (1997) cross-sectional investigations show that the downtoner was used considerably less

requently by their EFL learners than their native speaker participants, whileother internal modifers such as the politeness marker were used more re-quently. Thus it seems that the use o the downtoners may indeed by aectedby the learning environment.

The eect o the learning environment on learners’ employment o modi-fers also seems to be evidenced in the SA and AH learners’ use o syntacticdowngraders. These downgraders are used by a distinctly smaller number o




members = score 2.33. Thus, the higher the score or a particular modifer,the higher the number o instances with which the modifer was used by groupmembers in that particular contextual condition.

While the SA learners and AH learners employed lexical downgraders inthe same scenario types as the native speakers in the majority o the cases,

none o the learners used a syntactic downgrader that was employed by thenative speakers in low imposition, higher status requests. This is an interest-ing fnding, as it indicates that although more than 60 per cent o the SA learners employed the syntactic downgraders conditional clauses or appre-ciative embedding, none o these participants ound it necessary to modu-late their low imposition requests in such a way. Instead, learners o bothgroups sot ened their requests by using a higher amount o certain lexicaldowngraders than the native speakers, such as politeness markers and past

tense modals.One possible explanation or learners’ preerence or lexical downgradersover syntactic downgraders in low imposition scenarios might be that syntac-tic downgraders are inherently more complex than lexical ones, compare,or example, ‘it would be great i you could . . .’ versus ‘ please ’ or ‘maybe ’, andthat learners might rerain rom using these more difcult syntactic struc-tures when they do not fnd them absolutely necessary to achieve their aims.

Another possible explanation could be that the learners simply avoured

Tabl 7.2 Downgraders in low imposition interactions according to variables

Eqal stats, low mposton Hh stats, low mposton

S1 S2 S3 AH EE S1 S2 S3 AH EE

Lexical downgraders Downtoner 0.56 0.33 0.56 0.60 0.33 0.56 0.44 0.08 0.40Politeness marker 1.67 1.56 1.78 3.0 1.38 1.89 2.11 2.33 2.70 1.80Understater 0.56 0.67 0.44 0.92 0.80 0.77 0.77 0.11 0.46 1.13Past tense modals 2.33 1.78 1.78 2.46 1.13 2.56 2.78 2.67 2.77 1.80Consultative device 0.11 0.11 0.08 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.77 0.53Marked modality 0.08 0.44 0.22 0.22 0.15Hedge 0.11

Aspect 0.15Syntactic downgraders Conditional clause 0.13 0.27 Appreciative

embedding 0.27Tentative embedding 0.13 0.11 0.08Tag question 0.13 0.73Negation 0.07

Notes :

Groups: S1, S2, S3: SA Learners Session 1, 2, 3

AH: AH learners

EE: English native speakers




shorter, more succinct utterances in low imposition requests that took up lesstime, made their desired aim clear and were also appropriate in the dierent contexts.

Concerning the eect o the study abroad context on learners’ use o spe-cifc internal downgraders in low imposition scenarios, the data show that SA learners’ use o past tense modals in low imposition interactions involv-ing equal status interlocutors decreased towards the native speakers’ romSession 1 to Session 2. SA learners’ use o politeness markers in higher sta-tus, low imposition scenarios increased and was consistently higher than thenative speakers’. Generally, SA learners’ employment o internal downgradersin low imposition requests remained rather stable during their study abroad

sojourn. Although the SA learners employed certain internal downgraders with di-erent requencies than the native speaker participants, the dierences in theuse o these internal modifers are mostly not as distinct as the dierencesbetween the AH learners and the native speakers. This means that the dier-ence between the SA learners’ and native speakers’ requency scores is gener-ally smaller than the dierence between the AH learners’ and native speakers’requency scores in low imposition requests.

Strikingly, none o the AH learners employed a downtoner in equal status,low imposition requests, while the SA used them with a similar requency asthe native speakers in most sessions. The AH learners also employed consider-ably more politeness markers and past tense modals in both equal and higherstatus low imposition scenarios than the native speakers. The investigation o participants’ use o internal downgraders in high imposition scenarios willurther show that the AH learners also employed politeness markers and past tense modals with a higher requency than the native speakers in these con-texts. While past tense modals do not seem to have been ocused on in depth

in ILP research o requests so ar, previous studies have also ound that learn-ers in oreign language contexts oten used more politeness markers than thenative speakers (e.g. Faerch & Kasper, 1989; House, 1989; House & Kasper,1987).

Faerch and Kasper (1989) observed that this overuse o politeness markerscoincided with an underuse o downtoners in their study. The data o my AHlearners in both low and high imposition request scenarios corroborate thisfnding. This thus suggests that a sojourn in the study abroad environment

has a positive eect on learners’ pragmatic abilities, as SA learners’ use o downtoners was generally similar to that o the native speakers and they alsorelied less on the politeness marker. As SA learners’ use o many o the internaldowngraders in low imposition scenarios remained rather stable over time, thefrst intense weeks o the SA learners’ stay in the study abroad context beorethe initial data collection session may have provided ruitul learning oppor-tunities or the SA learners.




7.3.2 Us o downads n hh mposton ntactons

While there were distinct dierences in the native speakers and learners’ use

o lexical and syntactic downgraders in low imposition scenarios, the sameis not the case in high imposition situations as Table 7.3 illustrates below.In scenarios that put a high imposition on the interlocutor, the SA learnersand to a slightly lesser degree also the AH learners, employed a range o both lexical and syntactic downgraders that was similar to those used by thenative speaker participants. The data show that with the exception o oneinstance o conditional clause use, the AH learners did not use any othersyntactic downgraders in high imposition requests directed at equal statusinterlocutors, but did employ some syntactic downgraders in high impositionscenarios with a higher status interlocutor. In contrast, the SA learners andnative speakers used the same syntactic downgraders in both equal and highstatus situations involving a high imposition request, with the exception o tag questions.

Regarding the SA learners’ use o lexical and syntactic downgraders overtime, the data reveal instances o non-linear development regarding thegroups’ use o individual downgraders, such as their employment o past tensemodals in higher status, high imposition situations, and instances o linear

Tabl 7.3 Downgraders in high imposition interactions according to variables

Eqal stats, hh mposton Hh stats, hh mposton


Lexical downgraders Downtoner 1.11 1.11 1.22 0.46 1.00 0.78 1.11 1.11 0.31 0.60Politeness marker 0.56 0.33 0.11 1.38 0.87 0.44 0.44 0.22 1.15 0.80

Understater 0.44 0.33 0.08 0.47 0.11 0.11 0.08 0.33Past tense modals 2.33 2.67 2.0 2.08 1.67 1.44 1.89 1.55 2.46 1.93Consultative device 1.22 1.44 1.78 0.54 0.93 0.78 0.67 0.44 0.77 0.47Marked modality 0.22 0.22 0.11 0.08 0.44 0.22 0.33 0.23Hedge 0.07 Aspect 0.11 0.22 0.13 0.11 0.53

Syntactic downgraders Conditional clause 0.56 0.33 0.11 0.08 0.40 0.56 0.44 0.44 0.31 0.20 Appreciative

embedding 0.33 0.11 0.33 0.07 0.33 0.33 0.56 0.15 0.33

Tentative embedding 0.11 0.44 0.56 0.13 0.33 0.67 0.56 0.15 0.67Tag question 0.07 0.07Negation

Notes :

Groups: SA1, SA2, SA3: SA Learners session 1, 2, 3

AH: AH learners





development, such as the group’s use o the consultative device in equal status,high imposition interactions. These fndings corroborate previous research by

Achiba (2003) and Barron (2003) who also ound instances o both, linear and

non-linear development in their L2 learners’ data.Interestingly, the SA learners did not employ any understaters in high

imposition requests in the second sessions. A similar gap pertaining to theuse o internal modifers was also observed by Ellis (1992). Consequently, theabsence o this particular internal modifer in high imposition requests might,like the instances o linear and non-linear development discussed above, sim-ply be indicative o the SA learners’ learning process in the target language.The analysis o the participants’ use o internal modifers has so ar concen-

trated on their employment o downgraders. In the ollowing section, I willinvestigate the learners’ and native speakers’ use o modifers that increase theimpact o the request utterance, the upgraders.

7.4 First Occurrence o Upgraders in SA Learners’ Data

While downgraders are used by the speaker to soten the orce o the request,upgraders are used by the requester to increase the impact o an utterance on

the interlocutor. In contrast to lexical and syntactic downgraders, the num-ber o upgraders that are commonly distinguished is rather small (c. Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989a; Trosborg, 1995). This is probably also one o the reasons why only very ew studies have ocused on upgraders in the past.Figure 7.3 and Table 7.4 show the frst occurrence o internal upgraders in theSA learners’ requests that were elicited with the MET.

The data show that the intensifer was employed by all SA learners in thefrst data collection session. This is not unexpected since Trosborg (1995)

and Hill (1997) also ound instances o this particular modifer being used intheir learner data. Hill’s fndings also suggest that the intensifer was the only

2 2 2 2 2 21 1

3

1 1

1 1

1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

A n d r e a

s

B e r n d

C h r i s t o

p h

D a n i e l

E v a

F r a n

z i s k a

G r e t a

H e n d

r i k I r i s


Figure 7.3. First occurrence o upgraders in SA learners’ data




upgrader employed by his learner participants. The second upgrader type

investigated is a combination o both intensifer and time intensifer, which Idecided to analyse as a separate category, as the combined use o intensiferand time intensifer increases the illocutionary orce o a request more dras-tically than employing a single upgrader on its own. The time intensifer +intensifer was used by six SA learners in the frst data collection session and by a urther two in Session 2 or the frst time. Both learners, who only employedthe time intensifer + intensifer in the second session, did not use the sole timeintensifer in any o the three data elicitation sessions.

The results urther reveal that the time intensifer on its own was used by considerably ewer SA learners than the time intensifer + intensifer. Thelatter intensifer was only employed by three participants, two o whom frst used it in the second data collection session. This indicates that the SA learn-ers would tend to emphasize the urgency o their request rather orceully by using a combined upgrader i they decided to mention a temporal aspect at all.The data also reveal that the two other upgraders investigated, expletives andoverstater, were only used by one SA learner each in Session 1 and 3 respec-tively, thereby making them the least employed upgraders in the present inves-

tigation. This indicates that the use o these strategies seems to depend moreon an individual learners’ preerences and style.

The fndings thus show that upgraders which intensiy part o a request utter-ance or stress the urgency o the request are used by the majority o SA learnersand are generally also used relatively early on during their study abroad sojourn.

A possible explanation or why the sole time intensifer was only used by a rela-tively small number o SA learners could be that some learners may still fnd it difcult to deal with very intricate issues in request modifcation. Alternatively,

learners might believe that only by heavily emphasizing the urgency o a matter will interlocutors be persuaded to help them achieve their aims.

