The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics [First Edition] 0815349769, 9780815349761

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The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics [First Edition]
 0815349769, 9780815349761

Table of contents :
Chapter 1 SLA and pragmatics: An overview

Naoko Taguchi

SECTION 1: CONSTRUCTS AND UNITS OF ANALYSIS

Chapter 2 Speech acts in interaction: Negotiating joint action in a second language

J. César Félix-Brasdefer

Chapter 3 Iimplicature comprehension in L2 pragmatics research

Naoko Taguchi & Shota Yamaguchi

Chapter 4 Routines in L2 pragmatics research

Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig

Chapter 5 Humor in L2 pragmatics research

Nancy Bell & Anne Pomerantz

Chapter 6 Prosody in L2 pragmatics research

Okim Kang & Alyssa Kermad

Chapter 7 Interactional competence and L2 pragmatics

Richard F. Young

SECTION 2: THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Chapter 8 Cognitive approaches in L2 pragmatics research

Shuai Li

Chapter 9 Language socialization and L2 pragmatics

Wenhao Diao and Joy Maa

Chapter 10 Vygotskian cultural-historical psychology in L2 pragmatics

Rémi A. van Compernolle

Chapter 11 Identity and agency in L2 pragmatics

Noriko Ishihara

 

 

Chapter 12 Interactional usage-based L2 pragmatics: From form-meaning pairings to construction-action relations

Søren Wind Eskildsen & Gabriele Kasper

SECTION 3: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

Chapter 13 Data collection methods in L2 pragmatics research: An overview

Thi Thuy Minh Nguyen

Chapter 14 Mixed methods in L2 pragmatics research 

Steven J. Ross & Yoon Jee Hong

Chapter 15 Conversation analysis in L2 pragmatics research

Junko Mori & Hanh thi Nguyen

Chapter 16 Corpus linguistics approach to L2 pragmatics research

Shelley Staples and Julieta Fernández

Chapter 17 Systemic functional linguistics and L2 pragmatics

Marianna Ryshina-Pankova

Chapter 18 Psycholinguistic approaches to L2 pragmatics research

Thomas Holtgraves, Gyeongnam Kwon, and Tania Morales Zelaya

SECTION 4: PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES

Chapter 19 A meta-analysis of L2 pragmatics instruction

Luke Plonsky & Jingyuan Zhuang

Chapter 20 Assessment in L2 pragmatics

Soo Jung Youn & Valeria Bogorevich

Chapter 21 Instructional material development in L2 pragmatics

Donna Tatsuki,

Chapter 22 Task-Based Language Teaching and L2 Pragmatics

Marta González-Lloret

SECTION 5: CONTEXTUAL AND INDIVIDUAL CONSIDERATIONS

Chapter 23 L2 pragmatic development in study abroad settings

Carmen Pérez-Vidal & Rachel Shively

Chapter 24 L2 pragmatics learning in computer-mediated communication

D. Joseph Cunningham

Chapter 25 Pragmatics learning in digital games and virtual environments

Julie M. Sykes & Sebastien Dubreil

Chapter 26 Pragmatics in a language classroom

Yumiko Tateyama

Chapter 27 Pragmatics learning in the workplace

Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

Chapter 28 Individual learner considerations in SLA and L2 pragmatics

Satomi Takahashi

SECTION 6: L2 PRAGMATICS IN THE GLOBAL ERA

Chapter 29 Norms and variation in L2 pragmatics

Anne Barron

Chapter 30 Heritage learner pragmatics

Yang Xiao-Desai

Chapter 31 Intercultural competence and L2 pragmatics

Jane Jackson

Chapter 32 Multilingual pragmatics: Implicature comprehension in adult L2 learners and multilingual children

Kyriakos Antoniou

Citation preview

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is a comprehensive critical survey of the field of L2 pragmatics, collecting a number of chapters that highlight the key theories, methods, pedagogies, and research findings throughout its development over the last four decades. Demonstrating the ways in which pragmatics has long served as a lens through which to examine L2 development, the volume is divided into six parts which reflect the field’s structure and evolution: •• •• •• •• •• ••

Constructs and units of analysis Theoretical approaches Methodological approaches Pedagogical approaches Contextual and individual considerations L2 pragmatics in the global era

The handbook has a particular focus on covering not only traditional topics in the field, such as constructs of pragmatic competence (e.g., speech acts, implicature), teaching and assessment, and pragmatics learning in a study abroad program, but also emerging areas of study, including interactional pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, usage-based approaches, corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistic experimentation. Each chapter introduces the topic and follows with a description of its theoretical underpinnings, an overview of existing literature, appraisal of current practice, concluding with a discussion of future directions for research and key readings. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is an essential resource for those with an interest in second language acquisition, pragmatics, and applied linguistics. Naoko Taguchi is Professor in the Modern Languages Department at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. She is the co-editor of Journal of Applied Pragmatics and serves/has served on the editorial board for the Modern Language Journal, Language Teaching, Japanese SLA, Study Abroad Research in Second Language Education and International Education, and Studies of Chinese Language Teaching Journal. She is also a member of the Executive Board of AAAL. Her ­primary research area is L2 pragmatics.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOKS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Susan M. Gass and Alison Mackey, Series Editors

The Routledge Handbooks in Second Language Acquisition are a comprehensive, must-have survey of this core sub-discipline of applied linguistics. With a truly global reach and featuring diverse contributing voices, each handbook provides an overview of both the fundamentals and new directions for each topic. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics Edited by Naoko Taguchi For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/SecondLanguage-Acquisition-Research-Series/book-series/RHSLA

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics

Edited by Naoko Taguchi

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Naoko Taguchi to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Taguchi, Naoko, 1967- editor. Title: The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics / edited by Naoko Taguchi. Description: London: New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge handbooks in second language acquisition; 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018045057 (print) | LCCN 2018047296 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351164085 (E-book) | ISBN 9780815349761 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Second language acquisition. | Pragmatics. | Language and languages–Study and teaching. Classification: LCC P118.2 (ebook) | LCC P118.2 .R685 2019 (print) | DDC 401/.93–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045057 ISBN: 978-0-8153-4976-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-16408-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

Contributorsviii Acknowledgmentsxiii 1 Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics: An Overview Naoko Taguchi

1

PART I

Constructs and Units of Analysis

15

2 Speech Acts in Interaction: Negotiating Joint Action in a Second Language J. César Félix-Brasdefer

17

3 Implicature Comprehension in L2 Pragmatics Research Naoko Taguchi and Shota Yamaguchi

31

4 Routines in L2 Pragmatics Research Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig

47

5 Humor in L2 Pragmatics Research Nancy Bell and Anne Pomerantz

63

6 Prosody in L2 Pragmatics Research Okim Kang and Alyssa Kermad

78

7 Interactional Competence and L2 Pragmatics Richard F. Young

93

PART II

Theoretical Approaches 8 Cognitive Approaches in L2 Pragmatics Research Shuai Li

111 113

v

Contents

9 Language Socialization and L2 Pragmatics Wenhao Diao and Joy Maa

128

10 Vygotskian Cultural-Historical Psychology in L2 Pragmatics Rémi A. van Compernolle

145

11 Identity and Agency in L2 Pragmatics Noriko Ishihara

161

12 Interactional Usage-Based L2 Pragmatics: From Form–Meaning Pairings to Construction–Action Relations Søren Wind Eskildsen and Gabriele Kasper

176

PART III

Methodological Approaches

193

13 Data Collection Methods in L2 Pragmatics Research: An Overview Thi Thuy Minh Nguyen

195

14 Mixed Methods in L2 Pragmatics Research Steven J. Ross and Yoonjee Hong

212

15 Conversation Analysis in L2 Pragmatics Research Junko Mori and Hanh thi Nguyen

226

16 Corpus Linguistics Approaches to L2 Pragmatics Research Shelley Staples and Julieta Fernández

241

17 Systemic Functional Linguistics and L2 Pragmatics Marianna Ryshina-Pankova

255

18 Psycholinguistic Approaches to L2 Pragmatics Research Thomas Holtgraves, Gyeongnam Kwon and Tania Morales Zelaya

272

PART IV

Pedagogical Approaches

285

19 A Meta-Analysis of L2 Pragmatics Instruction Luke Plonsky and Jingyuan Zhuang

287

20 Assessment in L2 Pragmatics Soo Jung Youn and Valeriia Bogorevich

308

21 Instructional Material Development in L2 Pragmatics Donna Tatsuki

322

vi

Contents

22 Task-Based Language Teaching and L2 Pragmatics Marta González-Lloret

338

PART V

Contextual and Individual Considerations

353

23 L2 Pragmatic Development in Study Abroad Settings Carmen Pérez Vidal and Rachel L. Shively

355

24 L2 Pragmatics Learning in Computer-Mediated Communication D. Joseph Cunningham

372

25 Pragmatics Learning in Digital Games and Virtual Environments Julie M. Sykes and Sébastien Dubreil

387

26 Pragmatics in a Language Classroom Yumiko Tateyama

400

27 Pragmatics Learning in the Workplace Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

413

28 Individual Learner Considerations in SLA and L2 Pragmatics Satomi Takahashi

429

PART VI

L2 Pragmatics in the Global Era

445

29 Norms and Variation in L2 Pragmatics Anne Barron

447

30 Heritage Learner Pragmatics Yang Xiao-Desai

462

31 Intercultural Competence and L2 Pragmatics Jane Jackson

479

32 Multilingual Pragmatics: Implicature Comprehension in Adult L2 Learners and Multilingual Children Kyriakos Antoniou

495

Index511

vii

Contributors

Kyriakos Antoniou is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Center for Applied Neuroscience, University of Cyprus, and Tutor at the Hellenic Open University. After obtaining his PhD (Applied Linguistics) from Cambridge University in 2014, he held various positions at Cambridge University, Université libre de Bruxelles and University College London. Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig is Professor of Second Language Studies at Indiana University and

teaches and conducts research on second language acquisition, pragmatics, and formulaic language. Her work on the acquisition of conventional expressions, pragmatic routines, and formulaic language has appeared in Language Learning, Intercultural Pragmatics, and Second Language Research. Her work on the effects of instruction on pragmatic routines has appeared in Language Teaching Research and Language Learning and Technology.

Anne Barron is Professor of English Linguistics at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg,

Germany. Her research focuses on interlanguage pragmatics, variational pragmatics, the pragmatics of Irish English, and contrastive genre analysis. Recent publications include the co-edited handbooks Pragmatics of Discourse (De Gruyter, 2014) and The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics (Routledge, 2017).

Nancy Bell is Professor at Washington State University.  Her research focuses on humor and l­anguage play, especially with respect to L2 users.  Her recent books include  a text on failed humor (We are not Amused: Failed Humor in Interaction) and, with Anne Pomerantz, Humor in the Classroom: A Guide for Language Teachers and Educational Researchers. Valeriia Bogorevich has a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Northern Arizona University. She is currently an ESL instructor at the Program in Intensive English. Valeria has 10 years of EFL/ESL teaching experience, and her main research interests lie in the area of L2 assessment. Rémi A. van Compernolle is Associate Professor and William S. Dietrich II Career Development

Professor of Second Language Acquisition and French and Francophone Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on extensions of cultural-historical psychology to ­second language development, pedagogy, and assessment, with specific focus on pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and interaction.

D. Joseph Cunningham is Assistant Professor of German at Georgetown University. His research is situated at the intersection of computer-assisted language learning and second language pragmatic development, with particular emphasis on telecollaboration/virtual exchange. Wenhao Diao is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and the doctoral program of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her research viii

Contributors

deals with the sociolinguistic and sociocultural aspects of second language learning in different contexts, with a focus on study abroad. Sébastien Dubreil is Teaching Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Second Language Acquisition, and Technology-Enhanced Learning at Carnegie Mellon University. Specializing in CALL, his research interests focus on the use of technology in fostering transcultural learning. His most recent research examines the notions of social pedagogies, linguistic landscapes, and game-based language and culture learning. Søren Wind Eskildsen is Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. He primarily investigates developmental issues in L2 learning from the perspective of usage-based linguistics and conversation analysis. His research interests include the interplay between social interaction, opportunities for teaching and learning, and L2 development, inside and outside classrooms. J. César Félix-Brasdefer is Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Indiana University, Bloomington.

His research interests include pragmatics, discourse analysis, instruction of pragmatics, im/ politeness, and intercultural pragmatics. He has published several books and edited volumes, peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and articles for handbooks. He has a forthcoming textbook on pragmatics, discourse, and variation (Pragmática del español, Routledge Press).

Julieta Fernández is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and affiliated faculty in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on pragmatic dimensions of language use, language learning and technology, and second language learning and pedagogy. Marta González-Lloret is Professor at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. Her research interests

lie at the intersections of TBLT (task-based language teaching) technology and L2 pragmatics. Her books include A Practical Guide to Integrating Technology into Task-Based Language Teaching (Georgetown University Press, 2016) and Technology-Mediated TBLT (with Lourdes Ortega, John Benjamins, 2014). She is currently Editor of the Pragmatics & Language Learning book series (NFLRC) as well as co-editor of the journal System (Elsevier). 

Thomas Holtgraves is Professor of Psychological Science at Ball State University. He con-

ducts interdisciplinary research into multiple facets of language and social psychology. He is the author of the Oxford Handbook of Language and Social Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2014), the chapter ‘Social Psychology and Language: Words, Utterances, and Conversations’ in the Handbook of Social Psychology (Fiske, Gilbert, & Lindzey 2010; Wiley), and Language as Social Action: Social Psychology and Language Use (Erlbaum, 2002). Yoonjee Hong is a Ph.D. student in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland. She is also a graduate research assistant at the National Foreign Language Center. Her research interests include second language pragmatics, assessing second language proficiency, and universality and specificity in L2 discourse. Noriko Ishihara is Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL/EFL at Hosei University. Her

research interests include instructional pragmatics, identity and language learning, language teacher development, globalization, and peace linguistics. She facilitates teachers’ professional development courses in Japan and the U.S.A. on methodology, pragmatics, and intercultural communication. ix

Contributors

Jane Jackson is Professor in the English Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,

where she teaches applied linguistics courses. A recipient of numerous external research grants and awards, she has published widely on study abroad, intercultural communication/education, language and identity, internationalization, and eLearning.

Okim Kang is Associate Professor in the applied linguistics program at Northern Arizona

University, Flagstaff, AZ. Her research interests are speech production and perception, L2 pronunciation and intelligibility, L2 oral assessment and testing, automated scoring and speech recognition, World Englishes, and language attitude. 

Gabriele Kasper is Professor of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. After working extensively on speech act pragmatics, she became interested in the social organization of multilingual and multimodal interaction, including cognition, affect, and learning, and standard research methods in applied linguistics. Alyssa Kermad is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Her main research interests are in speech perception, speech assessment, second language speech and pronunciation, and second language acquisition. 

Gyeongnam Kwon received her master’s degree in Cognitive and Social Processes from Ball State University. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Korean Language and Literature and Business from Hongik University. Currently she is working on texting research to explore how principles of face-to-face communication are reflected in texting messages. Shuai Li is Associate Professor and Chinese Program Coordinator in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Georgia State University. His research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, language testing and assessment, and Chinese as a second language acquisition and teaching. Joy Maa is a Ph.D. student in the Second Language Acquisition program of the Department of

Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses primarily on the second language acquisition of pragmatics and sociocultural knowledge.

Junko Mori is Professor of Japanese Language and Linguistics at the University of WisconsinMadison, and a core faculty member of the university’s Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition. By using conversation analysis (CA), she has investigated the relationship between linguistic structures and organizations of social interaction, classroom discourse, intercultural communication, and workplace interaction. Hanh thi Nguyen is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the TESOL Program at Hawaii Pacific

University. Informed by ethnomethodological conversation analysis, her research focuses on the development of interactional competence in second language learning settings, workplaces, and child–parent interactions. She is also interested in Vietnamese applied linguistics. 

Thi Thuy Minh Nguyen is Associate Professor in the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her primary research interests are in pragmatics and language learning, language pedagogy, and language teacher education. Recently, her work has also expanded to include the development of interactional competence in child-parent interactions and child language socialization. x

Contributors

Carmen Pérez Vidal is a ChairProfessor in Language Acquisition and in English at the

Department of Translation and Linguistic Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Her research interests lie within the field of second/foreign language acquisition, bilingualism, and language/culture learning in different contexts (i.e., study abroad, immersion) and instructed second language acquisition. 

Luke Plonsky is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University where

he teaches courses in SLA and research methods. His work has appeared in a variety of journals (e.g., Applied Linguistics, Language Learning) and edited volumes. Luke is Associate Editor of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Managing Editor of Foreign Language Annals, and Co-Director of the IRIS Database.

Anne Pomerantz is Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. She teaches courses on language pedagogy, linguistic ethnography, and intercultural communication. Her research focuses on the functions of humor in multilingual educational spaces and the affordances of humor for developing learners’ intercultural competence. Steven J. Ross is Professor of Second Language Acquisition at the School of Language, Literature, and Culture at the University of Maryland. His research areas include language assessment, research methods, and second language pragmatics. Marianna Ryshina-Pankova is Associate Professor of German at Georgetown University. As

Director of Curriculum she is actively involved in the evaluation and renewal of the undergraduate curriculum and in mentoring graduate students teaching in the program. Her research focuses on the application of systemic functional theory to the study of second-language writing development and advanced proficiency assessment, as well as on L2 pedagogy and contentand language-integrated curriculum design.

Rachel L. Shively is Associate Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics at Illinois State

University. She received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on second language pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language and culture learning during study abroad. 

Shelley Staples is Associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the use of corpusbased discourse analysis to investigate (second) language use across spoken and written contexts, including pragmatic and functional dimensions. Julie M. Sykes is Director of CASLS and Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on applied linguistics and second language acquisition, with an emphasis on technological and pedagogical innovation for interlanguage pragmatic development and intercultural competence. She has published various articles on CALL-related topics, including synchronous computer-mediated communication and pragmatic development, gaming and CALL, and lexical acquisition in digitally mediated environments. Julie was awarded the 2018 University of Oregon Research Award for Impact and Innovation. Naoko Taguchi is Professor of Japanese and Second Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research addresses a number of topics in L2 pragmatics, including pragmatics learning while abroad, technology-assisted pragmatics learning, heritage learner pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, and task-based pragmatics teaching. She is currently the co-editor of a new journal, Applied Pragmatics. xi

Contributors

Satomi Takahashi is Professor of Second Language Acquisition at Rikkyo University, Tokyo,

where she teaches second language acquisition and pragmatics. Her current research interests include implicit teaching of L2 pragmalinguistic features and the relationships between L2 pragmatic awareness and various individual difference variables.

Yumiko Tateyama teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the

University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Her research interests include Japanese language pedagogy, teaching and learning pragmatics and classroom discourse. She recently co-edited a book entitled Interactional Competence in Japanese as an Additional Language (Greer, Ishida, & Tateyama, NFLRC, 2017).

Donna Tatsuki is Director of the Graduate School for English Language Education and Research at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, researches cross-cultural pragmatics, the representations of gender/ethnicity in government-approved language textbooks, and multiparty talk-in-interaction in MUN simulations. She has taught in Canada and Japan. Veronika Timpe-Laughlin is a research scientist in English language learning and assessment at

Educational Testing Service. Her research interests include L2 pragmatics, task-based language teaching, technology in L2 instruction and assessment, and young learner assessment. Before joining ETS, Veronika taught in the English Department at TU Dortmund University, Germany.

Yang Xiao-Desai is Associate Professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Her main areas of research are in Chinese linguistics, second language acquisition, heritage language education, and world language teacher education.  Shota Yamaguchi is a full-time English teacher at Waseda Jitsugyo Junior and Senior High School in Tokyo. His research interests include pragmatics, conversation analysis, and English as a lingua franca. Richard F. Young is Emeritus Professor in English Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition

at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His teaching and research is in sociolinguistics, English syntax, second language acquisition, and research methodology. Since 2016, he has held the Chutian Professorship in the School of Foreign Languages at Central China Normal University.

Soo Jung Youn is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. Her

research interests include language testing and assessment, L2 pragmatics, task-based language teaching, and mixed methods research.

Tania Morales Zelaya received her master’s degree in Cognitive and Social Processes from Ball State University. She has participated in research examining the role of emoji in text messaging and the variation of its use based on culture. Her research interests include the long-term effects of second language acquisition. Jingyuan Zhuang is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University.

She received her M.S. in Linguistics (with a concentration in Applied Linguistics) from Georgetown University. Her research interests include second language acquisition, L2 pragmatics, and study abroad.

xii

Acknowledgments

With 44 authors contributing to this volume, I am excited to present this comprehensive and wide-ranging portrait of pragmatics research in second language acquisition. A large-scale project like this makes us appreciate the help and support we receive from a number of people without whose kindness and dedication it would be impossible to complete our work. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Susan Gass and Alison Markey, the editors of the Routledge Second Language Acquisition Series, for inviting me to edit this handbook. There are many handbooks of pragmatics in the field, but to my knowledge this is the first one solely dedicated to second language pragmatics (L2 pragmatics). I appreciate the trust and support they provided me in elucidating the vision and scope of the handbook. My sincere appreciation also goes to the contributors to this volume for their insightful work, cooperation, and commitment as we worked our way through a number of revisions during the internal and external review processes. I feel privileged to be associated with these many outstanding scholars whose efforts were essential to the publication of this volume, and I am deeply indebted to all. I learned a tremendous amount from their expertise as I envision future possibilities of the field, and I am confident that readers will feel the same. Last but not least, I would like to thank Andrew Cohen for reviewing a large number of chapters in a timely manner. His succinct and insightful comments stemming from his long-term experience and knowledge of the field has no doubt enhanced the quality of the volume. Thanks also go to Bettina Migge, Lourdes Ortega, Rachel Shively, and Adam van Compernolle, who also took part in the review process. I hope that the scholarship presented in this handbook will cultivate new research agendas, methods, and theories of second language pragmatics as this important field moves to its fifth decade. Naoko Taguchi July 20, 2018 Pittsburgh, PA

xiii

1 Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics An Overview Naoko Taguchi

Both experts and lay people would agree that learning a second language (L2)1 involves more than learning grammar and vocabulary. Learning sociocultural conventions and norms of language use—what to say or not to say in a certain situation, how to convey intentions in a contextually fitting manner, and how to achieve a communicative goal collaboratively with others—is a crucial part of becoming a competent speaker in L2. The field of L2 pragmatics addresses this fundamental yet often neglected area of L2 learning and teaching. L2 pragmatics encompasses two broader disciplines—pragmatics and second language acquisition (SLA)—which are complementary in defining the objectives and substances of the field. Pragmatics serves as a goal for L2 acquisition, and SLA provides frameworks and empirical methods to examine the process and impetus of the acquisition. Pragmatics studies the connection between a linguistic form and a context, where that form is used, and how this connection is perceived and realized in a social interaction. Our linguistic choices (as it pertains to the use of form) are bound by several factors. Certainly, contextual factors such as settings, speakers’ relationships and their roles, and topics of conversation affect our way of speaking, but our linguistic choices are also shaped by agency and consequentiality. We choose to speak in a certain way depending on the type of ‘self’ that we want to project (Duff, 2012; LoCastro, 2003). We are also mindful of the consequences of our linguistic behavior—how it impacts others’ perceptions and reactions. These elements of pragmatics are reiterated in Crystal (1997), who defines pragmatics as ‘the study of language from the point of view of 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 other participants in the act of communication’ (p. 301). Given the intricacy involved in pragmatics, one can easily imagine that it can take a village to achieve full competency in pragmatics in L2—if it is ever possible. The challenge comes from many sources. One source is the influence coming from the first language (L1) (or any additional language in the system). Adult learners already have a foundation of pragmatic knowledge in L1 when they come to learn L2. Hence, they need to develop processing control over pre-existing pragmatic representations while re-learning new connections between linguistic forms and the social contexts in which they occur in L2 (Bialystok, 1993). Knowledge of how to express social and interpersonal concepts like politeness, formality, or solidarity in L1 does not directly transfer to L2 because linguistic expressions and strategies required in L2 are different. These concepts also vary in degrees across cultures. 1

Naoko Taguchi

Another challenge for L2 pragmatics acquisition is the sociocultural nature of pragmatics as a learning object. Because social norms and conventions of communication are not salient, it is often difficult for learners to notice what linguistic means are used to project appropriate levels of politeness or formality in a situation, or how meaning is conveyed indirectly with specific linguistic and non-linguistic means (Wolfson, 1989). Those means, and social conventions behind the means, also exhibit considerable variation even in a single community. This variable and tacit nature of forms and conventions further challenges pragmatics learning. Finally, pragmatics involves wide-ranging dimensions that encompass linguistic and sociocultural language use, which makes learning pragmatics a challenging task. Thomas (1983) defined these dimensions in a distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. The former refers to linguistic resources for performing a communicative act, while the latter involves knowledge of sociocultural norms and conventions associated with the act. To become pragmatically competent, L2 learners need a range of linguistic resources, as well as the ability to evaluate contextual information, select appropriate resources, and use them efficiently in a real-time interaction. For instance, when learners want to ask someone a favor, they need to know what linguistic forms are available to convey such illocution. They also need to assess the nature and size of the favor and to whom it is directed in what occasion, as well as its likely outcomes. Learning pragmatics is taxing because of this combination of linguistic knowledge and sociocultural sensitivity required for a pragmatic act. The combination also indicates that grammar and pragmatics are distinct yet interdependent in L2 learning (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000; Kasper & Rose, 2002). Knowledge of formal aspects of language (e.g., grammar, lexis) does not automatically lead to better pragmatic performance, but pragmatics learning does not occur without it. Threshold linguistic knowledge is pre-requisite and serves as a means for pragmatic performance. These observations suggest that acquisition of L2 pragmatics is a long-term process shaped by multiple interweaving factors: L1 pragmatics, L2 proficiency, knowledge of social conventions and norms, context of language use, and experience in the target community. These factors involved in pragmatics learning also inform a larger field of SLA. SLA is a multi-faceted and interdisciplinary field in which numerous factors—linguistic, psychological, and sociological— need to be examined together all at once to understand the process of L2 development and influences on the process (Gass & Mackey, 2012). As a branch of SLA, L2 pragmatics is a field that investigates the construct of pragmatics and process of acquiring the construct. The Routledge Handbook of SLA and Pragmatics illustrates the long-standing relationship between L2 pragmatics and SLA research. The starting point of the relationship goes back to the term interlanguage pragmatics, which was originally coined by Kasper in the 1980s and later defined in Kasper and Dahl (1991) as L2 learners’ pragmatic systems. Since this term debuted, L2 pragmatics has accumulated a critical mass of empirical findings that have enhanced our understanding of SLA from a pragmatics perspective. This handbook surveys this body of literature in six distinct areas: (1) constructs of pragmatic competence, (2) theoretical foundations, (3) research methods, (4) instruction and assessment of pragmatics, (5) contexts of learning and individual differences, and (6) L2 pragmatics in the global era. The handbook provides a critical review of the L2 pragmatics field by evaluating the existing literature, problematizing the current state, and identifying future directions. As an introduction to the handbook, this chapter presents a historical background of the field in response to critical questions that have guided L2 pragmatics research thus far. My goal is to present an introductory overview of the field and encourage readers to leap into subsequent chapters so they can read further on the issues raised in this chapter. I will address questions in three major areas of L2 pragmatics research: construct, development, and instruction. •• 2

Construct: What does it mean to be pragmatically competent? What elements are involved in the construct of pragmatic competence?

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•• ••

Development: How does pragmatic competence develop over time? How do individual learner characteristics and contextual resources shape pragmatic development? Instruction: What is the role of instruction in pragmatic development?

In the following, I will present representative literature addressing these questions.

Background Construct: What does it mean to be pragmatically competent? What elements are involved in the construct of pragmatic competence? The definition of pragmatic competence has evolved over time corresponding to the changing view of L2 ability and to epistemology of the field of SLA. The early definition goes back to the theoretical models of communicative competence, which situated pragmatic competence as a fundamental component of L2 ability, distinct from grammatical, discourse, and strategic competences (Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Canale & Swain, 1980). These models view pragmatic competence as involving two dimensions: functional and sociolinguistic knowledge. The former involves the use of proper linguistic forms for achieving a communicative function (e.g., what to say when greeting a colleague), while the latter involves understanding contextual characteristics and selecting appropriate forms to use in that context (e.g., how to greet a colleague in a business meeting vs. a roommate at a party). In these early models, pragmatic competence is postulated as the knowledge of form–function–context mappings—which forms to use for what communicative functions in what social contexts. With a surge of discursive pragmatics (Kasper, 2006) and interactional competence (Young, 2011), the view of pragmatic competence has moved away from the one-to-one correspondence among a form, function, and context of use. It is now well accepted that the form–function–context associations are not stable or pre-existing within individuals. Rather, they are contingent upon an unfolding course of interaction and are jointly constructed among participants in discourse. The form–function–context associations also shift constantly, corresponding to changing contextual dynamics such as the speakers’ attitudes, affect, and directions of discourse. Hence, ability to adapt to dynamic interaction and achieve a communicative act collaboratively with others is a fundamental aspect of pragmatic competence. Critically, with interaction as part of the construct, pragmatic knowledge is now understood as interactional resources. As Young (2011) claims, participants draw on numerous interactional resources during interaction, including register-specific linguistic forms, speech acts, topic management, turn taking, and repair. These resources are shared among participants as they co-construct a communicative act. More recently, the field of intercultural pragmatics has expanded our understanding of pragmatics-in-interaction. Intercultural pragmatics studies how people from different cultures communicate using a common language (Kecskes, 2014, 2016). Kecskes proposed the sociocognitive approach as a theoretical foundation. This approach combines the cognitive–philosophical perspective, which views intention as pre-existing in the speaker’s mind before it is uttered, and the sociocultural-interactional perspective, which views intention as emergent and jointly constructed among participants in discourse. People draw on their own norms and expectations, but these L1 norms are negotiated and re-defined as they seek common ground during interaction. Hence, individuals’ prior norms eventually develop into new, hybrid norms, creating a ‘third culture that combines elements of each of the speakers’ L1 cultures in novel ways’ (Kecskes 2014, p. 13). These tenets of intercultural pragmatics are directly applicable to L2 pragmatics. Learners draw on their own knowledge of form–function–context associations from their L1 (or other prior experiences), but their individual-level knowledge transforms to shared knowledge with new standards of politeness, directness, and conventions emerging from interaction. 3

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Hence, learners’ willingness to suspend their own standards and seek mutual standards is a critical aspect of pragmatic competence. Also important is the skilled use of communication strategies, which directly affect the process of mutual understanding. While interactional competence (Young, 2011) and the socio-cognitive approach (Kecskes, 2014, 2016) both capitalize on the concept of interaction to explain pragmatic competence, another concept that has recently expanded our understanding of pragmatic competence is learner agency. LoCastro (2003) defines agency as a self-defining capacity that works with volition to bring about a certain effect on or change to one’s behavior. In this definition, learners are viewed as social beings with their own values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world. Following their personal principles, learners make their own linguistic choices to create social positions for themselves, even when their choices do not conform to the norms widely practiced in the local community (Ishihara & Tarone, 2009). Hence, when examining L2 pragmatic competence, it is critical to consider learners’ desired social identity and how it impacts their pragmatic choices. Knowledge of the normative form–function–context associations is one thing, but deciding whether or not to actually use the knowledge with others can be a totally different matter. In summary, the concept of pragmatic competence has evolved over time, shaping our understanding of what it means to be pragmatically competent. Given this evolving conceptualization, pragmatic competence in the current era is best understood as a multi-dimensional and multilayered construct that involves several knowledge and skill areas: (1) linguistic and sociocultural knowledge of what forms to use in what context; (2) interactional abilities to use the knowledge in a flexible, adaptive manner corresponding to changing context; and (3) agency to make an informed decision on whether or not to implement the knowledge in the community. In the current transcultural society, pragmatic competence is often at stake in intercultural encounters where learners from different L1 backgrounds communicate using a common L2. In such a context, pragmatic competence goes beyond the traditional focus of how learners perform a pragmatic act in L2. It extends to how learners co-construct pragmatic norms with others and how they appropriate the norms. The chapters in this handbook collectively illustrate this multiplicity of pragmatic competence. Chapters on constructs and units of analysis in L2 pragmatics present a diverse scope, including traditional constructs of speech acts, conversational implicatures, and routines, as well as more recent areas of prosody, humor, and interactional competence (Part I). Chapters on theoretical foundations also show diverse representations, ranging from cognitive theories that view pragmatic knowledge as individuals’ mental representations, to socially oriented theories that situate pragmatic knowledge in an interpersonal interaction (Part II). Finally, uniform standards of pragmatic language use, as seen in the form–function–context associations, are critically discussed in chapters in the section on pragmatics in the global era, including variational pragmatics, intercultural communication, and multilingual pragmatics (Part VI). Development: How does pragmatic competence develop over time? How do individual learner characteristics and contextual resources shape developmental trajectories? Despite the explicit longitudinal orientation in the mainstream SLA research (Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), L2 pragmatics, particularly in its early years, has fallen short of this trend. This is because of the dominance of cross-linguistic and cross-sectional studies in the 1980s and 1990s, which focused on describing pragmatic language use rather than its development (e.g., Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989; Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993). Many studies in these periods used a questionnaire-based instrument to elicit speech acts (e.g., a discourse completion test or DCT) and examined how many different speech act strategies exist in a language, whether these are direct or indirect strategies, and how they differ across languages, situations, and participant groups (e.g., L2 learners vs. native speakers). Cross-sectional studies that emerged in this trend 4

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generated insights into development by comparing learners’ speech acts across different proficiency levels. The early cross-sectional practice still remains today with new target languages (e.g., Greek in Bella, 2014; Arabic in Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2014) and new constructs (e.g., argumentative discourse in Dippold, 2011; interactional competence in Galaczi, 2014). Longitudinal studies, although still outnumbered by cross-sectional studies, started to show more prominence in the 2000s. This shift is largely owed to a series of seminal publications that underscored the paucity of longitudinal practice and encouraged researchers to explore issues in acquisitional pragmatics (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999, 2000; Kasper & Rose, 2002; Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; Taguchi, 2010). According to Bardovi-Harlig (1999), acquisitional pragmatics addresses two fundamental issues: changes within the L2 pragmatics systems and influences on those systems. Longitudinal research can address both issues: It can document changes in pragmatic competence and explain those changes by examining influences—both contextual and individual—that may be related to these changes. Several longitudinal studies have documented changes in pragmatic language use and uncovered distinct stages of development. A classic study is Ellis’s (1992) investigation into two young ESL learners’ classroom requests. Changes in request forms found in classroom interaction data were interpreted as belonging to one of three developmental stages: (1) A pre-basic stage where learners conveyed a request intention in a context-dependent manner; (2) A formulaic stage where learners performed requests with chunks (e.g., ‘Give me that.’); and (3) An unpacking stage where formulae turned into productive language use with conventional request forms (e.g., ‘Can you’ + verb). Kasper and Rose (2002) later expanded these three stages into five stages of pragmatic development: (1) pre-basic, (2) formulaic, (3) unpacking, (4) expansion (entry of new forms), and (5) fine-tuning (understanding of associations among form, participants, goals, and context). Ohta (2001), on the other hand, analyzed naturalistic interactions in Japanese classes and identified a six-stage development of Japanese acknowledgment and alignment expressions (i.e., feedback signals used to show listenership and empathy). She found that acknowledgment expressions emerged first in learners’ production, followed by alignment expressions, and each expression expanded in lexical variety. In another study, Shively (2013) documented stages of humor production by analyzing an L2 Spanish learner’s conversations in a study abroad program over a semester. Data revealed three changes: (1) decrease in failed humor; (2) decrease in deadpan humor (humor without contextualization); and (3) increase in humorous revoicing. Studies using Conversation Analysis also revealed developmental stages, but unlike other studies focusing on linguistic strategies, these stages were presented from the standpoint of growing repertoire of interactional resources to create meaning. For instance, Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) analyzed semi-naturalistic role play data to trace development of request-making in L2 Arabic over a semester. Participants increased their use of pre-expansion (explaining the reason for request), which occurred in sequence with the interlocutor’s acknowledgment token. Pakarek Doehler and Berger (2017), on the other hand, examined story-openings by an L2 French learner in a home stay setting. Analysis of 20 conversations recorded over a period of eight months showed that the learner gradually expanded her interactional resources for a story launching: preparing the listener for the upcoming story; relating the story to the prior talk; and projecting the nature of the story (e.g., funny, serious). These studies documenting distinct stages of development are rather under-represented in the longitudinal practice because most existing studies have primarily focused on documenting changes using a pre–post design, rather than revealing a staged progression over multiple datapoints. Hence, the studies described above, albeit the minority, have generated valuable insights into patterns and stages of development, which in turn shed light on SLA issues like developmental order and time scale, ultimate attainment, and variation in developmental patterns. Although changes in pragmatic systems have been documented widely in the literature, when it comes to the other dimension of acquisitional pragmatics, i.e., influences on pragmatic systems, 5

