Pragmatics in Second Language Acquisition Research Marcus Callies PhilippsUniversitt Marburg

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Pragmatics inSecond Language Acquisition
Research Marcus CalliesPhilipps-Universität
Marburg
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1. Pragmatics is language use in context

• To fully understand the meaning of a sentence,
  we must understand the context in which it is
  uttered. Pragmatics is concerned with how people
  use language within a context and why they use
  language in particular ways.
• Student Is Prof. Plag in?
• Assisstant Well, the lights are still on in his
  office.
• Student 1 So, did you like my party?
• Student 2 Oh yes, it was great! (thinks It was
  in fact dead boring)
• Pragmatics broadly defined
• the study of language from the point of view of
  the users, especially of the choices they make,
  the constraints they encounter in using language
  in social interaction, and the effects their use
  of language has on the other participants in an
  act of communication(Crystal 1997301)

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1. Pragmatics is language use in context ctd.

• Two components of pragmatics
• a) the study of language from the viewpoint of a
  language's structural resources
• b) those pragmatic studies which examine the
  conditions on language use which derive from the
  social situation (adapted from Crystal 1997301)
• Pragmalinguistics Refers to the linguistic side
  of pragmatics, that is the range of structural
  linguistic resources from which speakers can
  choose when using language in a specific
  communicative situation
• ? Linguistic means to perform a speech act
  (speech act verbs, imperatives, politeness
  markers, other pragmatic markers)
• Could you please take the garbage out? Thank
  you!
• The garbage isn't out yet...
• Well, the kitchen garbage already smells, you
  know.
• Take the garbage out!

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1. Pragmatics is language use in context ctd.

• Sociopragmatics Relates to the social setting of
  language use, including variables such as the
  cultural context, the social status or social
  distance of interlocutors
• ? When and how to perform a certain speech act
• Imagine you need a book from the library very
  urgently, but the book has been borrowed by
  someone else. Take a look at the following
  sentences. In what situation would they be
  appropriate?
• I was wondering if you could you possibly return
  the book in the very near future. I need it
  urgently for my term paper. Thank you!
• I need this book urgently, so could you please
  return it as soon as possible?
• I really need the book and its overdue, youve
  had for too long anyway. So why dont you return
  it as soon as possible?
• Dude, can I have the book now? I really need it.

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2. Pragmatics in SLA research

• The study of pragmatics as a domain within SLA
  research Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP)
• ILP defined
• "the study of nonnative speakers' comprehension,
  production, and acquisition of linguistic action
  in L2" (Kasper 19951)
• "the study of nonnative speakers' use and
  acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge" (Kasper
  and Rose 199981)
• Modelled on cross-cultural pragmatics, adopting
  its research topics, theories and research
  methodology
• Predominantly concerned with issues of
  cross-cultural politeness
• Scope of inquiry
• Non-native speaker comprehension and production
  of a small number of speech acts, such as
  requests, apologies, refusals, complaints,
  compliments and compliment responses
• Use of internal and external modification to
  speech acts and learners' use of semantic
  formulas or lexical downgraders
• Only recently Discourse/pragmatic markers in
  NNSs (Fuller 2003, Müller 2004)
• Findings compared with native speaker performance

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3. Pragmatics in SLA A case study Compliment
responses by German and Spanish EFL-learners

• Questions
• Are advanced EFL-learners able to respond
  appropriately to a compliment in a certain
  sociopragmatic context?
• Do these learners differ from native speakers of
  English in their strategies in responding to a
  compliment?
• General hypotheses
• Sociocultural norms and values (e.g. politeness,
  modesty) of the source language (L1) influence
  learners performance in the target language (L2)
• In compliment responses, the speaker is faced
  with a conflict of the maxims of agreement and
  modesty
• Differences in L1 and L2 may lead to
  communicative misunderstandings
• Research methodology (Data collection techniques)
• Findings

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3.1. Research methodology Written (pseudo-oral
setting)

• 1. Discourse completion (different formats)Here
  first turn given, open response, no rejoinder

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3.1. Research methodology Written (pseudo-oral
setting) ctd.

• 2. Multiple choice

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3.1. Research methodology Written (pseudo-oral
setting) ctd.

• 3. Rating of responses

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3.1. Research methodology Spoken

• 4. Interview (actual purpose concealed)
• Sequence for the interview
• Ask the informant in.
• Greet the informant.
• Offer him/her a seat.
• Pay the compliment (exact formula!) Youve got
  (a) really nice X(es). It/They look(s) great on
  you.
• Wait for a compliment response.
• Begin with the interview.Topic What do you
  think is the most debated issue in German
  universities lately?
• Finish the interview Thanks, thats enough. -
  I enjoyed listening to you.
• Pay a compliment on informants English By the
  way, your English is really good.
• Wait for a compliment response.