7.5 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Upgraders

The discussion o upgraders so ar has concentrated on the occurrence o the dierent upgrader types in the SA learners’ data. In the ollowing, I will

Tabl 7.4 First occurrence o upgraders in SA learners’ data

A B C D E F G H I

Intensifer 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1Time intensifer + intensifer 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1Time intensifer 2 2 1Expletive 1Overstater 3

Note : The numbers 1, 2, 3 reer to the data elicitation sessions in which the particular downgraders werefrst used.




compare the employment o internal upgraders by the members o the threeparticipant groups. The three groups’ use o internal upgraders is illustratedin Figure 7.4.

The data show that the intensifer indeed seems to be the most commonly employed upgrader, as 93 per cent o the native speaker and 85 per cent o the AH learners also used it in their requests. Strikingly, the upgrader timeintensifer + intensifer was employed by a signifcantly higher number o learners than native speakers. Only 7 per cent o the native speakers used thisupgrader, while it was employed by 23 per cent o the AH learners and 87 percent o the SA learners. It should be noted, however, that the higher numbero learners using this particular modifer did not automatically translate into

a considerably higher use o this upgrader as Tables 7.5 and 7.6 in the ol-lowing section will show. Time intensifers were employed by a rather similarnumber o SA learners and native speakers, 33 and 27 per cent respectively,but were only used by 8 per cent o the AH learners. Thus in both groups thenumber o learners that employed the sole time intensifer was lower than thenative speakers’, while a higher number o participants in both learner groupsemployed the time intensifer + intensifer than in the native speaker group.This fnding may point towards learners’ difculty to increase the orce o

their request utterance without becoming too orceul.The data urther show that expletives were only used by one SA learner andnot by any o the AH learners or native speakers. This suggests that the use o this particular upgrader may be more related to an individual’s personal styleand preerences than to general language use in the scenarios investigated. Incontrast, overstaters, which also had only been used by one SA learner, wereemployed by members o the AH learner and native speaker groups, albeit by a

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10

Overstater

Expletive

Time Intensifier

Time Intensifier+Intensifier

Intensifier


Figure 7.4. Upgraders use by three participant groups




very small number. The limited use o expletives and overstaters was not unex-pected, as neither Trosborg (1995) nor Hill (1997) ound instances o theseupgraders in their studies.

7.6 Comparison o Groups’ Use o Upgraders According to Contextual Variables

The investigation o learners’ and native speakers’ use o upgraders has so arcentred on a general analysis and discussion concerning the groups’ use o the individual upgrader types in the present study. In this section I will ana-lyse learners and native speakers use o upgraders according to the contextualconditions status and imposition. Table 7.5 presents the groups’ employment o upgraders in low imposition scenarios, whereas Table 7.6 shows the partici-pants’ employment o upgraders in high imposition scenarios.

Tabl 7.5 Upgraders in low imposition scenarios according to variables



Intensifer 1.0 0.44 0.56 0.54 0.46 0.33 0.78 0.56 0.13Time intensifer +

intensifer 0.07Time intensiferExpletive 0.11 0.22Overstater 0.11

Notes :

Groups: S1, S2, S3: SA Learners session 1, 2, 3

AH: AH learners


Tabl 7.6 Upgraders in high imposition scenarios according to variables



Intensifer 1.22 1.44 1.78 0.23 1.07 2.11 1.78 0.78 0.85 1.33Time intensifer +

intensifer

0.11 0.33 0.11 0.67 0.56 0.33 0.23 0.07

Time intensifer 0.11 0.22 0.11 0.08 0.07 0.11 0.11 0.20Expletive 0.11 0.11 0.11Overstater 0.08 0.13

Notes :


AH: AH learners





The data show that the three participant groups used considerably ewerupgraders than downgraders in their requests, which corroborates Trosborg’s(1995) and Hill’s (1997) fndings. O the fve upgraders investigated, the

intensifer was used most requently by the learners and native speakers. Thus,it was not merely the only upgrader that was employed by the majority o learn-ers and native speakers, but also the only upgrader that was used by all threegroups in high and low imposition requests. Although the intensifer was usedby the SA learners and native speakers in all our contextual conditions – the

AH learners did not employ intensifers in low imposition interactions withhigher status interlocutors – the data show clearly that intensifers were usedconsiderably more requently in high rather than low imposition requests.

This fnding is in line with the overall fnding that learners and native speak-ers used a wider variety and higher number o upgraders in high impositionscenarios, a result which is similar to the groups’ use o internal downgraders.For example, time intensifer + intensifer and time intensifer were exclusively used in high imposition interactions by the learners and also by all but oneo the native speakers. Expletives were used rather consistently by one o theSA learners, but he restricted his use o this upgrader to interactions involv-ing equal status interlocutors, thus also displaying an awareness o contextualconditions in which the use o this particular upgrader would be perceived asmore permissible.

Regarding the SA learners’ use o upgraders over time, the data reveal that SA learners’ employment o intensifers tended to vary somewhat rom sessionto session. The most interesting fnding in that respect is perhaps that theiruse o intensifers increased steadily rom Session 1 to Session 3 in equal sta-tus, high imposition interactions, while at the same time their use o intensi-fers decreased in higher status, high imposition interactions. As the use o thetime intensifer + intensifer also decreased rom the frst to the last session in

scenarios involving a higher status interlocutor, a possible explanation might be that the SA learners simply decreased their employment o upgraders inhigh imposition requests with the exception o intensifers.

This section concludes the analysis and discussion o upgraders in the pre-sent investigation. In the ollowing section I will summarize the fndings o this chapter and will then discuss learners’ and native speakers’ use o externalmodifers in Chapter 8.

7.7 Summary

The present chapter ocused on learners’ and native speakers’ employment o internal downgraders and upgraders. In Section 7.1, I analysed the frst occur-rence o individual internal downgraders in the SA learners’ data. The fnd-ings showed that all SA learners employed at least one downgrader that they




had not already used in the frst data collection in the subsequent data collec-tion sessions. The results urther revealed that lexical downgraders were usedby a larger number o SA learners early on, while syntactic downgraders were

employed by a considerably smaller number o SA participants in the frst datacollection session, but were then used by several SA learners in subsequent ses-sions. Thus, the fndings suggest that learners may frst acquire and use lexicaldowngraders, beore acquiring the more complex syntactic downgraders. Theresults urther indicated that an individual learners’ ILP development may beaected by a combination o actors and that individual learner dierencesplay an important role in that respect.

The analysis o the three groups’ downgrader use in Section 7.2 showed

that politeness markers and past tense modals were the only downgraders that were employed by all members o the three groups. The results urther indi-cated that the SA learners have a broader repertoire o downgraders than the

AH learners, with the percentage scores o the SA learners requently beingclose to that o the native speakers. A particularly interesting fnding was that that the downtoner was used by a very small percentage o AH learners, namely 31, compared to 100 per cent o the SA learners and 93 per cent o the nativespeakers. Since the downtoner was the only downgrader that was employed by all SA learners in the frst data collection session, this fnding suggests that thestudy abroad context may inuence learners’ acquisition and use o this modi-fer in the early weeks o their sojourn. Compared to lexical downgraders,syntactic downgraders were used by ewer participants. The small number o

AH learners who employed syntactic downgraders was notable and could sug-gest that the acquisition and use o syntactic downgraders may be acilitatedby exposure to the L2 in the study abroad context.

The investigation o the groups’ use o internal downgraders according tothe contextual conditions status and imposition in Section 7.3 revealed that

both learner groups almost exclusively employed syntactic downgraders inhigh imposition interactions, while the native speakers also used syntacticdowngraders in low imposition scenarios. One possible explanation or learn-ers’ preerence or lexical downgraders over syntactic downgraders in lowimposition scenarios might be that syntactic downgraders are inherently morecomplex than lexical ones, and that learners might rerain rom using thesemore difcult syntactic structures when they do not fnd them absolutely neces-sary to achieve their goal. Concerning the possible eect o the SA context on

learners’ use o downgraders, the data show that the SA learners employed abroader range o strategies than the AH learners in equal status, high impo-sition scenarios and also employed more downgraders throughout.

The analysis o the initial occurrence o internal upgraders in the SA learn-ers’ data in Section 7.4 showed that the intensifer was the only upgrader that

was employed by all SA group members in the frst data collection session. Theresults urther showed that the combined upgrader time intensifer + intensifer




was used by a larger number o learners than the upgrader time intensiferon its own. This indicates that the SA learners would tend to emphasize theurgency o their request rather orceully by using a combined upgrader i they

decided to mention a temporal aspect at all. The other upgraders examined,expletive and overstater, were only employed by one SA learner each.

The comparison o the groups’ upgrader use in Section 7.5 revealed that theintensifer was also employed by more than 80 per cent o the native speakersand AH learners. The results urther showed that the upgrader time intensi-fer + intensifer was employed by a signifcantly higher number o learnersthan native speakers. This fnding may point towards learners’ difculty toincrease the orce o their request utterance without becoming too orceul.

While overstaters were employed by a small number o native speakers and AHlearners, expletives were only used by one SA learner.The investigation o learners’ and native speakers’ use o internal upgraders

according to the contextual conditions status and imposition in Section 7.6showed that the participants used ewer upgraders than downgraders in theirrequests. O the fve upgraders investigated, the intensifer was used most re-quently by the learners and native speakers. Thus, it was not only the only upgrader that was employed by the majority o learners and native speakers,but also the only upgrader that was used by all three groups in high and lowimposition requests. Generally, learners and native speakers used a wider vari-ety and higher number o upgraders in high imposition scenarios, a result

which is similar to the groups’ use o internal downgraders.This concludes the analysis and discussion o SA learners, AH learners and

native speakers’ employment o internal downgraders and upgraders in thepresent investigation. In Chapter 8, I will examine the participants’ use o external request modifers.



Chapter 8

Development o Pragmatic Production: External Request Modifcation

8.0 Introduction

In this chapter, I will frst analyse and discuss the initial occurrence o externalmodifers in individual SA learners’ data in Section 8.1. This will be ollowedby a comparison o the external modifers used by the two learner groups andthe native speakers in Section 8.2. In Section 8.3 I will analyse and discusslearners’ and native speakers’ use o external modifers according to the con-textual variables status and imposition. The fndings o this chapter will thenbe summarized in Section 8.4.

8.1 First Occurrence o External Modifers in the SA Learners’ Data

External modifers, which are also called supportive moves (Blum-Kulka et al.,1989b), are additional statements that are made by speakers to support the

head act, that is, the core o the request utterance containing the requestive verb(s) which determine the directness level o the request. External modif-ers can either precede the head act or ollow it and are employed to make therequest ‘plausible and justifable to the person who is to perorm it’ (Trosborg,1995, p. 215). Figure 8.1 schematically illustrates the frst occurrence o theexternal modifers categories ound in the SA learners’ data, while Table 8.1presents the frst occurrence o individual external modifers in the SA learn-ers’ data.