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findings are rather limited. Existing studies are largely descriptive, and do not explain how and why certain changes occurred. When considering ‘how’ and ‘why,’ the most obvious sources of influence are individual learner characteristics and contexts of learning. Individual characteristics have been the paramount area of SLA research (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009; MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Clément, 2016). Because learners often exhibit variation in their degrees of success in L2 acquisition, studies have strived to identify individual factors that can explain the variations and predict success in L2 learning. L2 pragmatics has followed this trend, as seen in a large body of studies that examined proficiency impact on pragmatic competence, and a smaller body of studies looking at other factors (e.g., gender, age, motivation, cognitive abilities, personality, and identity) (for a review, see Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Given the recent surge in the social turn (Block, 2003; Firth & Wagner, 1997) and in the dynamic, complex systems approaches (e.g., de Bot, 2008; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), it is more current to situate individual characteristics within a context where learning occurs. Indeed, the recent trend has been that, instead of treating individual characteristics as fixed and discrete variables independent from context, researchers view individual factors as interacting with each other and changing dynamically in context (Dörnyei, 2009). Hence, it is not individual characteristics per se that affect learning; it is a constellation of characteristics mediated by context and time that shapes learning. The interdependence between context and individuals is also seen in L2 pragmatics research. Recent studies have taken a qualitative, case study approach or mixed methods design in longitudinal investigations. These studies have documented learners’ changes over time, with a conjoined analysis of individual characteristics and resources available in a learning context affecting the changes (Brown, 2013; Cook, 2008; D. Li, 2000; Diao, 2016; DuFon, 2010; Hassall, 2006; Ohta, 2001; Shively, 2011; Taguchi, 2012). Many of these studies took place in a study abroad program or sojourn. This trend indicates that the target language community has served as a prolific environment to observe individual and contextual influences on pragmatics learning. Given the sociocultural nature of pragmatic competence, researchers consider that pragmatic development can be best observed in a target language community where learners have opportunities to observe local norms of interaction and experience real-life consequences of their pragmatic behavior. Study abroad settings involve unique participant memberships, activities, and organizations of interactions that could facilitate pragmatics learning to a greater extent than formal classroom settings. Another common feature among these studies is their application of language socialization theory as a guiding framework (e.g., Cook, 2008; Diao, 2016; Li, 2000; DuFon, 2010; Ohta, 2001; Shively, 2011). The language socialization approach contends that linguistic knowledge and sociocultural understanding of the knowledge develop together as learners participate in routine activities (Duff & Talmy, 2011; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). Socialization is characterized as a process of novices becoming competent members of a community through interaction with expert members in the community. Using observations, field notes, and analyses of interaction data, researchers have uncovered instances of explicit and implicit socialization leading to pragmatics learning. Ohta (2001), for example, showed how L2 Japanese learners were socialized into the role of empathetic listener through exposure to teacher talk demonstrating acknowledgment and alignment expressions. DuFon (2010) revealed how feedback and modeling coming from local members socialized learners into Indonesian leave-taking routines and cultural values associated with those routines. Diao (2016) analyzed conversations between L2 Chinese learners and their Chinese roommates to reveal socialization into gendered language use. These studies demonstrate a clear connection among learners, contexts, and pragmatic development. By looking at the data, we understand what kind of pragmatics learning opportunities occurred, how they occurred, and what learning outcomes were produced. To summarize, various issues related to pragmatic development can be paraphrased in a single question: What mechanisms drive development, moving learners from their current stage to a 6

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higher stage of pragmatic competence? This question has been addressed by a line of longitudinal studies, particularly by qualitative research conducted in a naturalistic context. A number of qualitative studies performed a holistic analysis of all the elements involved in a context, revealing a reciprocal relationship between contextual affordances and learners’ characteristics shaping development in a dynamic manner. This handbook will help us evaluate the current practice of acquisitional pragmatics based on two sources of influences on changing pragmatic systems: individual learner characteristics and contexts of learning (i.e., study abroad programs, classrooms, workplaces, and technologyenhanced environments) (Part V). The theoretical foundations section reviews a range of SLA theories from the standpoint of the mechanisms driving pragmatic development (Part II). The research methods section discusses methodological options for examining pragmatic development from a variety of perspectives, including discourse analysis, conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, psycholinguistic approaches, and mixed methods approach (Part III). Instruction: What is the role of instruction for pragmatic development? Instructed SLA (ISLA) is a growing sub-field of SLA as it has rigorously explored how systematic manipulations of learning mechanisms and conditions can lead to the development of an additional language (Loewen & Sato, 2017). L2 pragmatics has followed this trend. Researchers have proposed theoretically grounded hypotheses and tested them systematically using empirical data (for a review, see Takahashi, 2010; Taguchi, 2015). The contribution that pragmatics has made to ISLA is in the target area of instruction. While formal aspects of linguistics (e.g., grammar and lexis) have been the primary interests in ISLA, pragmatics has offered an opportunity to examine instructional effects beyond morpho-syntax, extending to sociocultural aspects of language use. Correspondingly, instructional materials have been designed to incorporate socially oriented communicative goals—whether learners can produce intended communicative effects on others or whether they can convey interpersonal meanings such as politeness, formality, and affect. Early studies in the 1980s and 1990s reached a consensus that pragmatics is teachable, given that instructed groups often outperformed their non-instructed counterparts (for a review, see Kasper & Rose, 1999). Studies in the next decade addressed the question of effective instruction by comparing different teaching methods for learning outcomes. By far, the comparison between explicit and implicit teaching method has dominated the field. Motivated by Schmidt’s (1993) noticing hypothesis that capitalizes on the role of consciousness and attention in learning, studies generally revealed that explicit metapragmatic explanation (e.g., information about which linguistic strategies to use when refusing someone’s invitation) is more instrumental than an implicit condition that promotes learning through input exposure and consciousness-raising (e.g., identifying refusal strategies in input). More recent literature suggests that effective teaching is closely related to depth of processing (Taguchi, 2015). Studies showed that implicit teaching can be equally effective when learners are strategically guided to notice pragmatic features and process those features at a deeper level (e.g., deducing why certain refusal strategies are used in a particular situation). In the same period, tips and guidelines for practitioners have also emerged, informing instructors how to design materials that can package key elements of pragmatics—contextual understanding, language use for communicative functions, cultural knowledge, and social interaction (Bardovi-Harlig & Mahan-Taylor, 2003; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010; Tatsuki & Houck, 2010). The general consensus emerging in this literature is three-fold: instructional tasks should be designed to enhance learners’ awareness and reflection of pragmatic language use, have learners engage in pragmatic-focused interaction activities, and guide learners’ discovery and understanding of pragmatics-related conventions and rules (Cohen & Ishihara, 2013). 7

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Parallel to the development in pedagogy, assessment practice has also been fortified. Traditional practices of testing—construct definition and operationalization, measurement design, validity argument, and reliability estimates—have been incorporated to develop a valid, reliable assessment battery of pragmatic competence. Hudson, Detmer, and Brown’s (1995) book was the forerunner of this trend, attempting the multi-trait, multi-method approach to the assessment of pragmatic competence. The study showed how different measures (e.g., written and spoken DCTs, role plays, and multiple-choice questions) can be used to evaluate speech acts of requests, apologies, and refusals. Roever (2005) advanced the practice with technology by developing a web-based test assessing speech acts, implicature, and routines. More recently, in line with the popularity of interactional competence (Young 2011), test developers have addressed learners’ ability to participate in extended discourse as an area of assessment in L2 pragmatics (Roever, Fraser & Elder, 2014; Youn, 2013; for a review, see Ross & Kasper, 2013). In the current decade, instructed pragmatics has grown further in two distinct directions. One is the increasing diversity in the theoretical epistemology underpinning the studies. The field has moved away from the dominance of noticing hypothesis and the comparison between explicit and implicit teaching. Researchers have started to adopt different SLA theories that represent both cognitive and social camps, including input processing (VanPatten, 2015; see Takimoto, 2009 for an example study), skill acquisition theories (Anderson, 1993; see S. Li, 2012), sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978; see van Compernolle, 2014), Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2011; see Kim & Taguchi, 2015), and collaborative dialogue (Swain & Lapkin, 1998; see Taguchi & Kim, 2016). These theories differ in terms of how they view the mechanisms and conditions that drive learning. Studies guided by skill acquisition theories focus on the knowledge of form–function–context associations, which require initial noticing and a large amount of practice to develop. Likewise, studies under sociocultural theory and collaborative dialogue capitalize on the role of interaction assisting co-construction and emergence of pragmatic knowledge. Cognition Hypothesis, on the other hand, informs the nature of an instructional task, focusing on how task features impact learners’ attention and processing of pragmatics and subsequent learning. This growing theoretical diversity has presented an array of conditions to consider when teaching pragmatics. Another recent trend in instructed pragmatics is the increasing popularity of technology application (for a review, see Taguchi & Sykes, 2013 and Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Technology has firmly established its position in SLA research and teaching, as seen in the wide-spread use of digital media for collecting data and delivering instruction, as well as examining technologymediated contexts (e.g., computer mediated communication or CMC, social media, and multiuser virtual environments) for L2 language use and interaction (Chapelle & Sauro, 2017; Chun, Kern, & Smith, 2016). In their seminal paper, Chun et al. (2016) contend that ‘the use of technology should not be seen as panacea, or a goal in and of itself, but rather as one means to support specific learning goals’ (p. 77). When considering this statement, it is apparent that technology plays a beneficial role in supporting learning goals specifically in pragmatics. The most obvious benefit is the contextualization of learning made available via technology. As Harris (2000; also cited in Chun et al.) argues, the computer is ‘the most powerful contextualization device ever known because it not only integrates language with images and sound in variously manipulable configurations, but also because it links information across languages and cultures’ (p. 242). This contextualization effect of technology is most beneficial for pragmatics learning because pragmatics fundamentally draws on the context of language use. A variety of CMC tools (e.g., chat, blogs, online discussion, and video/web conferencing) can provide a platform for learners to directly interact with other language users across time and physical space (e.g., Cunningham, 2016). Digital games and virtual environments can provide an interactive, input-rich, and selfguided space where learners simulate different participant roles in diverse social settings (Sykes, 2013). In such environments, learners can directly participate in an interactional situation, rather than observing the situation as a third person. They can also experience the direct consequences 8

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of their pragmatic behavior—what impact their language use has on others and how it shapes subsequent linguistic actions. Only recently these characteristics of technology-enhanced learning, i.e., contextualized language use, interaction with consequences, autonomous learning, and experience-based learning, have been integrated into an instructional study in L2 pragmatics. Research is currently underway to examine whether these characteristics actually lead to increased pragmatic knowledge. In summary, pedagogical issues in L2 pragmatics have diversified over time. Early investigation into the teachability of pragmatics has shifted into methods debates over effective instructional approaches and materials. This shift has been characterized by the explicit integration of mainstream SLA theories in designing instructional materials, along with a growth of the theoretical paradigms in guiding the investigation. The question of effective teaching methods has taken a new direction recently with technology as a potential for expanding traditional options of instruction. In this handbook, the chapters on pedagogical approaches address these various recent developments in teaching pragmatics (Part IV). A meta-analysis of instructional studies presents the current landscape of methods, approaches, and findings of pragmatics teaching. An emerging trend on the application of task-based language teaching (TBLT) to instructed pragmatics is highlighted in a chapter advocating this connection (see also Taguchi & Kim, 2018). Principles and guidelines for material design and development are presented through a systematic evaluation of textbooks and pedagogical practices. Also included in this section is the chapter on pragmatics assessment, which reviews various test types (e.g., DCTs, role plays, multiple-choice items, and performance-based tasks) for reliability and validity. Chapters in the contexts of learning also discuss pedagogical issues by highlighting learning resources and opportunities available in different contexts (e.g., CMC, virtual games, classrooms, workplaces, and study abroad programs) (Part V).

Structure and Features of This Handbook A range of research developments described above indicates that L2 pragmatics has firmly established its position as a branch of SLA. L2 pragmatics has constantly offered a window through which core issues of SLA—patterns of L2 development, and individual characteristics and contexts shaping the development—can be observed and understood. This handbook further illustrates the SLA–pragmatics interface. By presenting a critical survey of the existing literature, this handbook intends to exemplify how L2 pragmatics as a field has contributed to the accumulation of knowledge in SLA and identified areas to be taken further in future research. The handbook has several unique features as outlined below.

Depth and Scope in Coverage This handbook strives for both scope and depth in its survey of L2 pragmatics research by reviewing literature in the following six sections: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Constructs and units of analysis Theoretical approaches Methodological approaches Pedagogical approaches Contextual and individual considerations L2 pragmatics in the global era

These sections together represent the essential structure of the L2 pragmatics field in its entirety, and collectively define both the fundamentals and new directions of the field. 9

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Chapters in the section on constructs (Part I) illustrate what it means to become pragmatically competent in L2 by surveying typical constructs and units of analysis in pragmatic competence. Those constructs include traditional areas of speech acts, conversational implicatures, and routines, as well as recent areas of interactional competence, humor, and prosody. The section on theoretical approaches (Part II) showcases diverse theoretical assumptions underlying pragmatic development, ranging from cognitive to social epistemologies (e.g., noticing hypothesis, skill acquisition, usage-based approaches, language socialization, sociocultural theory, and identity/ agency). The section on methodology (Part III) presents an overview of data collection methods and specific research designs (e.g., mixed methods). This section also features data analysis frameworks that are relatively under-represented in L2 pragmatics research, such as corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and psycholinguistics approaches. The section on pedagogy (Part IV) includes classic areas of instructional studies, material development, and assessment, as well as more recent topics of TBLT and classroom socialization. The section on contexts and individuals (Part V) presents chapters on individual factors and contexts of learning, including typical areas of study abroad and classroom, extending to more recent areas of workplaces and technology-enhanced contexts (e.g., CMC, digital games, virtual environments). The final section on L2 pragmatics in the global era (Part VI) features recent trends by situating L2 pragmatics within the discourse of multilingualism, heritage language learning, lingua franca communication, and intercultural competence. Across sections and chapters, this handbook aims at problematizing the current state and identifying future directions of L2 pragmatics. To achieve this goal, each chapter presents a critical survey of the existing literature and concrete suggestions on how to advance the current practice.

Theoretical, Empirical, and Practical Considerations This handbook incorporates theoretical, empirical, and practical considerations together into the survey of L2 pragmatics research. These three dimensions are made explicit in separate sections dedicated to theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches to L2 pragmatics (Parts II, III, and IV). The theoretical section addresses conceptualization of pragmatic competence and common frameworks used to investigate pragmatics learning and development. The methodological section addresses research designs, data collection measures, and data analysis methods used to investigate pragmatic competence and development. The section on pedagogy surveys instructional intervention studies and their major findings, instructional materials and tasks, and assessment practice. By presenting these three areas separately, the handbook intends to achieve a comprehensive review that appeals to both researchers and practitioners. The theory–research–pedagogy link will also help underscore the ‘applied’ orientation of SLA as a field.

Conceptual Diversity This handbook promotes diversity and an interdisciplinary stance toward the field. Conceptual diversity is achieved by incorporating both orthodox L2 pragmatics topics (e.g., speech acts, implicatures, instruction, assessment, and learning pragmatics while abroad), as well as rather under-represented, emerging topics. For example, theoretical frameworks such as cognitive approaches (e.g., noticing hypothesis), language socialization, and sociocultural theory appear often in the pragmatics literature. An overview of data collection methods and Conversation Analysis are also common topics in the methods of L2 pragmatics research. In order to go beyond these revisited topics, this handbook presents other theories and methods, such as usage-based 10

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approaches, corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and psycholinguistic methods. Although existing findings in these under-represented topics are still small, inclusion of these topics will generate new interests and directions in future research. As another attempt to increase conceptual diversity, I have incorporated new perspectives into long-standing, revisited topics. For example, instructed pragmatics has been a common topic for decades, but this handbook addresses this topic with a recent perspective of meta-analysis. New instructional paradigms are presented through chapters on classroom pragmatics socialization and TBLT. Classic topics such as speech acts and implicatures incorporate more recent orientation of interaction as centrality of pragmatic performance. Finally, conceptual diversity is achieved by dedicating an entire section to globalization in L2 pragmatics with regard to current issues such as native speaker norms and variation, heritage learner pragmatics, intercultural competence, and multilingual pragmatics. By covering both classic topics and recent trends, this handbook aims to appeal to a wider audience including those who are new to the field and want to have a general outlook, as well as those who are already active in the field and want to explore new agendas in L2 pragmatics research. It is my hope that this handbook cultivates interests among students, researchers, and teachers who can take a critical look at L2 pragmatics from their own terrain of activity, and identify gaps and areas to be taken further. I believe that the collective insights coming from a number of stakeholders are impetus to strengthening the field of L2 pragmatics within SLA, as both fields continue to grow in the next decade.

Note 1 In this volume, L2 refers to any additional language(s) that learners acquire including a foreign language (FL) in a formal classroom setting and target language in the context where the language is spoken. As the reviewer of this volume pointed out, I am aware that the distinction between L2 and FL is important for pragmatics learning. I opted for using ‘L2’ as a cover term in this handbook for several reasons. First, the purpose of the handbook is to illustrate the connection between pragmatics and the larger field of SLA in which ‘second language (L2)’ is used as a cover term for ‘foreign language,’ ‘target language,’ and ‘additional language.’ Second, in the current era of globalization, the distinction between L2 and FL has become blurry. Even in a traditional FL context where the target language is not an official language, people have plenty opportunities to interact with target language speakers in both face-to-face and technology-supported mediums.

References Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2012). Role-playing L2 requests: Head acts and sequential organization. Applied Linguistics, 33, 42–65. Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2014). Preference structure in L2 Arabic requests. Intercultural Pragmatics, 11, 619–643. Anderson, J. R. (1993). Rules of the mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language testing in practice: Designing and developing useful language tests. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1999). Exploring the interlanguage of interlanguage pragmatics: A research agenda for acquisitional pragmatics. Language Learning, 49, 677–713. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000). Pragmatics and second language acquisition. In R. B. Kaplan (Ed.), Oxford handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 182–192). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Mahan-Taylor, R. (2003). Teaching pragmatics. Washington, DC: Office of English Programs, U.S. Department of State. Bella, S. (2014). Developing the ability to refuse: A cross-sectional study of Greek FL refusals. Journal of Pragmatics, 61, 35–62. Bialystok, E. (1993). Symbolic representation and attentional control in pragmatic competence. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 43–63). New York: Oxford University Press. Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 11

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Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brown, L. (2013). Identity and honorifics use in Korean study abroad. In C. Kinginger (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad (pp. 269–298). Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins. Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical aspects of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, 1–47. Chapelle, C., & Sauro, S. (2017). The handbook of technology and second language learning and teaching. New York: Wiley Blackwell. Chun, D., Kern, R., & Smith, B. (2016). Technology in language use, language teaching, and language learning. Modern Language Journal, 100, 64–80. Cohen, A. D. & Ishihara, N. (2013). Pragmatics. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Applied linguistics and materials development (pp. 113–126). London/New York: Bloomsbury. Cook, H. (2008). Socializing identities through speech style. New York/Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge encyclopedia of language (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Cunningham, J. (2016). Request modification in synchronous computer-mediated communication: The role of focused instruction. Modern Language Journal, 100, 484–507. de Bot, K. (2008). Introduction: Second language development as a dynamic process. Modern Language Journal, 92, 166–178. Diao, W. (2016). Peer socialization into gendered Mandarin practices in a study abroad context: Talk in the dorm. Applied Linguistics, 37, 599–620. Dippold, D. (2011). Argumentative discourse in L2 German: A sociocognitive perspective on the development of facework strategies. Modern Language Journal, 95, 171–187. Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The psychology of second language acquisition. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Duff, P. A. (2012). Identity, agency, and second language acquisition. In S. Gass & A. Mackey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 410–426). London: Routledge. Duff, P. A., & Talmy, S. (2011). Language socialization approaches to second language acquisition: Social, cultural, and linguistic development in additional languages. In D. Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 95–116). Abington: Routledge. DuFon, M. (2010). The socialization of leave-taking in L2 Indonesian. In G. Kasper, H. T. Nguyen, & D. R. Yoshimi (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 12 (pp. 91–112). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i National Language Resource Center. Ellis, R. (1992). Learning to communicate in the classroom: A study of two learners’ requests. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14, 1–23. Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal, 81, 285–300. Galaczi, E. D. (2014). Interactional competence across proficiency levels: How do learners manage interaction in paired speaking tests? Applied Linguistics, 35, 553–574. Gass, S., & Mackey, A. (2012). Introduction. In S. Gass & A. Mackey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 1–4). London: Routledge. Harris, R. (2000). Rethinking writing. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hassall, T. (2006). Learning to take leave in social conversations: A diary study. In M. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 31–58). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Hudson, T., Detmer, E., & Brown, J. D. (1995). Developing prototypic measures of cross-cultural pragmatics (Technical Report No. 7). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. Ishihara, N. & Tarone, E. (2009). Subjectivity and pragmatic choice in L2 Japanese: Emulating and resisting pragmatic norms. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), Pragmatic competence in Japanese as a second language (pp. 101–128). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kecskes, I. (2014) Intercultural pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Kecskes, I. (2016). Can intercultural pragmatics bring some new insight into pragmatics theories? In A. Capone & J. L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 43–69). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. 12

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Kasper, G. (2006). Speech acts in interaction: Towards discursive pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, J. C. Felix-Brasdefer, & A.S. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 11 (pp. 281–314). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa National Foreign Language Resource Center. Kasper, G., & Blum-Kulka, S. (1993). Interlanguage pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Kasper, G., & Dahl, M. (1991). Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, 215–247. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. (1999). Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 19, 81–104. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Oxford: Blackwell. Kasper, G., & Schmidt, R. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 149–169. Kim, Y., & Taguchi, N. (2015). Promoting task-based pragmatics instruction in EFL classroom context: The role of task complexity. Modern Language Journal, 99, 656–677. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Li, D. (2000). The pragmatics of making requests in the L2 workplace: A case study of language socialization. Canadian Modern Language Review, 57, 58–87. Li, S. (2012). The effects of input-based practice on pragmatic development of requests in L2 Chinese. Language Learning, 62, 403–438. LoCastro, V. (2003). An introduction to pragmatics: Social action for language teachers. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Loewen, S., & Sato, M. (2017). Instructed second language acquisition (ISLA): An overview. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of instructed second language acquisition (pp. 1–12). New York: Taylor & Francis. MacIntyre, P., Gregersen, T., & Clément, R. (2016). Individual differences. In G. Hall (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of English language teaching (pp. 310–323). New York: Routledge. Ohta, A. (2001). Second language acquisition processes in the classroom: Learning Japanese. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ortega, L., & Byrnes, H. (2008). The longitudinal study of advanced L2 capacities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pakarek Doehler, S., & Berger, E. (2017). L2 interactional competence as increased ability for contextsensitive conduct: A longitudinal study of story-openings. Applied Linguistics. Early view. Roever, C. (2005). Testing ESL pragmatics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Roever, C., Fraser, C., & Elder, C. (2014). Development and validation of a test of ESL sociopragmatics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Robinson, P. (2011). Second language task complexity, the Cognition Hypothesis, language learning, and performance. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Second language task complexity: Researching the cognition hypothesis of language learning and performance (pp. 3–37). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ross, S., & Kasper, G. (Eds.) (2013). Assessing second language pragmatics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmidt, R. (1993). Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 21–42). New York: Oxford University Press. Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shively, R. L. (2011). L2 pragmatic development in study abroad: A longitudinal study of Spanish service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1818–1835. Shively, R. L. (2013). Learning to be funny in Spanish study abroad: L2 humor development. Modern Language Journal, 97, 939–946. Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1998). Interaction and second language learning: Two adolescent French immersion students working together. Modern Language Journal, 82, 320–337. Sykes, J. M. (2013). Multiuser virtual environments: Apologies in Spanish. In N. Taguchi & J. M. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 71–100). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taguchi, N. (2010). Longitudinal studies in interlanguage pragmatics. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics Vol. 7 (pp. 333–361). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Taguchi, N. (2012). Context, individual differences, and pragmatic development. Bristol/New York: Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. State-of-the-art article. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. 13

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Taguchi, N., & Kim, Y. (2016). Collaborative dialogue in learning pragmatics: Pragmatics-related episodes as an opportunity for learning request-making. Applied Linguistics, 37, 416–437 Taguchi, N., & Kim, Y. (Eds.) (2018). Task-based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taguchi, N., & Sykes, J. M. (Eds.) (2013). Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Takahashi, S. (2010). Assessing learnability in second language pragmatics. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics Vol. 7 (pp. 391–421). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Takimoto, M. (2009). Exploring the effects of input-based treatment and test on the development of learners’ pragmatic proficiency. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1029–1046. Tatsuki, D., & Houck, N. (2010). Speech acts and beyond: New directions in pragmatics. Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91–111. van Compernolle, R. A. (2014). Sociocultural theory and instructed L2 pragmatics. Bristol/New York: Multilingual Matters. VanPatten, B. (2015). Foundations of processing instruction. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 53, 91–109. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wolfson, N. (1989). Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Youn, S. J. (2013). Validating task-based assessment of L2 pragmatics in interaction using mixed methods (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai’i. Young, R. (2011). Interactional competence in language learning, teaching, and testing. In H. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in language learning and teaching (pp. 426–443). New York: Routledge.

14

Part I

Constructs and Units of Analysis

2 Speech Acts in Interaction Negotiating Joint Action in a Second Language J. César Félix-Brasdefer

Introduction Learning to communicate appropriately and effectively in a second language (L2) is part of learners’ pragmatic competence, that is, the ability to comprehend and produce a variety of communicative acts in context (e.g., greeting, complimenting, and expressing agreement). From an interactional perspective, pragmatic competence concerns the dynamic and dialogic aspects of communication, with a focus on language use in social interaction (Taguchi, 2017). Pragmatic competence also involves the ability to co-construct a social action with interlocutors during interaction. This ability is part of learners’ interactional competence, which involves the skillful use of linguistic and non-linguistic resources to enact a variety of social actions (for an overview of interactional competence, see Hall, Hellerman, & Pekarek Doehler, 2011; see also Chapter 7 in this volume). Drawing on the discursive pragmatics perspective (Kasper, 2006), this chapter presents key concepts of joint actions (Clark, 1996) and Conversation Analysis (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), which can reveal the learners’ ability to co-construct a social action with their interlocutors. The chapter first describes the main tenets of speech act theory and explains how this theory can be extended to examine speech acts in extended discourse. The chapter then describes the discursive pragmatics perspective for examining speech acts in interaction and surveys the existing findings. The chapter ends with conclusions and directions for future research.

Speech Act Theory Speech act theory was first presented in 1955 by the British philosopher John Austin at the William James Lectures at Harvard University. This theory was later published posthumously in Austin’s influential book How to Do Things with Words (1962). Austin’s ideas were further developed by the American philosopher John Searle in his seminal work Speech Acts (1969) and in his later works (1976, 2010). Both philosophers were concerned with the structure of utterances with respect to their meaning, use, and the action they perform. Austin proposed a three-way taxonomy of speech acts, namely locution, illocution, and perlocution. A locutionary act refers to the act of saying something meaningful, that is, the act of producing a sentence in the literal sense (referring and predicating). An illocutionary act is the act performed by saying something that has a conventional force, such as requesting, refusing, warning, and complaining. 17

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Finally, a perlocutionary act refers to what we achieve ‘by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading’ (Austin, 1962, p. 109). Austin (1962) focused on the purpose of performative utterances, indicating that a speech act produced by the speaker has effects on the hearer. Searle (1969), on the other hand, focused on the intentional and conventional aspects of illocutionary acts by the speaker. Searle (1969) further proposed a set of felicity conditions that must be met before an utterance is considered successful as a speech act. Felicity conditions involve propositional, preparatory, sincerity, and essential conditions, each highlighting a different aspect of an utterance. The propositional condition involves the meaning or textual content, such as the reference and predication of an act (e.g., the act of promising has a future reference). The preparatory condition refers to the prerequisites that must be met prior to the realization of the speech act (i.e., knowing that the person is capable of performing the requested action before making the request). The sincerity condition reflects the speaker’s psychological state (i.e., being sincere about the speech act performed). Finally, the essential condition centers on the illocutionary force of an utterance (i.e., how an utterance is understood, such as classifying a request as an attempt to get the hearer to perform an action). Searle (1976) proposed five categories of speech acts: representatives (or assertives), directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Representatives constitute assertions that carry truth value and commit the speaker to the expressed proposition (e.g., asserting, claiming, and reporting). Directives involve an effort on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to perform an action (e.g., requesting or giving commands). Commissives create an obligation on the part of the speaker, that is, committing the speaker to performing (or not performing) a future action (e.g., promising or refusing an invitation). Expressives convey an attitude or a psychological state of the speaker (e.g., apologizing or praising). Finally, declarations are speech acts that immediately change the current state of affairs (i.e., institutionalized performatives, such as the act of declaring a marriage official). Austin (1962) noted that the successful performance of an illocutionary act involves three conditions: securing the hearer’s uptake, causing a change in the given situation, and inviting a response from the hearer. These conditions indicate that, although speech act theory primarily focuses on individual utterances rather than discourse, it provides the foundation for analyzing a speech act as a co-constructed act between the speaker and hearer (e.g., invitation–response and compliment– response sequences). First, in order to secure an uptake, the speaker must ensure that the interlocutor understands the force of an utterance. This concept serves as the basis for the analysis of speech acts in interaction because it considers both the speaker’s utterance and the interlocutor’s response to the utterance (e.g., A: I love your glasses; B: Thank you, I love this brand!). Second, illocutionary acts take effect by causing a change in the normal course of events. For example, after President Obama took the Oath of Office on January 20, 2009, he was no longer addressed as Senator Obama. Third, illocutionary acts typically ‘invite by convention a response or a sequel’ (Austin, 1962, p. 117). The response can be realized verbally and non-verbally through gestures and prosodic features (e.g., intonation). The concept of the illocutionary act suggests that speech acts are produced and interpreted in a specific manner between interlocutors. As described above, Austin’s initial conceptualization of speech acts as ‘doing things with words’ provides the foundation for the analysis of speech acts in interaction. Speech act theory contributes to our understanding of social actions in discourse because notions such as hearer uptake, illocutionary force, conventionality, and felicity conditions are part of social actions. These notions have been adapted to examine a wide range of speech act sequences across different languages (e.g., Barron & Schneider, 2009; Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989; Félix-Brasdefer, 2008, 2015; Márquez-Reiter, 2000; Wierzbicka, 2003). As demonstrated in these studies, analyzing the hearer’s uptake of the speaker’s illocutionary force is crucial for understanding how speakers jointly construct a speech act. 18

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A Discursive Perspective to Speech Acts Streeck (1980) and Edmonson (1981) were the first researchers to observe that speech acts are not the result of a single utterance; instead, they are the result of a negotiation, a cooperative achievement, and a conversational outcome among speakers. Streeck focused on the speaker’s use of sequential resources to express illocutionary force. The author noted that ‘[t]he performance of speech acts is an activity by which participants in interaction construct a social context within which they exchange verbal messages’ (p. 134). In order to examine speech acts in interaction, one must go beyond the analysis of individual utterances alone and consider their placement and sequential order in conversation, as well as their communicative functions and their uptake by the hearer. The term ‘speech act sequence’ was introduced by van Dijk (1979, 1980) as an extension of Austin and Searle’s speech act theory to account for the function of speech acts in interaction. It is used as an umbrella term to refer to speech acts performed by one speaker or negotiated among speakers across turns (Félix-Brasdefer, 2014). In the following section I review fundamental concepts and methods for examining speech acts in interaction. Those concepts and methods come from Conversation Analysis (CA) (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 2007) and the concept of language use in social action (Clark, 1996).

Conversation Analysis: A Micro-analytic Talk-in-Interaction Perspective Conversation Analysis (CA) offers a rigorous methodological framework for analyzing the sequential organization of discourse (e.g., conversation openings and closings) (Sacks et al., 1974) (see Chapter 15 in this volume for an in-depth discussion of CA). CA concerns how participants co-construct communicative actions (e.g., request–response, invitation–refusal, compliment–response) sequentially turn-by-turn, and how they design their turns to jointly construct actions with their interlocutor. In conversation analytic research, the adjacency pair (e.g., compliment–compliment response) serves as a basic unit of sequential and action organization in conversation. Turns are comprised of turn-constructional units (TCUs) that perform a specific action such as agreeing, disagreeing, or offering an opinion. Transition to a next speaker may typically occur at a transition-relevance place (TRP). A TRP represents a possible completion of a turn (e.g., where a next speaker may take a turn at talk) and indicates the place where the current speaker signals impending completion of the TCU-in-progress to a next speaker (Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007). Although the use of authentic data is one of the central assumptions of CA, CA has been extended to L2 pragmatics research that often uses elicited interactional data (e.g., see Taleghani-Nikazm & Huth, 2010, for elicited conversations; for role-plays, see Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2012, and Félix-Brasdefer, 2006). Kasper and Wagner (2014) emphasize the value of ‘applied CA,’ which involves ‘the application of basic CA’s principles, methods, and findings to the study of social domains and practices that are interactionally constituted’ (p. 171). Unlike basic CA, which analyzes naturalistic conversations to uncover the tacit principles enacted by participants to co-construct actions turn-by-turn, applied CA does not require a conversation to be naturally-occurring. Applied CA allows the use of CA analytic tools to examine interactional data in controlled settings. For example, CA has been used to examine different aspects of interaction in role-plays conducted as part of an oral proficiency interview (cf. Ross & Kasper, 2013). The aspects analyzed using CA include repair sequences, sequence construction, the organization of turn-taking, and topic selection (Kasper, 2013; Seedhouse, 2013; Tominaga, 2013). Kasper and Wagner (2014) argue that ‘applied linguistics offers a corrective to classic CA’s entrenched monolingualism, a limitation that CA shares with most social sciences outside of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics’ (p. 200). 19

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Thus, applied linguists researching L2 pragmatics have adapted CA principles and methods to analyze the sequential organization of social action using elicited interactional data in a variety of L2 contexts.

Joint Actions and Language Use Adopting a conversation as the basic unit of analysis, Clark (1996) offers a discursive approach to the analysis of language use in social interaction. Clark’s approach emphasizes two concepts: joint activities and joint actions. Following Levinson’s (1992) notion of ‘activity type,’ Clark employs the concept of ‘joint activity’ to refer to a social action that is coordinated among participants (e.g., calling a friend to plan a party, asking a professor to write a letter of recommendation, or buying something at a supermarket). The joint activity includes the entire interaction, that is, initiating, carrying out, and ending the social action. Clark proposes three criteria that determine a joint activity: the setting (e.g., an information center, a professor’s office, or the supermarket), the participants’ roles (e.g., clerk–customer, student–professor, or service-provider–serviceseeker), and the participants’ contributions to each activity (e.g., the rights and obligations of the interlocutors during the interaction). For example, at the supermarket, the vendor can initiate the transaction (e.g., ‘Hello, can I help you?’), the customer has the right to request service, and the vendor has the responsibility to provide the service. A joint activity involves joint actions, which Clark defines as an action ‘carried out by an ensemble of people acting in coordination with each other’ (p. 3). Joint actions include those that are coordinated sequentially across turns. A joint action is a sequence that comprises two actions organized as an adjacency pair (e.g., invitation– response). Joint actions require participants to coordinate their respective actions, which essentially form speech act sequences. The coordination of joint actions and goals among participants is part of a joint activity. Hence, Clark adopts an extended version of speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and key methodological concepts of CA (Sacks et al., 1974) to examine communicative acts performed by participants engaging in joint action. The discursive-pragmatics perspective focuses on language use in social interaction to illustrate how speech acts are negotiated at the discourse level. It adopts key concepts of CA (e.g., adjacency pairs, turn taking, topic change, repair, and preference organization), as well as the notions of joint action (e.g., a greeting exchange and invitation–response sequence) and joint activity (e.g., scheduling a meeting with an advisor). The pragmatic-discursive perspective helps us analyze speech acts in interaction in a range of interactional settings, including face-to-face and online communication (e.g., González-Lloret, 2016; Kim & Brown, 2014).

Speech Acts in Interaction: Survey of Empirical Findings Drawing on the discursive-pragmatics perspective, this section surveys existing studies to illustrate how speech acts can be analyzed in L2 interaction. I will focus on two areas of speech acts where findings are currently concentrated: directives (requests and direction-giving) and dispreferred responses (disagreements and refusals).