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3.2. Findings Making sense of the data

• Compliment Responses A Classification of
  Strategies (Chen 1993)
• 1. Thanking Oh, thank you !
• 2. Agreeing Yeah, I like it, too.
• 3. Expressing Gladness Nice to hear that.
• 4. Joking Yeah, I look pretty cool, dont I ?
• 5. Returning You look good, too !
• 6. Offering You can borrow it if you want !
• 7. Encouraging Why dont you get one yourself !?
• 8. Explaining I bought it at HM.
• 9. Doubting But Ive had it for ages.
• 10. Rejecting Well, I dont even like it anymore.

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3.2. Findings Making sense of the data ctd.

• Superstrategies
• Accepting (Thanking, Agreeing, Expressing
  Gladness)
• Rejecting (Doubting, Rejecting)
• Returning (Returning, Offering)
• Mocking (Joking, Encouraging)
• Deflecting (Explaining)

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3.2. Findings

• 56 advanced German EFL-learners
• 11 Spanish EFL-learners (exchange students, not
  discussed here)
• 31 native speakers of English (students,
  different varieties)
• General
• In the production task, all groups predominantly
  gave responses that exhibit combinations of 2-3
  substrategies such as Thanking Explaining or
  Thanking Returning

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3.2. Findings ctd.

• Learners
• Deflecting is the most frequent strategy in the
  production task (55) by the Germans, which drops
  to only 10 in the multiple choice task, where
  Accepting is the most frequently used (55).
• Learners may consider Deflecting as a compromise
  in that it gives the opportunity to neither fully
  accept nor entirely reject the compliment.
• Why acceptance rate higher in MPC? Task-related?
• Native speakers
• Preference for superstrategies Accepting and
  Deflecting, manifest in the use of
  substrategy-combinations such as Thanking
  Explaining
• In sum
• Generally good sociopragmatic competence by
  learners, as Accepting and Deflecting are also
  the preferred strategies for NS

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4. Open questions in ILP (1) Grammar vs.
Pragmatics

• In the majority of studies in ILP
• Pragmatic competence is singled out as an
  individual component of communicative competence
  and treated and investigated as an independent
  component of a learner's grammar (Kasper and Rose
  2002159, 163)
• Lack of research which explores the relationship
  between grammatical and pragmatic abilities in
  SLA (Bardovi-Harlig 1999a, Kasper 2001, Kasper
  and Rose 2002)
• The development of pragmatic competence has to be
  seen as independent of the development of
  grammatical competence since "high levels of
  grammatical competence do not guarantee
  concomitant high levels of pragmatic competence"
  (Bardovi-Harlig 1999a686)
• Question How is grammatical and pragmatic
  development in an L2 interrelated?

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4. Open questions in ILP (1) Grammar vs.
Pragmatics ctd.

• Research findings on the relationship of
  interlanguage pragmatic and grammatical
  development has lead to two scenarios
• Pragmatics precedes grammar Learners use L2
  pragmatic functions before they acquire the L2
  grammatical forms that are acceptable
  realizations of those functions
• Evidence
• Persistent belief in traditional foreign language
  teaching that in order to successfully
  communicate in an L2 in terms of
  (socio)pragmatics, learners need to have a solid
  knowledge of the target language grammar
• But the universal pragmatics principle states
  that unlike children in L1 acquisition, L2
  learners are usually pragmatically competent in
  their L1, hence they bring a supposedly universal
  pragmatic knowledge to the task of L2 learning

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4. Open questions in ILP (1) Grammar vs.
Pragmatics ctd.

• Grammar precedes pragmatics Learners acquire L2
  grammatical forms before they acquire their
  pragmalinguistic functions
• Three scenarios
• Grammatical knowledge does not enable
  pragmalinguistic use? Learners' (non-)use of
  modal verbs in mitigating disagreement
• Grammatical knowledge enables non-target-like
  pragmalinguistic use? The overuse and pragmatic
  overextension of I think
• Grammatical and pragmalinguistic knowledge enable
  non-target-like sociopragmatic use ? Learners'
  use of information questions as indirect
  strategies in a number of speech act types and
  contexts in which more transparent strategies
  would be more effective
• In sum There are differences as to the
  pragmalinguistic development of learners at
  different developmental stages in the L2 learning
  process
• However, it still remains unclear how grammatical
  and pragmatic knowledge in an L2 exactly
  correlate.

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4. Open questions in ILP (2) Is it all about
speech acts?

• Most recently, L2 pragmatic competence has been
  defined as
• "knowledge of the linguistic resources available
  in a given language for realizing particular
  illocutions, knowledge of the sequential aspects
  of speech acts and finally, knowledge of the
  appropriate contextual use of the particular
  languages' linguistic resources" (Barron
  200310).
• This definition draws a useful distinction
  between pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic
  knowledge, but
• It suffers from the fact that it centers around
  the notion of speech act, thus narrowing down the
  scope of pragmatic knowledge.
• This reflects the trend in ILP to almost
  exclusively focus on the domain of speech acts.
• Questions What exactly is L2 pragmatic
  knowledge/ competence? Is it only knowledge about
  speech acts (i.e. sociopragmatics)?