The most striking dierence between the frst occurrence o internal down-graders and external modifers in the present data is that while all learnersseemed to have increased their repertoire o internal downgrader by at least one during their sojourn in the target context, only our o the nine learn-ers (Andreas, Bernd, Daniel and Franziska) employed an external modiferin Session 2 or 3 that they had not previously used in Session 1. The highest number o new external modifers were used by two English honours students,



External Request Modifcation 185

native speakers, or Bernd, who stated in the interview that he had contact with many dierent native speakers as customers or colleagues as a result o his job in a caé on campus. The question that arises o course is why the other

learners who also had a high degree o exposure, such as Hendrik, did not develop in a similar manner. A possible explanation could be that althoughlearners may have been exposed to the similar amounts o L2 input in thestudy abroad context, the type o input itsel will have diered to a certainextent and thus L2 learners may have been exposed to strategies and modi-fers to dierent degrees.

The data o the SA learners urther show that generally ewer external modi-fers than internal modifers were employed by the learners in the frst data

collection session. This is in line with the results o Achiba’s (2003) longitu-dinal investigation, who observed that her learner tended to acquire internalmodifers beore external modifers in the L2 context and also used moreinternal modifers than external modifers. It could thereore be argued that these fndings provide evidence or temporal patterning in that the learnerstended to already have a broader repertoire o internal modifers in the frst data collection, which they then subsequently were all able to increase duringtheir sojourn, while their repertoire o external modifers was more limitedand also only saw gains in the case o our learners.

Concerning the individual external request modifers types that wereused by the SA learners, the data reveal that two external modifers, alerters(e.g. ‘Proessor Jones, . . .’ Hendrik, Session 1, Scenario 1) and grounders (e.g.‘I couldn’t fnd any articles on my essay.’ Christoph, Session 1, Scenario 4), werefrst used by all SA learners in the initial data collection session. This fndingis not unexpected as, together with the head act (e.g. ‘Is it maybe possible that we meet tomorrow instead o today? ’ Daniel, Session 1, Scenario 6), these exter-nal modifers might be regarded as very basic constituents o a request, since

the alerter is employed by the speaker to obtain their interlocutors’ atten-tion, while the grounder is used to provide an explanation or the request being made.

The data urther show that two external modifers, smalltalk (e.g. ‘. . . good to meet you here.’ Andreas, Session 2, Scenario 2) and considerator (e.g. ‘I hope

you don’t mind.’ Bernd, Session 2, Scenario 6), were frst used by the SA learnersin the second or third data collection session. This suggests that SA learners’use o two external modifers seems to be inuenced by the learners’ expos-

ure to the L2 in the study abroad environment, as none o the SA learners hadused either o the two external modifers in the frst data collection session.Since smalltalk is a category that was frst introduced or the present study,no previous data are available on this external modifer which might confrmthe notion that the learners’ use o this modifer and exposure to the L2 inthe study abroad context are connected. However, in Achiba’s (2003) study,her learner also frst used the option giver (an external modifer introduced




by Achiba that is very similar to the considerator) ater she had been exposedto the L2 or a number o months. Thus, there seems to be evidence or tem-poral patterning concerning certain external modifers. In addition, individ-

ual learner dierences also seem to play an important role in SA learners’ useo external modifers, as not all used the same modifers in the same sessions.

8.2 Comparison o Groups’ Use o External Modifers

So ar the discussion has concentrated on the SA learners’ frst use o externalmodifers. In the ollowing, I will compare the SA learners’ employment o

external modifers with that o the AH learners and native speakers. Figure 8.2schematically illustrates how many members o the three participant groupsused the dierent external modifers in the MET scenarios.

The data show that the external modifers alerter and grounder were usedby all learner and native speaker participants. This again seems to indicate,as has been suggested above, that these external modifers constitute coreelements o request utterances. Due to dierent coding categories and di-erent emphases in other request studies, alerters have rarely been examinedseparately and not as part o a bigger entity, such as o external modifers, in

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Considerator

Smalltalk

Promise of reward

Sweetener

Appreciator

Preparator

Imposition minimizer

Disarmer

Grounder

Alerter

SA learners (all sessions) AH learners Native Speakers

Figure 8.2. External modifer use by the three participant groups in per cent




the past. It is, thereore, difcult to determine whether alerters are generally used by a high number o learners. In one o the ew studies ocusing on alert-ers, Warga (2004), however, did fnd that learners tend to use alerters even at

a relatively early stage. The prevalence o grounders in requests, on the otherhand, has oten been observed in the past, or example, Kasper (1981) andHouse and Kasper (1987). Based on the CCSARP data, Faerch and Kasper(1989, p. 239) noted that ‘the grounder stands out as the single most requent external modifer.’

Overall, the results suggest that members o the SA and native speakergroup tended to have a much broader repertoire o external modifers thanthe AH learners. For example, while the disarmer was employed by 89 per

cent o the SA learners and 87 per cent o the native speakers, it was only usedby 46 per cent o the AH learners. Similarly, the preparator was used by 67per cent o the SA learners and 47 per cent o the native speakers, but again

was only employed by 16 per cent o the AH learners. None o the AH learnersemployed either the imposition minimizer (used by 40 per cent o the nativespeakers and 89 per cent o the SA learners) or the considerator (employed by 20 per cent o the native speakers and 22 per cent o the SA learners).

This suggests that staying in the L2 context may be benefcial with regardto language learners’ external modifer repertoire. That time spent in the tar-get community may inuence the use o certain external modifers seems tobe demonstrated most clearly by the considerator. This external modifer wasfrst employed in the second data collection session by the SA learners, but not used by any o the AH learners. This suggests that exposure to the L2 may inuence language learners’ acquisition and use o this and possibly also otherexternal modifers.

8.3 Comparison o Groups’ Use o External Modifers According to Contextual Variables

The investigation o the external modifers so ar has revealed dierences inthe participant numbers employing certain external modifers. In this section,I will compare and discuss the groups’ use o external modifers according tothe variables status and imposition. Learners’ and native speakers’ use o exter-nal modifers in low imposition scenarios will be analysed in Section 8.3.1,

while the groups’ use o external modifers in high imposition scenarios willbe examined in Section 8.3.2.

8.3.1 Us o xtnal modfs n low mposton ntactons

Table 8.2 reveals how requently the dierent external modifers were used ininteractions that involved a low imposition request. For the analyses according




to contextual variables, the instances with which the dierent external modi-fers were employed by the participant groups were divided by the individualparticipant numbers o the group. This was done to achieve comparability o the data sets since the group sizes varied. For example, the use o alerters inequal status, low impositions scenarios by the SA group in Session 1 was calcu-lated in the ollowing way: 31 instances o alerter use by SA group members inSession 1 in low imposition interactions divided by 9 group members = score3.44. Thus, the higher the score or a particular modifer, the higher the num-ber o instances with which the modifer was used by group members.

The use o external modifers in low imposition interactions shows that thelearners and native speakers only employ our dierent external modifers inthese scenarios, namely the alerter, the preparator, the grounder and small-talk. This indicates a shared assessment by the learners and native speakersregarding low imposition scenarios, as none o the members o these groupsound it necessary to employ an external modifer that atters the interlocu-tor or oers some kind o compensation or the desired act. The fguresreveal that the participants mainly employed alerters and grounders, while

the instances o smalltalk and preparator use are considerably more limited.The SA learners’ results show both instances o slight increases in the use o external modifers (e.g. grounders in low imposition interactions with higherstatus interlocutors), as well as slight non-linear variations over time (e.g. alert-ers in low imposition equal status scenarios). Similar observations regardingthe employment o external modifers during a learner’s sojourn in the target environment were also made by Achiba (2003).

Tabl 8.2 External modifers in low imposition interactions according to variables


S1 S2 S3 AH NS S1 S2 S3 AH NS

Alerter 3.44 3.0 3.44 1.77 2.87 3.67 4.0 4.0 2.85 3.47Preparator 0.22 0.11 0.11 0.07 0.22 0.08Grounder 2.33 1.89 2.11 1.15 1.13 1.67 1.67 2.11 0.38 1.33Disarmer AppreciatorSweetenerImposition minimizerSmalltalk 0.11 0.11 0.08 0.13 0.11

ConsideratorPromise o reward

Notes :


AH: AH learners

NS: English native speakers




The data urther reveal that the SA learners tended to employ more externalmodifers in low imposition interactions in all three sessions than the nativespeakers. Although this result may seem surprising, it is in line with fndings o

many previous studies (e.g. Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Cenoz & Valencia,1996; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; House 1989; House & Kasper, 1987, Kobayashiand Rinnert, 2003; Yu, 1999) that showed that L2 learner groups used moreexternal modifers than their native speaker controls. Edmondson and House(1991) coined the term ‘wae phenomenon’ to describe this higher employ-ment o external modifers by language learners. Warga (2004) also observeda rise in the use o external modifers in correlation with increasing prof-ciency levels away rom the native speaker norm in her learner data. She sug-

gests that a possible explanation or her fnding might be inuences rom herlearners’ L1 German, since her data showed that Austrian native speakers o German employed a noticeably higher amount o external modifers than herFrench native speakers.

In contrast to the SA Learners, the AH learners used ewer external modi-fers than the native speakers, with the exception o grounders in low impo-sition, equal status scenarios. A possible reason or this result may be that the

AH learners were more concerned with producing grammatically correct utter-ances than the SA learners and, thereore, produced less elaborate requeststhan the other two groups. A similar ocus on grammatical correctness by AHlearners was also ound by Laord (2004), who attributed this fnding to thetype o interlocutor with whom the learner communicates in the AH or SA context. She suggests that SA learners quickly realize that it is more important to convey their message to their interlocutors outside the classroom in a uent and polite manner, than to pay more attention to the grammatical correctnesso their utterance, which the learners would do inside the classroom in con-

versations with their teachers. This notion is also supported by the fndings o

the investigation into SA learners’ and AH learners’ pragmatic awareness inChapter 5.

8.3.2 Us o xtnal modfs n hh mposton ntactons

Table 8.3 reveals how requently the dierent external modifers were usedby the participant groups in interactions that involved a high impositionrequest.

The data show that, in contrast to the low imposition scenarios, the threeparticipant groups used a considerably larger variety o external modifers insituations involving a high imposition request. Both learners and native speak-ers employed disarmers, appreciators, sweeteners, imposition minimizers,considerators and promise o reward exclusively in high imposition interac-tions. This suggests that, similar to the scenarios involving a low impositionrequest, the three groups demonstrate a shared assessment o the useulness




o certain external modifer types that might be benefcial in persuading theinterlocutor to perorm the desired act.