Collaborative Construction of the Directive Speech Act According to Searle (1976), directives are defined as ‘speech acts that are attempts of the speaker to get the hearer to do something’ (p. 11). Requests and locative directives (giving directions) belong to this category. In a request, the speaker makes an attempt to get the hearer to do something (e.g., ‘Can you pass me the salt?’). In a locative directive, the direction-giver makes an attempt to get the direction-seeker to follow certain directions to arrive at a destination (e.g., ‘First, walk two blocks, then turn left at the traffic light.’). 20

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Request Sequences Request is the most examined speech act in L2 pragmatics research. A number of studies have examined this speech act, ranging from single-moment studies using a cross-sectional design to developmental studies using a longitudinal design. Although the majority of studies have focused on the analysis of the request head act (i.e., the core utterance that conveys the illocutionary force of request), recent studies have analyzed how learners and native speakers negotiate request sequences at the discourse level. This is illustrated in Example (1) from the author’s own data. This is a conversation between a 12-year-old American boy (Gabriel) and a shop assistant at a grocery store in Spain. Gabriel went to the store with his parents and interacted with a female vendor. (↑ indicates final rising intonation; two or more colons [:::] signal elongation of the ­syllable; V = ‘you-formal’; T = ‘you-informal’) (1)   1  Gabriel:  Buenas tardes (Good afternoon.)   2  Vendor:   buenas tardes, guapetón (Good afternoon, handsome.)   3  Gabriel:  ¿tiene leche? (Do youV have milk?)   4  Vendor:   leche semi↑, entera↑ (Low-fat, whole.)   5  Gabriel:  ah, semi (Um, low-fat.)   6  Vendor:   semi↑ (Low-fat.)  7      ((delivers product))   8  Vendor:   mira los donus, tengo de oferta los donus,   9  dos en un euro, ¿te doy donu?   (LookT at the donuts. I have donuts on sale, two for one euro, do you want donuts?) 10  Gabriel:  ((points to a different pastry)) 11  Vendor:   o:::h, ese, está buenísimo ese, con chocolate   (o:::h, that one, that one’s really good, with chocolate.) 12  Father:   ¿quieres ese? Pídelo (Do youT want that one? AskT for it.) 13  Mother:   ¿cuál quieres, hijo? (Which one do youT want, son?) 14  Vendor:   ¿de almendrita o de chocolate? (Almond or chocolate?) 15  Gabriel:  uno y uno (one of each.) 16  Vendor:   uno y uno↑ (one of each.) 17  Gabriel:  no, quiero este ((points to a different pastry))   (No, I want this one.) 18  Gabriel:   vale, gracias (okay, thanks.) ((receives product)) 19  ((payment)) 20  Vendor:   de nada, cariño (You’re welcome, dear.) In this excerpt, Gabriel opens the transaction with a greeting followed by the vendor’s response (lines 1–2). He then issues the request for service in the form of an interrogative, which is interpreted as a request for action, followed by the vendor’s response asking what kind of milk he wants, low-fat or whole (lines 3–4). Gabriel responds, and the transaction is completed successfully (lines 5–7). Then, the vendor initiates another speech act sequence by offering donuts (lines 8–9). Gabriel refuses the offer by pointing to a different pastry, which is followed by the vendor’s acknowledgment (lines 10–11). After Gabriel’s parents ask him to choose one (lines 12–13), the vendor issues another question with two options (line 14), which is followed by Gabriel’s response (‘one of each’) (line 15). Upon the vendor’s confirmation with final rising intonation (↑, line 16), Gabriel responds by pointing to a different pastry (No, quiero este ‘No, I want this one’, line 17). The transaction ends successfully with a closing 21

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sequence. This example shows the learner’s ability to negotiate a request for service in the target culture by means of verbal and non-verbal resources to get his message across during the sales transaction. This type of request negotiation sequence has been documented in existing studies. Using data from telephone calls to an airline company in South Korea, Lee (2009) showed that extended request sequences between a service-provider and a service-seeker (native speakers of Korean) were frequent during the negotiation of service; that is, the action of requesting was extended over several sequences and co-constructed over turns. Hence, the content of the requests was the result of a joint construction between the speakers. Shively (2011), on the other hand, analyzed L2 Spanish learners’ service encounter interactions in a local community in Spain. She found that, by the end of their semester abroad, the learners developed the ability to use appropriate greeting and closing sequences in their service-encounter requests. They also became able to negotiate requests for service with their service providers over extended discourse using insertexpansions (embedding an adjacency pair within an adjacency pair). Unlike these studies using naturalistic data, Al-Gahtani and Roever’s (2012) cross-sectional study used elicited data (via role-play) to examine request sequences in L2 English. The study demonstrated the usefulness of applied CA in revealing L2 learners’ speech act development in extended discourse. A notable difference across proficiency levels was found in the learners’ use of pre-expansions, which include ‘preliminaries’ or sequences preceding the request (e.g., ‘Could you do me a favor?’) (Schegloff, 2007). Lower-proficiency learners (beginners) did not use preexpansions to preface the request, whereas upper-proficiency counterparts (upper-intermediate and advanced) were able to open the interaction with a greeting sequence and used other forms of pre-expansion such as accounts and justifications for request. The same pattern was observed in the use of post-expansions. Post-expansions are sequences that follow an adjacency pair (e.g., request–acceptance/refusal). When the second pair part is a dispreferred action (e.g., a refusal after a request), post-expansions often occur (e.g., asking for a reason for refusal). Upper-proficiency learners showed a tendency of using longer postexpansions in requests. They frequently used a combination of two insert-expansions that promoted elaboration of the initial request (i.e., two question–response sequences following the initial request). In contrast, lower-proficiency learners accepted the request without adding a complication that could trigger post-expansions. Another study using applied CA with role-play data is Su and Ren’s (2017) study that examined requests among L2 Chinese learners of different proficiency levels. They found that higher-level learners delayed the provision of the request head act and sequenced their requests across turns using both insert- and post-expansions. In contrast, lower-level learners delayed their requests within the head act and barely used insert- and post-expansions. Hence, learners’ ability to sequence their requests with insert- and post-expansions increased with proficiency.

Direction-Giving Interactions Using a face-to-face direction-giving task, Lee (2014, 2017) examined the sequential structure of direction-giving interactions. Participants were learners of L2 English and L2 Korean of different proficiency levels in a U.S. university. Direction-giving interactions include four phases: initiation, route description, securing, and closing. Lee analyzed the direction-giving exchanges for the sequential organization of turns (pre-direction-giving, insert- and post-expansion sequences) and semantic formulas (directives, descriptions, and adjuncts). She found that the beginning-level learners relied on bare imperatives and repetition when giving directions. In contrast, the higherlevel learners elaborated route descriptions in three ways: They established common ground with 22

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the interlocutor through pre-direction-giving utterances in the form of preliminaries (e.g., ‘Do you know the campus?’); they used a greater number of descriptions (e.g., ‘The Medical School will be on your right.’); and they organized direction sequences within and across turns by using a wide range of pragmalinguistic resources. Example (2) taken from Lee’s (2014) study shows how a higher-proficiency L2 English learner (Anyu, pseudonym) co-constructed direction-giving sequences with a native speaker of English (Nora, pseudonym) in a role-play task (pp. 229–230). (2)   1  Nora:  Excuse me. I’m from out of town. And I’m not sure how to go from this room.   2      I’m trying to get to the Health Center. Can you give me some directions?   3  Anyu:  Ah: now we’re in the Goodbody Hall.   4  Nora:   Okay. Goodbody Hall.   5  Anyu:  Yeah uh: so (2.0) Health Center is in the cross in the cross.   6  Nora:   the intersection?   7  Anyu:  Yeah   8  Nora:   Okay   9  Anyu:  And it’s behind is the main library. 10  Nora:   Okay 11  Anyu:  It’s a big library. 12  Nora:   Okay 13  Anyu:  Many students in the college. 14        Uh:Now you you’ll take out the door. And the door and turn right. This exchange illustrates how speech acts (i.e., asking for and giving directions) are coconstructed between the learner and the native speaker interlocutor. After Nora asks for directions (lines 1–2), Anyu states the current location (pre-direction-giving), which is followed by agreement from the interlocutor (lines 3–4). In the next turn, he does not give directions immediately, but inserts multiple parenthetical comments that describe the destination location (pre-directiongiving sequences) and features of the destination in line 5 (‘Health Center is in the cross in the cross.’), line 9 (‘And it’s behind is the main library.’), line 11 (‘It’s a big library.’), and line 13 (‘Many students in the college.’). Nora acknowledges the pre-direction-giving utterances with the agreement marker ‘okay’ in lines 4, 8, 10, and 12. After multiple pre-direction-giving utterances, Anyu initiates the second pair part of a direction-giving sequence (route descriptions) in line 14. Lee (2014) found that, as proficiency increased, learners produced a greater number of pre-direction-giving sequences. For example, upper-level learners produced destination repeats and orientation checks as part of pre-direction-giving sequences, which resulted in an extended pre-direction-giving interaction. They also produced more elaborate pre-direction-giving turns prior to the route description phase. In contrast, lower-level learners relied on simple imperatives and one-turn sequences.

Dispreferred Responses: Disagreement and Refusal Sequences Several studies analyzed the sequential structure of dispreferred responses in L2. Some actions are designed as preferred (e.g., agreement and acceptance), whereas others are designed as dispreferred (e.g., disagreement and refusal) (see, e.g., Schegloff, 2007). A dispreferred response is generally signaled by hesitations, delays, mitigations, and various preliminary moves to preface the dispreferred social act. Previous studies revealed how L2 learners use various interactional resources to organize dispreferred social actions. 23

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Disagreement Sequences Bardovi-Harlig and Salsbury (2004) examined disagreement sequences that were realized across multiple turns in native and nonnative speakers’ (L2 English learners) discussions over controversial topics. Over time, the learners’ disagreement changed from a one-turn sequence (i.e., strong disagreement), to a more complex disagreement sequence (i.e., postponement of disagreement across multiple turns, inclusion of agreement components in disagreement, and postponement of disagreement components within a turn). Pekarek Doehler and Pochon-Berger’s (2011) study also revealed disagreement sequences in L2. Using videotaped classroom interaction data, disagreements were analyzed among L2 French learners at two proficiency levels: lower-intermediate students in a secondary school (13–14 years old) and advanced-level students in a high school (17–18 years old). Lowerintermediate learners showed exclusive use of turn-initial immediate disagreement and did not use linguistic hedges to soften the disagreement (e.g., ‘I think’). They relied on one-turn disagreements and did not produce sequential elaborations of disagreements; that is, their disagreements were not preceded by accounts, explanations, or other elements that could reinforce the stance taken by the speaker. In contrast, advanced-level learners employed diverse strategies to negotiate the disagreement. For example, they used turn-initial disagreements and delayed disagreements with a token agreement (e.g., ‘Yes, but …’) and avoided the initial-turn disagreement. They also organized a refusal in a conversational sequence by using hedges and syntactically complex disagreement sentences.

Refusal Sequences Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford’s (1993) classic study revealed how L2 English learners in a U.S. university developed their ability to appropriately refuse an advisor’s suggestion for course selections during academic consultation. Over time, the learners became familiar with the rules of academic advising sessions by offering fewer rejections, more suggestions, and more justifications to appropriately preface the rejection without offending the advisor. The learners also asked questions and provided appropriate reasons to reject the advisor’s suggestion (e.g., having already taken equivalent courses), which led to the advisor’s acceptance of the rejection. Analyzing role-play interactions, Al-Gahtani and Roever (2018) illustrated the sequential structure of L2 English refusals. The study involved L2 English groups in three proficiency levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The beginning-level group showed emerging interactional competence, as seen in their infrequent use of the agreement marker ‘OK’ followed by ‘but’ (‘OK, but …’) and frequent use of direct and unmitigated refusals. In contrast, the intermediate-level group used a conventional agreement marker followed by ‘but’ (‘yes, but …’). They also used preliminaries (e.g., pre-accounts) and insert-expansions to further delay the refusal. Advanced-level learners were more recipient-focused and used a greater combination of various resources to organize the dispreferred nature of the refusal. Using Gass and Houck’s (1999) interactional model of refusal trajectories, Su’s (2017) dissertation work analyzed the sequential structure of refusals among L2 learners of Chinese in a U.S. university. Learners at different proficiency levels (determined via test and institutional status) completed role-plays involving refusal scenarios, and then participated in retrospective verbal interviews. Results showed that lower-level learners focused on understanding the content of the scenarios in order to complete the refusal, while advanced-level learners attended to contextual variables in the scenarios more closely (e.g., cost of the refusal or interlocutors’ power relationship). The advanced-level learners also produced longer refusal sequences over multiple turns. Particularly notable among the advanced-level learners was their use of a combination of various semantic formulas placed across turns. 24

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Example (3) illustrates an invitation–refusal interaction between a native speaker of Chinese (I: Instructor) and a low-intermediate learner of Chinese (Jenna, pseudonym) (Su, 2017, pp. 114–115). The interaction involves three sequences: invitation–refusal response (lines 1–7); request for justification–response (lines 8–10); insistence–response (lines 11–13); and closing (lines 14–17). (3) 01    02    03    04    05    06    07  08    09    10   11    12    13    14    15    16    17   

I:  

Jenna: 

I:   Jenna:    I:



Jenna:  I:       Jenna:

Xiao Hu, kuai guo zhongqiu jie le ‘Xiao Hu, the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming soon.’ Wo qing ban shang de tongxue xingqiwu de wanshang ‘I invite the students this Friday evening’ dao wo jia lai wan-er ‘to my house for a party’ Ni keyi lai ma? ‘Can you come?’ Duibuqi, laoshi ‘I’m sorry, professor.’ Wo bu keyi lai. ‘I won’t be able to come (go)’ (.3) Wei shenme? ‘Why?’ Yinwei zhe ge xingqiwu, wo you gongzuo ‘Because I need to work this Friday’ Wo you hen duo gongzuo ‘I have a lot of work to do’ A::, ni you hen duo gongzuo, yao jiaban-er ma? ‘Ah, you have a lot of work. Are you gonna work extra hours?’ En, suoyi wo yao zuowan wo de gongzuo ‘Yes, so I need to finish my work’ A::, na hao ba, na hao ba ‘OK, then’ Yihou ban limian ruguo you huodong dehua, ‘If there are other activities in our class in the future’ xiwang ni neng lai canjia ‘I hope you can come and participate’ Xia ci xiwang ni neng lai canjia. ‘I hope you can come next time’ Wo juede xia ci wo keyi, canjia ni de wanhui. ‘I think I can come to your party next time.’

Jenna (the learner) prefaced the direct refusal (‘I won’t be able to come.’) with an apology (‘I’m sorry, professor’) (lines 5–6). However, she did not provide an explanation for her refusal until she was asked why (line 8). Jenna restated her explanation (line 12), which prompted her interlocutor to accept the refusal (lines 13). As this example illustrates, according to Su, low-intermediate learners’ refusals are characterized by a lack of post-sequences, elaboration of the refusal sequences, and mitigating devices to soften the refusal. In contrast, advanced learners employed a greater number of downgraders and upgraders than lower-level learners in all role-play scenarios, and they also delayed the refusal of the invitation over multiple turns. 25

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These findings highlight advanced-level learners’ ability to deploy their interactional resources to negotiate a refusal response in extended discourse and organize a refusal sequence, which is co-constructed with their interlocutors over multiple turns.

Conclusion and Future Directions This chapter demonstrated how speech acts are accomplished through actions that learners coconstruct with their interlocutors during interaction. Speech acts in interaction represent a collaborative effort among interlocutors who use their interactional resources to construct a social action in extended discourse. The discursive-pragmatics approach can reveal L2 learners’ use of interactional resources in various aspects of discourse, including sequential organization, turntaking, projection of dispreferred responses, and the use of repair. Studies surveyed in this chapter demonstrate that L2 speech act development can be observed through learners’ use of these interactional resources in a variety of contexts, including formal classrooms and study abroad settings (for a review, see Félix-Brasdefer, 2017; Félix-Brasdefer & Koike, 2014; Taguchi, 2017). Negotiation of speech acts occurs when learners engage in social interaction, which, in turn, leads to the development of their pragmatic skills over time. One tendency found in the literature is that learners’ abilities to co-construct speech acts in interaction are influenced by their general proficiency. Existing cross-sectional studies compared learners across different proficiency levels in the negotiation of requests (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2012), direction-giving interactions (Lee, 2017), and dispreferred responses such as refusals (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2018; Su, 2017; Su & Ren, 2017) and disagreements (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2011). These studies found that lower-proficiency leaners often rely on simple and direct requests through minimal use of request–response adjacency pairs and tend to overuse unmitigated and direct refusals. Lower-proficiency learners’ speech acts also tend to lack preliminaries (e.g., pre-requests, pre-refusals) and post-expansions (e.g., requests for additional information, other-initiated repair sequences). In contrast, higher-proficiency learners tend to use a combination of preliminaries and post-expansions, and exhibit more sophisticated abilities to use turn-taking mechanisms and a broader range of speech act formats across turns (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2012; Su, 2017). These findings indicate that, as proficiency increases, learners become able to monitor the unfolding course of discourse and respond to the interlocutor’s contributions in appropriate timing turn-by-turn. With proficiency, learners become able to use a variety of linguistic and interactional resources skillfully to jointly construct a speech act with their interlocutors. These findings point to the importance of analyzing interactional data to reveal speech act development and the need to further explore methodological options for such analysis. As demonstrated in this chapter ‘applied CA’ is one methodological option. Applied CA permits the use of elicited data to analyze the realization of speech acts in interaction. Although using naturalistic data adds to ecology validity, using data-elicitation tasks with an interactional focus can serve as a practical method to examine speech acts in interaction. Role-plays are particularly useful in this regard. Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) contend that ‘role-plays allow a decent degree of standardization while eliciting extended interactive data’ (p. 44). Félix-Brasdefer (2018a) offers a comprehensive account of the role-play method for the analysis of spoken interaction. The author presents five main role-play varieties that can be used to examine speech acts in interaction: (1) the archetypal role-play (participants take on social roles based on their previous experience); (2) the role-enactment approach (participants perform a role that is part of their real life); (3) the naturalized role-play (participants encounter a distracting task when performing a role-play); (4) the simulated role-play task (participants take on roles that are familiar to them); and (5) the OPI role-play (a component of the oral proficiency interview). These different types of role-play can be useful for eliciting extended discourse around speech acts. 26

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Another future direction relates to longitudinal investigation of speech acts in interaction. Except for a few studies (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004; Shively, 2011), most studies surveyed in this chapter used cross-sectional design by comparing learners’ interactions across different proficiency levels (e.g., Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2012, 2018; Sue & Ren, 2017). In these studies, any group-level differences found in learners’ performance are attributed to changes that learners exhibit at different stages of their development. However, claims about development are most meaningfully interpreted in a longitudinal design by tracing changes in the same participants over time. More longitudinal studies are necessary in the future to test the generalizability of the findings found in cross-sectional studies. For example, studies showed that more advanced learners’ requests were characterized by greater use of pre-/post-expansions and a prolonged turn-taking with insert-expansions. Future longitudinal research can examine whether these patterns emerge at a later point of development in L2 learners (for a sample longitudinal study, see Al-Ghatani & Roever, 2015). Finally, the discursive-pragmatics approach can be incorporated into instructional materials so that we can teach learners how to sequence speech acts in extended discourse. Research has shown that explicit instruction is effective in promoting learners’ pragmatic competence (cf. Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman, & Vellenga, 2015; Taguchi, 2015). Instructors can design materials that can direct learners’ attention to various conversational moves and sequences, such as openings and closings, pre- and post-expansions, and insertion sequences. Using authentic conversations as input, instructors can show learners how head acts (e.g., request-making forms) and external modification devices co-occur and are sequenced over turns. Instructors can also use awareness-raising activities (e.g., analysis of how speech acts are realized), explicit metapragmatic information, and communicative practice (e.g., role-play). For example, Hasler-Barker (2016) showed that learners who received explicit metapragmatic instruction and communicative practice became able to produce expanded compliment responses in Spanish. Similarly, Huth (2010) presented materials for teaching the sequential structure of German requests in extended discourse (e.g., explicit information on request pre-sequences, discussion, role-play, and conversational tasks). Instructors can also provide learners with opportunities to use their interactional resources to negotiate meaning with others. Félix-Brasdefer’s (2018b) website provides a variety of role-play tasks that can supply those opportunities (http​s://p​ragma​tics.​india​na.ed​u/tea​ching​/refu​sals-​engli​ sh.ht​ml). Other tasks are found in online intercultural communication on Reddit (Glide, 2015), in elicited conversations (Félix-Brasdefer & Lavin, 2007) and open role-plays (Félix-Brasdefer, 2018a). These tasks can generate opportunities for L2 learners to negotiate meaning, which could lead to skillful co-construction of speech acts in extended discourse.

Further reading Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2018). Proficiency and preference organization in second language refusals. Journal of Pragmatics, 129, 140–153. Using a role-play task, this study examined the development of L2 English learners’ interactional competence to sequence their refusals at three proficiency levels (i.e., beginner, intermediate, and advanced). L2 refusal performance was compared to that of native speakers in comparable role-play situations. Differences were observed with regard to how each learner group deployed interactional resources to produce a refusal, specifically presence or absence of preliminaries (e.g., pre-announcements, pauses), delays, or insertexpansions in a refusal sequence. This study underscores the effect of language proficiency on learners’ ability to employ interactional resources to mark a refusal as a dispreferred action. Hasler-Barker, M. (2016). Effects of metapragmatic instruction on the production of compliments and compliment responses: Learner-learner role play in the foreign language classroom. In K. BardoviHarlig & J. C. Félix-Brasdefer (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 14 (pp. 125–152). Manoa, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai‘i. 27

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This study examined the effects of instruction on the development of L2 Spanish compliment–compliment responses. Three treatment conditions were involved (explicit instruction, implicit instruction, and control), and the development was assessed with a role-play task. The instructional treatment included awareness raising activities, cross-cultural comparisons, form-focused instruction, and analysis of authentic language samples. Role-play data were analyzed for pragmalinguistic strategies for compliments and compliment responses (frequency and distribution of the strategies) and sequential organization of these speech acts. The sequential analysis revealed that learners who received explicit metapragmatic instruction produced expanded compliment responses in both the immediate and delayed post-tests. The study concludes with the pedagogical implications of teaching these speech acts in interaction. Kasper, G. (2006). Speech acts in interaction: Towards discursive pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, C. Félix-Brasdefer, & A. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 11 (pp. 281–314). Manoa, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai‘i. This article takes a discursive approach to examining speech acts in social action. In particular, it presents how CA can be applied to analyze speech acts. The author provides a critical appraisal of central notions in pragmatics—action, meaning, and context—for the analysis of language use in interaction. Each concept is reviewed from different perspectives and theoretical backgrounds, including Searle’s (1969) speech act theory and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. The author offers an incisive review of existing models of meaning and the notion of context (and contexts) for the analysis of social action from a CA perspective.

References Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2012). Proficiency and sequential organization of L2 requests. Applied Linguistics, 33(1), 42–65. Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2015). The development of requests by L2 learners of Modern Standard Arabic: A longitudinal and cross-sectional study. Foreign Language Annals, 48(4), 570–583. Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2018). Proficiency and preference organization in second language refusals. Journal of Pragmatics, 129, 140–153. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Hartford, B. S. (1993). Learning the rules of academic talk: A longitudinal study of pragmatic change. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15, 279–304. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Salsbury, T. (2004). The organization of turns in the disagreements of L2 learners: A longitudinal perspective. In D. Boxer & A. Cohen (Eds.), Studying speaking to inform second language learning (pp. 199–227). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Bardovi-Harlig, H., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. (2015). The effect of instruction on pragmatic routines in academic discussion. Language Teaching Research, 19(3), 324–350. Barron, A., & Schneider, K. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425–442. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Clark, H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Edmonson, W. (1981). Spoken discourse: A model for analysis. London: Longman. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2006). Teaching the negotiation of multi-turn speech acts: Using conversationanalytic tools to teach pragmatics in the classroom. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, J. C. Félix-Brasdefer, & A. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 11 (pp. 165–197). Manoa, HI: Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai‘i. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Politeness in Mexico and the United States: A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2014). Speech act sequences. In K. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics of discourse, Vol. 3 (pp. 323–352). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic-discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2017). Interlanguage pragmatics. In Y. Huang (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of pragmatics (pp. 416–434). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2018a). Role plays. In A. Jucker, K. P. Schneider, & W. Bublitz (Eds.), Methods in pragmatics (pp. 305–331). Berlin: Mouton DeGruyter. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2018b). Pragmatics at Indiana University. Retrieved on June 26, 2018, from https​:// pr​agmat​ics.i​ndian​a.edu​/teac​hing/​refus​als-e​nglis​h.htm​l 28

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Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Koike, D. (2014). Perspectives on Spanish SLA from pragmatics and discourse. In M. Lacorte (Ed.), Handbook of Hispanic applied linguistics (pp. 25–43). New York: Routledge. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Lavin, E. (2009). Grammar and turn expansion in second language conversations. In J. Collentine, M. García, B. Lafford, & F. Marcos Marín (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 11th Hispanic linguistics symposium (pp. 53–67). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Retrieved on June 26, 2018, from http:​//www​.ling​ref.c​om/cp​p/hls​/11/p​aper2​202.p​df Gass, S. M., & Houck, N. (1999). Interlanguage refusals: A cross-cultural study of Japanese-English. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Glide, M. (2015). ¿Cuáles son sus recomendaciones?: A comparative analysis of Spanish and English advice given on a Mexican Subreddit. IU Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 15(1). Retrieved on XXXX from https​://ww​w.ind​iana.​edu/~​iulcw​p/wp/​issue​/view​/25 González-Lloret, M. (2016). The construction of emotion in multilingual computer-mediated interaction. In M. Prior & G. Kasper (Eds.), Emotion in multilingual interaction (pp. 291–313). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hall, J. K., Hellerman, J., & Pekarek Doehler, S. (Eds.). (2011). L2 interactional competence and development. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Hasler-Barker, M. (2016). Effects of metapragmatic instruction on the production of compliments and compliment responses: Learner-learner role play in the foreign language classroom. In K. BardoviHarlig & J. C. Félix-Brasdefer (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 14 (pp. 125–152). Manoa, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai‘i. Huth, T. (2010). Intercultural competence in conversation: Teaching German requests. Die Unterrichtspraxis/ Teaching German, 43(2), 154–166. Hutchby, I., & Wooffitt, R. (2008). Conversation analysis (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Polity. Kasper, G. (2006). Speech acts in interaction: Towards discursive pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, J. C. Félix-Brasdefer, & A. Omar (Eds.). Pragmatics and Language Learning, Vol. 11 (pp. 281–314). Manoa, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai‘i. Kasper, G. (2013). Managing task update in oral proficiency interviews. In S. Ross & G. Kasper (Eds.), Assessing second language pragmatics (pp. 258–287). Basingtoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Kasper, G., & Wagner, J. (2014). Conversation analysis in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 34, 171–212. Kim, E-Y., & Brown, L. (2014). Negotiating pragmatic competence in computer mediated communication: The case of Korean address terms. CALICO, 31, 264–284. Lee, S. H. (2009). Extending requesting: Interaction and collaboration in the production and specification of requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1248–1271. Lee, J. H. (2014). Speech and gesture in route direction-giving interactions (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Lee, J. H. (2017). Speech in direction-giving interactions in L2 English. Korean Journal of Applied Linguistics, 33(2), 51–80. Levinson, S. (1992). Activity types and language. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work (pp. 66–100). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Marquez-Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pekarek Doehler, S., & Pochon-Berger, E. (2011). Developing ‘methods’ for interaction: A cross-sectional study of disagreement sequences in French L2. In J. K. Hall, J. Hellerman, & S. Pekarek Doehler (Eds.), L2 interactional competence and development (pp. 206–243). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ross, S., & Kasper, G. (2013). Assessing second language pragmatics. Basingtoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–735. Schegloff, E. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. London: Cambridge University Press. Searle. J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5, 1–23. Searle, J. R. (2010). Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Seedhouse, P. (2013). Oral proficiency interviews as varieties of interaction. In S. Ross & G. Kasper (Eds.), Assessing second language pragmatics (pp. 199–219). Basingtoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Shively, R. (2011). Pragmatic development in study abroad: A longitudinal study on Spanish service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(6), 1818–1835. Streeck, J. (1980). Speech acts in interaction: A critique of Searle. Discourse Processes, 3, 133–154. 29

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Su, Y. (2017). Developing L2 pragmatics in Chinese: Acceptance and refusal sequences in invitational and offering interactions (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Su, Y., & Ren, W. (2017). Developing L2 pragmatic competence in Mandarin Chinese: Sequential realization of requests. Foreign Language Annals, 50(2), 433–457. Taguchi, N. (2015). ‘Contextually’ speaking: A survey of pragmatic learning abroad, in class, and online. System, 48, 3–20. Taguchi, N. (2017). Interlanguage pragmatics: A historical sketch and future directions. In A. Barron (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of pragmatics (pp. 153–167). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Taguchi, N. (2018). Contexts and pragmatics learning: Problems and opportunities of the study abroad research. Language Teaching, 51(1), 124–137. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taleghani-Nikazm, C., & Huth, T. (2010). L2 requests: Preference structure in talk-in-interaction. Multilingua, 29, 185–202. Tominaga, W. (2013). The development of extended turns and storytelling in the Japanese oral proficiency interview. In S. Ross & G. Kasper (Eds.), Assessing second language pragmatics (pp. 220–257). Basingtoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. van Dijk, T. A. (1979). Pragmatic connectives. Journal of Pragmatics, 3, 447–456. van Dijk, T. A. (1980). Macrostructures: An interdisciplinary study of global structures in discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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3 Implicature Comprehension in L2 Pragmatics Research Naoko Taguchi and Shota Yamaguchi

Introduction Grice (1975) coined the term conversational implicature, referring to non-literal meanings that people infer based on the assumption of relevance and contextual information. Since then, implicature has been the critical concept of pragmatics theories that explain principles and mechanisms of human communication. As Morris (1938) originally claimed, syntax and semantics are concerned about the formal structure of an utterance and utterance-level meaning, whereas pragmatics is concerned about what the speaker means by the utterance. Implicature clearly illustrates the connection among syntax, semantics, and pragmatics because it represents a relationship between utterance meaning, or the literal sense of an utterance, and force, or the speaker’s intention behind the utterance (Thomas, 1995). Theories in the field of pragmatics situate the recognition of the speaker’s intention as the primary goal of communication. This chapter reviews three pragmatics theories that explain the mechanisms behind the recognition of intention: Grice’s (1975) maxims of conversation, Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) Relevance Theory, and Kecskes’s (2014) socio-cognitive approach. The chapter first discusses these theories focusing on their assumptions about how speaker intention is recognized and understood. Then, we illustrate how these theories have informed SLA research as we investigate the development of implicature comprehension. Empirical findings are reviewed in terms of common patterns and generalizations that emerge from the existing findings. The findings are also discussed critically in terms of how research foci and methods are essentially shaped by the theoretical frameworks. Based on the limitations identified in the literature, the chapter concludes with directions for future research.

Grice’s Conversational Maxims in L2 Comprehension of Implicature Maxims of Conversation Grice (1975) claimed that a conversation is built upon four maxims that participants follow: quantity, quality, manner, and relevance. The maxim of quantity tells us not to say too much or too little, while the quality maxim tells us to be truthful and not to lie. The manner maxim is about being orderly and avoiding ambiguity, while the relevance maxim means making a relevant contribution to the conversation in progress. These maxims function as a set of rules for 31

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communication, guiding how we understand meaning. When the speaker produces an utterance, the listener understands that the message is relevant to the ongoing discourse and draws the most plausible interpretation of the utterance. For example, when someone is late for a meeting, the utterance ‘You’re always on time’ flouts the maxim of quality because it contradicts with the reality. Still, the listener understands the speaker’s underlying intention and interprets the utterance as sarcasm, which purposefully disregards the maxim to produce humorous effects. These maxims of conversation can explain how we understand implicature. During conversation, we assume that each participant is making an appropriate contribution in a way that suits the direction of the conversation. Based on this assumption, we seek the most relevant interpretation of an utterance (the speaker’s true intention), even when the utterance seemingly deviates from the preceding discourse or context of communication.

Maxims of Conversation in L2 Implicature Comprehension Research Adapting Grice’s paradigm, previous studies investigated L2 comprehension of implicature (see also Chapter 32 in this volume). Some studies made an explicit reference to Grice’s maxims by comparing comprehension across different implicature types (e.g., relevance-based implicature, scalar implicature) (Bouton, 1992, 1994, 1999; Roever, 2005; Roever, Wang, & Brophy, 2014). Other studies focused on speech acts by comparing comprehension between direct and indirect speech act utterances (Carrell 1984; Cook & Liddicoat, 2002; Garcia, 2004; Koike, 1996; Yamanaka, 2003). Still others focused on irony, which often presents the greatest deviation from the literal meaning (saying the opposite of what is intended) (Shively, Menke, & ManzónOmundson, 2008; Yamanaka, 2003). Most studies used a reading instrument, having L2 learners read a dialogue or a sentence and then respond to a multiple-choice question to assess comprehension. Exceptions are Garcia’s (2004) study that used audio input in a listening test, and Yamanaka (2003) and Shively et al.’s (2008) studies using video clips. One generalization that emerged from these studies is that general proficiency has a strong effect on comprehension. Cross-sectional studies found that higher-proficiency learners outperformed their lower-proficiency counterparts on comprehension of implicature and indirect speech acts (Cook & Liddicoat, 2002; Garcia, 2004). Similar results were found in comprehension of irony (Shively et al., 2008; Yamanaka, 2003). High-proficiency learners were able to detect a clear difference between the utterance meaning and the context, and recognize the ironic intention behind the utterance, while low-proficiency learners comprehended ironic comments literally (Shively et al., 2008; Yamanaka, 2003). Studies using regression analyses revealed a main effect of proficiency on implicature comprehension, overriding other factors such as gender and target language exposure (Roever et al., 2014). Longitudinal studies also found that learners’ comprehension developed naturally as their proficiency matured over time (Bouton, 1992, 1999). The proficiency impact found in these studies tells us that comprehension of implicature is built on threshold L2 knowledge and abilities. To infer non-literal meaning, learners draw on their linguistic resources (e.g., grammar and vocabulary), as well as general skills of reading and listening. Unless there are other salient cues that assist comprehension, understanding utterancelevel meaning is prerequisite to implicature comprehension. Detecting maxim-flouting might be difficult for lower-proficiency learners because, due to their limited linguistic knowledge and skills, they have difficulty comprehending the utterance-level meaning. In contrast, advancedlevel learners have sufficient linguistic resources, which help them comprehend utterance-level meaning and further explore meaning behind the utterance. The proficiency impact is most evident in the wider range of indirectness that high-­proficiency learners can handle, which, in turn, informs SLA issues such as developmental order and ultimate 32

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attainment in implicature comprehension (see also Taguchi, 2018). Using a cross-sectional design, Yamanaka (2003) assessed L2 English learners’ comprehension of irony, negative evaluation, parody, and rhetorical question. Low-proficiency learners struggled with irony, but highproficiency learners did not. Cook and Liddicoat (2002), on the other hand, assessed L2 English learners’ comprehension of requests at three directness levels: direct (e.g., Pass me the salt.), conventional indirect (e.g., Can you pass me the salt?), and non-conventional indirect (e.g., The meat is a bit bland.). Both conventional and non-conventional indirect requests were difficult for low-proficiency learners, but high-proficiency learners were able to comprehend conventional indirect requests and struggled only with non-conventional indirect requests (hinting). Garcia (2004) examined comprehension of indirect speech acts (requests, suggestions, corrections, and offers). L2 learners of English with high TOEFL scores were more accurate with all speech act types than those with lower TOEFL scores, except for indirect requests, which revealed no significant proficiency effect. Longitudinal studies also revealed a relationship between proficiency and implicature type. Bouton (1992, 1994, 1999) compared L2 English learners’ comprehension of relevance implicature, Pope questions (saying ‘Is the Pope catholic?’ to mean that something is obvious), irony, indirect criticisms, and sequence implicature. Relevance implicatures were relatively easy for learners, but Pope questions, irony, indirect criticism, and sequence implicature remained difficult even after spending 17 months in the U.S.A. When we look at implicature types that advanced-level learners struggle with, we can understand the elements that make comprehension difficult. For one, comprehension difficulty often results from a larger distance between the utterance-level meaning and intended meaning. This is evident in Cook and Liddicoat’s (2002) findings: Higher-proficiency learners had difficulty with non-conventional requests (i.e., hinting), which exhibited a larger mismatch between the surface form and the request intention than with conventional requests. Another source of support comes from studies on irony (Bouton, 1992, 1994, 1999; Yamanaka, 2003). Irony is a rhetorical device in which the propositional and intended meanings are opposite. The widespread deviation from the literal meaning in irony adds to comprehension difficulty, as found in Bouton’s (1994, 1999) participants, who struggled with irony after spending more than a year in the target community. The difficulty related to irony suggests that L2 learners may not be familiar with the convention of irony. Saying the opposite of what is intended is a common rhetorical device, and we use such irony purposefully with a goal of having the listener recognize the opposite intention. The fact that learners struggled with irony indicates that the rhetorical convention of irony is not easily accessible in the L2. It is also possible that irony is culture-specific. Irony may be practiced more in some cultures than in others; as a result, learners may lack experience with irony, adding to their comprehension difficulty. The difficulty coming from culture-specific convention was also found in Bouton’s (1992, 1994) studies where Pope questions were difficult to acquire via exposure alone. Unlike relevance-based implicature that can be understood using L1-based maxims, Pope questions—asking something that has an obvious affirmative response—involve a convention specific to the L2. Without knowing this convention, it is nearly impossible to draw the speaker’s intended meaning from bottom-up, sentence-level processing alone. While a drastic deviation from the literal meaning (i.e., hinting and irony) and L2-specific conventions (e.g., Pope questions) can be the cause of comprehension difficulty, very few studies reviewed here have adapted theoretically informed criteria to operationalize implicature difficulty and design test items accordingly. As a result, the level of comprehension difficulty found in the data is rather incidental, generating ad hoc explanations about what makes implicature difficult. Additionally, previous studies used only a small number of items to reveal comprehension difficulty. Yamanaka’s (2003) study had 12 items, of which only four were irony. Bouton (1994) used more items (28 total) but only three were Pope questions, and the rest were divided into six different implicature types. Garcia’s (2004) test had 12 items assessing four different types of 33

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indirect speech acts. The small item pool makes comparison across item categories unreliable. To understand different natures of indirectness across implicature types, we need research using theoretically grounded principles to design items and compare learners’ comprehension across item categories with a goal of clarifying a hierarchy of implicature types. We will review those studies in the next section.