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact

• Syntax can also be pragmatically motivated!
• (0) She is looking forward to the new System Of A
  Down album.
• (1) Its the new System Of A Down album (that)
  shes looking forward to.
• (2) What shes looking forward to is the new
  System Of A Down album.
• (3) The new System Of A Down album she is looking
  forward to, but the new EMINEM CD she doesnt
  care about.
• (4) She really likes U2, but even more
  fascinating is Metallica.

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact

• Syntax can also be pragmatically motivated!
• (0) She is looking forward to the new System Of A
  Down album.
• (1) Its the new System Of A Down album (that)
  shes looking forward to.it-cleft
• (2) What shes looking forward to is the new
  System Of A Down album.
• (3) The new System Of A Down album she is looking
  forward to, but the new EMINEM CD she doesnt
  care about.
• (4) She really likes U2, but even more
  fascinating is Metallica.

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact

• Syntax can also be pragmatically motivated!
• (0) She is looking forward to the new System Of A
  Down album.
• (1) Its the new System Of A Down album (that)
  shes looking forward to.it-cleft
• (2) What shes looking forward to is the new
  System Of A Down album.wh-cleft / pseudo-cleft
• (3) The new System Of A Down album she is looking
  forward to, but the new EMINEM CD she doesnt
  care about.
• (4) She really likes U2, but even more
  fascinating is Metallica.

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact

• Syntax can also be pragmatically motivated!
• (0) She is looking forward to the new System Of A
  Down album.
• (1) Its the new System Of A Down album (that)
  shes looking forward to.it-cleft
• (2) What shes looking forward to is the new
  System Of A Down album.wh-cleft / pseudo-cleft
• (3) The new System Of A Down album she is looking
  forward to, but the new EMINEM CD she doesnt
  care about.preposing / fronting
• (4) She really likes U2, but even more
  fascinating is Metallica.

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact

• Syntax can also be pragmatically motivated!
• (0) She is looking forward to the new System Of A
  Down album.
• (1) Its the new System Of A Down album (that)
  shes looking forward to.it-cleft
• (2) What shes looking forward to is the new
  System Of A Down album.wh-cleft / pseudo-cleft
• (3) The new System Of A Down album she is looking
  forward to, but the new EMINEM CD she doesnt
  care about.preposing / fronting
• She really likes U2, but even more fascinating is
  Metallica.Inversion

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact ctd.

• The meaning of a sentence or utterance can be
  subdivided into
• content meaning and
• pragmatic meaning
• Particular syntactic constructions such as
  clefting or preposing may have the same
  propositional content as their canonical
  counterparts, but they clearly differ in the way
  how the convey this propositional content. They
  differ in pragmatic meaning.
• Question When/Why would speakers use such
  sentence types? What is their discourse function?

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5. Pragmatics and Syntax interact ctd.

• Speakers of a language do not use these special
  sentence types randomly. They choose from among
  several options to serve their communicative
  needs in discourse and therefore use devices with
  an explicit discourse-pragmatic intention.
• In Gricean terms, an utterance must be relevant,
  and in both speech and writing, speakers must
  indicate and justify why something really needs
  to be said or written down.
• They often want to highlight a certain part of
  the utterance to secure the interlocutor's
  attention and to signal that this is the most
  important piece of information.
• There are various reasons for highlighting
  discourse elements emphasizing a certain point,
  correcting a misunderstanding, or repairing a
  communicative breakdown.
• The sentences above are syntactic means of
  information focusing, also called focus
  constructions.
• They are specifically useful in writing where
  information cannot be highlighted by prosodic
  means.

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6. Implications for Pragmatics in SLA

• Second language learners' knowledge and use of
  focusing devices in spoken and written discourse
  is an underexplored area in SLA research, and a
  potential learning problem even for advanced
  learners.
• There is an explicit research gap as to learners'
  comprehension and use of these structures and
  their discourse-pragmatic functions.
• Recent findings show that information structure
  management is problematic even for advanced L2
  learners, and they have limited awareness of the
  appropriate use of lexical and syntactic focusing
  devices in formal and informal registers in the
  spoken and written mode (Callies 2006).

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7. Summary and Conclusion

• Pragmatic knowledge in an L2 includes more than
  the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities
  for understanding and performing speech acts.
• Due to the traditional line of research in ILP,
  the significance of L2 pragmatic knowledge beyond
  the domain of speech acts has been neglected to
  date.
• The choice and use of focusing devices is clearly
  pragmatically motivated, and thus relates to
  pragmatic knowledge in an L2.
• Just as the need to apologize or make an offer
  results in expressing these intentions by using
  the necessary pragmalinguistic resources, the
  communicative need to highlight information
  results in using the necessary linguistic means
  to do so.
• The field of inquiry in ILP needs to be extended
  beyond the cross-cultural investigation of speech
  acts.
• This may also be a rewarding enterprise with
  respect to the interrelationship of grammatical
  and pragmalinguistic abilities in SLA, an
  important issue in current ILP research.

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• Thank you for your attention.
• If youd like to get the slides send an e-mail to
• callies_at_staff.uni-marburg.de