As was the case in the low imposition scenarios, the SA learners’ data showboth instances o linear increases and decreases in the employment o exter-nal modifers over time (e.g. linear increase: disarmers in high impositioninteractions with higher status interlocutors, linear decrease: appreciators inhigh imposition interactions with equal status interlocutors), as well as non- linear developments (e.g. the use o sweeteners in equal status, high impos-ition scenarios). These fndings are again similar to those by Achiba (2003). As

had also been observed in low imposition interactions, the SA learners againtended to employ more external modifers than native speakers, thus lendingurther support to the aorementioned ‘wae phenomenon’.

Compared to the SA learners and the English native speakers, the AH learn-ers again used ewer external modifers, with the exception o alerters. A pos-sible explanation or this might be the learning contexts o the SA and AHlearners. Because they were living in the study abroad context, the SA learners

were orced to communicate in their L2 in their everyday lie to achieve a wide

variety o dierent aims, such as gaining inormation or socialising. The AHlearners, in contrast, had never lived in an L2 environment beore and, thus,may have made requests that resembled those expected in the seminars they attended. Interactions in seminars, either with ellow students or the lecturer,that are intended to provide AH learners with opportunities to use their L2are oten artifcial in that learners tend to make many utterances in order tolearn certain linguistic eatures and not to achieve a desired goal. The AH

Tabl 8.3 External modifers in high imposition interactions according to variables


S1 S2 S3 AH NS S1 S2 S3 AH NS

Alerter 3.78 3.56 3.89 2.70 2.20 3.78 3.78 3.78 2.54 1.73Preparator 0.89 1.0 1.11 0.08 0.33 0.56 0.22 0.78 0.08 0.13Grounder 2.67 3.44 3.0 1.46 1.93 3.89 3.89 3.56 2.46 2.73Disarmer 1.33 1.11 0.78 0.77 1.07 0.44 0.78 1.0 0.54 0.87 Appreciator 0.56 0.44 0.33 0.13 0.67 0.56 0.67 0.08 0.20Sweetener 0.33 0.78 0.22 0.15 0.33 0.11 0.22 0.11 0.08 0.13Imposition minimizer 0.78 0.44 0.40

SmalltalkConsiderator 0.22 0.11 0.07 0.07Promise o reward 0.11 0.22 0.11 0.08 0.27

Notes :


AH: AH learners

NS: English native speakers




language learning environment may also only provide learners with limitedopportunities to produce a variety o dierent requests. In addition, i all AHlearners share the same L1 and this L1 is also understood by their lecturers,

as is the case in the present sample, learners can always switch back to theirL1 when they want to talk about a particularly sensitive issue or make a highimposition request. Thus, the lower use o external modifers by the AH learn-ers could simply indicate that they lack the real-lie experience o having tosolely rely on their L2 to achieve desired outcomes.

8.4 Summary

This chapter began with an initial analysis and discussion o the frst occur-rence o individual external modifers in the SA learners’ data in Section 8.1.The data showed that the SA learners tended to use ewer external modifersthan internal modifers in the frst data elicitation session. The results urtherrevealed that only our o the nine SA learners employed an external modiferthat they had not previously used in Session 1 in the subsequent sessions. Thiscould suggest that internal modifers are easier to acquire than external ones.Regarding individual external modifer types, the data showed that only alert-ers and grounders were used by all SA learners in the initial data collectionsession, while smalltalk and considerators were exclusively used in later ses-sions by the SA participants. This indicates that SA learners’ use o the lattertwo external modifers seems to be inuenced by the learners’ exposure to theL2 in the study abroad environment. Based on the fndings o this section, SA learners’ use o specifc external modifers seems to be inuenced by individ-ual learner dierences and temporal patterning with regard to certain modi-fers (e.g. the considerator).

Section 8.2 ocused on a general comparison o individual external modiferuse by the three participant groups. The results revealed that again alertersand grounders were used by all learner and native speaker participants, sug-gesting that these external modifers are the core elements o request utter-ances. The data showed that overall members o the SA and native speakergroup tended to have a much broader repertoire o external modifers thanthe AH learners. That a study abroad sojourn can aect L2 learners’ use o certain external modifers is demonstrated most clearly by the considerator.

This external modifer was frst employed in the second data collection sessionby the SA learners, but not used by any o the AH learners. This suggests that studying abroad may be benefcial with regard to language learners’ externalmodifer repertoire.

Learners’ and native speakers’ use o external modifers according to the variables status and imposition was examined in Section 8.3. The resultsrevealed dierences in the groups’ use o external modifers in low and high




imposition request interactions. Learners and native speakers only employedour dierent external modifers (alerters, preparators, grounders, smalltalk)in low imposition scenarios, whereas all three groups used a considerably larger

variety o external modifers in situations involving a high imposition request.This suggests that both learner groups and the native speaker assessed thesituational conditions in which specifc external modifers can/should be usedin a similar way.

Concerning the SA learners’ use o external modifers over time, the datareveal instances o both linear and non-linear developments. The fndings ur-ther show that while the SA learners tended to use more external modifersthan the native speakers, the AH learners tended to use ewer. Possible expla-

nations or the latter result may be SA learners’ preoccupation with grammat-ical correctness rather than pragmatic concerns and/or their lack o real-liecommunicative experiences in the L2 outside the EFL classroom. This con-cludes the analysis and discussion o external modifers. In the ollowing chap-ter I will summarize the fndings o the present study.



Chapter 9

Summary and Conclusion

9.0 Introduction

The aim o the present investigation was to examine how the receptive andproductive pragmatic competence o study abroad learners develops in theBritish L2 target environment, and to explore to which extent learners’ devel-opment concerning their awareness o pragmatic and grammatical inelicitiesis interconnected. I will provide a summary o the fndings o the study inSection 9.1, in which I will reer back to the research questions set out in theintroduction. In Section 9.2, I will address the limitations o the present inves-

tigation. Theoretical, methodological and pedagogical and implications willthen be discussed in Section 9.3.

9.1 Summary o Findings

The results o the present study will be discussed in two sections. In Section 9.1.1,I will provide answers to the research questions addressing issues related to L2

learners’ pragmatic awareness. I will then summarize the results o the investi-gation into SA learners’ productive pragmatic development in Section 9.1.2.

9.1.1 Fndns latd to SA lans’ pamatc awanss

Does the study abroad context inuence language learners’

awareness o pragmatic and grammatical inelicities?

The statistical analyses o participants’ error recognition scores have shownthat the SA learners’ awareness o pragmatic and grammatical inelicitiesincreased signifcantly during their 9-month sojourn at a British university.This fnding thereore corroborates the results o previous studies by Bouton(1994), Matsumura (2003) and Hassall (2005) that had also concluded that aprolonged sojourn in the target language environment helps to improve L2learners’ pragmatic awareness. A comparison o the group’s recognition scores




revealed that the SA learners and the native speakers recognized signifcantly more pragmatic inelicities than the AH learners. The dierence in errorrecognition scores or pragmatic inelicities was already signifcant in the SA

learners’ frst data collection session, which means that even ater only about 4 weeks in the L2 context, the SA learners detected signifcantly more prag-matic inelicities than the AH learners.

Ater their 9-month stay in the study abroad context, the SA learners’ prag-matic error recognition scores had not only improved signifcantly, thus show-ing an increase in the SA learners’ pragmatic awareness, but had increasedto exactly match the native speakers’ scores. This indicates that at the end o their sojourn, the SA learners had reached a native-like receptive pragmatic

profciency level pertaining to the simple, everyday interactions examined by the video-and-questionnaire task. It has to be noted, however, that the resultscannot be generalized to predicting the students’ pragmatic awareness regard-ing more complex and/or unamiliar situations in dierent contexts.

A comparison o the participants’ ability to detect grammatical errorsshowed that the AH learners and native speakers noticed signifcantly moregrammatical inelicities than the SA learners in the frst data collection ses-sion. The good perormance o the AH learners was not unexpected, as the

AH learners had received a minimum o 2 hours o university-level grammarinstruction in the 2.5 years preceding the data collection. However, ater9 months in England, the SA learners’ ability to detect grammatical inelicitieshad improved so drastically that dierences between the three groups’ scores

were no longer signifcant.

Does language learners’ pragmatic and grammatical

awareness develop at the same time? The results o the present investigation have shown that the proessionallanguage learners in the AH context, who were studying English to becometranslators and/or interpreters, were less aware o pragmatic than grammat-ical inelicities. Thus, it seems that L2 learners’ grammatical awareness willprobably develop earlier than their pragmatic awareness in typical oreign lan-guage contexts, such as Germany, where learners’ input is oten limited to thelanguage classroom. As Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) noted, instruction

in EFL environments tends to ocus on grammatical correctness and it appearsthat this ocus has not changed since Kasper observed in 1982 that ‘ormal cor-rectness is given high priority in the German school context’ (p. 109).

While L2 learners’ grammatical awareness seems to develop earlier in typ-ical EFL contexts, ESL contexts like Great Britain seem to promote both, L2learners’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness. The SA learners’ good rec-ognition scores or pragmatic errors in the frst data collection session could



Summary and Conclusion 195

potentially indicate that the frst ew weeks o the SA learners’ sojourn in thetarget country lead to a leap in L2 learners’ pragmatic awareness. However,as no data were elicited rom the SA participants beore they let their home

country, urther studies that include a pre-sojourn data collection are neededto determine whether this leap does indeed take place or not.

Do language learners and native speakers perceive one type o

inelicity (grammatical/pragmatic) to be more serious than another?

The analysis o the data has shown that the SA learners considered prag-

matic inelicities to be more serious than grammatical errors. It is important to note that they already considered pragmatic inelicities to be worse thangrammatical ones in the frst data collection session and that they perceivedpragmatic errors to be even more serious at the end o their stay than at the beginning. This indicates that a study abroad sojourn in the L2 envi-ronment aects L2 learners’ perceptions concerning the seriousness o prag-matic inelicities. Like the SA learners, the native speakers also consideredpragmatic errors to be much more serious than grammatical ones. The AHlearner group, in contrast, perceived grammatical inelicities to be worsethan grammatical ones. The statistical analysis showed that the severity rat-ing scores o the SA learners and native speakers were signifcantly dierent rom those o the AH learners in the frst and second data collection ses-sions. These fndings support the results o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s(1998) investigation, who had also observed an inverse rating behaviour o their learner participant groups concerning the severity o pragmatic andgrammatical errors, which they called ‘the mirror eect’ and which was alsoound in the present investigation.

Are study abroad learners aware o their own pragmatic

development in the study abroad context?

The members o the group diered in their willingness to share their observations regarding their own L2 development and their study abroad sojourn with me. Four o the participants chose not to comment on the issue. O the

remaining 12 SA learners, only two learners explicitly talked about prag-matic issues. They explained how they had become aware o the way nativespeakers interacted and as a result had either acquired new expressions oradjusted their language use to adapt to that in the target environment. Thus,the statements o these two SA learners seem to be congruent with Schmidt’s(1993, 1995) noticing hypothesis regarding the development o pragmaticawareness.