Relevance Theory in L2 Comprehension of Implicature Relevance Theory Sperber and Wilson (1995) advanced Grice’s (1975) theory in several important ways. First, they condensed Grice’s four maxims into one, i.e., the maxim of relevance, claiming that the four maxims often overlap. For example, B’s response below flouts the maxim of relevance (not providing the direct answer to A’s question), but it also flouts the maxim of quantity and manner (not providing sufficient and useful information to A’s inquiry): (1)  A:  How was your job interview?     B: I don’t know. By condensing the four maxims into one, Sperber and Wilson underscored the central role of the principle of relevance in communication. When an utterance is presented, people automatically seek relevance of the utterance even when it is largely unrelated to the preceding information. This is illustrated in the following example adapted from Mey (1995): (2)  A:  Let’s go to the movie.    B:  I will bring Kleenex. B’s utterance is not a typical second-pair response to A’s invitation. Still, we can understand that B’s response is an acceptance of the invitation. We also automatically maximize the relevance of B’s response by actively comparing possible interpretations, such as ‘The movie is a sad’ or ‘B has a cold.’ Hence, relevance-seeking is part of human cognition and takes place automatically whenever information is presented (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Another contribution of Relevance Theory is the theory’s solid grounding in cognitive psychology. Sperber and Wilson explained the process of meaning comprehension as an asymmetry between contextual effect and processing load. The contextual effect indicates saliency of meaning presented, while the processing load refers to the degree of effort required for comprehension. When the contextual effect is strong (or meaning is salient), we do not have to process many contextual cues to detect meaning; as a result, our processing load decreases. When we comprehend meaning, many different assumptions come to our mind. Among those, we select the assumption that has the greatest contextual effect (or most relevance) for the smallest processing load. Several factors affect our processing load: linguistic complexity, number of contextual cues to be processed, and accessibility of the cues (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). When the utterance is linguistically complex and involves a number of contextual cues to process, we need to go through extensive inferencing, resulting in a greater processing load. In Example (2) above, the utterance ‘I will bring Kleenex’ is linguistically simple, but it requires a number of cues, for example, the meaning of Kleenex and its conventional usage, and the type of the movie. In contrast, B’s intention in (3) can be understood almost immediately: (3)  A:  Let’s go to the movie.    B:  I have to finish up this paper. It’s due tomorrow. 34

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Understanding B’s refusal intention is relatively easy because B’s response follows the conventional pattern of refusal. When someone invites us to do something, our response is either to accept or refuse the invitation. Because refusing an invitation is a dispreferred response (Pomerantz & Heritage, 2013), which might threaten the interlocutor’s positive face (Brown & Levinson, 1987), we often avoid saying ‘no’ directly and instead use an indirect reply and explain why we cannot accept the invitation. Hence, giving an excuse is a common pattern of indirect refusal. Our knowledge of this convention, which is built upon our previous experiences, works as a contextual effect, making the speaker’s intention salient and predictable. To summarize, Sperber and Wilson explicated cognitive mechanisms behind the process of inferencing. Comprehension of implicature is driven by our relevance-seeking cognition. When someone says something, we automatically seek relevance of the information by maximizing the use of available contextual cues. The degree of indirectness in an utterance (or strength of implicature) is a function of the number of contextual cues to be processed. The distance between the propositional and intended meaning becomes smaller when meaning is readily accessible via convention and saliency, requiring fewer cues to process.

Relevance Theory in L2 Implicature Comprehension Research The relationship among contextual cues, processing load, and conventionality has been explored in L2 studies (e.g., Taguchi, 2005, 2007, 2008a, 2011, 2012; Taguchi, Li, & Liu, 2013). A distinct feature of these studies is the use of an online listening test and response time data. Response times show how quickly one can respond to the stimuli. Shorter response times indicate relative ease in processing the stimuli, whereas longer response times signal processing effort coming from linguistic, cognitive, and affective demands (see Chapter 18 in this volume). In implicature comprehension, response time data can symbolize the distance between the propositional and intended meaning, and the degree of processing load coming from that distance. Comprehension is faster when the propositional meaning is immediate, but when the proposition is remote, we need to bridge the gap, resulting in longer response times (Hamblin & Gibbs, 2003). Existing findings support the relationship between the degree of indirectness and the amount of processing load. Specifically, studies found that conventionality encoded in implicature facilitates comprehension, resulting in higher accuracy scores and shorter response times. Here, we will focus on two studies that compared comprehension of conventional and non-conventional implicature among L2 English learners across proficiency levels (Taguchi, 2011) and different time-points (Taguchi, 2012). These studies adapted naturally occurring implicature found in corpora of conversations. Conventional implicatures were operationalized as indirect refusals involving a common pattern of refusal (i.e., giving an excuse when refusing), while nonconventional implicatures were operationalized as indirect opinions that do not involve common discourse patterns. Examples of these implicature types are presented below (Taguchi, 2012, pp. 270 and 275). In (4), B’s refusal (last utterance) is conventional (telling A why he can’t go out to eat). In (5), B’s last utterance is non-conventional and idiosyncratic because different utterances can express how B feels about New York. (4)  Conventional implicature: Indirect refusals A:   Hey Nancy, what are you doing? Do you wanna do something tonight? B:   I don’t know. I was just gonna watch TV. A:  I wanna go out tonight. Maybe we can go to the Japanese restaurant. The new one just opened. B:   I don’t have any money this week to pay the bills. 35

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(5)  Non-conventional implicature: Indirect opinions A:  So, Mary, you and your husband just moved from Florida to New York? B:  Yes, last year. A:  Do you like living in New York? B: We looked around for two years. My husband and I went all over the United States, and we didn’t find any place we liked better. Taguchi’s study found that, regardless of proficiency levels, indirect refusals (conventional implicatures) were easier and faster to comprehend than non-conventional indirect opinions. Comprehension of both implicature types developed over time, but the gain size was larger for refusals than for opinions. The facilitation effect of conventionality was found in other languages, including Japanese (Taguchi, 2008b) and Chinese (Taguchi, Li, & Liu, 2013), as well as in different learning contexts (study abroad programs, immersion settings, and formal classrooms) (Taguchi, 2008a, 2011, 2012), different source materials (corpus-based vs. artificially created dialogues) (Taguchi, 2005, 2011), and different response formats (yes-no vs. multiple-choice questions) (Taguchi, 2008a, 2011). The same results were also found in cross-sectional studies (Taguchi, 2011) and longitudinal studies (Taguchi, 2007, 2012). These findings provide unquestionable evidence of conventionality effect. Critically, the conventionality effect is a property of a shared convention between L1 and L2. Unlike Pope questions that involve culture-specific conventions (Bouton, 1994, 1999), learners are familiar with the indirect refusal convention in L1 and thus can transfer the L1-based convention to L2 comprehension. However, when conventionality is not shared or present, learners need to rely on both linguistic knowledge (bottom-up processing) and contextual information (top-down processing) to derive meaning. As a result, the degree of inferencing becomes extensive, leading to a greater comprehension difficulty and slower-paced progress over time. The conventionality effect helps us operationalize different types of indirectness, which can be used to explore SLA issues such as the construct of comprehension, developmental order, and L1 transfer. For instance, the order of development found in previous studies (comprehension of conventional implicature preceding that of non-conventional implicature) can be treated as stages of L2 development. These stages can be used to examine pace of development, along with individual factors that may affect the pace (e.g., proficiency, personality). In addition, conventionality can be operationalized from universal and language-specific standpoints so we can examine positive bi-directional transfer based on universal (and shared) conventions, as well as negative transfer or absence of transfer due to L1-specific conventions. While the facilitative effect of conventionality in implicature comprehension is clear, this generalization is based on the studies that used an instrument with low contextual effect. Most studies used auditory input and did not incorporate visual cues. Hence, the conventionality effect is restricted to the area of linguistic conventionality, and other areas of contextual effect (e.g., visual input) have not been addressed systematically. Critically, previous studies did not compare contextual effects coming from different sources, limiting our understanding of the relationship between contextual cues and processing load. Indeed, when different signals of contextual effect are compared, linguistic-level conventionality is not always advantageous, as found in Taguchi, Gomez-Laich, and Arufat-Marqués’s (2016) study. They used a multimedia listening test with video-recorded conversations to assess comprehension. Because inferential processing involves a parallel processing of all available signals, both linguistic and non-linguistic (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), multimedia input combining multiple signals at once (e.g., sounds, images, videos, and texts) more closely reflects our real-life inferential processes than does audio input alone. By incorporating multiple sources of input, the

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study examined whether L2 Spanish learners’ comprehension differed across items of different conventionality (indirect refusals, indirect opinions, and irony). Contrary to other studies, the conventionality effect was not found in Taguchi et al.’s study: There was no difference between indirect refusals (conventional implicature) and indirect opinions (non-conventional implicature) in accuracy scores. Indirect opinions were even faster to comprehend than indirect refusals. Introspective interview data revealed the facilitative effect of verbal and non-verbal cues when comprehending indirect opinions. When people express negative opinions (dislike or disapproval), their emotions often appear in facial expressions, gestures, and tone. These visual cues in indirect opinion items reduced the processing load, leading to faster comprehension speed. Drawing on visual cues is economical in comprehension because visual information directly maps onto meaning and helps us bypass the bottom-up processing of an utterance. Notably, the contextual effect coming from visual cues can override that of linguistic conventionality (common indirect refusal patterns), as found in the study. Other than Taguchi et al.’s study, very few studies have used audio-visual input to assess L2 comprehension of implied meaning. Using video clips from films and TV shows, Shively et al. (2008) examined comprehension of irony in L2 Spanish, and Yamanaka (2003) analyzed implicature comprehension in L2 English, but these studies did not address how learners used visual cues in input or how those cues facilitated their comprehension. Use of multimodal input is critical when studying comprehension because comprehension is not merely the decoding of linguistic input; rather, it is a global process that involves the use of all available cues, both linguistic and non-linguistic, to arrive at meaning (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Multimedia input makes a greater number of cues available and thus presents a more realistic, theoretically grounded approach to understanding L2 implicature comprehension. The next section discusses a global process of implicature comprehension based on naturalistic data drawn from intercultural communication.

The Socio-cognitive Approach in L2 Comprehension of Implicature The Socio-cognitive Approach Grice’s and Sperber and Wilson’s theories situate the recognition of speaker intention as the central goal of communication. They consider that intention exists in the speaker’s mind as a preplanned object, and the listener’s job is to recognize the intention by using contextual cues and assumptions of relevance. Hence, these theories observe a clear separation between the speaker’s intention and the listener’s interpretation of the intention. Quite differently, the socio-cognitive approach (Kecskes, 2014, 2016) combines the speaker’s and listener’s perspectives. Kecskes contends that intention is a ‘cooperation-directed practice’ (p. 47); that is, intention is an a priori state of the speaker’s mind, but it is also emergent, as the speaker and listener jointly develop what is actually communicated. The emergent nature of intention is illustrated in the following example (Kecskes, 2014, p. 9): (6)  Sam:  Coming for a drink?    Andy:       Sorry, I can’t. My doctor won’t let me.   Sam:  What’s wrong with you? Kecskes explains that the last utterance by Sam is ambiguous and generates implicature. It could be a sincere question about Andy’s health, or it could be sarcastically asking Sam why he takes the doctor’s advice seriously. The Gricean paradigm of logical inferencing does not help disambiguate this implicature. Similarly, the relevance-theoretic account of attending to salient cues (intonation, facial expressions) may not lead to a complete understanding. What is likely to

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happen in this situation is a follow-up negotiation sequence between Sam and Andy. Andy might ask a clarification question such as ‘What do you mean?’ Alternatively, Andy might comprehend the question literally and explain his health problems to Sam, or he might respond with laughter as a reaction to a sarcastic comment. Hence, the actual meaning of Sam’s utterance is emergent and locally situated as Sam and Andy negotiate to reach joint understanding. The socio-cognitive approach is a useful framework for understanding intercultural pragmatics (Kecskes, 2014). In intercultural communication, participants bring their own L1-based assumptions, norms, and expectations from their experience. However, these norms and assumptions are not fixed. They are negotiated and redefined as speakers strive to establish mutual understanding. Individuals’ prior norms eventually develop into new hybrid norms reflecting the emergent situational characteristics. As Kecskes (2014) contends, ‘interculture’ involves participants’ ‘mutual transformation of knowledge and communicative behavior rather than transmission’ (p. 44). Participants from different cultures do not necessarily have a common background readily available to them. They need to actively seek and co-construct shared assumptions. Those assumptions are called common ground (Clark, 1996), mutual cognitive environment (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), or presumed shared beliefs (Zegarac & Spencer-Oatey, 2013). As Clark (1996) argues, participants must establish shared knowledge to understand others and to be understood by others. When speakers actively seek for common ground, negotiation of meaning—in the form of accommodation, interactional management, and problem solving—occurs frequently, characterizing the nature of intercultural communication. In summary, unlike Grice’s or Sperber and Wilson’s theories, the socio-cognitive approach attends to two types of intention in synergy: prior intention and emergent intention. Intention is individual and pre-planned, but it is also emergent, reflecting situational experiences shared among speakers. The socio-cognitive approach features the ‘privatization’ of meaning, where the speaker ‘blends his prior experience with the situational (current) experience, and makes an individual understanding of collective experience’ (Kecskes, 2016, p. 50). The privatization of meaning often occurs in intercultural communication where speakers of different cultural backgrounds get together and communicate in search for common ground.

The Socio-cognitive Approach in L2 Implicature Comprehension Research Given the paucity of available findings under the socio-cognitive approach in L2 implicature comprehension, we will present our original data in this section. By analyzing a conversation between two speakers of English as a lingua franca, we will illustrate how implicatures emerge from participants’ different cultural assumptions and how participants try to achieve mutual understanding of implied meaning. Our data shows that implicature comprehension is not always an individual process, as in Grice’s maxims or Relevance Theory. Rather, it is a collaborative process that is locally negotiated among participants.

Participants and Data The participants were two female students (Japanese and Chinese) enrolled in the graduate program in an English-medium university in Japan. The Japanese participant was from Osaka and enrolled in the TESOL program. The Chinese participant was from Xian and enrolled in the Communication Studies program. The data was a 20-minute naturalistic conversation between the two participants, who had a free-flowing discussion based on topics provided by the researchers. The conversation was audio-recorded and transcribed using existing conventions (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 2007; Wong & Waring, 2010) (see Appendix). Adapting the socio-cognitive approach, we analyzed how two types of intention—a priori intention inherent 38

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in the speaker’s mind and an emergent intention negotiated between the speakers (Kecskes, 2014, 2016)—co-occur in the process of common-ground seeking.

Findings: Collaborative Disambiguation of Implicature In Excerpt 1, the Chinese speaker begins a discussion on pros and cons of early English education in elementary schools in Japan. Starting the discussion, she asks whether the Japanese speaker studied English when she was in elementary school (line 27). The Japanese speaker responds saying that she learned English in a cram school (line 31). This response is ambiguous and generates implicature. The fact that she learned English in a cram school essentially means that she did not study English in an elementary school; however, the Chinese speaker does not understand this meaning because cram schools have different meanings in China. In Japan, cram schools focus on materials that are either absent or limited in formal schooling, whereas in China cram schools primarily teach exam-taking techniques that are closely tied with school curriculums. Critically, misunderstanding occurs in both parties because the Japanese speaker also fails to recognize the intention behind the Chinese speaker’s question. The question was about whether the Japanese speaker learned English as part of an elementary school curriculum, not about learning English elsewhere (e.g., extracurricular activities) when she was of her elementary school age. Hence, the Japanese speaker’s response (learning English in a cram school) is not a relevant answer to the Chinese speaker’s question. In order to solve this miscommunication, the Chinese speaker repeats the same question in line 43. When the Chinese speaker mispronounces the word ‘when’ as ‘one’, both speakers try to clarify the meaning: The Chinese speaker provides self-repair (line 47), and the Japanese speaker provides a confirmation check (line 48). This effort, however, fails again, and the misunderstanding (or failure to recognize each other’s intention) remains.

Excerpt 1 27 C:  yeah, °but°How about, how about (.) one you’re in your elementary school, did you= 28 C:  =learn the (.)English? One you’re in elementary school? 29 J:   Me? 30 C:  Yeah. 31 J:    Ah::, actually I started, ah, to learn English (.) ah, with the:: in the:: cram school? from the= 32 J:    =elementary [school, in elementary school, so I didn’t have chance to learn English so= 33 C:  [ah, yeah 34 J:    =much but I learned alphabet?= 35 C:  Yeah 36 J:    =in six grade and fifth grade 37 C:  $Oh::$ 38 J:    Only that so 39 C:  So early. 40 J:     Yeah, but I think it’s good (.) thing to, for children to be familiar with (.) um 41 C:  Like English 42 J:     Yeah, English 43 C:   Yeah so (.) [why, yeah, for one (.) you are (.) a:: elementary school student, did you learn= 44 J:    [listening skill 45 C:  =English? at that time, one your 46 J:    Why? 47 C:  ONE, WHEN 48 J:    When? 39

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49 C:  When, when you’re, when you’re in elementary school kids= 50 J:    Third [grade or fourth grade? 51 C:  =[did you (learn them)? So you learn it from third grade one you’re in elementary= 52 C:  =school. 53 J:   Yeah, or fourth grade. 54 C:  ( ) you told me you’re in a private school right? 55 J:   NO, no, no, no, no. it’s from my middle school? so in elementary school, I was in the= 56 J:   =public. 57 C:  Oh, so you didn’t learn English from elementary school. 58 J:   In cram school? I learned. 59 C:  Yeah, I I I it’s it’s it’s it’s early in elementary school, early from the class, not the= 60 C:  =outside (.) °space° 61 J:   No (.) not, for fifth and six grade, I learned um [only… 62 C:  [Yeah, but it’s not, not the school offer,= 63 C:  =right? 64 J:    it is school offer or not. 65 C:  Is that a mean if it is school offered it’s in the um, in the public elementary school that,= 66 C:  =you just go to elementary school you (.) you’re that learning the from just in the class,= 67 C:  =but you go to outside the, like (.) 68 J:    Un 69 C:  Yeah, to learn (it) 70 J:   Yeah 71 C:  So, it’s mean (.) your age that you (dida) learn English from elementary school, yeah= 72 C:  =from just from your school, right? 73 J:   Un Following this, in line 57, the Chinese speaker once again tries to clarify the meaning, but the Japanese speaker still provides the same indirect answer (line 58). Not getting the answer she wants, the Chinese speaker tries to clarify her intention in subsequent turns. She emphasizes that her question is about learning English as part of the school’s offerings, not outside the formal school context (cram schools). What is noticeable here is a greater degree of explicitness and an elaboration in her clarification sequences. She provides a confirmation tag (‘… right?’ in lines 63 and 72); paraphrases her sentence to confirm her interlocutor’s meaning (‘Is that a mean …’ in line 65 and ‘So, it’s mean …’ in line 71); elaborates on her explanation (line 66); and seeks confirmation by repeating the same information (lines 71–72). This intensive clarification work reflects the Chinese speaker’s effort toward achieving mutual understanding. Her clarification work is also contingent upon her interlocutor’s reaction to her utterances. The Chinese speaker seeks confirmation of her stated proposition in lines 62 and 63 (‘it’s not, not the school offer, right?’), but the Japanese speaker does not confirm this, saying that she does not know. Lacking confirmation, the Chinese speaker keeps clarifying her intention. This segment illustrates the process of common ground seeking in several ways. First, we can see that the process takes place through turn-taking in a sequentially organized discourse. Both speakers incorporate interpretive work of what their interlocutors mean turn-by-turn, while using interactional resources to co-construct meaning. The amount of resources used (e.g., confirmation check, paraphrasing, and repetition) is upgraded or downgraded depending on how much mutual ground they are able to establish at the moment. In addition, the process of common ground seeking reflects the synergy between the speaker’s prior mental state and the shared situational experience. The Chinese and Japanese speakers draw on their own assumptions and expectations from their prior cultural repertoires. The Japanese 40

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speaker assumes that her response, albeit indirect, is clear enough for her interlocutor’s question based on her prior knowledge of Japanese cram schools. The Chinese speaker’s failure to recognize this intention indicates that she also operates on her own assumptions coming from her understanding of cram schools in China. However, these individual cultural experiences are negotiated and redefined in their actual situational experience. Misunderstanding and miscommunication—as evidenced in hesitations, repetitions, clarifications, and confirmation checks— are part of the situational experience. The speakers react to this reality by implementing a series of clarification sequences. During this process, the prior intention (or original meaning) blends with the current situational experience, leading to a collective understanding. The speakers try to reformulate their prior intentions in a way that allows them to fit the actual situation. In essence, miscommunication, which is common in intercultural communication, serves as a driving force for creating the basis for common ground.

Appraisal of the Current Literature Three decades of empirical work have advanced our understanding of how L2 learners comprehend non-literal, implied meaning. Characteristics of the empirical practice can be summarized as follows. First, existing studies have maintained a close connection with the mainstream theories of pragmatics. Grice’s maxims, Relevance Theory, and the socio-cognitive approach all situate the recognition of speaker intention as the central goal of communication, but they differ in their explanations of how such intention is recognized. Grice’s maxims use logical inferencing and presumption of relevance as explanatory force, while Sperber and Wilson present the cognitive inferencing model by drawing on psycholinguistic concepts of saliency, processing load, and economy of communication. The socio-cognitive approach takes both a mentalist and a social-interactionalist approach to meaning comprehension, emphasizing that intention is both pre-existing in the speaker’s mind and shared among participants. These different theoretical accounts have shaped the investigative foci of L2 implicature research. Some studies focus on the state of non-literal comprehension and proficiency effect on comprehension. Other studies focus on different degrees of indirectness by drawing on the concepts of contextual effect and processing load. Still others focus on the process rather than the product of comprehension to reveal how implicature comprehension manifests as a distributed effort among participants. These different research foci tell us that implicature comprehension is both a cognitive and a social phenomenon, depending on which theoretical accounts are adapted. Another observation of the existing practice is its increasing diversification of research methods. Most studies in the 1980s to mid-2000s used a reading instrument with a series of written conversations as input, followed by multiple-choice questions. Since the mid-2000s this practice has been replaced with the use of auditory and visual input. Real-life conversations are usually heard, not read, and also require on-line processing where listeners cannot control the rate at which information is taken in. As such, a test involving audio-visual input reflects real-life language use more closely than does written input. A conversation task can further promote the authenticity of data. In a listening or reading test, learners are third-party observers, eavesdropping other peoples’ conversations and detecting implied intentions involved in the conversations. However, in a face-to-face conversation, learners are participants themselves who generate and clarify implicature emerging from their own interactional experiences. In a real-life conversation, implicature comprehension requires abilities beyond basic linguistic processing. It extends to the use of communication strategies (e.g., clarification requests and confirmation checks) and negotiation skills to develop mutual understanding. Conversation data helps reveal these multiple skills and strategies involved in comprehension. 41

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These various data collection and analysis methods also influence the conclusions we can draw about implicature comprehension from the data. A reading test with written conversations can only reveal whether or not learners can recognize implied meaning. On the other hand, a listening instrument and response time data available from the instrument help us see the distance between the propositional and intended meaning, as well as the relationship between the distance and the amount of effort required for comprehension. A multimedia instrument incorporating visual and auditory cues helps us see which cues work best as salient signals and facilitate comprehension. Real-time conversation data can reveal participants’ use of communication strategies to derive meaning, going beyond their linguistic knowledge and listening skills. These different findings coming from different research instruments confirm that implicature comprehension is a global process involving multiple resources—linguistic, cognitive, and interactional—in one setting. Finally, three decades of research have revealed a close relationship among implicature comprehension, L2 learning, and development. The relationship is observed in the topics addressed in the research, including L1 transfer, developmental pace, and factors affecting development. Studies showed that learners are able to transfer their L1-based inferencing skill and relevance maxim to L2 comprehension. Transfer has a facilitative effect when meaning encodes a shared convention between L1 and L2, but when an utterance involves a culturespecific convention (e.g., Pope questions) or does not contain any conventional features, comprehension becomes difficult. Other than conventionality, distance between the propositional and intended meaning, as well as availability of audio-visual cues, influence comprehension. Proficiency also has a clear advantage for implicature comprehension, sometimes overriding other factors such as study abroad experience (Roever et al., 2014; Taguchi, 2011). Due to linguistic and skill-specific constraints, low-proficiency learners often devote their resources to utterance-level comprehension. In contrast, high-proficiency learners can take advantage of their advanced-level linguistic knowledge to free up some of their processing resources so they can attend to information beyond the utterance-level to disambiguate implied meaning.

Conclusion and Future Directions Having observed these generalizations that emerge from past research, we conclude this chapter with several directions for future research.

Future Direction 1: Innovation in Instrumentation—Assessing Implicature Comprehension as a Global Process Future research should expand the scope of instrumentation in assessing L2 implicature comprehension. Previous studies mainly used a highly controlled, decontextualized listening or reading test with researcher-made dialogues, limiting the generalizability of the findings in real-life situations. This limitation can be solved by developing instruments that reflect real-life inferential practices. Particularly useful in this direction is the use of multimodal input combining visual, auditory, and textual information. As Sperber and Wilson (1995) contend, comprehension is not just about decoding linguistic input; it is a global process in which all available cues, both linguistic and non-linguistic, are simultaneously used to infer meaning. To assess the global process, instrument design needs innovation. Recent advancement in technology should help us incorporate a number of contextual cues to simulate real-life comprehension. We can examine how learners attend to paralinguistic cues, such as voice tone, stress, gestures, head nods, or gaze directions, and use them to draw inferences. By incorporating these features of authentic interaction, we can assess implicature comprehension at the discourse-level, regulated by all forms of semiotic activity. 42

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Future Direction 2: Situating Implicature Comprehension in an Interactional, Interpretive work Empirical data and findings under the socio-cognitive approach (Kecskes, 2014) are seriously under-represented in the literature, and thus future research in this area is needed. Previous studies typically treated learners as passive recipients of information and did not examine their active involvement in the process of joint understanding of implicature. Future researchers can commit to discourse analysis or conversation analysis as a methodological option to reveal how participants interactionally disambiguate implicatures that emerge in ongoing discourse (see Chapter 15 in this volume). Researchers can focus on the elements of adaptability and contingency as learners collaboratively establish meaning by using available resources. Such analyses will help us move from the study of comprehension as an individual process to a shared process among participants.

Future Direction 3: Investigating Longitudinal Development of Implicature Comprehension Existing studies have primarily focused on whether or not learners can comprehend implied meaning in L2, and very few studies have addressed development of comprehension in a longitudinal design. The hierarchy of difficulty among implicature types found in previous studies can help us infer the order of development—which implicature type is easier to comprehend and thus comes at an earlier stage of development than others. However, the implicature types examined in the existing studies have been restricted to the dichotomized categories of conventional and non-conventional implicature (e.g., Taguchi, 2012). This practice needs to be improved in the future. Researchers can develop other categories of implicature so those categories can be used to document patterns of development.

Future Direction 4: Applying SLA Theories to Examine Implicature Comprehension The current practice can be advanced by adapting insights coming from SLA theories. A critical question for future research is how implicature comprehension develops over time. Existing studies have primarily focused on factors affecting comprehension (e.g., proficiency, study abroad experiences, and length of formal study), revealing individual learners’ influences on development, but studies have not systematically addressed the underlying mechanisms that drive development. We can resort to SLA theories to unveil the mechanisms that help move learners from their current stage to a higher stage of implicature comprehension. For example, Schmidt’s (1993) noticing hypothesis can be adapted as a guiding framework to design an instructional study on implicature development. Schmidt contends that input becomes intake and leads to acquisition if learners notice the input (see also Chapter 8 in this volume). The initial phase of input selection and attention controls learners’ access to consciousness and awareness of input. This initial phase is critical for the subsequent phase—intake and internalization of linguistic forms contained in the input. The noticing hypothesis has been widely used in instructional intervention research, as seen in a large number of studies comparing explicit and implicit teaching methods (for a review, see Taguchi, 2015). Despite this popularity, the noticing hypothesis has rarely been used in teaching implicature (but see Kubota, 1995). Future research can explore how consciousness and attention can facilitate learning of implicature by using tasks focusing on explicit learning, such as consciousness raising, input enhancement, and focus-on-form approaches. Another useful SLA theory for implicature comprehension is the language socialization approach, which postulates that learners are socialized into the use of particular linguistic forms and their socio-cultural meanings through guided assistance from community members 43

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(e.g., Duff & Talmy, 2011; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) (see also Chapter 9 in this volume). Adapting this theoretical approach, we can analyze a learner’s routine participation in community activities to see how a shared understanding is achieved between the learner and a community member. We can focus on instances of miscommunication arising from non-literal meaning and analyze how such misunderstandings get solved through explicit and implicit socialization. Explicit socialization may occur when a misunderstanding arises from a culture-specific communicative convention (e.g., sarcasm) and a community member providing direct information about the convention. Implicit socialization can be observed in negotiation and clarification sequences where community members implicitly model strategies that learners can use to clarify meaning. An exemplary attempt in using the socialization approach is Shively’s (2013) study that documented an L2 Spanish learner’s development in understanding and creating humor in a study abroad context. She recorded a naturalistic conversation between the leaner and a community member (host father and friend) over one semester and coded instances of humor as either successful or failed. The learner’s humor competence developed as he observed other people’s humor and reflected on others’ reactions to his own humor attempts (see Chapter 5 in this volume for the construct of humor). Compared with the field of pragmatics where theories have evolved over time with new theories refining or replacing old theoretical accounts, the SLA field observes diversity through a number of co-existing theories that explain L2 learning and development. We believe that different theoretical frameworks can collectively strengthen our understanding of the changes within pragmatic systems and influences on these systems. We also believe that pragmatics theories and SLA theories together can help us cultivate a more informed study design to examine L2 learners’ development of implicature comprehension. Explicit application of SLA theories focusing on learning and development, combined with application of pragmatics theories explicating the construct of comprehension, will help us explore what L2 learners develop in implicature comprehension and how they develop.

Suggested reading Kecskes, I. (2014). Intercultural pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. This book presents intercultural pragmatics as a field of research that studies how speakers with different first languages and cultural backgrounds communicate with each other using a common language. The book presents the socio-cognitive approach as the theoretical foundation for intercultural pragmatics. The book presents a contrast between the cognitive-philosophical approach and the sociocultural-interactional approach, which serves as a useful reading on Gricean and neo-Gricean accounts of meaning comprehension, as opposed to the discursive pragmatics approach to meaning comprehension. The socio-cognitive approach that blends these two perspectives presents another theoretical perspective to meaning comprehension. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. This book presents a comprehensive review of L2 pragmatics research over the past decades. Chapters 2 and 5 are particularly relevant to the present chapter. Chapter 2 presents the representation of pragmatic competence with implicature comprehension being part of the representation. Chapter 5 focuses on longitudinal studies and addresses developmental trajectories of pragmatic competence. The chapter summarizes findings from four key areas: implicature comprehension including psycholinguistic aspects of development, recognition and production of routine formulae, speech-act based research on politeness and appropriateness, and research in discursive pragmatics on extended conversation.

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Bouton, L. (1994). Conversational implicature in the second language: Learned slowly when not deliberately taught. Journal of Pragmatics, 22, 157–167. Bouton, L. (1999). Developing nonnative speaker skills in interpreting conversational implicatures in English. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 47–70). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. D. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Carrell, P. (1984). Inferencing in ESL: Presuppositions and implications of factive and implicative predicates. Language Learning, 34, 1–19. Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cook, M., & Liddicoat, A. J. (2002). The development of comprehension in interlanguage pragmatics: The case of request strategies in English. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 25, 19–39. Duff, P. A., & Talmy, S. (2011). Language socialization approaches to second language acquisition: Social, cultural, and linguistic development in additional languages. In D. Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 95–116). Abington, UK: Routledge. Garcia, P. (2004). Developmental differences in speech act recognition: A pragmatic awareness study. Language Awareness, 13, 96–115. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3 (pp. 31–58). New York: Academic Press. Hamblin, J., & Gibbs, R. (2003). Processing the meaning of what speakers say and implicate. Discourse Processes, 35, 59–80. Koike, A. D. (1996). Transfer of pragmatic competence and suggestions in Spanish foreign language learning. In S. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures (pp. 257–281). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kubota, M. (1995). Teachability of conversational implicatures to Japanese EFL learners. IRLT Bulletin, 9, 35–67. Kecskes, I. (2014) Intercultural pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Kecskes, I. (2016). Can intercultural pragmatics bring some new insight into pragmatics theories? In A. Capone & J. L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 43–69). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Mey, J. L. (1995). Pragmatics: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Morris, C. (1938). Foundations of the theory of signs. In O. Neurath, R. Carnap, & C. Morris (Eds.), International encyclopedia of unified science (pp. 77–138). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pomerantz, A., & Heritage, J. (2013). Preference. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 210–228). Oxford: Blackwell. Roever, C. (2005). Testing ESL pragmatics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Roever, C., Wang, S., & Brophy, S. (2014). Learner background factors and learning of second language pragmatics. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 52, 377–401. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–735. Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, R. (1993). Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 21–42). New York: Oxford University Press. Shively, R. L. (2013). Learning to be funny in Spanish study abroad: L2 humor development. Modern Language Journal, 97, 939–946. Shively, R., Menke, M., & Manzón-Omundson, S. (2008). Perception of irony by L2 learners of Spanish. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 16, 101–132. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taguchi, N. (2005). Comprehension of implied meaning in English as a second language. Modern Language Journal, 89, 543–562. Taguchi, N. (2007). Development of speed and accuracy in pragmatic comprehension in English as a foreign language. TESOL Quarterly, 42, 313–338. Taguchi, N. (2008a). Pragmatic comprehension in Japanese as a foreign language. Modern Language Journal, 92, 558–576. Taguchi, N. (2008b). The role of learning environment in the development of pragmatic comprehension: A comparison of gains between EFL and ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 423–452. 45

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Taguchi, N. (2011). The effect of L2 proficiency and study-abroad experience in pragmatic comprehension. Language Learning, 61, 904–939. Taguchi, N. (2012). Context, individual differences, and pragmatic competence. New York/Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. State-of-the-art article. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Taguchi, N. (2018). Advanced pragmatic competence. In P. A. Malovrh & A. Benati (Eds.), The handbook of advanced proficiency in second language acquisition (pp. 505–526). Wiley-Blackwell. Taguchi, N., Gomez-Laich, P. M., & Arrufat-Marqués, M. J. (2016). Comprehension of indirect meaning in Spanish as a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 49, 677–698. Taguchi, N., Li, S., & Liu, Y. (2013). Comprehension of conversational implicature in L2 Chinese. Pragmatics and Cognition, 21, 139–157. Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Longman. Wong, J., & Waring, H. A. (2010). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/ EFL Teachers. New York: Routledge. Yamanaka, J. (2003). Effects of proficiency and length of residence on the pragmatic comprehension of Japanese ESL Learners. Second Language Studies, 22, 107–175. Zegarac, V., & Spencer-Oatey, H. (2013). Achieving mutual understanding in intercultural partnerships: Co-operation, self-orientation and fragility. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10, 433–458.

Appendix: Transcription Conventions Transcription conventions based on Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson (1974), Schegloff (2007), and Wong & Waring (2010). (.)    (3.2) hehh, hahh  wo(h)rd $word$ .hh ((sniff)) cu- lo:ng (word) run= =on  ? . : WORD ºsoftº >fast< over[lap [overlap  … word ***** word

46

timed pause shorter than 1.0 second timed pause longer than 1.0 second laughter syllables  (h) laughter within words  smiley voice  inhalation  non-speech sound, non-verbal action, description  cut-off  stretch  unclear or inaudible word  run on/latch  rising intonation  falling intonation  stretch  louder voice  softer speech  faster speech  slower speech  overlap  omission  Italic text indicates non-English word (e.g., Japanese)  Individual name.  Underlined words indicate ‘incorrect’ pronunciation. ‘Incorrect’ pronunciation means the pronounced sounds are far from the received pronunciation.

4 Routines in L2 Pragmatics Research Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig

Introduction Why are we interested in formulaic language at the intersection of pragmatics and second ­language acquisition (SLA)? From the perspective of pragmatics, pragmatic routines are tied to specific contexts and specific speech acts, two basic pragmatic constructs. They include expressions such as Nice to meet you as a reply to an introduction and Thanks for having me in a reciprocal thanking exchange at an event to which one was invited. Such expressions are part of the pragmalinguistic resources of a given speech community. From an acquisitional perspective, the study of pragmatic routines permits the documentation of the acquisition of one type of formulaic language that occurs with some frequency or density. This is the direct opposite of poverty of stimulus research in which learners come to develop linguistic knowledge not available in the input. However, in the case of pragmatic routines in SLA, the routines are available but not necessarily acquired, as though they were hiding in plain sight. Empirical pragmatics, with its tradition of investigating language use in particular situations, creates robust experimental contexts in which the acquisition of formulaic language in a second language (L2) can be investigated, as was anticipated by Granger (1998) who identified pragmatics as a profitable arena for SLA research on formulaic language. Indeed, the research designs of interlanguage pragmatics have led to discoveries about the acquisition of formulaic language, including the involvement of learners’ developing interlanguage grammar and the morpho-syntactic foundation on which conventional expressions are built (Bardovi-Harlig & Stringer, 2017; see also Bardovi-Harlig, 2018a, for extended discussion of the pragmatic contribution to formulaic research more generally). In this chapter, I discuss what the study of the acquisition of formulaic language—pragmatic routines—reveals about the acquisition of L2 pragmatics, namely (a) how formulas are acquired and what pragmatic requirements there are to use them, and (b) how researchers can best study them. The sections that follow will discuss the formulaicity of L2 pragmatics and challenges to acquiring formulaic language. Research design and implementation are also discussed. The chapter concludes with future research directions and applications of research to the teaching of pragmatic routines.

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Key Concepts The field of formulaic language is well known for its wealth of terms. Several dozen are listed in the early literature (see, e.g., Weinert, 1995; Wray, 2002; Wray & Perkins, 2000). Within L2 pragmatics, the dominant current terms are conventional expression, pragmatic routine, ­situation-bound utterance (SBU), and formula. Formula seems to be most widely used as a cover term (Bardovi-Harlig, 2012a). Pragmatic routine was originally used by Scarcella (1979) in a discourse completion test (DCT) called the ‘routines test’ and 25 years later by Roever (2005, 2012) in a 12-item multiple-choice ‘routines test’ that contributed to the renewed interest in formulaic language use in L2 pragmatics. Situation-bound utterance (SBU) is the term preferred by Kecskes (2000, 2003, 2016) and his students. In addition to the relation to a certain context (situation boundedness), SBUs have the potential for multiple meanings, often a literal and a figurative meaning, such as piece of cake meaning ‘a slice of a baked good’ and ‘easy.’ The interest in multiple meanings distinguishes SBUs and its approach from the others. Conventional expression was adopted by Bardovi-Harlig (2009) to emphasize the social side of formulaic language use in pragmatics in contrast to psycholinguistic accounts of formulaic language in other areas of SLA. This term has come to mean the preferred form of native speakers in a specific context. Following Erman and Warren (2000), conventional expressions are ‘combinations of at least two words favored by native speakers in preference to an alternative combination which could have been equivalent had there been no conventionalization’ (p. 31). The phrase ‘favored by native speakers’ was operationalized as supplied by more than half (50%) of the native-speaker respondents to a single experimental item in an empirically determined task. Pragmatic routine also has a second use. On the one hand, it is used as a general term (see House, 1996; Roever, 2005, 2012). On the other, pragmatic routine has been contrasted to conventional expression, with the former (routine) reserved for demonstrably frequent strings associated with a speech act often indicating the illocutionary force, but not tied to a specific situation like a conventional expression which is tied to a specific speech act as well as a specific context. For example, expressions such as That’s right, You’re right, That’s true, and I agree all indicate agreement and are demonstrably frequent (65–90/million words for the first three and 35+/million for I agree, based on the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) and are thus considered as pragmatic routines (Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman, & Vellenga, 2015a; Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman, & Su, 2017). In contrast, as shown in Bardovi-Harlig’s (2009) study, {Thanks/Thank you} for your {help/time} was produced by 94% of undergraduates (33 out of 35 total) when presented with a scenario in which they were leaving the office of a busy teacher and Thank you {so/very} much was used by 89% (31/35) of the undergraduates when presented with a scenario in which a teacher allowed them to take a make-up exam. Thus, these thanking expressions are conventional expressions because they are tied to specific contexts. (See Bardovi-Harlig, in 2018b, for an extended discussion.) The fact that an expression may be the preferred expression in one context does not preclude its use in other contexts. However, for research purposes, establishing that there is a single preferred expression in a specific context permits the investigation of whether and how L2 learners come to be able to use expressions that have been conventionalized by a speech community. The learnability problem is whether L2 learners can identify the conventional expressions from a range of grammatical alternatives (called native-like selection by Pawley & Syder, 1983) as pragmatic resources, and this requires sociopragmatic knowledge as well. In the following sections, this chapter treats these terms (i.e., formula, conventional expressions, SBUs, and pragmatic routine) more or less synonymously, while discussing studies that have a pragmatics focus. This focuses on what the terms share, the relatively fixed linguistic forms tied to communicative functions and contexts of use and their role as pragmalinguistic resources, rather than on the subtle differences between them. 48

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Survey of the Current Literature Pragmatic routines are found in at least two types of L2 pragmatic studies: those in which routines are examined as one type of pragmalinguistic device among others, and those studies in which routines are the specific focus of investigation. In the former, the formulas are not preselected in investigation; researchers analyze what is produced by either native speakers (NS) or learners (or both) in a given situation, which may involve formulas. For example, Barron (2003) investigated the development of pragmatic routines as one type of pragmalinguistic resource (among other resources such as mitigation in speech acts) in the production of Irish learners of German during a study abroad year. Learners showed increased target-like use of routines and decreased non-target-like use of L1-driven expressions within a single academic year. Forsberg Lundell and Erman (2012) examined the production of request sequences by Swedish speakers of L2 English and L2 French who were long-term residents (10 years) in the L2 country. Learners completed a role play between an employee and her/his boss. Even after spending 10 years in the target community, both L2 French and L2 English speakers significantly underused ‘situationbound’ routinized formulaic sequences for expressing the request head act.1

Identifying Candidate Formulaic Expressions In the other strand of studies in which formulas are the focus of investigation, the formulas are identified in advance of the study. Early work of this type relied on intuition and a general sense of what expressions are common in a speech community (Scarcella, 1979) or what expressions are problematic for L2 learners (Kecskes, 2000; Roever, 2005). The studies in the next period used expressions examined in the previous literature (Bardovi-Harlig, 2008; Taguchi, 2011), and more recent studies have empirically documented the conventionality and/or frequency of target formulaic expressions. Candidate expressions have been collected from a variety of sources, including authentic conversations (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; BardoviHarlig, Bastos, Burghardt, Chappetto, Nickels, & Rose, 2010), field notes (Taguchi, Li, & Xiao, 2013), TV reality shows, graffiti dialogues, and diary accounts (Culpeper, 2010), multiple expression generation (asking NS to provide as many possible responses as they can) in response to a DCT (Edmonds, 2014); and identification of phrases produced in DCTs by classroom instructors (Wong, 2012). Other sources include translational equivalents in languages of interest (Roever, 2005), pairs of literal and figurative expressions (Kecskes, 2000), reports by L2 learners on the expressions they needed to use while studying abroad (Bardovi-Harlig & Su, 2018; Yang, 2016), textbooks (Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman, & Vellenga, 2015a; Yang, 2016), reference works including phrasebooks for travelers (Taguchi et al., 2013), and dictionaries (Ding, 2006).

Establishing the Conventionality of Candidate Formulaic Expressions The candidate expressions are then further tested for conventionality in one of two ways, by analyzing native-speaker production on the same elicitation task as the learners complete or by analyzing frequency of occurrence in an appropriately matched corpus. When conventionality is confirmed by native-speaker completion of the same task, candidate expressions are regarded as conventional when their use is high, exceeding a 50% cut-off (see the previous section). When conventionality is confirmed by frequency in an appropriate corpus, frequency of usage ideally meets or exceeds estimates of frequency for multi-word units. Biber and colleagues established a range of 10–40 occurrences per million words as frequent rates for multi-word expressions in corpora (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Biber, Conrad, & Cortes, 2004). Following this standard, Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2015a) 49

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identified pragmatic routines as instructional targets when they met or exceeded the range of 10–40 occurrences/million words using the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) (Simpson, Briggs, Ovens, & Swales, 2002). Similarly, Wong (2012) used a Chinese corpus, the Center for Chinese Linguistics Online Corpus, to identify frequent and conventional expressions in Chinese. This group of studies combines the rigor of formula research with established elicitation techniques from L2 pragmatics research. These studies focus on how learners acquire formulas in the target language—including acquisitional stages—and what factors influence their development, thus drawing the studies closer to concerns voiced in SLA research and L2 investigations of formulaic language in general. There are relatively few studies focusing on acquisition issues of formulas in pragmatics (although I expect more to follow): English (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011; Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a; Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2017); Chinese (Taguchi, Li, & Tang, 2017; Taguchi, Li, & Xiao, 2013; Yang, 2016; Bardovi-Harlig & Su, 2018); French (Edmonds, 2014); and Russian (Furniss, 2016). From the SLA perspective, documenting the conventionality of the expressions is crucial if claims are to be made about their potential learnability based on frequency in the target language. Hence, the studies cited above align more closely to formula research than other studies that do not target formulas in investigation. From the pragmatics perspective, the trials of demonstrating frequency—and the subsequent rejection of low scoring (but familiar) expressions—suggest that pragmatics is not as formulaic as some believe (Bardovi-Harlig, 2016). There is variation even among native speakers (Bardovi-Harlig, 2012b). For example, a pilot study reported in Bardovi-Harlig (2009) and Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2010) showed that, in the situation of someone talking during a movie in a theater, all the undergraduate native-speaker participants (28 total) used one of Be quiet, Keep it down, or Shut up. In the main study involving 49 native-speaker participants, Be quiet continued to dominate with 60% of the responses supplied by the 35 undergraduates, supplemented by Shut up and Keep it down (11% each), Quiet down (9%), and one case of sssshhhh (which is also conventional, but not likely to be formulaic). Also in the pilot, low-imposition request scenarios (e.g., asking a roommate standing next to a kitchen cupboard to hand the speaker a glass) derived from our field notes failed to elicit recurrent formulaic expressions. In fact, of the 77 situations of mixed speech acts that were originally identified, more than half failed to elicit consistent use of candidate expressions upon repeated testing. Taguchi, Xiao, and Li (2016) also compared conventional and non-conventional realization of speech acts; among the non-conventionally realized speech acts were requests, refusals, and compliment responses. Thus, as interesting as formulaic language is, in L2 pragmatics research we recognize that formulas are one type of pragmalinguistic resource among many that learners use and acquire in L2.

Pragmatic Prerequisites for Formula Use Tracking the L2 acquisition and use of pragmatic routines reveals what kind of pragmatic knowledge is required to support their use. It is not the case—as was earlier imagined—that using a target-like expression would render learners’ contributions comprehensible and illocutionarily secure, but rather something quite different is required. Learners must recognize the speech act required in a particular context (and the semantic formulas and the content) in order to use the preferred expression. For example, a speaker has to be able to recognize a context as a setting for the speech act of gratitude to be able to use thanking expressions (rather than apologies). In order to deflect thanks, a speaker must perceive an imposition as minor. In order to accept thanks, a speaker must regard the imposition as significant enough to warrant an acknowledgement. In other words, a speaker’s sociopragmatic knowledge creates contexts for use of pragmatic routines. 50

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What Do We Know So Far about the Acquisition of Routines and Formulas in L2 Pragmatics? There are three types of formula-focused studies in L2 pragmatics: (1) production studies, (2) non-production (recognition and comprehension) studies, and (3) instructional studies. Many researchers agree that even at the higher levels of proficiency, learners both have fewer formulas in their repertoires and use fewer formulas than native speakers (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Edmondson & House, 1991; House, 1996; Wildner-Bassett, 1984, 1994). In an attempt to understand why fewer formulas are produced by learners than native speakers, previous studies asked whether learners can distinguish between formulas and nonformulas. Bardovi-Harlig (2010b) aurally presented a recognition task that included both authentic formulas and modified, but grammatical, counterparts. A cross-sectional study showed that as L2 English learners increased in level of proficiency, their acceptance of modified expressions decreased, and their acceptance of authentic formulaic expressions increased. The authentic expressions were accepted as being heard significantly more often than modified responses. Edmonds (2014) employed an online contextualized naturalness judgment task with 13 conventional expressions used in southwest France and corresponding modified expressions. Twenty French native speakers, 20 long-stay non-native speakers (NNS) of French (more than one year of residence), and 20 short-stay NNS of French (4–6 months of residence) completed the task. All groups were able to distinguish conventional expressions from nonconventional but grammatical expressions. Roever (2005) investigated L2 English learners’ ability to select an appropriate routine expression in a given context. He used a 12-item multiple-choice task (the routines task) in which a brief description of a situation was followed by a question such as ‘What would Jack probably say?’ Roever found that even short-term exposure of up to three months led learners in the host environment to score significantly higher than learners without such exposure. Production studies also report that formulas emerge in stages in a variety of languages including L2 Japanese (Tateyama, 2001; Tateyama, Kasper, Mui, Tay, & Thananart, 1997), German (Wildner-Bassett, 1994), English (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Bardovi-Harlig & Stringer, 2017; Edmondson & House, 1991), and Chinese (Bardovi-Harlig & Su, 2018; Taguchi et al., 2013; Yang, 2016). These studies found that the learner-produced formulas may reflect interlanguage grammar of the learners (including both morphology and syntax); may exhibit non-target-like modification; and may not exhibit modification where expected. In addition to morphosyntax, the suprasegmental delivery of pragmatic routines (i.e., the intonation and rhythm) also develops in interlanguage pragmatics (House, 1996; Tateyama, 2001) (see also Chapter 6 in this volume). These studies documented ‘mechanical’ delivery by German learners of English (House, 1996) and non-hesitant, smooth delivery of apologies by American learners of Japanese where hesitation was actually expected (Tateyama, 2001). Some researchers have posited that lack of formulas leads to unnecessarily longer responses in written DCTs from learners (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Edmondson & House, 1991). Edmondson and House interpreted learners’ longer responses on written DCTs to be an indication that learners underuse formulas, suggesting that the wordiness in learners’ responses results from their lack of confidence in getting their illocutionary point across. Thus, length is a compensatory strategy. Like Edmondson and House (1991), Kecskes (2003) found that some learners talked too much and used too few formulas, while others oversimplified, suggesting a lack of use of formulas. However, Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2010) found that learners did not use significantly more words or semantic formulas than did native speakers, and there was no significant difference in length (as measured by the number of words or semantic formulas) in responses that contained conventional expressions and those that did not. 51

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Finally, factors such as proficiency, learning environment (at home or abroad), length of residence, and intensity of interaction have all been hypothesized to play a role in the acquisition of pragmatic routines. These factors are often hard to tease apart. House (1996) observed that L2 English foreign-language learners who had had long-term stays in English-speaking countries completed a 14-week instructional unit on pragmatic routines with higher scores than their counterparts with short-term stays; however, she further noted that it was not possible to determine whether it was the length of stay or proficiency that contributed to the higher scores. This is because foreign-language learners often do not engage in study abroad programs equally at all levels of proficiency or years of study. Because study abroad enrollment tends to be more robust in third- and fourth-years, length of study is often confounded with proficiency.2 Length of stay and intensity of interaction are other factors that affect the acquisition of pragmatic routines. Length of stay is distinct from intensity of interaction, but it is likely that more interaction with speakers in the host culture might encourage longer stays, and similarly that longer stays might encourage (but not require) greater interaction. Proficiency has been found to significantly influence learners’ ability to distinguish authentic formulas from modified ones (Bardovi-Harlig, 2010b); to select appropriate conventional expressions (by foreign-language learners, not by learners with host environment exposure; Roever, 2005); to process formulas in a speedy manner (Taguchi, 2011); and to produce morphosyntactically well-formed conventional expressions (Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011). On the other hand, study abroad experience affected the comprehension of routines (Taguchi, 2011), and increased length of stay led to improved formula production (Barron, 2003). Yang (2016) reported that recognition of formulas in context increased as length of stay abroad increased, although it did not affect production. Roever found that L2 English learners with exposure to a host environment scored higher on the selection of routines in context in a multiple-choice task than learners without such exposure, even when their proficiency was kept constant. Even brief exposure of three months or less showed a beneficial effect on the recognition. In a study of proficiency, length of residence, and intensity of interaction combined, Bardovi-Harlig and Bastos (2011) found that recognition of pragmatic formulas was significantly influenced by intensity of interaction, and production of pragmatic formulas by both proficiency and intensity of interaction. Length of stay had no significant effect on either recognition or production. Not surprisingly, instruction facilitates the acquisition of formulas. Many characteristics associated with higher-proficiency formula use are found after instruction. Those characteristics include increased ability to distinguish (and reject) grammatical but nonconventional expressions from conventional ones (Bardovi-Harlig & Vellenga, 2012; Furniss, 2016) and increased use and well-formedness of routines (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a; Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2017). Whether or not pragmatic routines can be learned (or should be taught) in a foreign language context remains an unresolved issue. Based on the findings that ESL learners outperformed their EFL counterparts on the recognition of routines, Roever (2012) questioned whether it is necessary to ‘spend valuable class time on the teaching of routine formulae’ in foreign-language classrooms (p. 12), reasoning that it would be unnecessary ‘if learners can be expected to acquire them quickly and unproblematically in the target language country’ (p. 12). He then concluded that ‘learners in the L2 setting get routines “for free” through exposure to contextualized discourse’ (p. 10). However, this claim is not warranted on the basis of a recognition task alone. As noted previously, Roever used a 12-item written multiplechoice task in which learners picked one of four sentences as appropriate to the context; one contained a conventional expression and three did not. Because a recognition task is relatively less demanding than a production task, the sense of ease associated with identification may not hold in a production task, as found in other studies. Nor is the claim warranted on the basis of acquisition in the host environment as judged by production tasks. Learners in the host environment, regardless of target language, show developmental sequences in the acquisition of 52

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conventional expressions that do not look like getting routines ‘for free,’ especially when we factor in the amount of pragmatic knowledge required to establish a context for the use of a pragmatic routine (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Taguchi et al., 2013). It seems premature to suggest that teaching conventional expressions is a waste of time in foreign-language (or second-language) settings based on ease of acquisition in the host environment, especially at a time when there is increased interest in instructed pragmatics in foreign languages. Promising results have been reported from foreign- as well as second-language classrooms, and these are discussed in the section on Practical Applications.

Appraisal of the Current Practice and Critical Insights There are four main areas of evaluation in the current research on the acquisition of formulaic language in L2 pragmatics. Three areas relate to research methods, namely empirically establishing the list of routines or formulas to be investigated, taking modality (production and comprehension) into consideration when developing a task, and using the target language in the task prompt. The fourth area relates to the analysis of formulas and the resulting degree of transparency for understanding the stages of acquisition. The first area has been discussed in the preceding sections. Practices for identifying candidate pragmatic routines and for verifying their conventionality have been established in previous studies, which provide models for future research. The second area, the issue of modality, continues to plague task design (Bardovi-Harlig, 2010a, in 2018c). The principle is simple. The modality of an elicitation task should match the modality of the event that is simulated. Conversation is spoken, thus, the elicitation tasks that simulate conversation or spoken language should be spoken (or oral-for-oral) (Bardovi-Harlig, 2010a, 2013, 2018c). Interlanguage pragmatics has not fully abandoned written-for-oral designs (e.g., DCT), in spite of numerous negative assessments throughout the literature (see Chapter 13 in this volume). This practice is also seen in the studies on L2 formulaic language reviewed in the previous section (Roever, 2012; Yang, 2016). This mismatched modality in written-for-oral tasks may impact the production of formulaic language directly. In some studies, time-pressured oral DCTs were designed not only to match modality in oral-for-oral tasks (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a), but to recreate conditions that are thought to favor the production of formulaic language (Edmonds, 2014; Weinert, 1995). Thus, oral delivery is intended to help learners perform their best under time pressure—the condition that essentially simulates real-life formulaic language use. Using written elicitation tasks to capture formula use is not only mismatched for modality, but may also hinder performance because at least one essential condition—a shortened planning time, and thus, the use of formulas while planning the rest of a turn—has been eliminated. Language of task delivery is another study design issue. It is ideal to use the target language (rather than learners’ L1) for task delivery. In L2 formulae studies, it means using the target language to deliver DCT and role play scenarios to elicit formulas. Using the target language helps orient learners cognitively and socially to the target language itself and to the target language environment, culture, and pragmatics. There are legitimate concerns about learners’ understanding of the scenarios if they are presented in the target language, but several accommodations and enhancements are found in the literature. In computer-delivered oral DCTs, written scenarios can be presented with pre-recorded files of the scenarios, thus using oral delivery to assist less confident readers and using written input to support listening comprehension of the scenarios (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a). The language itself can be simplified for vocabulary and syntax. In existing studies, target language delivery has been supported by photographs (Nickels, 2006; Schauer, 2006) and by drawings (Scarcella, 1979; Bardovi-Harlig & Su, 2018). Chinese characters have been supplemented by pinyin in a recognition test (Yang, 2016) and during instruction (Taguchi, Li, & Tang, 2017). Occasional glosses of essential but 53

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unfamiliar words can be provided in L1 (Bardovi-Harlig & Su, 2018). All these approaches have endeavored to avoid using words from the target conventional expression in the scenario so as not to prime the expression itself through its lexis. Using the target language has an additional advantage with multilingual populations. Whereas researchers in the second language environment (host environment) have always worked with learners from multiple L1 backgrounds, this situation is also increasingly common in the foreignlanguage environment as well. Working directly in the target language gives everyone the same opportunity in such a multilingual context. In addition, in a DCT with 24 items, if a scenario is presented in L1, a participant needs to switch from L1 (or institutional language) to target language and back 24 times, leading to a condition that is unlikely to enhance the image of having a conversation in the target language. While differences between L1 (majority or institutional language) and target language delivery remain to be tested, modality has been extensively discussed in the literature. Yang’s (2016) findings indicate that the compound use of majority language (English) and written-for-oral format could have unintentionally depressed L2 Chinese learners’ use of Chinese conventional expressions because learners with comparable backgrounds scored much higher on similar Chinese expressions on an oral task delivered in Chinese with occasional word-glosses (Bardovi-Harlig & Su, 2018). The final area of evaluation of the current literature is analysis of production data. Transparency of the analysis is key in order to identify acquisitional sequences and to assess the impact of instruction on acquisition and use of routines/formulas in L2 pragmatics. Linguistic analysis of production data reveals the levels of pragmatic knowledge involved in using formulaic language as a pragmalinguistic resource. Given the nature of the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic knowledge involved, each point of alignment between these two levels of knowledge should be recorded separately. Figure 4.1 displays the main levels of alignment between learners’ potential responses and a community preferred expression given a production

Same speech act? No

Yes Same pragmatic strategy?

No

Yes Same content?

No

Yes Same form?

No Alternative Wording

Attempted Lexical Core

Yes Conventional Expression

Figure 4.1 Levels of pragmatic alignment leading to felicitous use of a pragmatic routine. 54

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task like an oral DCT or a role play. At the first juncture we ask whether the speech act aligns: Does the participant perform the same speech act as the community? If yes, the contribution has the potential to create a context for the pragmatic routine in question. At the next step we ask whether the participant produced the same pragmatic strategy as the community in the speech act; for example, in an apology, was an explanation given or a promise of forbearance offered? If the pragmatic strategies align, the speaker is one step closer to creating the context for the use of the pragmatic routine in question. Next we consider the content. If the content aligns, say thanking an instructor for his/her time or help, then the speaker has created the context for a pragmatic routine such as {Thanks/thank you} for your {time/help}, but that does not guarantee that the speaker will use the pragmatic routine favored by the community. That brings us to the bottom of the tree, ‘form.’ An exact match in the case of thanking a busy professor, Thank you for your time (from Bardovi-Harlig, 2009) is not the only felicitous option. The respondent may choose alternative wording such as I appreciate it, a favorite among L2 learners (see Bardovi-Harlig & Stringer, 2017). Learners may also attempt the target conventional expression, but fall short due to their interlanguage grammars, nevertheless indicating that they associate the context and the target expression. For example, in a situation in which a student was five minutes late for office hours, Sorry I’m late, is the preferred expression in the community, but learners might use interlanguage forms including Sorry for lating and Sorry about my late, as found in previous studies (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, 2009). These three options are represented in the final branch of the figure. At any branch labeled ‘no,’ the utterance is ineligible as a context for the target conventional expression. As discussed earlier, a learner may realize a different speech act, or the same speech act with different pragmatic strategies, or the same pragmatic strategies with different content. The same content may be encoded felicitously with a different grammatical form. For example, in response to ‘Thanks for the ride,’ an attested learner alternative to the conventional form ‘No problem’ was ‘That’s okay, any time’ (Bardovi-Harlig, class project data, November 2017). In L2 data, attempting a conventional expression does not guarantee grammatical production of it (Bardovi-Harlig 2009; Bardovi-Harlig & Stringer, 2017; Taguchi et al., 2013), so attempted and full realizations of the target expression should be reported separately (Bardovi-Harlig & Stringer, 2017). In that way, we can trace the development specifically related to formulaic language use in L2 pragmatics. Separate scoring categories for targeted speech acts, pragmatic strategies, and content can also be tallied as done in the analysis. The use of holistic scoring, although potentially practical for assessment and placement purposes, might obscure the analysis of development by assigning a point value to a combination of undifferentiated features (e.g., content, strategy, and form) (Taguchi et al., 2013, 2017). Distinguishing different dimensions of knowledge through analytical scoring is important in both charting development—learners get ‘better’ but we need to know in what ways—and in understanding the impact of proficiency, learning environment, intensity of interaction, and instruction on various dimensions of development. For example, instruction on pragmatic routines may not only increase learners’ use of pragmatic routines, but also increase clarity of speech acts, so assigning separate scores on these two categories can be informative (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a). Scores on discrete categories can later be combined and compared. In addition, varying instructional approaches had differential effects on speech act production, but not on pragmatic routines (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2017), which further supports the importance of assigning separate scores on different dimensions.

Directions for Future Research All the areas reviewed thus far could be the focus of additional research, but this section presents two additional areas that are considered crucial to the endeavor of understanding 55

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how pragmatic routines function in the acquisition of L2 pragmatics. In addition to continuing to develop appropriate means of eliciting pragmatic routines and focusing on both using the target language to set the scene and matching modality (oral-for-oral and writtenfor written; Bardovi-Harlig, 2010a, 2013, 2018c), the focus of future research should be to expand the number of target languages, and the number and variety of conventional expressions investigated. Within the studies that focus primarily on conventional expressions, English has been the dominant target language, with recent activity in L2 Chinese, French, and Russian. Expanding on the pool of target languages would permit a better understanding of the use of formulaic language in pragmatics. There are slightly more languages that have included pragmatic routines as one of many pragmalinguistic resources investigated, including Forsberg Lundell and Erman’s (2012) study on French, Tateyama (2001) on Japanese, and Barron (2003) on German. All other languages would enhance our knowledge, but noteworthy in their absence given their prominence in L2 pragmatics more generally are studies of Spanish and Japanese. When expanding the target languages, researchers can follow the same implementation procedures as established in the previous literature: first, to identify candidate formulaic expressions and second, to document their frequency of use as done by the studies cited in this chapter (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009 and Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a for English; Edmonds 2014, for French; Taguchi et al., 2013 and Yang, 2016 for Chinese; and Furniss, 2016 for Russian). This crucial second step (documenting frequency and conventionality) involves collecting native speaker data using DCTs (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Edmonds, 2014; Taguchi et al., 2013; Yang 2016) and corpora (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a; Furniss, 2016). Starting from a pragmatic perspective, we could investigate additional speech acts or different situations involving formulas. Both Yang (2016) and Bardovi-Harlig and Su’s (submitted) studies asked former study abroad students to report on the situations that they encountered often in the target language community. Alternatively, we could start with candidate expressions nominated by textbooks and other sources, and verify their occurrence against a register-appropriate corpus (e.g., verifying pragmatic routines occurring in academic discussions by searching those routines in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English/MICASE). Fieldwork and observation can also yield candidate expressions. We might also supplement frequency counts of expressions with native speakers’ accounts on how often they have encountered specific situations and expressions, a technique already used by Taguchi et al. (2013). Although they found no effect of frequency of occurrence on L2 Chinese learners’ production of formulaic expressions, the same question could be pursued by asking learners how salient or how memorable a specific situation or expression was. A few caveats are in order from what we have learned so far. First, not all speech acts involve pragmatic routines: Some speech acts are realized in an idiosyncratic manner with unique, nonconventional expressions and strategies (Bardovi-Harlig, 2012b, 2016; Taguchi et al., 2016). In addition, formulaic language shows regional variation (and language change), so all formulaic expressions should be treated initially as though they were local until we have the data to suggest that they are used commonly across communities.

Practical Implications The traditional practical implication for research in SLA has been to use empirical research to inform language instruction. As a review of instructed SLA studies shows, the application of research on the acquisition of routines in L2 pragmatics is already underway. Three primary areas have been addressed thus far: the availability of input on pragmatic routines from textbooks, the development of new materials and activities, and resources for teachers. 56

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Textbook Reviews Previous textbook reviews from pragmatics perspectives have shown that commercially available textbooks are lacking in pragmatically authentic language (see for example, Ishihara & Cohen, 2014). Three recent articles have compared textbook presentation of pragmatic routines with authentic routines. Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2015b) reviewed 26 ESL/EAP textbooks for pragmatic routines in academic discussion (i.e., expressions for indicating agreement, disagreement, and clarification). They found that, although textbooks had pragmatic routines that occur with high frequency in an academic corpus (MICASE), they also included many low-frequency expressions and expressions that did not occur in the corpus. Those expressions included You’re completely wrong and That’s crazy which, although possible, would require very specific contextualization of usage beyond the information that the textbooks offer. Moreover, many common routines in the corpus, such as Yeah but and OK but, did not appear in the textbooks. Yeh (2016) surveyed five major Chinese textbooks (three used in the U.S.A., one in Taiwan, and one in mainland China) and evaluated the textbooks for the inclusion of situation-bound utterances (SBUs), corresponding explanations of how to use them, and repetition of the expressions. Yeh and five native-speaker judges identified a possible 178 SBUs in the textbooks. Of those, only 9 SBUs appeared in all five books, and only 15 SBUs occurred relatively more frequently than the other 178 SBUs, meaning that there was very little repeated occurrence of the majority of expressions. Only one of the textbooks explained the usage of SBUs and provided contexts. De Pablos-Ortega (2011) conducted a survey of thanking expressions in 64 Spanish textbooks and found that thanking was reasonably well-represented in the textbooks at the lower levels, but it decreased at the intermediate level and again at the advanced level. They also found that when compared to native speakers’ responses to a DCT, the textbook thanking expressions were more restricted in terms of variety. These textbook reviews point to the need to expand the representation of routine inventories in Spanish and Chinese textbooks, and a refinement of those in ESL textbooks. All the reviews call for increased contextualization when presenting routines. They also emphasize the importance of using authentic language in textbooks.

Materials and Activities Development Along with adding to the general understanding of how pragmatic routines contribute to L2 pragmatic development, the studies investigating instructional effects have also contributed to the development of pedagogy for pragmatics more generally. A range of approaches have been used to achieve common goals for teaching and learning routines. Authentic language excerpts from a corpus (i.e., MICASE) were used for teaching pragmatic routines for agreements, disagreements, and clarifications in academic discussion (Bardovi-Harlig et al, 2015a). Written fan transcriptions of the TV sitcom Friends were used to teach English routines (Bardovi-Harlig & Vellenga, 2012). In Russian, clips of classic Russian films were used to teach pragmatic routines that were identified from the oral and multimedia subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus (Furniss, 2016). The film clips supplied authentic audio-visual input for learners, and were supplemented by audio and written transcriptions. Audio-visual recordings of researcher constructed dialogs in Chinese (Taguchi et al., 2017) and voice recordings of transcripts from MICASE in English (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a, 2017) provided prosody, as well as context and form, in teaching routines. Means of instructional delivery was also explored. Furniss (2016, 2017) developed a corpusreferred website for online instruction; Taguchi et al. (2017) also developed online instruction, 57

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utilizing a game-like framework whose dual goals were for students to learn routines and complete the game successfully. Oral practice was implemented through face-to-face card games as well as board games with both unpredictable turns and content built into the games (BardoviHarlig et al., 2015a, 2017). Written production practice of routines was implemented by having students type expressions into a dialogue with missing turns (Taguchi et al., 2017). Online exercises that covered nine different pragmatic and cultural features were designed by Furniss (2016). Assessment tasks developed in the previous studies include recognition tasks (BardoviHarlig & Vellenga, 2012; Furniss, 2016), oral DCTs formatted as oral group-work simulation tasks (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2015a, 2017), online fill-in-the-blank tasks using authentic scripted film transcripts (Furniss, 2016), and written online multiple-choice tasks (Taguchi, et al., 2017).3 One issue that arises in instruction studies is whether learners have had exposure to the routines prior to instruction. Furniss (2016) attempted to control for exposure by eliminating any routines that appeared in the textbook; Taguchi et al. (2017) reported that half of the target routines occurred in the textbook (but without explicit information); and Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2015a) worked almost exclusively with routines that came from textbooks. As Furniss reported, students’ varied experience with routines makes prior experience an uncontrollable variable. Students often come to instruction with radically different levels of knowledge in different areas, making previous exposure hard to control for. However, all the studies employed a pretest, which should be sufficient to document participants’ pre-existing knowledge of routines. Although there have not been many instructed SLA studies on pragmatic routines focusing specifically on how routines are taught and learned, taken together, the most recent instructional studies are found in three languages—English, Chinese, and Russian. These studies illustrated the process involved in the development of a pedagogical practice. They carefully identified the target pragmatic routes for instruction, provided contextualized input and opportunities for practice, and used appropriate assessment tasks to measure learning outcomes. Notably, the studies were all supported by instructional technology.