9.1.2 Fndns latd to SA lans’ podctv pamatc sklls

Does the study abroad context aect language

learners’ use o request strategies? The eect o the SA context on L2 learners’ use o request strategies is not asobvious as the eect on L2 learners’ pragmatic and grammatical awareness.This is probably due to the rather high profciency level o the learner partici-pants in the present study. The most striking developments with regard to SA learners’ request strategy use appear to be on an individual level, highlightingthe importance o individual learner dierences. The two SA learners Berndand Iris who employed imperatives in the frst data collection session either

stopped doing so in the second or the third session, and then began to use moreappropriate indirect strategies instead. That stopping to use a particular strat-egy can be indicative o increasing pragmatic competence in the L2 appearsto also be evidenced by Hendrik, who stopped using unhedged perormativesater the frst data collection session and instead resorted to conven tionally indirect strategies or hedged perormatives. The data also showed, however,that SA learners not only developed by no longer using somewhat inappropri-ate strategies, but also by beginning to use new strategies in certain contexts.

Bernd’s employment o hints is particularly interesting in that respect, as hebegan to use hints in a scenario in Sessions 2 and 3 in which he had previously used an imperative. As imperatives and hints are at the exact opposite ends o the directness scale, this is a considerable change in strategy use or him andseems to be indicative o a positive development o his pragmatic abilities inthe study abroad context. Thus the choices o the SA learners to use or not useparticular strategies in certain situations suggest that the study abroad environ-ment had a positive impact on their pragmatic abilities.

On a more general point, o all request strategy types investigated in thisstudy, ability is the one that was used with the highest requency by the nativespeakers and both learner groups. This supported fndings o previous request studies (e.g. House & Kasper, 1987; Otçu & Zeyrek, 2008; Woodfeld, 2008).

Although ability was the most requently employed conventionally indirect strategy type by all three participant groups, there are considerable dier-ences regarding how oten this request strategy was used by the three groups.The AH learners, or example, used ability in 75 per cent o situations withequal status interlocutors that involved a low imposition request, while the

English native speakers only employed it in 40 per cent o this contextual con-dition. This and the AH learners’ limited use o other strategies suggests that overall their request strategy repertoire is more limited than the SA learners’.

With regard to the SA learners, the results reveal that by the end o their stay in the study abroad context, the requency with which they employed ability

was similar to the native speakers’ in three o the our contextual conditionsthat were examined.




Does the study abroad context aect language learners’ use o

internal request modifers?

The results revealed that all SA learners used at least one downgrader that they had not previously used in the frst data collection in the subsequent datacollection sessions. The data urther showed that lexical downgraders wereused by a larger number o SA learners early on, while syntactic downgraders

were employed by a considerably smaller number o SA participants in the frst data collection session, but were then used by several SA learners in subse-quent sessions. Thus, the fndings suggest that learners may frst acquire anduse lexical downgraders, beore acquiring the more complex syntactic down-graders. This is in line with Hendrik’s (2008), Otçu and Zeyrek’s (2008) and

Woodfeld’s (2008) results who also noted that their learners o English usedmore lexical than syntactic downgraders and in disagreement with Warga’s(2004) fnding who reported that her learners o French used more syntacticthan lexical downgraders. A possible explanation or these diering resultsmay lie in the L2 the learners were using, English and French.

The results urther indicated that the SA learners had a broader repertoireo downgraders than the AH learners, as the percentage scores o the SA learners were oten close to those o the native speakers. A particularly inter-

esting fnding was that that the downtoner was used by a very small percentageo AH learners, namely 31, compared to 100 per cent o the SA learners and93 per cent o the native speakers. Since the downtoner was the only down-grader that was employed by all SA learners in the frst data collection session,this fnding suggests that the study abroad context may inuence learners’acquisition and use o this modifer in the early weeks o their sojourn.

The analysis o the initial occurrence o internal upgraders in the SA learn-ers’ data showed that the intensifer was the only upgrader that was employed

by all SA group members in the frst data collection session. The comparisono the groups’ upgrader use revealed that the intensifer was also employed by more than 80 per cent o the native speakers and AH learners. This indicatesthat this upgrader is indeed requently used and also suggests that it can beacquired in both oreign language and target language contexts. The resultsurther showed that the upgrader time intensifer + intensifer was employedby a signifcantly higher number o SA and AH learners than as native speak-ers. This fnding may point towards learners’ difculty to increase the orce o

their request utterance without becoming too orceul.

Does the study abroad context aect language learners’ use o

external request modifers?

The data revealed that the SA learners tended to use ewer external modifersthan internal modifers in the frst data elicitation session. The analysis o the




results urther showed that only our o the nine SA learners employed anexternal modifer that they had not previously used in the initial data collec-tion session in the subsequent sessions. This may suggest that internal modi-

fers are easier to acquire than external ones. Concerning individual externalmodifer types, the data showed that only alerters and grounders were used by all SA learners in the initial data collection session. As the comparison o thegroups’ use o external modifers revealed that these two modifers were alsoemployed by all AH learners and all native speakers in the present investiga-tion, alerters and grounders could be regarded as the core elements o request utterances. With regard to individual external modifer repertoires, the datashowed that members o the SA and native speaker group tended to have a

much broader repertoire o external modifers than the AH learners.That a study abroad sojourn can have a positive eect on L2 learners’ use o certain external modifers is demonstrated most clearly by the considerator.This external modifer was frst employed in the second data collection sessionby the SA learners, but not used by any o the AH learners. Thus, while individ-ual learner dierences may play an important role in L2 learners’ pragmaticdevelopment, there are also indications or temporal patterning.

9.2 Limitations

There are several limitations o this study that need to be acknowledged andaddressed. The frst limitation concerns the number o participants. Due tothe combined video-and-questionnaire and interview approach and the ocuson German native speakers or both learner groups, the number o partici-pants in the receptive part o the study is considerably smaller than that o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) original research. However, since the

fndings o the investigation into the learners’ and native speakers’ linguisticawareness corroborated the results o Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s study, thelower amount o data does not seem to have inuenced the overall results.

A larger participant number in the productive part o the study could havehelped to establish the role o individual learner dierences and temporalpatterning more clearly. Regrettably it seems that attracting a higher numbero participants or a study that involves a long-term commitment will probably always be difcult.

A second limitation involves the use o elicited data in the investigation o learners’ productive pragmatic skills. It has to be noted that elicited data in gen-eral cannot reect ully how participants would react in real-lie request situa-tions. Such data can, however, provide indications o the linguistic means theinormants have at their disposal to negotiate these situations. Nevertheless,it has to be pointed out that the examination o the learners’ productive com-petence concentrated exclusively on requests and could thereore not provide




comprehensive list o categories or typical request eatures that can be oundeither in naturally occurring speech or elicited spoken data. The introductiono the new modifer ‘option giver’ in Achiba’s (2003) study that was based on

naturally occurring spoken data suggests that additional categories may haveto be added to better represent participants’ output.

When analysing the data o the present investigation, I noticed that cer-tain sections o participants’ utterances could not be coded according to theexisting rameworks and thereore added the three external modifers ‘appre-ciator’, ‘considerator’ and ‘smalltalk’ to my coding scheme to better reect

what the participants were saying in order to convince their interlocutors todo something or them. Developing a comprehensive request strategy and

modifcation ramework that is based on oral data and covers the many pos-sible ways o ormulating and supporting a request in a variety o languages iso course a major endeavour and a great challenge. However, the benefts o expanding the request coding schemes could make it worth it, as more com-prehensive coding schemes would provide us with urther insights into what successul language users do to achieve their aims and what L2 learners needto be taught.

9.3.2 Mthodolocal mplcatonsThe present research has shown the advantages o combining multimedia instru-ments with interviews in pragmatics research. Both multimedia instrumentsinstruments, Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) video-and- questionnairetask and the newly developed MET, have three essential advantages orresearchers compared to other data elicitation methods that are commonly used in interlanguage pragmatics research. First, they provide participants

with a high amount o audiovisual contextual inormation, thereby making

it easier or the participants to grasp and evaluate the context. Secondly, they provide researchers with a highly reliable and standardized data elicitationmethod that enables them to subject their participants to exactly the samesituational conditions without any variations. Finally, they enable researchersto work independently o other people, such as actors in role-plays, and to usenative speaker input, such as the audio data in the MET, even i they them-selves are not native speakers o that language. It is hoped that these advan-tages o using data collection instruments based on inormation technology

will lead to a higher use o available technologies in pragmatics research andthus to the development o new, urther improved instruments. Although these new instruments have a number o advantages, the present

investigation has also shown the benefts o combining multimedia technology with traditional techniques, such as the interview. The interviews enabled meto obtain urther insights into participants’ decision making rationales andtheir more general thoughts on pragmatic issues. These conversations were




very valuable, because they showed to what extent learners and native speakers were conscious o their rating behaviour or not. The interviews also revealedhow participants really elt about pragmatic or grammatical errors and that

Thomas (1983) was right to argue that committing a pragmatic inelicity tendsto reect badly on the speaker’s character.

While the potential consequences o pragmatic inelicities are widely com-mented on in the ILP literature, only very ew investigations have examinedthe impact o these inelicities on hearers by asking hearers to share theirthoughts and eelings upon hearing the utterance. More o these investiga-tions are needed, because they show how important it is or language learnersto have certain pragmatic skills and thereby make it easier to argue the case

or including pragmatic elements into language curricula, especially in EFLcontexts, where learners and teachers do not normally experience the conse-quences o pragmatic inelicities as requently as learners and teachers in theESL context.

The results o the investigation o learners’ productive pragmatic develop-ment have shown that not all SA learners frst use the same strategy or modiferin the same data collection session. This supports Matsumura’s (2003, 2007)fnding that individual learner dierences and SA learners’ experiences in thetarget environment inuence learners’ development. To help establish what impact individual learner dierences (e.g. motivation, profciency, personal-ity) and other actors, such as number o native speaker contact hours andpositive/negative experiences in the SA context, have on SA learners’ prag-matic development, urther studies are needed that include instruments that address these issues.

Instruments that could be added to pragmatic investigations are Freed et al.’s(2004) language contact profle survey, questionnaires on language learners’motivation (e.g. Gardner, 2004; c. also Dörnyei, 2001 or urther question-

naires), and learner diaries. The latter in particular could provide very richdata about dierences in L2 learners’ development, but also require a con-siderable time commitment on the learners’ part. As participant attrition isalways a problem in longitudinal studies relying on volunteer participants, theindividual research instruments would need to be careully combined so asnot to place too high a demand on the participants.