Resources for Teachers As researchers have investigated the acquisition of pragmatic routines and developed specific instructional approaches, they have also developed resources for teachers. Bardovi-Harlig (2011) demonstrated how to use a recognition task as a pre-teaching assessment to determine whether students can recognize conventional expressions. For the expressions that are unfamiliar to students, instruction begins with basic input; for the expressions that are familiar, instruction begins with usage. Recognizing the relative dearth of instructional materials for teaching pragmatics in general, and conventional expressions more specifically, Schauer and Adolphs (2006) compared sources of thanking expressions for the purpose of developing instructional materials. They compared English thanking expressions collected via DCTs to thanking expressions appearing in CANCODE (Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English, a 5-million word corpus). The focused contexts of the DCT were able to elicit specific thanking expressions that were not attested even in a corpus as large as CANCODE. The DCT data offered advantages for teaching thanking expressions in context, whereas features of interaction were illustrated by the corpus data. Bardovi-Harlig and Nickels (2011) also developed teaching materials and activities for thanking expressions in English. Using native speaker responses collected from an oral DCT (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009; Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2010) as input and using learner responses as a needs assessment, instruction on expressions of gratitude was developed for a range of contexts. As Schauer and Adolphs (2006) demonstrated, corpora can be useful in the instruction of pragmatic routines. With the high value placed on authentic input in pragmatics instruction, it is

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worthwhile to teach instructors how to use free online corpora that are matched to their students’ needs. In an article prepared for continuing teacher education, Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2015b) demonstrated how to select and present authentic MICASE excerpts for instruction on pragmatic routines in an EAP class focusing on academic group work. Similarly, Bardovi-Harlig and Mossman (2016) provided a teacher-audience with guidelines for selecting a corpus given specific curricular goals and illustrated how three different corpora provide a different range of routines (in this case, routines for request-making). Furniss (2017) reported on how the corpus-referred website for the teaching of pragmatic routines in Russian (used in the experimental teaching unit in Furniss, 2016) was developed using the Russian National Corpus. Although these articles address specific target languages, the principles they lay out can be used to develop materials for the instruction of any target language. In conclusion, much progress has been made by L2 pragmatics researchers who have empirically documented inventories of pragmatic routines, contributing to research in both L2 pragmatics and the acquisition of formulaic language. The existing literature speaks to the observation that different elements of pragmatics are not acquired all at once, and it shows how intertwined sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics are in acquisition. Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have identified factors that facilitate acquisition (e.g., proficiency, length of residence, intensity of interaction), and instructional intervention studies have also helped to further develop pedagogical practices for teaching pragmatic routines. Building on this foundation, future research will expand both on the range of pragmatic routines investigated and the number of target languages in which they are used.

Notes 1 For reviews of earlier studies of pragmatic routines please see Bardovi-Harlig (2006, 2012a). 2 An exception to this is intensive English programs abroad, in which learners enroll at all levels of proficiency. 3 Authentic scripted input refers to TV and films which are scripted and performed for the entertainment of the target language community, and are thus cultural artifacts. They are both scripted and authentic. See Bardovi-Harlig (2015) for a taxonomy of how conversation has been operationalized in instructional effect studies in pragmatics.

Further Reading Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2009). Conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource: Recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Language Learning, 59, 755–795. This paper describes the development of tasks for assessing comprehension and production of conventional expressions from field notes and native speaker production on an oral discourse completion test. The paper explains how to set up a production and a recognition task and the relation between them. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2012a). Formulas, routines, and conventional expressions in pragmatics research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 206–227. This article presents a review of research on conventional expressions, pragmatic routines, and formulas in pragmatics. This is a useful resource for those looking for inspiration on types of expressions that are used cross-linguistically, of what kind of expressions have been studied, and what should be studied next. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. E. (2015b). Developing corpus-based materials to teach pragmatic routines. TESOL Journal, 6, 499–526. This paper details how to work with a corpus to develop materials for teaching routines and evaluating textbooks. Twenty-six ESL textbooks are reviewed and means of conducting a review of other pragmatic routines or routines from other languages are given. The paper also presents how to prepare excerpts from a corpus as teaching materials.

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Taguchi, N., Li, S., & Xiao, F. (2013). Production of formulaic expressions in L2 Chinese: A developmental investigation in a study abroad context. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 2, 23–58. This paper discusses the identification of candidate formulaic expressions in Chinese for research purposes and subsequent confirmation of their status as conventional expressions. Furniss, E. A. (2016). Teaching the pragmatics of Russian conversation using a corpus-referred website. Language Learning & Technology, 20, 38–60. This paper describes the use of corpus and films for teaching pragmatic routines and designing a corpusreferred website. The paper provides a guide for those interested in developing such materials for teaching or researching instructional effects on the acquisition of routines.

References Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2006). On the role of formulas in the acquisition of L2 pragmatics. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 11, 1–28. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2008). Recognition and production of formulas in L2 pragmatics. In Z.-H. Han (Ed.), Understanding second language process (pp. 205–222). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2009). Conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource: Recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Language Learning, 59, 755–795. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2010a). Exploring the pragmatics of interlanguage pragmatics: Definition by design. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics: Pragmatics across languages and cultures (pp. 219–259). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2010b). Recognition of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 12, 141–162. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2011). Assessing familiarity with pragmatic formulas: Planning oral/aural assessment. In N. R. Houck & D. H. Tatsuki (Eds.), Pragmatics: Teaching natural conversation (pp. 7–22). New York: TESOL. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2012a). Formulas, routines, and conventional expressions in pragmatics research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 206–227. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2012b). Pragmatic variation and conventional expressions. In J. C. Félix-Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 141–173). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2013). Developing L2 pragmatics. Language Learning, 63 (Suppl.1), 68–86. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2016). How formulaic is pragmatics? Pragmatics and Language Learning, 14, 325–340. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2018a). Formulaic language in second language pragmatics research. In A. SiyanovaChanturia & A. Pellicer-Sánchez (Eds.), Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective (pp. 97–114). New York: Routledge. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2018b). Formulaicity and context in second language pragmatics. In L. Pickering & V. Evans (Eds.), Language in the context of communication: Studies in honor of Andrea Tyler (pp. 193–211). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2018c). Matching modality in L2 pragmatics research design. System, 75, 13–22. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Bastos, M.-T. (2011). Proficiency, length of stay, and intensity of interaction and the acquisition of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 8, 347–384. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Bastos, M.-T., Burghardt, B., Chappetto, E., Nickels, E., & Rose, M. (2010). The use of conventional expressions and utterance length in L2 pragmatics. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 12, 163–186. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Mossman, S. (2016). Corpus-based materials development for teaching and learning pragmatic routines. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.) SLA research and materials development for language learning (pp. 250–267). New York: Taylor & Francis. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Su, Y. (2017). The effect of corpus-based instruction on pragmatic routines. Language Learning & Technology, 21, 76–103. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. E. (2015a). The effect of instruction on pragmatic routines in academic discussion. Language Teaching Research, 19, 324-350. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H.E. (2015b). Developing corpus-based materials to teach pragmatic routines. TESOL Journal, 6, 499–526. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Nickels, E. L. (2011). No thanks, I’m full: Raising awareness of expressions of gratitude and formulaic language. In N. R. Houck & D. H. Tatsuki (Eds.) Pragmatics: Teaching natural conversation (pp. 23–40). New York: TESOL. 60

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Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Stringer, D. (2017). Unconventional expressions: Productive syntax in the L2 acquisition of formulaic language. Second Language Research, 33, 61–90. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Su, Y. (2018). The acquisition of conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource in Chinese as a foreign language. Modern Language Journal, 102, 732–757. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Vellenga, H. E. (2012). The effect of instruction on conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. System, 40, 77–89. Barron, A. (2003). Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics: Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at… Lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25, 371–405. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Essex, UK: Pearson Education. Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1986). Too many words: Length of utterance and pragmatic failure. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8, 165–180. Culpeper, J. (2010). Conventionalised impoliteness formulae. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 3232–3245. De Pablos-Ortega, C. (2011). The pragmatics of thanking reflected in the textbooks for teaching Spanish as a foreign language. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 2411–2433. Ding, J. (2006). Liuxuesheng hanyu kouyu xiyongyu yukuai xide yanjiu [Exploration of second language acquisition of oral Chinese idioms by foreign students] (unpublished MA thesis). Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. Edmonds, A. (2014). Conventional expressions: Investigating pragmatics and processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 36, 69–99. Edmondson, W., & House, J. (1991). Do learners talk too much? The waffle phenomenon in interlanguage pragmatics. In R. Phillipson, E. Kellerman, L. Selinker, M. Sharwood Smith, & M. Swain (Eds.), Foreign/second language pedagogy research: A commemorative volume for Claus Faerch (pp. 273–287). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Erman, B., & Warren, B. (2000). The idiom principle and the open choice principle. Text, 20, 29–62. Forsberg Lundell, F., & Erman, B. (2012). High-level requests: A study of long-residency L2 users of English and French and native speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 756–775. Furniss, E. A. (2016). Teaching the pragmatics of Russian conversation using a corpus-referred website. Language Learning & Technology, 20, 38–60. Furniss, E. (2017). Teaching pragmatics with corpus data: The development of a corpus-referred website for the instruction of routine formulas in Russian. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics, Vol. 4 (pp. 129–152). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Granger, S. (1998). Prefabricated patterns in advanced EFL writing: Collocations and formulae. In A. P. Cowie (Ed.), Phraseology: Theory, analysis, and applications (pp. 145–160). Oxford, UK: Clarendon. House, J. (1996). Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language: Routines and metapragmatic awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 225–252. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2014). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. New York: Routledge. Kecskes, I. (2000). Conceptual fluency and the use of situation-bound utterances. Links & Letters, 7, 145–161. Kecskes, I. (2003). Situation-bound utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin: Mouton. Kecskes, I. (2016). Situation-bound utterances in Chinese. East Asian Pragmatics, 1, 107–126. Nickels, E. L. (2006). Interlanguage pragmatics and the effects of setting. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 11, 253–280. Pawley, A., & Syder, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 191–226). London: Longman. Roever, C. (2005). Testing ESL pragmatics: Development and validation of a web-based assessment battery. Berlin: Peter Lang. Roever, C. (2012). What learners get for free: Learning of routine formulae in ESL and EFL environments. ELT Journal, 66, 10–21. Scarcella, R. (1979). Watch up! Working Papers in Bilingualism, 19, 79–88. Schauer, G. A. (2006). Pragmatic awareness in ESL and EFL contexts: Contrast and development. Language Learning, 56, 269–318. Schauer, G. A., & Adolphs, S. (2006). Expressions of gratitude in corpus and DCT data: Vocabulary, formulaic sequences, and pedagogy. System, 34, 119–134. Simpson, R. C., Briggs, S. L., Ovens, J., & Swales, J. M. (2002). The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Retrieved multiple times between May 2013 and December 2014 from http://quod.lib.umich. edu/m/micase 61

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Taguchi, N. (2011). The effect of L2 proficiency and study-abroad experience on pragmatic comprehension. Language Learning, 61, 1–36. Taguchi, N., Li, Q., & Tang, X. (2017). Learning Chinese formulaic expressions in a scenario-based interactive environment. Foreign Language Annals, 50, 641–660. Taguchi, N., Li, S., & Xiao, F. (2013). Production of formulaic expressions in L2 Chinese: A developmental investigation in a study abroad context. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 2, 23–58. Taguchi, N., Xiao, F., & Li, S. (2016). Effects of intercultural competence and social interaction on speech act production in a Chinese study aboard context. Modern Language Journal, 100, 775–796. Tateyama, Y. (2001). Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines: Japanese sumimasen. In K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 200–222). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tateyama, Y., Kasper, G., Mui, L. P., Tay, H., & Thananart, O. (1997). Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 8, 163–177. Weinert, R. (1995). The role of formulaic language in second language acquisition: A review. Applied Linguistics, 16, 180–205. Wildner-Bassett, M. (1984). Improving pragmatics of learners’ interlanguage. Tübingen: Narr. Wildner-Bassett, M. E. (1994). Intercultural pragmatics and proficiency: ‘Polite’ noises for cultural appropriateness. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 3–17. Wong, H. (2012). Use of formulaic sequences in task-based oral production of Chinese (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Durham University, Durham, UK. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wray, A., & Perkins, M. R (2000). The functions of formulaic language: An integrated model. Language and Communication, 20, 1–28. Yang, J. (2016). CFL learners’ recognition and production of pragmatic routine formulae. Chinese as a Second Language, 51, 29–61. Yeh, S.-H. (2016). The use of situation-bound utterances in Chinese foreign language textbooks. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 5, 187–212.

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5 Humor in L2 Pragmatics Research Nancy Bell and Anne Pomerantz

Introduction As play with and through language is increasingly recognized as central to the human experience and omnipresent within bi/multilingual contexts, research within L2 pragmatics has responded by considering non-serious language use more seriously. We have learned a great deal about how jocular forms of language play, or humor, are used by teachers and students in L2 classrooms, as well as how L2 users strategically deploy or avoid humor in interaction, both within intercultural and lingua franca communication (see Bell 2017, 2015, 2014, 2012b for earlier reviews from different perspectives). In this chapter, we begin by presenting key concepts and findings from the study of humor. We then review both foundational and recently published empirical studies that look at the role of humor in L2 pragmatic development and use. In so doing, we highlight three broad, intersecting themes: (1) humor as an aid to L2 pragmatic development, (2) humor as a resource for L2 interactions, and (3) humor as an aspect of the L2 to be learned. Although our review reveals humor to be a productive area of inquiry within L2 studies, short-term, small-scale examinations form much of our current knowledge base. Thus, we argue that a more robust array of approaches would bring much needed methodological diversity in the research of L2 humor. Furthermore, we contend that, in addition to what research on humor might contribute to our overall understanding of L2 pragmatic development, serious consideration must also be given to how classroom instruction might help L2 users to better identify, comprehend, produce, and respond to humor. Before presenting the review of empirical findings, we will briefly discuss key theoretical concepts related to humor.

Key Concepts Research on social interaction has long asked what makes an utterance or written text funny. Although various theories of humor exist, most viable are those—like the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH)—that rest on the notion of incongruity (see Attardo & Raskin, 1991; Attardo, 2001). From this perspective, humor emerges when two or more unconventional, unusual, or unexpected elements come together in a particular moment and the act of noticing this incongruity produces a feeling of mirth (as opposed to confusion or frustration) for the noticer. For example, a person may recognize that an utterance or text can be understood through two competing interpretive lenses or that a given word or phrase may share a similar phonetic realization, 63

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but not a similar meaning, across national languages, such as when English-speaking learners of Spanish discover that ‘embarazada’ is a false cognate meaning ‘pregnant.’ Humor arises when the individual not only recognizes, but rejoices in the polysemy or ambiguity of what is meant by what is communicated. In taking such of view of humor, the GTVH is compatible with the field of pragmatics in that it foregrounds not only the distributed nature of interpretive knowledge (not everyone will have access to the same lenses for making meaning), but also the active role of individuals as meaning makers (not everyone will find the same utterances or texts funny). It follows, then, that a given bit of language is not inherently amusing or serious; individuals must do some work to shape how the tenor or key of their statements is understood by others. As people interact with one another—either orally or in writing—they deploy an array of contextualization cues that signal to their interlocutors how their communicative actions should be understood (Gumperz, 1982). And, in turn, their interlocutors signal to them how they are understanding the ongoing flow of interaction. For example, Conversation Analytic research on the sequential placement of laughter in face-to-face interaction has illustrated that speakers often use laughter tokens near the end of their utterances in order to signal that the what was said should be understood as funny (Jefferson, 1979). Listeners then use an array of contextualization cues, ranging from smiles, to laughter, to explicit verbal acknowledgement (e.g., ‘good one,’ ‘ha ha,’ ‘very funny’) to show that they recognize, comprehend, and perhaps even appreciate the preceding utterance as humorous. Yet, as cross-cultural research on humor has illustrated, recognizing the presence of humor and coming to a shared understanding of what precisely is funny about an utterance or text, are not one and the same (Davies, 2015). L2 users can detect the presence of humor while not comprehending it (Bell, 2007). And, as Bell (2006) has illustrated, even when they identify and understand the humor, they may not appreciate it. Despite an understanding of humor as an emergent interactional accomplishment, it is not necessarily a ‘one-off’ phenomenon. Efforts to describe the forms that non-serious language use can take have resulted in the identification of recurring genres of humor, ranging from riddles and canned jokes, to teases, hyperbole, parody, and, although not always issued with humorous intent, sarcasm. Like other everyday genres, these forms of humor are habitually realized in certain ways in certain spaces, and their conventional form and frequent reoccurrence serve to cue a nonserious interpretation. Although some types of humor can cross national and linguistic boundaries more or less seamlessly, others tend to be restricted to particular contexts and cultures. Humor, like the taste for certain foods, is both culturally shared and acutely idiosyncratic. Just as many Americans are raised on a dairy-heavy diet and have a passion for cheese, there are some Americans who, despite the ubiquity of dairy on U.S. tables, find the taste and texture of cheese abhorrent. This understanding of humor as organized into various genres, situated within specific contexts, dynamic in its appeal, and intra- and inter-culturally variable mirrors, to a large extent, findings within L2 pragmatics that have demonstrated that registers, politeness markers, and speech acts, among other linguistic elements, behave in similar ways. Research on the functions of humor suggests that humor tends to serve the following purposes: (1) relieving stress and reducing tension, (2) establishing and maintaining rapport, and (3) highlighting and redrawing relations of power (Martin, 2007). In an effort to create a heuristic for categorizing these functions, Bell and Pomerantz (2015) proposed that most instances of humor fall somewhere on a horizontal axis of affiliative or disaffiliative (dimension of solidarity), while simultaneously occupying a space on the vertical axis between norm-upholding and norm-challenging (dimension of power) (see Figure 5.1). This view of humor as operating along the intersecting axes of solidarity and power echoes Brown and Levinson’s (1978/1987) seminal work on politeness and suggests that humor, like other linguistic elements, serves as a resource for doing important social work around relationships and social hierarchies. From this perspective, then, humor becomes not a deviation from the serious business of communicating, but rather a typically recurring aspect of oral and written interaction that has 64

Humor in L2 Pragmatics Research Norm-Upholding Joking with a friend about how

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Figure 5.1 Functions of humor with examples (Copyright 2015, p. 31, from Humor in the Classroom: A Guide for Language Teachers and Educational Researchers by Nancy Bell and Anne Pomerantz. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc).

identifiable forms and that realizes critical social functions. Thus, with this as our starting point, we argue that a focus on the pragmatics of humor can help us to understand not only what is distinctive about nonserious talk and texts, but also how they mirror their serious counterparts (see Bell, 2018, for a fuller account of this argument). Such a view pushes us to consider how a focus on humor can enrich what we already know about L2 pragmatic development and use from traditional studies of common units of pragmatics, such as speech acts, implicature, and discourse markers, and can foreground what remains to be learned. With this in mind, we turn to what research on humor has illuminated with respect to L2 pragmatic development, the role of humor in L2 interactions, and humor as an aspect of the L2 to be learned.

Recent Empirical Findings and Critical Insights Humor as an Aid of L2 Development How Can Engagement with Humor Facilitate L2 Pragmatic Development? Some evidence suggests that humor can facilitate L2 development, helping learners to comprehend and remember forms and meanings better than if they were encountered or taught only within a serious (i.e., non-humorous) frame. By keying particular texts or utterances as humorous, 65

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a learner’s attention is drawn to the focal linguistic elements and, in order to partake in the potential amusement, the learner must work to understand the multiple, and likely ambiguous, meanings of the linguistic elements in this context. Ishihara and Cohen (2010) refer to this as noticing with understanding, a kind of language awareness that goes beyond the mere apprehension of forms to include a deeper appreciation of language in use. For example, both Lucas (2005) and TocalliBeller and Swain (2007) have shown that the act of working through what makes a particular text or utterance funny—in these cases, puns—results in increased understanding and recall of the text. In an effort to examine whether the positive effect of humor might extend to recall of more spontaneous utterances, Bell (2012a) found that ESL learners recalled language elements that were attended to humorously in the classroom better than elements that received a more serious treatment. At the same time, her analysis revealed that the effect of humor was stronger for semantic understanding than for morphosyntax. Given these findings, it seems that pragmatic development, too, might be facilitated through humor, though empirical evidence remains sparse. Whereas the precise relationship between humor and L2 pragmatic development remains to be specified, accounts of L2 learners playing in and with language suggest that a focus on humorous episodes can be used to gain insight into learners’ pragmatic competence. For example, Huth (2017), Lehtimaja (2011), and Reddington and Waring (2015) have illustrated emergent bilinguals’ sensitivity to both the sequential ordering of talk and turn-allocation procedures by carefully documenting learners’ ability to playfully manipulate these formulaic elements. In a similar vein, Ahn (2015) examined spontaneously occurring interaction in an English immersion camp for Korean adolescents. She argued that playful episodes of language use, and in particular those that involved the simultaneous manipulation of Korean and English, allowed learners to display their language awareness, as well as their pragmatic competence as bilinguals. Ahn’s work points to the need to consider the role of humor not only as a metacognitive tool for increasing language awareness, but also as a kind of talk that foregrounds the particular pragmatic dimensions of bilingual interactions (cf., Kramsch, 2009). Indeed, examinations of spontaneously occurring humor in L2 classrooms have shown that learners are quite attuned to and able to play with the functions of language. For example, L2 learners often engage in language play that serves not only as a form of entertainment, but also as a temporary respite from the boredom of language exercises and/or as a counterweight to the potential face-threat of being asked to perform in a language in which their proficiency is still developing (e.g., Broner & Tarone, 2001; Bushnell, 2009; Garland, 2010; Pomerantz & Bell, 2011). Within such work, researchers have looked closely at how learners engage in voicing, illustrating their awareness of the relationship between language and identity, and their skillfulness in deploying particular constellations of communicative resources to enact these identities in socially recognizable ways. For example, Shardakova (2016) looked at learners’ impromptu enactments of Russianness (e.g., speaking through the voice of an obedient Soviet laborer or a stereotypical Russian grandmother) to consider how these episodes might demonstrate their symbolic competence. Following Kramsch (2006, see also Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008), Shardakova describes symbolic competence as ‘the ability to access contextually relevant social memories and symbols, including social roles and identities’ (Shardakova, 2016, p. 180) and links this not only to the notion of ‘performativity’ within pragmatics, but also to a growing consensus within the field of L2 pedagogy that sees the development of interculturality as the end goal (Kramsch, 2014; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). Shardakova presents evidence of spontaneously occurring identity play across three levels of language instruction, novice through advanced, and notes both increasing ability to enact a range of socially recognizable identities as learners grow in proficiency, as well as greater sensitivity to Russian ways of voicing. Similarly, Hann (2017), in a study of the genesis and development of an in-joke between two students and a teacher in a business English class, further corroborates this view, noting how the identity play in this classroom functioned as an opportunity for pragmatic development. The joke 66

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originated during a role play, when one student provided an unsympathetic response after his interlocutor informed him that the data he needed was not available, as the person tasked with getting it ready had been sick. The student’s unconcerned ‘OK’ and rather cold ‘it’s not my problem’ were quickly identified as pragmatically inappropriate, and the reaction became rekeyed as humorous and then exaggerated over several days. Not only did this provide these three with a great deal of entertainment, it also drew the attention of the two students to the need to engage in phatic talk, even in a business environment where time is money and the ability to engage in transactional talk is likely to be considered of primary importance. Furthermore, this ongoing joke became a playful part of these students’ identities within the school. When their teacher explained that he would tell their next instructors a bit about these two students, one playfully suggested he explain that they were ‘good guys but not so much polite’ (p. 237). Thus, in addition to this episode likely raising their awareness of the important role of small talk in business, it also enabled them to access and use a broader array of communicative resources than they might have in a class that restricted play, and they were subsequently able to collaboratively and successfully link these linguistic performances to new, playful social identities. Does Teacher-Initiated or Teacher-Sanctioned Play Enhance Pragmatic Development? Notable in both Shardakova’s and Hann’s work is the role of ludic, teacher-sanctioned play in potentially fostering learners’ pragmatic development. Shardakova (2016), for instance, observed that instructors’ willingness to engage with and extend such play seemed to support the development of emergent bilinguals’ symbolic competence, as it provided a structured environment within which learners could test out their knowledge of and ability to speak through Russian voices. Similarly, Hann (2017), who was himself the teacher of the two focal students, collaborated with them in the development of this ongoing joke, rather than deeming it to be off-task, unhelpful behavior. It is also worth mentioning here the detailed description provided by Van Dam and Bannink (2017) of the first day of a Dutch EFL class. This, too, provides some evidence of the role of teacher-sanctioned humor in L2 pragmatic development. Within a largely traditional Initiation–Response–Feedback (IRF) structure, the teacher engaged in playful practices that allowed students to participate at their own pace, to access a variety of voices, and to engage in complex forms of talk. Ultimately, as Van Dam and Bannink argue, the activities of the first day laid the foundation for a classroom culture where play was encouraged, thus suggesting the potential for engagement with a wider variety of language forms and functions. Still, some caution must be exercised in interpreting these findings. As Petraki and Nguyen (2016) observed in their examination of Vietnamese EFL teachers’ attitudes toward humor in the classroom, teachers are strongly aware of the role that humor can play in building rapport and are open to the idea of humor as an aid for language learning, yet do not use it systematically for such ends. Descriptive accounts of teacher-initiated and teacher-sanctioned humor have revealed that although teachers may engage in frequent ludic language play, they often do so in ways that do not draw learners’ attention to specific aspects of language. And, even when teachers do manage to use humor to raise awareness around language use, their efforts are somewhat limited in scope. For example, in a case study of language play in an intermediate Spanish classroom, Sterling and Loewen (2015) found 209 instances of teacher-initiated language play, most of which involved the teacher using humor for general entertainment and rapport-building functions, such as telling funny stories. Of the 27 playful episodes that explicitly drew attention to language form or meaning, the majority focused on issues of lexicon, with just five episodes focused on grammar and four on pronunciation. While the authors noted that the design of their study precluded investigation of the teacher’s reasons for keying particular pedagogical utterances as humorous, 67

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nevertheless it suggests a need for more explicit attention to when and how teachers might use humor to foster L2 development. Despite documentation of the frequency of humor in L2 instruction, serious attention to the affordances of humor for classroom management and language development is rarely included as a topic in teacher education. For example, Illés and Akcan (2017) observed that although teacher trainers in Turkey and Hungary recognized the need for L2 instruction to include engagement with a wide array of forms of talk, student-teachers were advised to avoid or put an end to ‘off task’ talk in the classroom, as their mentors perceived such acts—often realized in a humorous key—as evidence of a breakdown in classroom management and a lack of teacher control. This advice, while intended to help student-teachers to develop agency as strong classroom managers, had the adverse (and likely unintentional) effect of closing down opportunities for students to engage in precisely the kind of spontaneous, nonserious talk that they might encounter outside the classroom. Indeed, as Waring, Reddington, and Tadic (2016) noted, experienced teachers often use specific types of humor, like ironic teases, to redirect student contributions that they perceive to be ‘off task,’ thus accomplishing the twin function of maintaining order and providing opportunities for meaningful, student-centered communication. Their work, like that of Illés and Akcan, suggests that teacher educators would be wise to consider how humor might figure into professional development activities for both novice teachers and more experienced practitioners. How Can We Integrate Humor into Classroom Activities to Facilitate Pragmatic Development? The understanding of humor as both an aid to pragmatic development and a resource for classroom management prompts us to consider what kinds of ‘pro-humor’ pedagogical activities teachers might want to implement in their classrooms. Davies (2015) provides an example of classroom talk that emerged in response to the description of a puzzling incident involving humor that an ESL user had experienced in her workplace and subsequently brought to her peers for discussion. Davies described how the metalinguistic act of presenting and analyzing this incident brought to the fore many pragmatic dimensions of language use, including the original participants’ and discussants’ existing frameworks for interpretation; the use of contextualization cues in the focal incident to index semantic meaning, key, stance, and identity; and the discussants’ emotional responses to the example. In addition, she considered how the spontaneous instances of humor that arose both in response to this and other classroom examples provided additional spaces for learners to test out their pragmatic competences and develop a richer understanding of the situated relationship between language and meaning. Although not intentionally aimed at exploring the affordances and limitations of humor as a pedagogical tool for pragmatic development, Sydorenko’s (2015) comparative study of online tasks versus face-to-face role plays to develop L2 learners’ awareness of request strategies in English showed that language play occurred frequently in the role plays, but not the computer-based tasks. In this study both groups received pragmatic instruction designed to raise their awareness of the features of polite requests and to help them notice the differences between requests made to individuals with equal or greater power and social distance (friends vs. professors). Each group then rehearsed this speech act in two scenarios. One group did this via traditional role plays between learners, while the others interacted individually with a computer program that provided fixed prompts to which the students responded. Although the computerbased tasks facilitated better focus on form, they prompted little negotiation of meaning because the computer responses were fixed, rather than responsive to the participant’s utterance. This resulted in longer, uninterrupted turns from the student. In contrast, the face-to-face role plays allowed for more negotiation of meaning and thus construction of more realistic exchange, but with less attention to form. Much of the humor that arose during these role plays took the form of socially unexpected and at times even contextually inappropriate instances of language use. 68

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This occurred particularly when students were asked to take on the unfamiliar role of professor, consequently provoking a feeling of mirth among the interlocutors. For instance, one student acting as the instructor asked the student, ‘Why you come in? [pause] I’m busy’ (Sydorenko, 2015, p. 347). Sydorenko argued that, though the presence of humor may have distracted learners from concerns about accuracy, it nevertheless resulted in much richer and more engaging instances of language use (cf. Kim & Kellogg, 2007; Pomerantz & Bell, 2007). Her work is important for helping us understand what types of activities invoke what types of language, thus allowing instructors to make more informed choices that balance accuracy and creativity (see also Kim & Kellogg, 2007; Tin, 2011, 2012).

Humor as a Resource for Successful L2 Interactions As we noted earlier, the functions of humor can be broadly understood as existing along two intersecting axes. On the one hand, humor varies with respect to the kinds of social relationships it creates between interlocutors. To this end, it can be more or less affiliative. On the other, humor also varies with respect to whether it preserves prevailing relations of power or disrupts them. Put simply, humor can stir things up and simmer them down (Jaspers, 2011). Yet, research on the use of humor by L2 users has long noted the tendency within both SLA scholarship and classroom contexts to cast acts of linguistic ingenuity as errors or deviations from the expected norms of language use and to attribute these moves to a lack of linguistic, sociolinguistic, or perhaps even pragmatic competence (Thomas, 1983). Yet, if we begin from the premise that humor is ubiquitous in everyday interaction and a means by which individuals accomplish important interactional work, we must remain mindful of learners’ agency in creating humor (Bell & Pomerantz, 2014). Studies of bi- and multilinguals spontaneously engaging in humor show that regardless of language proficiency, they are aware of the social functions that nonserious talk can play in interaction and can use it strategically. For example, Jwa (2017) examined the ways in which a multinational group of English users (Korean, Malaysian, Japanese) drew on various communicative strategies to manage the social tensions that arose while they were mutually engaged, via video conferencing, in a project for a synchronous, online class. Despite differences in their national origins and linguistic proficiencies, one common strategy used to defuse face threats was self-deprecating humor. The example provided is a rather painful one, in which a discussion of standards of beauty turns to the question of suntanning, and the typically darkerskinned Malaysians refer to their own skin color self-mockingly. Jwa argues that this strategy allowed them to establish affiliation with other students, although it must also be acknowledged that their self-deprecating humor contributed, unfortunately, to an apparently unified assessment by the group of lighter skin as preferable. This complex example does, however, demonstrate the power of self-mocking to ward off potential teasing, while at the same time increasing group affiliation. Similarly, Moody’s (2014) ethnographic, discourse-analytic account of a Westerner interning at a Japanese company showcased the ways in which this intern, David, was able to use humor to navigate between the low status accorded to him as a non-Japanese temporary employee and the ‘star power’ he embodied as an English-speaking foreigner. Moody carefully documented how David strategically manipulated both micro-level interactional resources such as language choice and various pragmatic conventions, as well as macro-level stereotypes about non-Japanese, to create a light-hearted foreigner or ‘gaijin’ identity for himself. This identity, Moody argued, was emergent in local interactional practices and central to David’s ability to manage potentially face-threatening acts, such as interrupting higher-status co-workers, requesting assistance, or creating affiliation across socially-marked ethnocultural differences. Within these interactions, humor played a central role in casting both David and the talk in which he was engaged as wellintentioned and aimed at increasing solidarity. This is an important finding, as it suggests that the 69

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successful use of humor is both an aspect of one’s interactional ability within settings that are marked as ‘intercultural,’ as well as a potential measure of one’s overall intercultural competence. Another example of an L2 user purposefully and (eventually) successfully using humor is provided by Laursen and Kolstrup (2017). They examine how Tora, a pre-teen relatively new to Denmark and the Danish school system, playfully manipulated aspects of Danish in a cooperative literacy activity to both create affiliation and assert her right to be attended to by her peers. Within the focal interaction, Tora oriented not only herself, but also her peers, to the humorous potential within particular linguistic forms by contextualizing her contributions to the literacy activity as non-serious. Although Tora’s peers at first resisted her attempts to engage them in the imaginary world that she was creating through play, they were eventually drawn into this new universe in which words like ‘hormones’ were mirthfully transcribed as ‘hairmones,’ thus fusing the academic work the girls were doing within the literacy activity with an ongoing and intertwined conversation about hairdos. As Laursen and Kolstrup write, Tora’s language play allowed her to overcome, to a certain extent, the limitations of her proficiency in Danish. She was able to perceive, rejoice in, and share phonetic, semantic, and aesthetic aspects of Danish and thus position herself in more agentive and ‘audible’ ways. Through language play, Tora became not merely a newcomer with poorly developed Danish, but ‘an amusing peer, a serious student, and a guide into a pre-sexual universe’ (p. 18). Research on English as a lingua franca (ELF), too, has been important in illuminating the ways in which L2 users draw on humor to negotiate not only the social dimensions of interactions, but also to create pragmatic norms that exist outside of any one national, linguistic, or cultural frame (e.g., Matsumoto, 2014; Pullin, 2010). Walkinshaw (2016), for example, looked at the occurrence of teasing within a corpus of naturally occurring ELF conversations in East and Southeast Asia. As he notes, prior research on ELF has indicated that ELF interactions tend to be characterized by (1) a willingness on the part of interlocutors to look beyond interpretations grounded in their pre-existing cultural norms and to privilege, instead, a view of pragmatic norms as interactionally emergent within the present interaction; (2) a shared open-mindedness toward acts of linguistic creativity and an ability to suspend interpretation; and (3) a preference for creating and maintaining solidarity, particularly in non-task-oriented interactions. Walkinshaw found that, in line with previous descriptions of ELF, the instances of teasing he identified in the corpus tended to be light-hearted and affiliative, and fell into the following categories: jocular mockery, jocular agreement with a target’s negative self-assessment, jocular insult, and banter. As Walkinshaw observed, despite the potential for teasing to disrupt social relationships and cause offense, there were no instances of this in his data. While Walkinshaw was cognizant of the limitations of his study, nevertheless his findings suggest that a focus on humor can reveal important information regarding the characteristics of particular speech communities (e.g., ELF). Skeptical of descriptions of ELF interactions showing interlocutors striving for affiliation, consensus, and solidarity, Kappa (2016) closely analyzed three extracts of talk from a dinner party in which participants of Southern and Eastern European nationalities living in Denmark diverged in their assessments of some social norm, and in which laughter was present. Teasing, which occurred extensively in her extracts, often communicates criticism, and thus is regularly used for social control, which also can make it a risky strategy, despite the amusement it engenders. Kappa’s analysis demonstrated how these ELF speakers used teasing in this way, with disaffilative outcomes, as well as to the exclusion of one participant’s perspective. This research indicates that ELF interactions are sensitive to contextual variation and we cannot expect that humor will be used in a uniformly affiliative fashion. Although the research we have reviewed thus far in this section indicates that L2 users can engage with humor in the target language in pragmatically appropriate and socially effective ways, some studies have demonstrated that humor can be a source of anxiety and even interactional trouble and marginalization for bilinguals, who are often not expected, by some interlocutors, 70

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to joke or understand humor (Bell, 2006; Hassall, 2004; Prodromou, 2007; Shardakova, 2013). L2 users need to be prepared for this possibility, and research on humor use by both L1 and L2 speakers can be a basis for helping them recognize ways that humor might be used as a resource for them in interaction.

Humor as an Aspect of the L2 to Be Learned Above, we reviewed recent studies suggesting ways that humor may be integrated into the classroom systematically to facilitate L2 pragmatic development in general. Another question to consider, however, is the extent to which humor itself may be teachable and, if so, what methods might be used to teach this aspect of pragmatics. It is only recently that this issue has been taken up as a serious line of inquiry, perhaps because humor is sometimes thought of as too creative, risky, or unpredictable to warrant being taught in a classroom setting. Yet, as noted in our discussion of key concepts associated with our topic, research has increasingly demonstrated that humor, like other forms of interaction, often follows generic conventions and norms of use. These findings (see Bell, 2011, for a review) can serve as a useful, empirically grounded point of departure for instruction. However, the question of what such instruction might look like and whether it can help students develop an ability to use, understand, and appreciate L2 humor has not yet been established. Initial studies do, however, suggest that humor can indeed be taught. To this end, we discuss two examples of studies that showcase the design and implementation of research-driven humor curricula. These studies are notable in that unlike other, more descriptive accounts of teaching humor, they incorporate pre- and posttest measures to gauge the effectiveness of their instruction (however, see also Hodson, 2014). Petkova (2013) designed a humor course that she taught to two intact classes of low-advanced students (35 total) enrolled in listening/note-taking classes at an Intensive English Program in California. The students were primarily from China and the Middle East, and were typically studying in preparation for enrolling in a U.S. university. The humor portion of the course was taught over eight weeks, with two 30-minute sessions per week. Petkova based her curriculum primarily on Wulf’s (2010) proposal for a humor curriculum, which drew on current humor theory to establish a set of microskills needed to increase students’ humor competence. The lessons she designed covered different types of humor and their functions, different types of laughter, and various ways that utterances are contextualized as humorous in conversation. Her students kept humor diaries and discussed their experiences with L2 humor in class, as well as analyzing video clips illustrative of American humor. Three instruments were used both before and after the course to assess student learning, as well as their perceptions of their learning: a humor questionnaire, in which students answered questions on a Likert scale about their perceptions of L2 humor, including the extent to which they enjoyed and understood it; a questionnaire in which they answered questions after watching a humorous video clip, in order to gauge changes to their comprehension; and a role play designed to assess changes in their ability to produce humor in English. Her analysis found a significant increase in the students’ perceptions of their ability to appreciate and understand American humor, and this finding was confirmed by their analysis of the video at the end of the course, which showed that actual comprehension, as well as appreciation, also increased. There was, however, no significant difference in their ability to produce humor. Where Petkova’s (2013) work cast a wide net, Kim (2017) and Kim and Lantolf (2016) focused her efforts more narrowly, aiming to improve the identification and comprehension of one specific aspect of humor: sarcasm (see also Chapter 10 in this volume). Kim’s (2014) research demonstrated that sarcasm tends to be challenging even to bilingual Koreans with advanced proficiency in their L2, English. She found that not only is sarcasm comparatively rare in Korean, but the schemas Koreans used to identify and understand it were substantially different from Americans’ conceptualizations. This study allowed Kim to identify specific areas of difficulty 71

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and to design a sophisticated pedagogical intervention, which she then used to examine whether and to what extent she might be able to improve native Korean speakers’ receptive skills with respect to sarcasm in English. Because her research had demonstrated that her participants would need to develop new concepts regarding sarcasm, she developed a series of SCOBAs (Schema for the Orienting Basis of Action) that the learners could use to assist them in identifying and understanding American sarcasm (Kim, 2017; Kim & Lantolf, 2016). To test the teachability of sarcasm, as well as the effectiveness of instruction on learners’ identification and comprehension of sarcastic utterances, Kim (2017; see also Kim & Lantolf, 2016) worked individually one hour per week for 10 weeks with nine L1 Korean students enrolled in graduate programs in the U.S. During instruction, the students learned to use the SCOBAs to analyze examples of sarcasm, mainly taken from video clips of U.S. television shows. The eight SCOBAs were designed to help the participants assess a sarcastic speaker’s goals and intentions; conceptualize irony broadly, as well as recognize subcategories of it; identify facial, gestural, and bodily cues to sarcasm, and go through a series of steps to systematically assess whether or not an utterance was likely to be sarcastic. In her analysis of pre-, post-, and four-week delayed posttest scores, participants showed significant improvement in their ability to identify American sarcasm, and this change proved durable. Much of the improvement came from using a broader range of cues. In addition, qualitative analysis of their interviews indicated not only that their concept of sarcasm had developed and was more detailed and accurate than at the outset, but their understanding of language use and learning had also expanded to include a greater focus on speaker intentions, rather than merely on decoding the L2. These two studies suggest that instruction targeted at raising learners’ awareness of certain aspects of L2 humor can result in an increase in receptive skills. It is unclear, however, the extent to which an improved ability to recognize and appreciate humor is worth devoting eight to ten hours of course time to (or, in Kim’s case, time spent working with individuals). Such curricular decisions, it must be acknowledged, are tied to learners’ reasons for seeking language instruction and their desires for an explicit focus on humor. Whereas humor is a legitimate and potentially fruitful area for intervention, the intensity of the initiatives described in the previous sections must be taken into consideration. For example, it remains to be seen whether similar gains could be made with less intensive efforts. Likewise, we know little about what other aspects of humor might benefit from instruction. Thus, rather than thinking about humor as an isolated aspect of the L2 to be learned, it may instead make more sense to purposefully integrate it into our instruction more generally. For example, in speech act instruction humor might be presented as one strategy for doing facework, rather than as a separate kind of language use. Yet, despite these cautions, it is important to recognize that the mere act of seeing humor as a teachable element of the L2 represents a shift within the field of language education, as humor has long been regarded as too abstract to teach or as impervious to instruction. Thus, we see considerable potential in studies, like those of Petkova and Kim, that provide evidence as to the value of humor as an object of L2 instruction.

Conclusion and Future Directions As our review has demonstrated, a small but growing body of research has emerged within applied linguistics to address how L2 users engage in and with humor. Such work has provided accounts of the ways in which L2 learners deploy humor in interaction and has begun to illustrate what a focus on humor might contribute to our understanding of pragmatic development. Our descriptions of humor use have come largely from qualitative, discourse analytic work that draws on naturally occurring instances in the data. Future studies will require diversification of the research methods, such as the use of more longitudinal, cross-sectional, comparative, and experimental designs, as well as more attention to issues of instruction. 72

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More Longitudinal and Cross-sectional Studies of L2 Humor Development The developmental path of L2 humor is little understood. Here, Shively’s (2013; see also 2018) longitudinal case study of the changes to one study-abroad student’s humor is notable and an excellent model for future inquiry, as she draws on a range of data (recordings of face-to-face interaction, learner diaries, questionnaire data, interviews with participants), as well as a 15-week data collection period. The advantage of this is that she is able to illustrate how individual L2 learners not only used humor in Spanish, but also how their use of humor changed over time and was mediated by particular factors (setting, participants, desire to be perceived as witty, etc.). More developmental accounts, particularly across different linguistic and cultural contexts, would allow us to assess the generalizability of Shively’s findings. Shardakova’s (2016) account of humor development provides a useful model of what a crosssectional design might look like. As we noted previously, Shardakova examined the use of humorous voicing across three levels of Russian language instruction, documenting the frequency and types of humor that occurred in order to understand the role of language proficiency in mediating humor use. In simultaneously collecting data across novice, intermediate, and advanced Russian courses, Shardakova was able to document, within a relatively short time period, changes in humor use that may occur with growing L2 proficiency. In this way cross-sectional studies complement our understanding of humor development in ways that do not overly tax learner participation or researcher time. More studies that use longitudinal and cross-sectional designs will allow us to see not only how L2 humor abilities develop, but also how the interest and willingness of emergent bilinguals to engage in and with L2 humor changes over time.

More Comparative Research In addition, studies of humor in interaction should also begin to include greater diversity of contexts and languages to enable comparison. While the growing body of research into L1 conversational humor practices is a helpful resource for those who wish to integrate humor into their classrooms, extensive gaps remain, for instance, in our understanding of the multimodal means of contextualizing humor, of the typical practices speakers engage in when negotiating various types of humor and responses to them, and in understanding the humor forms and practices of communities of speakers of languages other than English. Here, a great deal of work comparing Australian humor practices with those of other cultures is an excellent model (see, e.g. Béal & Mullan, 2017; Haugh & Bousfield, 2012; Sinkeviciute 2017a, b, c; see also Taylor, 2016, comparing mock politeness in the U.K. and Italy). This type of work follows in the vein of cross-cultural studies of speech acts that began in the 1980s, which have proved helpful for understanding L2 pragmatic development, as well as providing information for L2 pedagogy. While the discourse completion tasks used by those early studies have not yet been attempted, Sinkeviciute (2017a, b, c) has found comparisions of different national versions of the reality show Big Brother to be a fruitful source of data for comparing humor, as well as metalinguistic evaluations of humor across cultures, while others have drawn on linguistic corpora (Haugh & Bousfield, 2012; Taylor, 2016) or naturally occurring interaction (Béal & Mullan, 2017). Of particular interest to language educators (and therefore, we hope, to L2 pragmatics researchers) are comparative studies of the use of humor across cultures that we can use to glean information for teaching and to help us understand and explain humor use to students.

More Experimental Studies In addition to more comparative research, we need studies to assess the effectiveness of pedagogical interventions involving humor. Clearly, many aspects of pragmatics benefit from instruction (see Taguchi, 2015, for a review; see also Chapter 19 in this volume). What remains to be 73

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seen, however, is the extent to which strategically and purposefully integrating humor into existing pragmatics instruction might further facilitate pragmatic development, as well as increasing learner ease and ability to engage with L2 humor. For instance, we must consider whether, like sarcasm, other types of humor (e.g., teasing, hyperbole) might be taught. Research could be designed to teach and assess students’ understanding of sociocultural norms of humor use, in much the same way that language instructors typically help students gain awareness of other norms of interaction, such as talk in academic contexts or businesses. Production of humor, too, seems to remain a challenge for L2 users, so it is worth asking whether some methods of instruction might help them develop productive skills with respect to humor. Our understanding will be greatly enhanced through research that uses pre- and posttests, as well as a comparison between a treatment and control group. This will allow us to assess the effectiveness of instructional interventions. A great deal remains to be learned through and about the intersection of L2 pragmatic development and humor.

Further reading Bell, N., & Pomerantz, A. (2015). Humor in the classroom: A guide for language teachers and educational researchers. New York: Routledge. This book provides an accessible and comprehensive account of the role of humor in L2 teaching, L2 development, and L2 classroom interaction. It is aimed at teachers and researchers who are curious about the effects of humor on L2 development and about how to integrate humor in theoretically and pedagogically principled ways. Cook, G. (2000). Language play, language learning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cook’s monograph on the affordances of language play for L2 learning and instruction remains a theoretical touchstone for researchers working in this still nascent area of inquiry. Here, Cook brings together work from an array of disciplines, ranging from evolutionary biology, to cognitive psychology, to applied linguistics, to argue for more attention to nonserious language use in both studies of L2 language development in our approach to L2 instruction. Reddington, E. (2015). Humor and play in language classroom interaction: A review of the literature. Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 15(2), 22–38. This state-of-the art review offers readers a detailed account of what research has revealed about the forms, functions, and developmental affordances of nonserious language use in L2 classroom contexts. Reddington describes how applied linguists have oriented to and documented instances of language play and humor in instructional settings, providing a thoughtful assessment of what the existing research base has taught us and what questions remain to be addressed.

References Ahn, S.-Y. (2015). Exploring language awareness through students’ engagement in language play. Language Awareness, 25(1–2), 40–54. Attardo, S. (2001). Humor and irony in interaction: From mode adoption to failure of detection. In L. Anolli, R. Ciceri, & G. Riva (Eds.), Say not to say: New perspectives on miscommunication (pp. 166–185). Amsterdam: IOS Press. Attardo, S., & Raskin, V. (1991). Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 4(3/4), 293–348. Béal, C., & Mullan, K. (2017). The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits: French and Australian English. Language & Communication, 55, 24–40. Bell, N. (2006). Interactional adjustments in humorous intercultural communication. Intercultural Pragmatics, 3(1), 1–28. Bell, N. (2007). Humor comprehension: Lessons learned from cross-cultural interaction. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 20(4), 367–387. Bell, N. (2011). Humor scholarship and TESOL: Applying findings and establishing a research agenda. TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 134–159. 74

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Bell, N. (2012a). Comparing playful and non-playful incidental attention to form. Language Learning, 62(1), 236–265. Bell, N. (2012b). Formulaic language, creativity, and language play in a second language. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 189–205. Bell, N. (2014). Second language acquisition. In S. Attardo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of humor studies (Vol.2, pp. 672–673). Los Angeles: Sage. Bell, N. (2015). Humour and language play. In R. Jones (Ed.), Routledge handbook of language and creativity (pp. 148–160). New York: Routledge. Bell, N. (2017). Humor and SLA. In S. Attardo (Ed.), Routledge handbook of the linguistics of humor (pp. 444–455). New York: Routledge. Bell, N. (2018). Pragmatics, humor studies, and the study of interaction. In N. Norrick and C. Ilie (eds), Pragmatics and its Interfaces (pp. 291–309). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bell, N., & Pomerantz, A. (2014). Reconsidering language teaching through a focus on humor. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 1(1), 31–47. Bell, N., & Pomerantz, A. (2015). Humor in the classroom: A guide for language teachers and educational researchers. New York: Routledge. Broner, M., & Tarone, E. (2001). Is it fun? Language play in a fifth-grade Spanish immersion classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 85(3), 363–379. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978/1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bushnell, C. (2009). ‘Lego my keego!’: An analysis of language play in a beginning Japanese as a foreign language classroom. Applied Linguistics, 30(1), 49–69. Davies, C. (2015). Humor in intercultural interaction as both content and process in the classroom. Humor, 28(3), 375–395. Forman, R. (2011). Humorous language play in a Thai EFL classroom. Applied Linguistics, 32(5), 541–565. Garland, J. (2010). ‘I am under cool’: Humorous mock-translation as a claim to expertise in an Irish language class. Sociolinguistic Studies, 4(1), 27–44. Gumperz, J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hann, D. (2017). Building rapport and a communal sense of identity through play in a second language classroom. In N. Bell (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play (pp. 219–244). Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hassall, T. (2004). Through a glass, darkly: When learner pragmatics is misconstrued. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 997–1002. Haugh, M., & Bousfield, D. (2012). Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1099–1114. Hodson, R. (2014). Teaching ‘humour competence.’ Proceedings of CLaSIC 2014, 149–161. Huth, T. (2017). Playing with turns, playing with action? A social interactionist perspective. In N. Bell (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play (pp. 47–72). Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Illés, E., & Akcan, S. (2017). Bringing real-life language use into EFL classrooms. ELT Journal, 71(1), 3–12. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. Jaspers, J. (2011). Talking like a ‘zerolingual’: Ambiguous linguistic caricatures at an urban secondary school. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(5), 1264–1278. Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 79–95). New York: Irvington Publishers. Jwa, S. (2017). Facework among L2 speakers: A close look at intercultural communication. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 38(6), 517–529. Kappa, K. (2016). Exploring solidarity and consensus in English as lingua franca interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 95, 16–33. Kim, J. (2014). How Korean EFL learners understand sarcasm in L2 English. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 193–206. Kim, J. (2017). Teaching language learners how to understand sarcasm in L2 English. In N. Bell (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play (pp. 317–346). Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Kim, J., & Lantolf, J. (2016). Developing conceptual understanding of sarcasm in L2 English through explicit instruction. Language Teaching Research, 22(2), 208–229. Kim, Y.-H., & Kellogg, D. (2007). Rules out of roles: Some differences in play language and their developmental significant. Applied Linguistics, 28(1), 25–45. 75

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Kramsch, C. (2006). From communicative competence to symbolic competence. The Modern Language Journal, 90(2), 249–252. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kramsch, C. (2014). Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 296–311. Kramsch, C., & Whiteside, A. (2008). Language ecology in multilingual settings: Towards a theory of symbolic competence. Applied Linguistics, 29(4), 645–671. Laursen, H., & Kolstrup, K. (2017). Multilingual children between real and imaginary worlds: Language play as resignifying practice. Applied Linguistics. Early view. Lehtimaja, I. (2011). Teach-oriented address terms in students’ reproach turns. Linguistics and Education, 22, 348–363. Liddicoat, A., & Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural language teaching and learning. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Lucas, T. (2005). Language awareness and comprehension through puns among ESL learners. Language Awareness, 14(4), 221–238. Martin, R. (2007). The psychology of humor: An integrative approach. Boston: Elsevier Academic Press. Matsumoto, Y. (2014). Collaborative co-construction of humorous interaction among ELF speakers. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3(1), 81–107. Moody, S. (2014). ‘Well, I’m a gaijin’: Constructing identity through English and humor in the international workplace. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 75–88. Petkova, M. (2013). Effects and perceptions of a humor competence curriculum in an intensive English program in southern California (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Alliant International University, San Diego, CA. Petraki, E., & Nguyen, H. (2016). Do Asian EFL teachers use humor in the classroom? A case study of Vietnamese EFL university teachers. System, 61, 98–109. Pomerantz, A., & Bell, N. (2007). Learning to play, playing to learn: FL learners as multicompetent language users. Applied Linguistics, 28(4), 556–578. Pomerantz, A., & Bell, N. (2011). Humor as safe house in the foreign language classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 95(1), 148–161. Prodromou, L. (2007). Bumping into creative idiomaticity. English Today, 23(1), 14–25. Pullin, P. (2010). Small talk, rapport, and international communicative competence. Journal of Business Communication, 47(4), 455–476. Reddington, E., & Waring, H. (2015). Understanding the sequential resources for doing humor in the language classroom. Humor, 28(1), 1–23. Shardakova, M. (2013). ‘I joke you don’t’: Second language humor and intercultural identity construction. In C. Kinginger (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad (pp. 207–238). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Shardakova, M. (2016). Playful performances of Russianness and L2 symbolic competence. In K. BardoviHarlig & J. C. Félix-Brasdefer (Eds.), Pragmatics & language learning (Vol.14, pp. 179–206). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Shively, R. (2013). Learning to be funny in Spanish during study abroad: L2 humor development. The Modern Language Journal, 97(4), 930–946. Shively, R. (2018). Learning and using conversational humor in a second language during study abroad. Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Sinkeviciute, V. (2017a). Funniness and ‘the preferred reaction’ to jocularity in Australian and British English: An analysis of interviewees’ metapragmatic comments. Language & Communication, 55, 41–54. Sinkeviciute, V. (2017b). ‘It’s just a bit of cultural [...] lost in translation’: Australian and British intracultural and intercultural metapragmatic evaluations of jocularity. Lingua, 197, 50–67. Sinkeviciute, V. (2017c). What makes teasing impolite in Australian and British English? ‘Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing.’ Journal of Politeness Research, 13(2), 175–207. Sterling, S., & Loewen, S. (2015). The occurrence of teacher-initiated playful LREs in a Spanish L2 classroom. System, 53, 73–83. Sydorenko, T. (2015). The use of computer-delivered structured tasks in pragmatic instruction: An exploratory study. Intercultural Pragmatics, 12(3), 333–362. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48(1), 1–50. Taylor, C. (2016). Mock politeness and culture: Perceptions and practice in UK and Italian data. Intercultural Pragmatics, 13(4), 463–498. 76

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Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91–112. Tin, T. B. (2011). Language creativity and co-emergence of form and meaning in creative writing tasks. Applied Linguistics, 32(2), 215–235. Tin, T. B. (2012). Freedom, constraints and creativity in language learning tasks: New task features. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 6(2), 177–186. Tocalli-Beller, A., & Swain, M. (2007). Riddles and puns in the ESL classroom: Adults talk to learn. In A. Mackey (Ed.), Conversational interaction in second language acquisition: Empirical studies (pp. 143–167). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Van Dam, J. & Bannink, A. (2017). The first English (EFL) lesson: Initial settings or the emergence of a playful classroom culture. In N. Bell (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play (pp. 245–279). Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Walkinshaw, I. (2016). Teasing in informal contexts in English as an Asian lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 5(2), 249–271. Waring, H., Reddington, E., & Tadic, N. (2016). Responding artfully to student-initiated departures in the adult ESL classroom. Linguistics and Education, 33, 28–39. Wulf, D. (2010). A humor competence curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 44(1), 155–169.

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6 Prosody in L2 Pragmatics Research Okim Kang and Alyssa Kermad

Introduction Prosody refers to suprasegmental features of speech, including tone, sentence prominence, word stress, pausing, speech rate, and pitch. Prosody extends over one single sound segment in an utterance and encompasses other suprasegmental aspects of speech such as pitch, tone, duration, intensity, and voice quality that may affect meaning (Chun, 2002). Empirical investigations of prosody have been central to several research areas, especially in the area of speech perception (e.g., Kang 2010, 2012; Kang, Rubin, & Pickering, 2010). Using the speech analysis software Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2016), researchers have analyzed a range of prosodic features to evaluate how these features influence listeners’ judgments of nonnative speakers’ speech. Prosody has also been incorporated into high-stakes assessments for the evaluation of second language (L2) learners’ speech proficiency (e.g., International English Language Testing System, Test of English as a Foreign Language, and Cambridge English Language Assessment). While prosody is central in managing interaction (Brazil, 1997), prosodic features, especially intonation, are not intuitive for L2 learners (Levis, 1999). Yet, learners need to acquire prosodic features in order to convey meaning accurately and appropriately (Chun, 1988). In other words, not only must learners understand linguistic systems of a language (e.g., grammar), but they also have to understand prosody in order to interact effectively in the target language. Prosodic aspects of speech are critical in the effective management of interaction in L2 and essentially in pragmatic competence, which involves the ability to convey and interpret meaning accurately and appropriately in social interaction. In this chapter, we attempt to illustrate the relationship between prosody and L2 pragmatics. The chapter begins with an overview of well-established theories and conceptual frameworks of prosody. Then, we present a survey of the current empirical findings on prosody in pragmatics. We then provide an appraisal of this literature and conclude with implications for future research and teaching. Throughout our discussion, readers should keep in mind that, while we present general trends, patterns, and examples of how prosody and pragmatics are closely linked, prosody is infinitely dynamic, and as such, there is no straightforward one-to-one correspondence between a prosodic pattern and a pragmatic function. Hence, the purpose of this chapter is to highlight general relationships between prosody and pragmatics, providing an overall picture of which prosodic features are commonly associated with what contexts of use. 78

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Theoretical Frameworks Prosody is critical in the study of pragmatics (Archer, Aijmer, & Wichmann, 2012; Brazil, 1997; Romero-Trillo, 2012). When producing an utterance, speakers are in control of the meaning they wish to convey as they can manipulate prosodic features to transmit their intended meaning (Cheang & Pell, 2008). For example, in English, intonation patterns (or pitch contours) contribute significantly to the meaning of an entire utterance, while a change in pitch can create different meanings for the same utterance (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992). Two major frameworks have been proposed to conceptualize prosodic systems: (1) the British framework represented by David Brazil, and (2) the American framework represented by Janet Pierrehumbert. This section presents these two models. Although most research on prosody in pragmatics does not make distinctions between these two, these theoretical models are important as they can assist with our understanding of the role of prosody in meaning making. Brazil’s model is commonly used by applied linguists because of its focus on real-life communication, as well as its application to discourse analysis and language teaching and learning (Cauldwell, 2013). In fact, because of its focus on discourse, communication, and pragmatics, this framework has been used to prosodically transcribe language in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (Cheng & Warren, 2005), which involves naturalistic interactive data. On the other hand, Pierrehumbert’s framework is commonly used by computational linguists to model speech-to-text synthesis in a quantitative manner.

David Brazil’s Prosodic Framework Emerging from the Birmingham School of Discourse Analysis, David Brazil developed his prosodic framework to discuss prosody in discourse. In Brazil’s (1997) book, The Communicative Value of Intonation in English, he presented the prosodic functions of intonation and prominence, focusing on how they help express pragmatic meaning in interaction. Brazil’s model is based on the shared world between the speaker and the listener, or the context of interaction. In the shared world, the tone unit (a minimal unit that can carry intonation, i.e., a thought group) promotes the conversation between two speakers. Prominence (i.e., highlighted words) and tone (i.e., rising, falling, and level tone) appear in the course of interaction based on the exchange of new and given information in discourse. Sentence prominence is a word highlighted by the speaker within a sentence and is indicated by three prosodic features: (1) pitch (measured in hertz at the onset of a vowel); (2) loudness (measured in amplitude of a wave); and (3) length (measured on the duration of the vowel). Sentence prominence is at a higher level than word stress, although both involve the same features of pitch, loudness, and vowel duration. Word stress follows a rule-based system because there is an expected pattern of stress within a word. In contrast, sentence prominence is part of a discourse-based system because any word in a sentence can carry prominence, even function words. Sentence prominence, therefore, is affected by decisions that a speaker makes in discourse in real time (e.g., which information to emphasize). Central to Brazil’s notion of speaker–listener convergence (or agreement) is the distinction between proclaiming and referring intonation. Intonation patterns can be categorized as proclaiming (fall or rise-fall) or referring (rise or fall-rise), as shown in the examples below: Fall: Rise fall: Rise: Fall rise: 79

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Generally, when the speaker uses a referring tone (rise or fall-rise) in an utterance, he/she does not change the state of speaker–listener agreement because the utterance involves information of which the listener has previous knowledge. In contrast, the use of a proclaiming tone (fall or rise-fall) changes the state of speaker–listener agreement because the utterance transmits new information, upon which the listener cannot claim to agree. There is a third tone, i.e., the level tone (neither rising nor falling). The level tone can signal incomplete tone units, often characterizing prayers, liturgical discourse, verbal planning, and filled pauses (Brazil, 1997). The choice of tone can be influenced by contextual and discoursal factors. For example, dominant speakers (e.g., teachers, doctors, parents) can use either a proclaiming or referring tone, but non-dominant speakers (e.g., students, patients, children) do not have such a full range of tone options (Brazil, 1997). If this dominant/non-dominant relationship is not pre-established, real-time tone choice attributes this role to a speaker. Cheng and Warren (2005) validated this phenomenon empirically. They found that rising tone, instead of fall-rising, was more frequently used by the speaker in the dominant role. According to Cheng, Greaves, and Warren (2008), use of these tone choices can fall on a continuum with daily conversations being almost 50% (rising):50% (falling) and with professors in academic supervising positions using more of the rising tone. Business meetings have the next most unequal distribution with supervisors using more rising tones than falling tones. Besides the speaker role, tone choice depends on the types of communicative functions that a speaker performs (e.g., expressing forcefulness and adding emphasis to information). In Brazil’s model, tone choice directly affects pragmatic outcomes because each tone is associated with a particular communicative value in the context of interaction. Brazil underscores the importance of considering the consequences that a particular tone choice brings to communication. Because pragmatic meaning is communicated through tone, when choosing a particular tone, the speaker expects the listener to understand the value of that choice. If the listener does not understand the value, the speaker must re-evaluate the communicative situation and re-consider his/her tone choice. Brazil’s concept of pitch concord can explain how a speaker achieves a communicative function by using a specific tone. Pitch concord deals with how speakers match (or do not match) pitch with interlocutors. When taking turns during interaction between two speakers (Speaker A and Speaker B), the ending tone (pitch) of speaker A’s turn should be in line with the beginning tone (pitch) of speaker B’s turn. Successful communicators are expected to match their pitch with their interlocuter’s pitch.

Janet Pierrehumbert’s Prosodic Framework Janet Pierrehumbert’s prosodic framework (1980) was developed in the U.S.A. in collaboration with her colleague and a computer scientist, Julia Hirschberg. This model holds its roots in a generative tradition which presupposes an underlying structure of a language. Pierrehumbert’s model was initially created for the analysis of speech synthesis and recognition. Pierrehumbert’s system has three components of tone: pitch accents, phrase accents, and boundary tones (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990, p. 271). Phrase accents mark the end of a phrase, and boundary tones appear at the end of an intonational phrase. There are six pitch accents (H*, L*, H* +L, H+L*, L*+H, L+ H*) which occur on stressed syllables, and they mark the information status of the item. These six tones indicate tone status that determines the shape of the pitch movement. A high tone is represented as H* where H indicates a high tone and * stands for the alignment of this tone with a stressed syllable. In contrast, L indicates a low tone with * representing a stressed syllable. Pitch accent tones are marked at every accented syllable. The lack of a pitch accent assignment for a syllable usually means that the syllable is not accented. In Example (1), high pitch accents (H*) mark the ‘new’ information. In other words, ‘train’, ‘leaves’, and ‘seven’ are the new information provided to the listener. 80

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(1) The train leaves at seven H*  H*  H* Hirschberg (2004) discusses the discourse phenomenon of intonational variation. For instance, while pronouns are function words (as opposed to content words) and thus typically receive no prominence, they may receive prominence depending on the discourse context in which they appear. Pitch range and pausing are important in establishing a topic structure, while amplitude (loudness) can signal a topic shift. Prominence can distinguish discourse markers from their adverbial or structural role in a sentence. Finally, intonation can distinguish speech act types (e.g., direct or indirect speech act), as well as question types (e.g., yes/no or wh-questions). While there are a number of similarities between Brazil’s and Pierrehumbert’s frameworks regarding tone, pitch, and prominence descriptions, differences are also notable. First, Pierrehumbert’s model takes a componential approach, where individual pitch accents on prominent syllables are marked within an intonation phrase (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990). Brazil’s framework, on the other hand, emphasizes the movement from the last prominent syllable in the tone unit to the end of the tone unit. That is, Brazil’s model accounts for the tonal movement in the tone unit, not just the prominent syllable. Another difference is that, unlike Brazil’s model, Pierrehumbert’s model does not emphasize the first prominent syllable in the tone unit which has been found to have a great deal of interpretive power (e.g., marking a shift in topic). Finally, Brazil’s framework presents a three-level analysis of pitch height on prominent syllables (low, mid, and high), whereas Pierrehumbert’s framework has only two (high and low). Despite these differences, both models explicate the critical prosodic features of human discourse.

Survey of Prosody Research in L1 and L2 Pragmatics While there is a limited body of research on the prosody–pragmatics interface, much of what is available focuses on indirect meaning. Indirect meaning is often the result of a speaker flouting one or more of Grice’s (1975) maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Indirect meaning has been studied in relation to pragmatic concepts such as speech acts (e.g., indirect refusals), implicature, irony, humor, and impoliteness. Although indirect meaning and Grice’s maxims are not new to the field of pragmatics, a slew of research investigating the prosodic–pragmatic interface in these areas has surfaced within the last ten years, mostly with a focus on irony. Other research investigating the role of prosody in pragmatics is found in the areas of politeness, speech acts, and discourse. We will review these areas of investigation in the following section to provide an overview of the current literature on the prosody–pragmatics interface. Due to the paucity of L2 studies on prosody and pragmatics, our review includes both L1 and L2 studies that explored the connection between prosody and pragmatics.

Indirect Meaning and Prosody Some studies have begun to explore the link between indirect meaning and prosody both quantitatively and qualitatively. Of these, the connection between irony and prosody has been well-documented. In fact, multiple prosodic cues are thought to accompany irony, including intonation, stress, pausing, speech rate, and amplitude (loudness) (Bryant & Fox Tree, 2005; Kalbermatten, 2007; Rockwell, 2000; Taguchi, Gomez-Laich, & Arrufat-Marqués, 2016; Yus Ramos, 1998). Through acoustic analyses using the program Multi Speech (a Windows version of the Computerized Speech Lab for speech visualization), Bryant and Fox Tree (2005) found that, while vocal quality can systematically be associated with irony, there is not a oneto-one match between tone of voice and irony. To this end, ‘an utterance can be sarcastic, angry, 81

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inquisitive, provide new information, and be spoken with authority all at the same time’ (Bryant & Fox Tree, 2005, p. 272). Irony is therefore a dynamic involvement of many interactional features. Another study, by Taguchi et al. (2016), looked at L2 comprehension of irony. While not taking an instrumental investigation of prosody itself, their work explored the way in which L2 Spanish learners used paralinguistic cues to infer ironic meaning encoded in a series of dialogues presented via computer. Those paralinguistic cues included auditory features of the voice quality, such as sarcastic or negative tones. Similarly, Shively, Menke, and Manzon-Omundson (2008) asked L2 Spanish learners to assess tone of film segments by checking all features that applied (e.g., sincere, sarcastic/ironic, friendly, etc.). While they found that their question on tone was not methodologically ideal as a stand-alone question, they did note that participants seemed to have been able to pick up multiple tones of irony (e.g., joking, criticizing, etc.).

Politeness/Impoliteness and Prosody Speakers can convey politeness and impoliteness through a combination of strategies. See the following examples. (2) X:  Can you come to our dinner party this weekend? Y:  Well, I actually have a lot of work to do. (3) X:  Can you come to our dinner party this weekend? Y:  No. While the invitation is the same in both dialogues, the refusal in Example 2 can be perceived as polite with a hesitation marker (‘well’) and hedging (‘actually’), as well as through an avoidance of an explicit ‘no’, while the refusal in Example 3 is extremely direct and thus can be considered impolite. Besides these syntactic and lexical signals, politeness or impoliteness can also be conveyed through prosody, as illustrated in the following dialogues (words in all caps signal sentence prominence). (4) X:  I am thinking of applying to grad school. Y:  YOU’RE applying to grad school? (5) X:  I am thinking of applying to grad school. Y:  You’re applying to GRAD school? In these two dialogues (Examples 4 and 5), both Speaker Y’s parts are exactly the same at the syntactic level, yet different at the prosodic level. Y’s utterance in Example 4 can be perceived to be impolite because prominence is placed on ‘you’re’, exhibiting Y’s disbelief with X’s applying to grad school, which may sound like an insult to X. In contrast, Y’s utterance in Example 5 is not associated with a politeness value because it simply conveys the speaker’s surprise or excitement with Y’s decision to pursue graduate school. In fact, while scarce, research has documented the role of prosody in signaling politeness and impoliteness. In their seminal work on positive and negative politeness, Brown and Levinson (1987) discuss the qualitative role of prosody in marking certain politeness strategies. 82

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For instance, higher pitch can be used alongside hedging to signal negative politeness (acknowledging the addressee’s feelings to be unimpeded on), while intonation and stress can be used to signal exaggeration in positive politeness (or the positive self-image of the addressee). Culpeper (2011) takes this concept further through an instrumental analysis of two speech segments of judges on Pop Idol (a British singing talent show). Parallel prosodic structures, a faster speech rate, and some marked pitch movement were used by a judge to signal a polite comment. On the other hand, a slower speech rate, more pausing, a low pitch range, and an overall monotonous speech pattern were used by another judge to signal boredom and impoliteness. Culpeper’s study highlights the role of prosody in signaling (im)politeness and a speaker’s stance.

Speech Acts and Prosody Speech acts, which involve a speaker’s communicative intention or purpose, rely heavily on prosody for their transmission of meaning (Archer et al., 2012). Prominence and intonation are largely responsible in signaling speech acts (Archer et al., 2012; Brazil, 1997). Most prosodic work on speech acts has been conducted on the topic of directives (yes/no or wh- questions). While Pierrehumbert’s framework has been used to describe patterns of yes/no or wh- questions (Hirschberg, 2004), we draw on Brazil’s (1997) model here, as this model is based on discourse in action. Brazil argues that both yes/no questions and information questions (wh-questions) can have a rising or falling tone in the proclaiming vs. referring system of interaction, although traditionally wh-questions have been associated with falling tones and yes/no questions with rising tones. Consider the following sentences that have the exact same words and prominent syllables, but differ in intonational patterns (Brazil, 1997, p. 106): (6) // Do you prefer THAT one // (fall) (7) // Do you prefer THAT one // (rise) The question in Example 6 spoken with a falling tone illustrates the speaker’s intention to learn which one the listener prefers; that is, the speaker has some doubt about the listener’s preferred choice. Once the listener responds with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the state of convergence between the speaker and listener becomes altered, meaning that new information has been transmitted. On the other hand, in the second yes/no question, spoken with a rising tone (Example 7), the speaker has an assumption about the one that the listener prefers, yet asks the question to receive confirmation (or denial) on this assumption. Hence, prior to asking the question, an assumption has already been made, and the common ground between the speaker and the listener has already been established. Information questions (wh-questions) follow the same pragmatic patterns as yes/no questions: A speaker uses referring tones to present information which s/he thinks has been negotiated but lacks confirmation, while proclaiming tones project information which has not yet been negotiated. This is illustrated in the following set of informational questions (Examples 8 and 9) (Brazil, 1997, p. 111): (8) // WHAT TIME is it? // (fall) (9) // WHAT TIME is it? // (fall-rise) 83

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In Example 8, ‘What time is it?’ spoken with a falling (proclaiming) tone asks the listener to provide information to fill in this unknown time. On the other hand, when spoken with a referring (rising) tone as in Example 9, the speaker is insinuating some underlying information about the time—either the speaker wants to double-check his/her idea of the time or the speaker is hinting that perhaps it is the time to leave. According to Brazil (1997, p. 114), ‘social bridge-building’ questions, or those that are often asked without the purpose of eliciting information (e.g., ‘How are you?’), frequently use referring tones (rise/fall-rise). These questions exchange a minimal amount of world-changing information; therefore, the purpose of the tones in these questions is to highlight the social condition of togetherness. At the same time, questions such as ‘What’s your name?’ can combine social and informational intentions. Brazil gives the example of an interviewer asking this question to an interviewee. The interviewer already knows the interviewee’s name, yet asks the question to include the interviewee into a shared world. In contrast, a receptionist asking a patient for his/her name could be purely informational. In addition to the commonly investigated yes/no or wh-questions, a small amount of work has been conducted on other speech acts and their prosodic patterns. Lin (2013) explored the regularity of prosody and formulaic expressions in the Lancaster/IBM Spoken English Corpus (Knowles, Taylor, & Williams, 1996), revealing that the word at the end of a tone unit (or one that takes up the entire tone unit) in a formulaic expression received the nucleus (the highest point of prominence). Wennerstrom (2001) found that rising tones were used for signaling directives and commissives. Corpus-prosodic research by Aijmer (1996) found the intonation of apologies to vary based on the gravity of the offense, and that the most common apology, ‘sorry,’ is spoken most often with rising or fall-rising tones, indicating its function of routine, rather than serious remorse. More serious apologies, or offering of condolences, have been noted to end with falling tones (Knowles, 2016; Staples, 2015). Tone choice is also used to distinguish between genuine and routine gratitude: The phrase ‘thank you’ spoken with a falling tone expresses sincere gratitude, while when spoken with a rising tone, it simply acknowledges the service as routine (Knowles, 2016, p. 195). The phrase ‘cheers,’ which is more commonly used in British English to mean ‘thank you,’ usually only takes a falling pattern (Knowles, 2016, p. 195–196). Taken together, falling tones are more commonly used in apologizing and thanking for more sincere expressions of the speech act, while rising tones are more routine-like. Only a few studies to date have examined the relationship between prosody and speech acts in an L2. Staples (2015) examined a particular type of nurse–patient interaction (i.e., an assessment interview when a nurse gives an assessment to a patient) in order to investigate differences between internationally-educated nurses (IENs) and U.S.-educated nurses (USNs). She used both Praat and Computerized Speech Lab for her prosodic analyses. She found that the IENs used a much narrower pitch range and more level tones than the USNs in expressions of empathy. These two prosodic patterns together can have a negative impact on patients and the nurse–patient relationship because they signal a lack of interest or care. She concluded that these findings of pitch range and tone choice could contribute to an understanding of sociopragmatic differences in nurses’ approaches to patient interaction. In another study, Hewings (1995) investigated the use of tone choices in parallel readings of a scripted dialogue by 12 speakers of British English and 12 learners of English from Korea, Greece, and Indonesia. Results showed that, in order to mitigate any disagreement or contradiction, learners seemed to use falling tones often, while British English speakers would use rising or level tones (Hewings, 1995). This finding suggested that L2 learners failed to use rising tones for socially integrative purposes in a way that native English speakers would do.