9.3.3 Pdaocal Implcatons

The current investigation has shown that a sojourn in the L2 context hasbeneft ed SA learners’ pragmatic competence in their L2. This is a positiveresult or the large number o students deciding to study at a oreign univer-sity. The fndings o the present study also revealed that the SA learners’ aware-ness o pragmatic inelicities surpassed that o the AH participants and that




the SA participants tended to have a broader request strategy and modiferrepertoire at the end o their stay than the AH participants. This in itsel is not a complete surprise because previous research such as House (1996), and most

notably the original study or which the elicitation instrument was developed,Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998), has reached similar conclusions regardingthe eect o the ESL and EFL learning context. With regard to the AH learn-ers in the present study, the results oreshadow that these students will gradu-ate with a sound knowledge o grammar but will be less aware o pragmaticproblems than their SA counterparts. They may also fnd it more difcult toormulate requests in a more nuanced manner than the SA learners.

This is disappointing because it seems clear that an insufcient recogni-

tion o pragmatic issues in oreign language curricula results in a markedlinguistic disadvantage on the part o the AH participants whose L2 input isprimarily restricted to what the curriculum oers. House (2003) listed a num-ber o reasons that were commonly used in arguments as to why pragmaticsdoes not need to be taught. The question, o course, is whether the AH learn-ers who want to build their careers on their skills in a oreign language andexpect to receive a high standard education in their country would agree withthose arguments. Focusing on grammatical correctness in school teaching isundoubtedly essential, but studies like the present one demonstrate that lan-guage learners are also in need o instruction on L2 pragmatics.

When introducing pragmatics to experienced ESL/EFL teachers on my lan-guage teaching methodology course at Lancaster, it is oten clear that the major-ity o language teachers attending the course have not come across pragmaticsbeore and are much more used to thinking about L2 profciency in terms o the our skills, listening, reading, speaking and writing. This shows that theabsence o instruction on pragmatic issues in language classrooms may not be adeliberate decision by language teachers, but may simply be the result o curric-

ula at teacher training institutions that do not include pragmatics at all. Whilethis clearly is very worrying, it is encouraging to see that once made aware o pragmatics, teachers on the language methodology course oten enquire about how pragmatic issues can be included in their individual teaching contexts.

In the recent years, a number o researchers have suggested various waysto teach pragmatics to L2 learners, such as awareness raising techniques (e.g.Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig & Grifn, 2005; Crandall & Basturkmen,2004; Kasper, 1997a, 1997b; Meier, 1997), the use o video flm material (e.g.

Alcon Soler, 2005; Martinez Flor, 2007; Rose, 1997, 1999), multi-methodapproaches (Judd, 1999; Kobayashi and Rinnert, 2003), the use o inor-mation provided by previous participants o exchanges programmes in theorm o diaries (Du Fon, 2003), the combined use o corpus and DCT data(Schauer & Adolphs, 2006) and the participation in telecollaboration pro-grammes in which oreign learner groups are paired up and exchange prag-matic inormation (e.g. Belz & Kinginger, 2002; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006).




While not all suggested approaches and methods may be easible or languageteachers and curriculum developers in their particular teaching contexts, it should be possible to include at least some orm o pragmatic instruction in all

teaching contexts. Ignoring pragmatic concerns in language teaching comesat a price, especially or language learners in EFL contexts, and can leave themat a disadvantage to other L2 learners who have received pragmatic instruc-tion or have spent time in the L2 target environment. It should thereore be inthe best interest o all teachers, curriculum designers and education author-ities to incorporate pragmatic instruction into their curricula.



Appendices

Appendix A

Awareness Study Questionnaires

A1 Enlsh vson

Scenes rom School * Questionnaire * 2003

Thank you or helping us with our research. In the video you are going to see Anna and Peter talking to classmates and teachers. Their English will some-times be correct but sometimes there will be a problem. Your job is to decidehow well Anna and Peter use English in dierent conversations. You will seeevery conversation twice. The frst time, just watch and listen. The second time,there will be an exclamation mark (!) beore the part we want you to evaluate.

When the conversation ends, decide whether you think there is a mistake ornot and mark your answer sheet.

Let’s look at an example:

Anna’s answer obviously is not good. So in the example on your answer sheet put an ‘X’ in the box marked ‘No’. Ater this, you decide how big the mistakeis. Put an ‘X’ somewhere on the line between ‘not bad at all’ and ‘very bad’.

John: Good morning, Anna.

! Anna: Good night, John .

Was the last part appropriate / correct?

Yes No

If there was a problem, how bad doyou think it was?

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad



Appendix A 205

For a small mistake mark the second or third slot; or a serious mistake markthe last slot.

Remember: This is not a test; we are interested in what you think.

I you have a question, please ask now and we’ll stop the video.

1. Teacher: Peter, could you check the bus times for us on the way home tonight?

! No, I can't tonight. Sorry.


Yes No


2. Classmate: Peter, would you like to come over to my house tonight?

! I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm very tired. I couldn't sleep on last night.


Yes No


3. Dinnerlady: May I help you?

! Would you be so kind as to give me a sandwich and a yoghurt please?


Yes No


Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad



206 Appendix A

4. Classmate: I've got to go to the library

! Oh, if you are going to the library, can you please return my books too?


Yes No


Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

5. Teacher: Well, I think that's all I can help you with at the moment.

! Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for all the informations.


Yes No


6. [Anna knocks over some books inher teacher's office]

! Oh no! I'm really sorry! Let me help you pick them up.


Yes No


7. Teacher: Anna, it's your turn to give your talk.

! I can't do it today but I will do it next week.


Yes No

If there was a problem, how bad do

you think it was?



Appendix A 207

8. Dinnerlady: Would you like some

cream in your coffee?

! Yes, I would like.


Yes No


Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

9. Classmate: Anna, do you have the book I gave you last week?

!Oh, I'm really sorry but I was in a rush this morning and I didn't brought it today.


Yes No


10. Student: Hi.

! Tell me how to get to the library.


Yes No


11. Classmate: Weren't we supposed to meet at 4?

! I couldn't come earlier. And anyway, we don't have to hurry anywhere.


Yes No


you think it was?



208 Appendix A

12.

13.

14.

15.

Classmate: What shall we do?

! Let’s go to the snack bar.


Yes No


Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Teacher: Could you come back later?

! Ok, I'll be here tomorrow morning at 8.


Yes No


Teacher: Yes?

! Could I possibly borrow this book for the weekend if you not need it?


Yes No


Teacher: Peter, we need to talk about the class party soon.

! Yeah, if tomorrow is good for you, I could come in any time yoy say.


Yes No


you think it was?



Appendix A 209

16.

17.

18.

19.

Teacher: Yes, come in.

! Hello. My name is Anna Kovacs. If you don’t mind I would like you to fill this in for me


Yes No


Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

Classmate: Anna, would you like to come over this afternoon?

! I’m sorry, I’d really like to come but I have a difficult history test tomorrow.


Yes No


[Anna asks another student]

! Excuse me, could you tell me where is the library?


Yes No


Teacher: Anna, have you brought

back the book I gave you yesterday?

! Oh, I’m very sorry, I completely forgot. Can I giving it to you tomorrow?


Yes No


you think it was?



210 Appendix A

20. Classmate: No, I have already

prepared for tomorrow’s classes?

! Then I say we go to the cinema. OK?


Yes No


Not bad Very____:____:____:____:____:____:

at all bad

A2 Gman vsonScenes rom School * Questionnaire * 2001

Thank you or helping us with our research. In the video you are going to see Anna and Peter talking to classmates and teachers. Their English will some-times be correct but sometimes there will be a problem. Your job is to decidehow well Anna and Peter use English in dierent conversations. You will seeevery conversation twice. The frst time, just watch and listen. The second time,

there will be an exclamation mark (!) beore the part we want you to evaluate. When the conversation ends, decide whether you think there is a mistake ornot and mark your answer sheet.

Let’s look at an example:

John: Good morning, Anna.

! Anna: Good night, John.

War der letzte Teil angemessen / korrekt?

Ja Nein

Falls es ein Problem gab, wie schlimm war es deiner Ansicht nach?

Gar nicht Sehr____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

Anna’s answer is obviously not good. So in the example on your answer sheet put an ‘X’ in the box marked ‘Nein’: Ater this, you decide how big the mistakeis. Put an ‘X’ somewhere on the line between ‘gar nicht schlimm’ and ‘sehrschlimm’. For a small mistake mark the second or third slot; or a serious mis-take mark the last slot.

Remember: This is not a test, we are interested in what you think.I you have a question, please ask now and we’ll stop the video.



Appendix A 211

1. Teacher: Peter, could you check

the bus times for us on the way home tonight?

! No, I can't tonight. Sorry.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

2. Classmate: Peter, would you like

to come over to my house tonight?

! I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm

very tired. I couldn't sleep on

last night.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

3. Dinnerlady: May I help you?

! Would you be so kind as to

give me a sandwich and a yoghurt please?


Ja Nein


4. Classmate: I've got to go to the library to return my books.

! Oh, if you are going to the library, can you please return my book too?


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm



212 Appendix A

5. Teacher: Well, I think that's all I can help you with at the moment.

! Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for all the informations.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

6. [Anna knocks over some books inher teacher’s office]

! Oh no! I'm really sorry! Let me help you pick them up.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:___ _:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

7. Teacher: Anna, it's your turn to give your talk.

! I can't do it today but I will do it next week.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

8. Dinnerlady: Would you like some cream in your coffee?

! Yes, I would like.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm



Appendix A 213

9. Classmate: Anna, do you have the book I gave you last week?

! Oh, I'm really sorry but I was in a rush this morning and I didn't brought it today.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

10. Student: Hi.

! Tell me how to get to the library.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

11. Classmate Weren't we supposed to meet at 4?

! I couldn't come earlier. And

anyway, we don't have to hurry anywhere.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

12. Classmate: What shall we do?

! Let's to go to the snack bar.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm



214 Appendix A

13. Teacher: Could you come back later?

! Ok, I'll be here tomorrow morning at 8.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

14. Teacher: Yes?

! Could I possibly borrow this book for the weekend if you not need it?


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

15. Teacher: Peter, we need to talk about the class party soon.

! Yeah, if tomorrow is good for

you, I could come any time you

say.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

16. Teacher: Yes, come in.

! Hello. My name is Anna

Kovacs. If you don't mind I

would like you to fill this in for

me.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm



Appendix A 215

17. Classmate: Anna, would you like to come over this afternoon?

! I'm sorry, I'd really like to

come but I have a difficult

history test tomorrow.


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

18. [Anna asks another student]

! Excuse me, could you tell me

where is the library?


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

19. Teacher: Anna, have you brought back the book I gave you yesterday?

! Oh, I'm very sorry, I

completely forgot. Can I giving it to you tomorrow ?


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm

20. Classmate: No, I have already prepared for tomorrow's classes?

Then I say we go to the

cinema. OK?


Ja Nein


Gar nicht Sehr ____:____:____:____:____:____:

schlimm schlimm



Appendix B

MET Scenarios

B1 Wttn nstctons (Enlsh vson)

Thank you very much or participating in my research. In the ollowing you will see 16 scenarios and a sample scenario. Each scenario is introduced by aslide that contains a short description o the ollowing scenario. Ater 10 sec-onds you will see another slide containing a photo depicting the scenario. At the same time you will hear a detailed description o the scenario. At the endo each description, the speaker says ‘You say’. Please say what you would say in this situation. In two scenarios, the name o the person you are talking to ismentioned. I you want to address the other persons by their names, eel reeto think o a name or them.

B2 Wttn nstctons (Gman vson)

Vielen Dank ür deine Teilnahme an dieser Studie. Im Folgenden siehst du

16 Situationen und eine Beispielsituation. Jede Situation wird durch ein Diaeingeleitet, das eine kurze Beschreibung der olgenden Situation enthält, z.B.‘Asking a riend or the time’. Nach 10 Sekunden wechselt das Dia zu einemPhoto, das die Situation darstellt. Zeitgleich erklingt eine genaue Beschreibungder jeweiligen Situation. Am Ende jeder Beschreibung sagt die Sprecherin ‘Yousay’. Sage dann bitte, was du in dieser Situation sagen würdest. Es werden inzwei Situationen Namen der Personen mit denen du sprichst genannt. Wenndu die anderen Personen mit einem Namen ansprechen möchtest, denke direinach Namen ür sie aus.



Appendix B 217

Sampl scnao

Slide 1

Slide 2

A) Askn a nd o th tm

You are having coee with a riend beore your seminar. You want tocheck whether you have to leave soon, when you realize that you don’t have your watch with you. You ask your riend or the time.

You say:



218 Appendix B

Scenario 1

Slide 1

Slide 2

(1) Askn a posso to opn a wndow

You are attending a seminar. It is a very sunny day and the classroom ishot. The proessor is standing near the window. You ask him to open it.

You say:



Appendix B 219

Scenario 2

Slide 1

Slide 2

You are in the corridor o your department. Your next seminar is tak-ing place in the Trent Building, but you don’t know where the Trent Building is. One o your proessors, Proessor Jones, is walking down thecorridor towards you. You ask him or directions to the Trent Building.

You say:

(2) Askn a posso o dctons toth Tnt Bldn



220 Appendix B

Scenario 3

Slide 1

(3) Askn a nd to fll n aqstonna

Slide 2

You have to ask a student to complete a questionnaire or one o yourprojects. You decide to ask Lucy, a riend o yours. You know that sheis very busy with her own projects at the moment, but you eel that sheis the best person or your assignment. At the end o the seminar, youturn to her and ask her to complete the questionnaire or you.

You say:



Appendix B 221

Scenario 4

Slide 1

(4) Askn a posso toslct and bn n atcls

Slide 2

You are having difculties fnding articles and books or one o youressays. You hardly ound anything in the library and ear that you will not be able to write the essay. Your proessor, who gave you the essay topic and

who is a specialist in this area, is conducting a seminar. Ater the seminaris over, you go up to her and ask her to bring in some articles or you. Youalso tell her that it is urgent.

You say:



222 Appendix B

Scenario 5

Slide 1

Slide 2

You have to hand in an essay to the secretary. The secretary’s ofce is clos-ing soon and you are already running late. When you get to her ofce, twoproessors are standing in ront o it. You ask them to let you through.

You say:

(5) Askn two possos to stp asd



Appendix B 223

Scenario 6

Slide 1

(6) Askn a nd to mt yo onanoth day

Slide 2

You arranged to meet a riend o yours at 4 p.m. to help you with youressay. However, on the morning o your meeting, you wake up with aterrible toothache and the dentist can only see you at 4 p.m. Your riendhas cancelled another meeting to see you this aternoon and is very busy, because he has to hand in his essays soon. You wait or him aterhis seminar and ask him to meet you tomorrow instead.

You say:



224 Appendix B

Scenario 7

Slide 1

Slide 2

(7) Askn a nd to spak lod

You and some o your riends are having a snack in the caeteria. One o your riends is telling you something about new university regulations or your course. But you cannot hear her very well, as it is quite noisy. You askher to speak louder.

You say:



Appendix B 225

Scenario 8

Slide 1

(8) Askn a posso o a mtn dn th holdays

Slide 2

You are in your proessor’s ofce. It is the last day beore the university holidays. You are staying in Nottingham during the holidays to fnish

your essays. You are having difculties with your topic and ear that you will need some more help. You ask your proessor or a meeting duringthe holidays.

You say:



226 Appendix B

Scenario 9

Slide 1

Slide 2

You are attending a seminar. The sun is shining into the classroom andit is very hot. A riend o yours is sitting next to the window. You turn to

your riend and ask him to open it.

You say:

(9) Askn a nd to opn a wndow



Appendix B 227

Scenario 10

Slide 1

Slide 2

You are having difculties fnding articles and books or one o youressays. You hardly ound anything in the library and ear that you willnot be able to write the essay. A riend o yours is in the middle o writ-ing an essay on a similar topic and has bought several books on thistopic. The library does not have these books. You and your riend arestanding in the corridor o your department. You turn to her and askher to lend you the books and bring them in or you the next day.

You say:

(10) Askn a nd to lnd yo books andbn thm n



228 Appendix B

Scenario 11

Slide 1

(11) Askn a posso to complt aqstonna

Slide 2

You are running a project or which you would like your proessor tocomplete a lengthy questionnaire. She is a very busy person, but the ques-tionnaire is essential or your project. At the end o class, you go up tothe proessor’s desk and ask her to complete the questionnaire or you.

You say:



Appendix B 229

Scenario 12

Slide 1

(12) Askn a nd o dctons to thPotland Bldn

Slide 2

You are standing in ront o the library. Your next seminar is takingplace in the Portland Building, but you don’t know where the PortlandBuilding is. A riend o yours is walking towards you. You ask him ordirections to the Portland Building.

You say:



230 Appendix B

Scenario 13

Slide 1

(13) Askn a posso to mt yo onanoth day

Slide 2

You arranged a meeting with a visiting proessor, who is always very busy.On the morning o the meeting you wake up with a ever and a terriblecold. You attend his seminar, but eel too ill to meet him aterwards. Yougo to him during a short break and ask him or another appointment.

You say:



232 Appendix B

Scenario 15

Slide 1

Slide 2

It is the last day beore the university holidays. You are staying inNottingham during the holidays to prepare or your exams, but youare having difculties with one o the concepts that is essential or theexams. Your riend understands the concept, but is ying home in twodays and is quite busy. You turn to him ater the seminar is over and askhim to meet you and explain the concept to you.

You say:

(15) Askn a nd to mt yo andxplan a concpt



Appendix B 233

Scenario 16

Slide 1

Slide 2

You are attending a seminar. The proessor is explaining a new concept,but you cannot hear her very well. You ask her to speak louder.

You say:

(16) Askn a posso to spak lod



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ability 88, 123, 155–9, 164acculturation 16 Achiba, M. 28, 55, 56, 65, 92, 142,

147, 150, 166, 176, 185, 186, 188,190, 200

acquisitional theories, in L2pragmatics 16–17

adult learners, longitudinaldevelopmental studies 53–4

advice utterances 20 Arican learners o English 33agreement 11

alerters 92, 130–1, 185, 190 American English learners o

Spanish 51–2appreciators 92approbation 11 Arabic learners o English 46–7at home (AH) learners

in awareness study 72–4in production study 75

Austin, J.L., 5, 7, 8, 58 n3 Austrian learners o French 50–1availability 87, 142–5, 163awareness studies

data elicitation techniques in 60–5participants in 71–4

awareness study questionnaires 204–15

Bachman, L.F. 15, 59 n10

Bardovi-Harlig, K. 3, 16, 22, 23, 24, 44,64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 77, 78, 80, 83, 94,95, 97, 99, 103, 107, 108, 110, 120,121, 194, 195, 198, 200, 202

Barron, A. 2, 42–3, 53, 54, 56, 166, 176behabitives 58 n3Bialystok, E. 17, 23, 41

Blum-Kulka, S. 8, 20, 25, 26, 34–5, 36,62, 85, 89, 120, 123, 127, 133, 141,159, 165 n3, 166, 199

Bonikowska, M.P. 64, 80Bouton, L.F. 2, 20, 21, 22, 35, 39, 40, 63,

120, 193Brown, P. 11, 26, 58Bublitz, W. 6, 128

camaraderie 10card-sorting 62Cartoon Oral Production Task

(COPT) 49children

acquisition o pragmatic norms by 17longitudinal developmental

studies 54–6pragmatic development 54–6socialization o 13

Chinese learners o English 33, 49Chomsky, N. 59 n9

closed role-plays 67Cohen, A.D. 45, 61, 67commissives 8, 58 n3communicative competence models 15,

59 n10complaints 11, 25complete transcription method 84–5compliments 25comprehension 15, 18–19

pragmatic 17computer-assisted interactive DCT

(IDCT) 68conceptual representation 17concurrent verbal protocols 61–2considerators 92, 185, 187context 29

Index



250 Index

contextual analysis 17–18contextual variables

use o downgraders and 172–6

use o external modifers and 187–91use o upgraders and 179–80conventionally indirect requests 27, 51,

55–6, 87–8, 123, 125–8, 141–59,163–4

ability 155–9availability 142–5permission 148–52prediction 145–8

suggestory ormulae 141–2 willingness 152–5conventions 18conversational contract (cc) 12, 58 n5conversational implicature 6, 8–9, 21, 39cooperative principle 6, 8–9

maxims o 9corrected error rating scores 108–11corrected error recognition 99–103

Cross-Cultural Speech Act RealizationProject (CCSARP) 27–8, 29–30, 89,199–200

cross-sectional developmentalstudies 46–52

cultural perceptions, o politeness 116culture 12, 13–15, 18

Danish learners o English 47

data analysis 84–93data collection techniquesin awareness studies 60–5combination o 199in interlanguage pragmatics 60–9in production studies 65–9

declarations 8deerential behaviour 12Deutsch-Französische Jugendwerk 1developmental studies 41–57

cross-sectional 46–52longitudinal 52–7long-term studies 42–4short-term studies 44–5

development o pragmaticcompetence 16

diaries 60–1

directives 8direct requests 27, 51, 85–7, 123,

128–41, 163

imperatives 128–31locution derivables 135–8perormatives 131–5 want statements 138–41

direct speech acts 8disarmer 92, 187discourse completion task (DCT) 29, 49, 66Dörnyei, Z. 3, 22, 23, 24, 64, 69, 70, 76, 77,

78, 80, 83, 94, 95, 97, 99, 103, 107, 108,

110, 120, 121, 194, 195, 198, 200, 202downgraders 28, 49, 50, 89, 166comparison o groups’ use o 169–72comparison o use o, according to

contextual variables 172–6frst occurrence o internal 167–9lexical 167, 172–6syntactic 167–8, 172–6use o, in high imposition

interactions 175–6use o, in low impositioninteractions 172–4

downtoners 28, 130–1DuFon, M. 61dulu statements 45Dutch learners o English 47–8

elicited conversations 67–8

elicited data 198–9elicited requests, transcription o 84–5Ellis, R. 54–6, 65, 142, 147, 176e-mail, requests in 30English learners

Arican 33 Arabic 46–7Chinese 33, 49Danish 47Dutch 47–8German, request studies o 29–32 Japanese 31, 33–4, 36–8, 49–50non-German, request studies

o 32–4Spanish 32–3Turkish 48–9

equality 10



Index 251

Erasmus/Socrates Programmes 1, 4 n3error ratings 103–11

corrected 108–11

uncorrected 103–8error recognition 94–103corrected 99–103uncorrected 95–8

exercitives 58 n3expletives 178–9expositives 58 n3expressives 8external modifers 28, 29, 47, 49–52, 89, 92

comparison o groups’ use o 186–7comparison o use o, according tocontextual variables 187–91

frst occurrence o upgraders in SA learners’ data 183–6

in high imposition interactions 189–91in low imposition interactions 187–9

external request modifcation 183–92study abroad context and 197–8

ace 11negative 11, 58 n6positive 11, 58 n6

ace-loss 11ace-threatening-acts (FTAs) 3, 11Fanshel, D. 8, 26Felix-Brasdeer, C. 42, 45, 46, 51, 59fndings

related to productive pragmaticskills 196–8related to SA learners’ pragmatic

awareness 193–4summary o 193–8

frst occurrenceo external modifers 183–6o internal downgraders 167–9o request strategies 123–6o upgraders 176–7

ormality 10ormal representation 17Fraser, B. 10, 12, 24–5, 58 n5, 133French, Austrian learners o 50–1

general social context 17generosity 11

German learners o English, request studies o 29–32

Goman, E. 11

grammatical awareness 193–5pragmatic awareness and 22–4grammatical mistakes 111–17Grice, H.P. 5, 8–9, 10, 21, 40, 58 n4grounders 28, 92, 185

Hassal, T. 45, 46, 59 nn13,14, 61, 120,127, 166, 193

head 92

hearer, relative power o 11hedged perormatives 86, 132–5hesitancy 10high imposition interactions

use o downgraders in 175–6use o external modifers in 189–91

Hill, T. 49–50, 51, 56, 127, 148, 156, 166,176, 179

Hinkel, E. 20, 21–2, 63

House, J. 8, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,51, 59 n9, 67, 85, 89, 105, 123, 127, 140,141, 142, 153, 159, 166, 187, 189, 202

Hutz, M. 30, 31Hymes, D. 15, 59 n10

IDCT (computer-assisted interactiveDCT) 68

illocutionary orces 7–8, 88, 89, 128,

138, 140, 166imperatives 85, 123, 128–31implications o study 199–203

methodological implications 200–1pedagogical implications 201–3theoretical implications 199–200

implied meaning 21, 22studies on 38–41

imposition, degree o 11imposition minimizer 92, 187indirect requests 27, 55–6, 87–8, 123,

125–8conventionally 27, 51, 55–6, 87–8, 123,

125–8, 141–59, 163–4non-conventionally 27, 88, 123,

159–62, 164–5indirect speech acts 8



252 Index

intensifers 176–7interlanguage 59 n8interlanguage pragmatic

development 41–57interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) 2, 3,15–16

acquisitional theories in 16–17data collection in 60–9defnition o 15–16politeness theory and 10–12pragmatic awareness 17–24request studies 23–34

see also pragmaticsinterlocutorscultural norms and 13–15positive and negative ace o 11status o 11

internal downgraders 167–9internal modifers 28–30, 31, 47, 89–92, 151internal request modifcation 166–82

comparison o groups’ use o

downgraders 169–72frst occurrence o internal downgradersin SA learners’ data 167–9

frst occurrence o upgraders in SA learners’ data 176–7

study abroad context and 197internal upgraders 91interviews

semi-structured 77–9, 82–3

transcription o 84–5 Japanese learners o English 31, 33–4,

36–8, 49–50

Kachru, Y. 13–14Kasper, G. 8, 15, 16, 17, 24, 25, 26, 29,

30, 32, 33, 60, 61, 85, 89, 108, 123,127, 133, 140, 141, 142, 153, 166, 174,187, 194

Kerekes, J. 38–9knowledge

linguistic 15shared 14

Labov, W. 8, 26, 65Lako, R. 10, 131

languagecomprehension 15culture and 13–15

production o 15language learnersdevelopment o pragmatic awareness

in 34–41interrelationship o pragmatic and

grammatical awareness 22–4pragmatic awareness o native

speakers vs. 19–22profciency level o 23

learning environment 171–2Leech, G.N. 11–12, 26, 58 n3, 142Levinson, S.C. 9, 11, 26, 58 nn4, 6lexical downgraders 89, 90, 167, 172–6limitations o study 198–9linguistic assertiveness, studies

on 38–41linguistic knowledge 15locution derivable requests 86–7

locution derivables 85, 123, 135–8longitudinal developmentalstudies 52–7

adult learners 53–4child learners 54–6

low imposition interactionsuse o downgraders in 172–4use o external modifers in 187–9

marked modality 171Matsumura, S. 20, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42,105, 120, 193, 201

maxim o manner 9maxim o quality 9maxim o quantity 9maxim o relation 9maxims o the cooperative principle 9methodological implications 200–1methodology 70–93

data analysis 84–93instrument 76–82participants 70–6procedure 82–4

MET scenarios 216–33Mey, J.L. 6modesty 11



Index 253

motivation 16multimedia elicitation task (MET) 3,

68–9, 70, 79–82, 83–4

multimedia instruments 63–5, 68–9multiple choice questionnaires(MCQs) 63

native speakersin awareness study 74interrelationship o pragmatic and

grammatical awareness 22–4pragmatic awareness o language

learners vs. 19–22in production study 76negative ace 11, 58 n6negative transer 16Niezgoda, K. 23–4, 94, 95, 97, 99, 103, 107non-conventionally indirect

requests 27, 88, 123, 159–62,164–5

noticing hypothesis 16–17

observation 65–6Olshtain, E. 20, 26, 34–5, 36, 62,

67, 120one-way analyses o variance

(ANOVA) 95Open Door Report 1–2open role-plays 67option giver 28, 185–6

overall ongoing action 18overstaters 178–9

participants 70–6in awareness study 71–4number o 198pragmatics awareness o, o own

rating behavior 111–17in production study 74–6

pedagogical implications 201–3perormatives 85, 86, 123, 131–5permission 88, 123, 148–52, 164‘please’ 29–30, 31politeness

awareness o 21–2cultural perceptions o 116in requests 19–20

politeness markers 28, 29–30, 47, 170, 174politeness mistakes 111–17Politeness Principle 11–12

politeness theory 6, 10–12positive ace 11, 58 n6positive transer 16pragmatic awareness 17–24

development o 94–122error ratings 103–11error recognition 94–103fndings related to 193–4grammatic awareness and 22–4

o participants own ratingbehaviour 111–17o SA learners 117–20studies in development o L2

learners’ 34–41studies on 19–24

pragmatic competence 16, 59 n10pragmatic comprehension 17pragmatic development

internal request modifcation 166–82SA learners’ awareness o own 117–20studies on 41–57study abroad context and 195

pragmatic ailure 18pragmatics

acquisitional theories in 16–17conversational implicature and 8–9cooperative principle and 8–9

culture and 12, 13–15defning 5–7, 57 n1politeness theory and 10–12speech act theory and 7–8theoretical background 5–17see also interlanguage pragmatics (ILP)

prediction 87–8, 123, 145–8, 163–4preparators 92pre-sojourn data collection 199prgamatic norms 21–2production o language 15production questionnaires 66–7production studies

data collection techniques in 65–9participants in 74–6

productive pragmatic skills 196–8promise o reward 92



254 Index

questionnairesawareness study 204–15multiple choice 63

production 66–7rank-ordering 62–3 video-and-questionnaire task 76–7

rank-ordering tasks 62–3receptive pragmatic competence 17reusals 11representatives 8request modiers 50

request modifcation 28–9, 56coding categories 89–93external 183–92internal 166–82

requests 3, 8classifcation systems or 26–9direct 27, 85–7, 123, 128–41elicited 84–5indirect 27, 55–6, 87–8, 123,

125–8interpretation o 36politeness in 19–20reasons or studying 24–6

request strategies 26–8, 123–65coding categories 85–8comparison o groups’ use o

126–8conventionally indirect requests

141–59, 163–4direct strategies 128–41, 163frst occurrence o 123–6multiple 151–2non-conventionally indirect

requests 159–62, 164–5request studies 24–34

cross-sectional developmentalstudies 46–52

o German learners o English29–32

longitudinal developmentalstudies 52–7

o non-German learners o English 32–4

retrospective verbal protocols 61role-plays 67–8

Rose, K.R. 15, 16, 33, 49, 51,69 nn2, 3, 127

Röver, C. 23–4, 60, 61, 94, 95, 97,

99, 103, 107rules o politeness 10

Sawyer, M. 42, 67Scarcella, R. 46–7, 53, 54, 55Schmidt, R. 16–17, 23, 41, 53, 54, 55, 65,

119, 121, 134, 149, 169, 195Searle, J.F. 5, 7–8, 26, 58 n3second language acquisition, research

on 2–3semiotics 58 n2semi-structured interviews 77–9, 82–3shared knowledge 14smalltalk 92, 185social contexts 17–18socialization 13Société d’échange international des enants et

de jeunes gens pur l’études des langues

étrangéres 1Spanish, American English learnerso 51–2

Spanish learners o English 32–3speaker, relative power o 11specifc social context 17speech acts

direct 8ace-threatening 11

indirect 8studies on 19–21, 34–8types o 8, 58 n3see also requests

speech act theory 6, 7–8status dierences 11studies

data collection techniquesor 60–9

on development o L2 learners’pragmatic awareness 34–41

ILP developmental studies 41–57on implied meaning 38–41on interrelation o pragmatic and

grammatical awareness 22–4on linguistic assertiveness 38–41on pragmatic awareness 19–24



Index 255

request studies 24–34study abroad (SA) learners 74–5

awareness o own pragmatic

transer 16Trosborg, A. 27–8, 29, 47, 48, 50, 51, 56,

85, 87, 88, 89, 123, 127, 128, 131, 140,

iif kgpm schauer g.interlanguage pragmatic 1

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