Discourse and Prosody Prosodic cues play a crucial role in spoken texts and contribute independently to the structure of L2 discourse (Pickering, 2017). Nowadays, it is not uncommon to use instrumental measures to 84

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detect pitch and tone choices in various discourse contexts, instead of relying on human listeners to determine intonation as a general category (e.g., rising and falling) (Hayes-Harb & Hacking, 2015). The number of times the vocal cords vibrate in one second, when producing a voiced sound, is known as the fundamental frequency (F0), and it is measured in Hertz (Hz), ‘cycle per second.’ Our perception of this rate of vibration is known as pitch. Therefore, the greater the fundamental frequency (F0), the higher pitched we perceive the sound to be. These objectively measured properties help create a detailed picture of L2 spoken discourse production. At the same time, prosody has been the empirical focus of pragmatics analysis in discourse. In a speech analysis of the discourse in nurse–patient interactions, Staples (2015) (cited above) investigated the use of prosody by internationally-educated nurses (IENs) and U.S.-educated nurses (USNs). Using Brazil’s (1997) framework, she instrumentally analyzed speech rate, number and length of silent pauses, pitch range, tone choice, prominence, and paratone. After dividing these two nurse groups into low-, mid-, and high-levels on an assessment of interpersonal skills, Staples examined the role of prosody on the effectiveness of communication with patients. She found that more use of level tones and sentence prominence negatively correlated with effective interactions. Higher-scoring nurses used a significantly wider pitch range and fewer level tones to express empathy towards their patients (for example, offering condolences to a patient who lost a family member). In this case, a wider pitch range and fewer level tones indicate more interest, focus, and involvement with the patient. On the other hand, Staples gave the example of how saying the phrase ‘sorry to hear that’ with a level tone can make it sound like a routine expression, such as ‘have a nice day.’ In terms of speech rate, there seemed to be a curvilinear result (which supports research of Munro & Derwing, 1998, 2001); that is, for IENs, the most interactionally effective speech rate was approximately between 3.27 and 3.38 syllables per second, whereas for USNs, it was between 3.48 and 3.69 syllables per second. Speech rate was curvilinear for IENs because too fast of a speech rate (beyond this threshold of 3.27–3.38) was less effective for listeners, but too slow of a speech rate is also inappropriate for communication. Other research, especially in the areas of speech perception, has examined the effect of prosody on discourse success. Pickering (2001) analyzed tone choice using Brazil’s (1997) framework of intonation. She compared the intonation patterns of North American teaching assistants with those of international teaching assistants (ITAs) from China to evaluate overall teaching success in the classroom. Critical differences in tone choice between these two groups revealed that the ITAs did not exploit tone in a pragmatically effective way. With notably more level tones and fewer rising tones, the ITAs not only excluded their students from their teaching interaction, but they also increased the social distance between them and their students. Furthermore, their use of tone gave their students the impression that the ITAs were uninterested and uninvolved. Other studies have found that listeners are largely affected by prosodic cues in non-native speech; therefore, communicative success is due in part to prosodic aspects of communication (e.g., Kang, 2010; Kang, 2012; Kang et al., 2010; Wennerstrom, 1994, 2001). Wennerstrom’s (1994) finding added that non-native speakers of English used low and falling tones more in places where rising or mid-level tones were expected by native speakers. This result affected native speaker listeners’ understanding of L2 speech. Other discourse functions affected by prosody include fillers, turn-taking, alignment, and feedback through discourse markers. L2 learners often use fillers in their speech (e.g., ‘I mean’, ‘you know’) to give listeners a perception of fluent speech (Lin, 2010, p. 183). Furthermore, prosody has been known to play a role in turn-taking. Generally, work on interaction and prosody has connected low-rising tones with holding the floor (Wennerstrom, 1997; Wennerstrom & Siegel, 2003), rising tones on discourse markers with speaker backchanneling (Wennerstrom, 2001), and high-rising tones for turn-shifting (Wennerstrom & Siegel, 2003). However, Szczepek Reed (2004, 2012) argues that in an actual conversation, tone choices are often made through 85

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interlocutors’ intentions or conversational actions instead of one-to-one correspondences with turn-taking. Overall, prosody in conversation is multi-functional. While it is used at junctures of turntaking, it is also used for other actions including assessments, speech repairs, reported speech, and conversational shifts (Szczepek Reed, 2012). Perhaps even more important in determining whether a turn is acting as a response or a new sequence is the occurrence of ‘prosodic matching,’ or the act of a speaker aligning the prosody of one turn with another speaker’s previous turn (Szczepek Reed, 2012, p. 156). This conversational strategy allows speakers to practice topic continuation, interactional collaboration, and agreement (Szczepek Reed, 2012). As for the use of discourse markers to provide feedback (e.g., ‘mhm’, ‘yeah’), Romero-Trillo and Newell (2012) used Praat to find a divergence between English native speakers’ prosodic patterns and those of non-native speakers. Native speakers tended to use longer and higher-pitched discourse markers than non-native speakers, clearly signaling their use of feedback in an interactive way.

Gestures and Prosody In addition to meaning communicated through prosodic combinations of rate, pausing, pitch, stress, prominence, and intonation, non-verbal cues such as bodily movements or gestures also work to convey speaker meaning (Archer et al., 2012). In fact, Staples (2015) found that therapeutic touch and smiling by U.S.-educated nurses (USNs) could have been used more often than internationally-educated nurses (IENs) to establish rapport with patients. Yet the overall communicative style of IENs, accompanied with smiling less and using less therapeutic touch, could have resulted in misunderstandings between the patients and the nurses. These findings support the multi-modality of communicative meaning: What is important is the combination of what is said, how it is said, and the physical movements that accompany the speech (Archer et al., 2012). While gaze can signal affective meaning about the speaker’s attitude (e.g., shock, confusion, etc.) (Archer et al., 2012), it can also assist in conversation management by signaling turn-taking, adding emphasis, or indicating a speaker’s word-searching process (Allwood, 2008; Argyle, 1988; Archer et al., 2012). Allwood (2008) found that speaker gaze was used to indicate word searching and holding the floor when the gaze was turned away from the interlocutors. When the speaker was able to retrieve the word, the gaze was turned back to the interlocutors. Because gestures and physical movement can be unique to a culture, they may communicate additional meaning. Some gestures and physical language may not be culturally shared and can even carry offense. For example, close physical proximity between speakers may be seen as both a sign of intrusiveness or disinterest, depending on the culture (Archer et al., 2012).

Appraisal of the Current Literature and Critical Insights In the previous section, we reviewed current literature on the relationship of prosody to indirect meaning, politeness/impoliteness, speech acts, discourse, and gestures. Current research on prosody in pragmatics seems to be generally limited in terms of scope and methodological approaches and design. For example, much of the current pragmatic-prosodic work deals with indirect meaning (e.g., irony). We extend a call for research that investigates other areas of pragmatics to inform L2 pedagogy such as L2 comprehension and production of speech acts, service encounters, and interactions in formal and informal situations. As the field of SLA becomes more interdisciplinary (see The Douglas Fir Group, 2016), the junction of pragmatics and prosody should be explored through different methodological approaches and techniques, including combinations of conversational analyses, corpus analyses, and linguistic analyses of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (such as with Staples, 2015). Knowing that speech utterances are multi-modal with no one-to-one mapping of meaning and a single linguistic feature, inclusive 86

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methodological approaches allow us to learn more about communication and interaction, which are highly context-specific by nature. Approaches which investigate pragmatics and prosody across different settings, with different levels of imposition, various speakers, and on diverse topics can be most representative of the wide roles that prosody plays in pragmatic performance. Furthermore, conversational analysis (see the work of Szczepek Reed, 2004, 2012) can account for turn-taking, overlap, and other organizational structures of discourse (see also Chapter 15 in this volume). Together with instrumental speech analyses (i.e., using computer programs to analyze speech properties), pragmatic-prosodic methodology can be triangulated for unearthing more comprehensive patterns of language use. Furthermore, while some studies reviewed in the previous section (e.g., Shively et al., 2008; Taguchi et al., 2016) have dealt with L2 learners’ pragmatic competence in relation to some prosodic aspects (e.g., ironic tones), a large majority of existing research is limited to native speakers’ speech when analyzing prosody in pragmatics. What is largely unknown is how L2 learners use prosody to express meaning, how their prosodic features in production affect listener comprehension, and how they perceive and comprehend prosodic input themselves. Future research within different learner groups of different proficiency levels, contexts of learning, and L1/L2 backgrounds can be fruitful in our understanding of within-group variance in L2 acquisition of prosody and pragmatics. For example, non-student learners living and/or working in an ESL community may acquire different competencies than traditional student learners in this environment. These differences may be even greater between ESL and EFL contexts. One recent study in this area (Kermad, Kang, & Taguchi, 2017) investigated the effect of study abroad and proficiency on prosodic acquisition of speech acts among Japanese learners of L2 English. Results showed that high-proficiency learners with study abroad experience demonstrated the use of intonational patterns similar to those of native English speakers when making requests. This type of research focusing on prosody and L2 pragmatic competence is still limited in the field, yet greatly needed. Similarly, although connections have been made between a speaker’s intonation and intention expressed in speech acts (e.g. Archer et al., 2012; Brazil, 1997), little research has adopted Brazil’s (1997) discourse-based intonation framework to examine prosodic features systematically through computer-based analyses, particularly among L2 speakers. While a theory-based approach may not be necessary for applied aspects of prosodic events (i.e., tone choices or pitch movement), discourse-based intonation analysis can enhance the ability of interpreting various pragmatic functions. In addition, what is limited in the existing literature on pragmatics and prosody is the assessment of L2 learners’ prosody when performing pragmatic functions (e.g., production of speech acts, comprehension of implicature). Indeed, pragmatic assessment alone is a rather under-represented research area (Roever, 2011, 2014), although assessment of interaction-based pragmatic performance is becoming of more interest in improving the validity of assessment (Youn, 2015) (see Chapter 20 in this volume). While prosody has been incorporated into assessment rubrics, speech samples are largely dependent on pre-determined, structured spoken tasks, which do not necessarily assess pragmatic competence in a naturalistic interaction. Moreover, most of these tasks are monologic, inadvertently understating the importance of dialogue and the negotiation of meaning in communication. While the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) has incorporated speaking tasks in interview format and question/answer format, the high-stakes nature of the exam and these particular formats do not currently help assess pragmatic competence in everyday language-use situations. Crystal (2003) defines pragmatics as the ‘study of language from the point of view of the users, especially of the choices they make and encounter in using language in social interaction, and the effects of their use of language on other participants in an act of communication’ (p. 364). This definition indicates that pragmatic competence comprises socially oriented abilities, yet 87

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existing assessment measures are short of capturing the omnipresence of this competence. An example is discourse completion tests (DCT) that are commonly used for pragmatic assessment. These tests provide a scenario along with an open-ended slot for learners to fill in their responses according to a given scenario. While DCTs have their benefits, they are far from authentic representations of real-life interactions (Roever, 2014; see also Chapters 13 and 20 in this volume). What we find as one of the greatest disadvantages of written DCTs is that these tasks do not allow for prosodic output. If these tasks are to be used for their convenience of administration, context manipulation, and efficient scoring (Roever, 2014), oral DCTs should be used instead of written ones to evaluate prosodic output (e.g., Taguchi, 2012). Similarly, open role plays (Youn, 2015) are recommended for the investigation of prosody-related L2 pragmatics.

Implications for Research The pragmatic-prosodic interface may surface a plethora of future empirical questions. One area which demands further attention is a complete battery of speech acts and their intonational patterns in real-life communication. While research has rather extensively explored the prosody of wh- and yes/no questions (types of directive speech acts), little is known about the prosody of other speech acts—such as compliments, invitations, and refusals—their functions in discourse, and empirical and instrumental investigations of their use. Neither has research uncovered the developmental process of L2 learners with respect to prosody and speech acts. Intervention studies can reveal the extent to which prosody-focused pragmatics instruction can assist L2 learners in recognizing and producing different speech acts. Furthermore, these pragmatic-prosodic abilities can be investigated in different language learning contexts (e.g., at home, immersion, study abroad, work abroad, etc.) and with different learner groups (e.g., traditional college students, non-traditional learners, bilinguals, multilinguals, etc.). With the continued growth of English as an international language, prosodic features and their pragmatic appropriateness should be carefully examined from the perspectives of World Englishes (WE) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). As Pickering (2017, p. 441) argues, there can be differences in prosodic features (e.g., phonetic realizations of prominence patterns and nucleus placement) between speakers of Inner Circle Englishes and Outer/Expanding Circle Englishes. In Pitzl’s (2005) study, for instance, participants at ELF business meetings combined the use of tonic placement and rising intonation to indicate their need for feedback. Also, it seems to be common for ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) speakers (e.g., Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, or Thailand) to place the nucleus on the final word in their interaction (Deterding & Kirkpatrick, 2006). These prosodic features are somewhat unique and do not necessarily appear in interaction within Inner Circle Englishes. Another example of this case is the use of rising tones, which are often seen by native speakers as a face-saving function to avoid any contradiction; however, WE speakers do not necessarily use them in such a manner (Pickering, 2017). Accordingly, future research should refrain from a unidirectional approach in which prosodic patterns are based on Inner Circle English models, by instead taking a multidimensional method by incorporating social and cultural pragmatics into interpretations of discourse. Future research can also be conducted on detailed prosodic features that can help interpret test takers’ scores when assessing L2 pragmatics. An inherent complexity may exist in the assessment of L2 pragmatics due to its requirement for context-specific goals, social nature, and authenticity. Currently, most high-stakes English proficiency tests do not specify pragmatic competence clearly, even if they have an interactive portion of speaking assessment included in their tests. For example, a speaking section in the Cambridge English Language Assessment has an evaluation criterion for interactive communication, but it mostly emphasizes interactive features (e.g., ‘maintain simple exchanges or require very little prompting and support’), but not pragmatic 88

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dimensions of formality and appropriateness. Perhaps some of the prosodic features such as pitch concord and rising tones can be incorporated into assessment rubrics to determine test takers’ pragmatic abilities to convey meaning appropriately, as long as specific contexts are described and controlled. Prosodic features such as pitch range or level tones can also be used as the objects of sensitization in future rater training of pragmatic competence.

Implications for Teaching Modern pronunciation textbooks and materials have overemphasized Pike’s (1945) concept of affective meaning, associating different pitches with feelings or attributes of the person’s mood, while discouraging the focus on communication (Levis, 1999). This approach can be a problem because ‘an intonation that sounds “bored” in one sentence, for instance, may sound “level-headed” in another, “angry” in another, and “interested” in yet another’ (Levis, 1999, p. 56). Levis suggests a new approach to teaching intonation with a focus on communication and practice with intonational variations as a communication strategy. This method confirms that of Szczepek Reed (2012) who stresses the part that prosody plays in the whole. In other words, prosody interacts in the dynamic, interactional linguistic and non-linguistic system, drawing on resources such as vocabulary, syntax, information organization, and even gestures, eye contact, and posture. Szczepek Reed calls for an instructional method that is holistic and communicative, minimizing the focus on prosody in isolation. To assist learners with successful communication and the multiple demands involved, providing opportunities for learners to engage in communication with interlocutors to negotiate meaning, agree or disagree, change topics, and so on, is crucial to the development of the successful use of prosody as well as pragmatics. In addition, while teachers can expose learners to the many pragmatic functions of prosody (e.g., speech acts, discourse markers, formulaic expressions), learners’ relationship with prosody should be bi-focal. Not only does a learner need to use prosody in a pragmatically efficient and appropriate way for conversational success, but a learner also has to make sense of prosodic cues after hearing them (Chun, 1988). Classroom practice and inference-based modes of pragmatic assessment can be a vital tool in practicing listener comprehension of speaker meaning via prosody. Since pragmatic meaning and prosody are both highly context-dependent (Romero-Trillo & Newell, 2012), it is imperative to provide learners with numerous opportunities to practice meaningful production and comprehension. To this end, we suggest some practical activities which can be implemented in a communicative language teaching environment. For example, students can practice differentiating between sincere and ironic meaning through tone. This can be done through short, oral role-plays. Praat visualization functions can also be implemented in the classroom to illustrate tone and prominence patterns as students record their dialogue. For example, students can create a sentence and give prominence to different words in the same sentence to illustrate (through Praat) how meaning changes when prosodic focus is placed to different words. Additionally, teachers can prepare common expressions (e.g., greetings, conversation openings and closings, markers for topic shift) and display them in Praat, while having students practice recording the patterns on their own. Moreover, in-class debates can be implemented for practicing agreement and disagreement with tone. Teachers can provide common expressions used to agree or disagree with someone while exemplifying the tonal patterns through Praat. Then, students can have a list of those expressions and emulate them during the debate. Direct and indirect meaning can be analyzed through video content, including news broadcast shows (for factual information), TV series (for humor, irony, speech acts, etc.), and TED Talks (for monologic speech patterns, gestures, discourse management). Scenarios can be written to provide learners with practice in asking wh- and yes/no questions for purposes of both proclaiming and referring 89

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(Brazil, 1997). For all of these suggestions, pronunciation training is essential for prosodic development, not only in establishing a meta-awareness of this system, but also for the development of learner comprehension and production of L2 pragmatics.

Further Reading Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., Goodwin, J. M., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A course book and reference guide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. This book provides a thorough guide to theoretically grounded, research-based pedagogical instruction of Northern American English pronunciation. An overview of teaching issues from the perspectives of different methodologies and SLA research is also included. The book provides very useful activities and measures for teaching, practicing, and assessing pronunciation in the classroom based on a variety of methods, along with suggestions for syllabus design. Kang, O., Thomson, R., & Murphy, J. (2017). The Routledge handbook of contemporary English pronunciation. New York: Routledge. This handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field covering both theoretical and practical perspectives on pronunciation. It also considers new ways of teaching pronunciation, factors related to pronunciation acquisition, current research topics and applications on L2 pronunciation, the connection between pronunciation and other language skills, and the place of pronunciation within the emerging paradigm of World Englishes. It has several entries that discuss the connection between prosody and other aspects of L2 speech (e.g., vowels and consonants, syllable structure). The volume also offers rich pedagogical implications featuring several chapters on pronunciation instruction and teacher training. Romero-Trillo, J. (2012). Pragmatics and prosody in English language teaching. New York: Springer. This edited volume brings together a collection of chapters on the interface between pragmatics and prosody and how they relate to English teaching. The book stresses the undeniable relationship between pragmatics and prosody through a series of chapters on various topics, such as acoustic measurement of rhythm and prosody in conversation. It particularly deals with the stress, rhythm, tone units, information structure, and intonation and pragmatic meaning and discusses their relevance for English language teaching.

References Aijmer, K. (1996). Apologies. In K. Aijmer (Ed.), Conversational routines in English: Convention and creativity (pp. 80–123). London: Longman. Allwood, J. (2008). Multimodal corpora. In A. Lüdeling & M. Kytö (Eds.), Corpus linguistics: An international handbook (pp. 207–225). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Archer, D., Aijmer, K., & Wichmann, A. (2012). Unit A9: Pragmatics, prosody, and gesture. In D. Archer, K. Aijmer, & A. Wichmann (Eds.), Pragmatics: An advanced resource book for students (pp. 96–109). Cambridge, UK: Routledge. Argyle, M. (1988). Bodily communication. London: Routledge. Avery, P., & Ehrlich, S. (1992). Teaching American English pronunciation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2016). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 6.0.11) [software]. Available from http:​//www​.fon.​hum.u​va.nl​/paul​/praa​t.htm​l Brazil, D. (1997). The communicative value of intonation in English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bryant, G. A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2005). Is there an ironic tone of voice? Language and Speech, 48(3), 257–277. Cauldwell, R. (2013). Phonology for listening: Teaching the stream of speech. Birmingham, UK: Speech in Action. Celce-Murcia, M., Dörnyei, Z., & Thurrell, S. (1995). Communicative competence: A pedagogically motivated model with content specifications. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 6(2), 5–35.

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Cheang, H. S., & Pell, M. D. (2008). The sound of sarcasm. Speech Communication, 50(5), 366–381. Cheng, W., & Warren, M. (2005). Can I help you? The use of rise and rise-fall tones in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 10(1), 85–107. Cheng, W., Greaves, C., & Warren, M. (2008). A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation: The Hong Kong corpus of spoken English (prosodic). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Chun, D. M. (1988). The neglected role of intonation in communicative competence and proficiency. The Modern Language Journal, 72(3), 295–303. Chun, D. M. (2002). Discourse intonation in L2: From theory and research to practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Crystal, D. (2003). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Culpeper, J. (2011). It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it!: Prosody and impoliteness. In Linguistic Politeness Research Group (Eds.), Discursive approaches to politeness (pp. 57–83). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Deterding, D., & Kirkpatrick, A. (2006). Emerging South-East Asian Englishes and intelligibility. World Englishes, 25(3/4), 391–409. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Hayes-Harb, R., & Hacking, J. (2015). Beyond rating data: What do listeners believe underlies their accentedness judgments? Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 1(1), 43–64. Hewings, M. (1995). Tone choice in the English intonation of non-native speakers. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 33(3), 251–266. Hirschberg, J. (2004). Pragmatics and intonation. In L. R. Horn (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 515–537). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kalbermatten, M. (2007). Verbal irony as a prototype category in Spanish: A discursive analysis (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN. Kang, O. (2010) Relative salience of suprasegmental features on judgments of L2 comprehensibility and accentedness. System, 38(2), 301–315. Kang, O. (2012). Impact of rater characteristics and prosodic features of speaker accentedness on ratings of international teaching assistants’ oral performance. Language Assessment Quarterly, 9(3), 249–269. Kang, O., Rubin, D., Pickering, L. (2010). Suprasegmental measures of accentedness and judgments of English language learner proficiency in oral English. The Modern Language Journal, 94(4), 554–566. Kermad, A., Kang, O., & Taguchi, N. (2017). The use of prosodic patterns by L2 learners in speech acts. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, Portland, OR. Knowles, G. (2016). Patterns of spoken English: An introduction to English phonetics. New York: Routledge. Knowles, G., Taylor, L., & Williams, B. (1996). A corpus of formal British English speech: The Lancaster/ IBM Spoken English Corpus. London: Routledge. Levis, J. M. (1999). Intonation in theory and practice, revisited. TESOL Quarterly, 33(1), 37–63. Lin, P. M. S. (2010). The phonology of formulaic sequences: A review. In D. Wood (Ed.), Perspectives on formulaic language: Acquisition and communication (pp. 74–193). London: Continuum. Lin, P. M. (2013). The prosody of formulaic expression in the IBM/Lancaster Spoken English Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18(4), 561–588. Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1998). The effects of speaking rate on listener evaluations of native and foreign‐accented speech. Language Learning, 48(2), 159–182. Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (2001). Modeling perceptions of the accentedness and comprehensibility of L2 speech: The role of speaking rate. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23(4), 451–468. Pickering, L. (2001). The role of tone choice in improving ITA communication in the classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 35(2), 233–255. Pickering, L. (2017). Pronunciation in discourse contexts. In O. Kang, R. Thomson, & J. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of contemporary English pronunciation (pp. 432–446). New York: Routledge. Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, J. (1990). The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In P. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. Pollock (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 271–312). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pike, K. L. (1945). The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Pitzl, M.-L. (2005). Non-understanding in English as a Lingua Franca: Examples from a business context. Vienna English Working Papers, 14(2), 50–71. Rockwell, P. (2000). Lower, slower, louder: Vocal cues of sarcasm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29(5), 483–495. 91

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Roever, C. (2011). Testing of second language pragmatics: Past and future. Language Testing, 28(4), 463–481. Roever, C. (2014). Assessing pragmatics. In A. J. Kunnan (Ed.), The companion to language assessment (pp. 125–139). Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Romero-Trillo, J. (2012). Introduction. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Pragmatics and prosody in English language teaching (pp. 1–6). New York: Springer. Romero-Trillo, J., & Newell, J. (2012). Prosody and feedback in native and non-native speakers of English. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Pragmatics and prosody in English language teaching (pp. 117–131). New York: Springer. Szczepek Reed, B. (2004) Turn-final intonation in English. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & C. E. Ford (Eds.), Sound patterns in interaction (pp. 97–119). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Szczepek Reed, B. (2012). Prosody in conversation: Implications for teaching English pronunciation. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Pragmatics, prosody and English language teaching (pp. 147–168). New York: Springer. Shively, R., Menke, M., & Manzón-Omundson, S. (2008). Perception of irony by L2 learners of Spanish. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 16(2), 101–132. Staples, S. (2015). The discourse of nurse–patient interactions: Contrasting the communicative styles of US and international nurses. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Taguchi, N. (2012). Context, individual differences, and pragmatic competence. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N., Gomez-Laich, P. M., & Arrufat-Marqués, M. J. (2016). Comprehension of indirect meaning in Spanish as a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 49(4), 677–698. The Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 100(1), 19–47. Wennerstrom, A. (1994). Intonational meaning in English discourse: A study of non-native speakers. Applied Linguistics, 15(4), 399–421. Wennerstrom, A. (1997). Discourse intonation in second language acquisition: Three genre-based studies (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Wennerstrom, A. (2001). The music of everyday speech: Prosody and discourse analysis. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Wennerstrom, A., & Siegel, A. F. (2003). Keeping the floor in multiparty conversations: Intonation, syntax, and pause. Discourse Processes, 36(2), 77–107. Youn, S. J. (2015). Validity argument for assessing L2 pragmatics in interaction using mixed methods. Language Testing, 32(2), 199–225. Yus Ramos, F. (1998). Irony: Context accessibility and processing effort. Pragmalingüística, 5–6, 391–410. Retrieved on July 10, 2018, from http:​//rev​istas​.uca.​es/in​dex.p​hp/pr​agma/​artic​le/vi​ewFil​e/530​/464

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7 Interactional Competence and L2 Pragmatics Richard F. Young

Introduction Since the 1990s, much research in second language (L2) learning and testing (including L2 pragmatics learning and testing) has focused on the dynamic and dialogic aspects of L2 use. Researchers have used Kramsch’s (1986) term interactional competence (IC) to describe many of those aspects, but there is little agreement among researchers as to which of those dynamic and dialogic aspects to include under the IC umbrella. Some researchers have described interaction using conversation analysis, while others have highlighted the intersubjective nature of interaction. Some cultural theorists have identified IC with intercultural competence, emphasizing how formal schooling of minorities may require teachers and pupils to recognize different interactional competences. Many researchers have described how IC develops in L2, and still others have developed procedures for assessing IC informally in the classroom as well as with formal language tests. In a handbook such as this, with its focus on pragmatics, readers might begin by assuming that IC includes well-studied pragmatic phenomena such as speech acts, implicature, discourse structure, pragmatic markers, studies of face and (im)politeness, prosody, and body language. However, IC and pragmatics are not the same phenomenon. While most researchers agree that pragmatics is the study of the relationship between the meaning of an utterance and the context in which the utterance is produced, they disagree on what to include within the notion of context. In their conceptualization of context, for example, Kasper and Rose (2002) focused on a speaker’s choice among linguistic forms, claiming that ‘pragmatic meanings arise from choices between linguistic forms, such as using one discourse marker or particle over another, or opting for one linguistic format of a communicative act instead of a contextually possible alternative to convey illocutionary force or politeness’ (p. 2). Taguchi and Roever (2017) expanded the notion of context to include both the speaker and listener when they wrote: ‘The field of pragmatics studies aspects of language systems that are dependent on the speaker, the listener, and the context of an utterance’ (p. 1). It is exactly here that pragmatics and IC diverge. As will become apparent in this chapter, participants’ use and understanding of the pragmatic meanings of communicative acts is clearly one defining feature of IC, but IC goes beyond the pragmatic competence of a single participant to recognize that IC is co-constructed by all participants in a discursive practice and, furthermore, that IC is practice-specific.

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In this chapter, I review the research done so far on the development of IC in second and first language contexts and, by framing my review within a general theory of intersubjectivity, I aim to increase mutual understanding among different approaches to IC and L2 pragmatics.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts What is Interactional Competence? In linguistic theory, the term competence has been taken to mean an individual’s knowledge underlying the production and interpretation of well-formed sentences in a language. The term was first used in this sense by Chomsky (1965) to distinguish between a speaker’s knowledge of language in the abstract (competence) and the way in which that knowledge is realized in the production and interpretation of actual utterances (performance). Chomsky’s idea of competence was criticized by Hymes (1972), who countered that not only does competence refer to the individual’s knowledge of language, but competence also extends to how the individual uses language in social situations. In effect, Hymes rejected Chomsky’s dichotomy between competence and performance; in Hymes’s words, ‘There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar are useless’ (p. 278). Hymes then went on to specify the knowledge that speakers must have of at least four ways in which language is used in social situations: what is possible to do with language, what is feasible, what is appropriate, and what is actually done. Hymes called this combination of ability and knowledge communicative competence, which many people contrasted with Chomsky’s theory and his concept of linguistic competence. Hymes’s ideas were the basis for an applied linguistics theory of communicative competence put forward by Canale and Swain (1980) and for the assessment of communicative language ability theorized by Bachman (1990). These scholars tried to relate linguistic acts in social situations to an individual’s underlying knowledge, and their views became influential in L2 teaching and testing. In both applied linguistic theory and the practice of language assessment, competence was recognized as a characteristic of a single individual. An individual’s communicative competence was considered to be a complex construct composed of several component parts and something that differentiated one individual from others. For example, Bachman (1990) conceptualized pragmatic competence (a component of communicative language ability) as consisting of two sub-components: illocutionary competence (knowledge of conventions for performing language functions) and sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of social rules of appropriateness). IC builds on the theories of competence that preceded it, but it is a very different notion from Canale and Swain’s communicative competence or Bachman’s communicative language ability. In contrasting language proficiency with IC, Kramsch (1986) made clear the distinction: [S]uccessful interaction presupposes not only a shared knowledge of the world, the reference to a common external context of communication, but also the construction of a shared internal context or ‘sphere of inter-subjectivity’ that is built through the collaborative efforts of the interactional partners. (p. 367) The importance of ‘the collaborative efforts of the interactional partners’ was shown clearly in Shea’s (1994) analysis of four conversations in English between Americans and Japanese students in the U.S.A. Shea’s analysis showed that, in different conversations with different

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interlocutors, learners of English with the same level of communicative competence demonstrated very different knowledge of English. He explained this difference by invoking two dimensions of the participation framework of conversation: participation and perspective. On the participation dimension, a native speaker of English may allow learners to cooperatively share the floor, recognize their right to speak, and value their ideas. Alternatively, the native speaker may interrupt or exclude learners and usurp the rights to shape the direction of talk. On the dimension of perspective, the native speaker may acknowledge learners’ orientation and commitment to the topic of discussion; alternatively, the native speaker may index a distinct orientation and a different commitment. Shea’s study showed that IC is distributed among participants in a discursive practice, and in contexts in which participants do not work to construct a ‘sphere of inter-subjectivity,’ the consequences endure. This was shown by Saville-Troike (2003) in her report of an exchange in a kindergarten classroom in the Navajo Nation: A Navajo man opened the door to the classroom and stood silently, looking at the floor. The Anglo-American teacher said, ‘Good morning’ and waited expectantly, but the man did not respond. The teacher then said ‘My name is Mrs. Jones,’ and again waited for a response. There was none. In the meantime, a child in the room put away his crayons and got his coat from the rack. The teacher, noting this, said to the man, ‘Oh, are you taking Billy now?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ The teacher continued to talk to the man while Billy got ready to leave, saying, ‘Billy is such a good boy,’ ‘I’m so happy to have him in class,’ etc. Billy walked toward the man (his father), stopping to turn around and wave at the teacher on his way out and saying, ‘Bye-bye.’ The teacher responded, ‘Bye-bye.’ The man remained silent as he left. (p. 105) Saville-Troike explained the interaction as one in which participants were interpreting the conversational exchange in different ways. From a Navajo perspective, the Navajo man’s silence was appropriate and respectful; his silence after the Anglo-American teacher’s greeting was also a polite response to her greeting and, if he had identified himself by name, the man would have broken a traditional taboo that prohibits Navajos from saying their own name. The AngloAmerican teacher followed her own expectations that her greeting would be returned and that the unknown man would identify himself. Billy, who was more used to Anglo-American ways than his father, displayed IC by taking his leave of the teacher in the way she expected while his father remained silent. What, then, is interactional competence? An examination of what persons did in the interactions reported by Shea and by Saville-Troike reveals at least four defining features. First, IC may be observed (or its absence noted) in spoken face-to-face interaction. Most research on IC has focused exclusively on spoken interaction, though nonverbal semiotic resources such as gesture, gaze, posture, kinesics, and proxemics are frequently considered, as indeed are verbal prosody, rhythm, and intonation. The second feature of IC involves participants recognizing and responding to expectations of what to say and how to say it (which is also the central concern in pragmatics). These expectations lead participants to interpret forms of talk in a given practice with conventional cultural meanings and to assume that participants have constructed a sphere of intersubjectivity. When in fact participants’ assumptions are incorrect, cultural misunderstandings may occur, as illustrated in Saville-Troike’s comments on the encounter between the Navajo man and the Anglo teacher. Saville-Troike wrote that, ‘[t]his encounter reinforced the teacher’s stereotype that Navajos are ‘impolite’ and ‘unresponsive,’ and the man’s stereotype that AngloAmericans are ‘impolite’ and ‘talk too much’ (p. 106). 95

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Viewing IC as simply a pragmatic match between cultural expectations and observed forms of talk in a discursive practice may lead us to believe that IC is simply a question of pragmatics, but this would be a mistake. Pragmatic meaning, as defined by Kasper and Rose (2002), arises ‘from choices between linguistic forms’ (p. 2). Such choices are, however, ‘not unconstrained but are governed by social conventions, which can be flexed to different, contextually varying degrees but only entirely set aside at the peril of losing claims to face, insider status, or sanity’ (pp. 2–3). Pragmatic meaning in interaction goes so far but does not include Kramsch’s (1986) notion of ‘the construction of a shared internal context’ (p. 367). Thus, the third defining feature of IC is that IC is not about the ability of a single individual to deploy those resources in any and every social interaction; rather, IC is how those resources are deployed mutually and reciprocally by all participants in a particular discursive practice in order to create a sphere of intersubjectivity; that is, mutual intentionality and sharing of mental state. This means that IC is not the knowledge or the possession of an individual person but is co-constructed by all participants in a discursive practice, and IC varies with the practice and with the participants. The fourth defining feature of IC is that not only does it vary with participants, but it also varies with the discursive practice in which they are engaged. The focus on practice emerged from a debate in education and child development centered on the learning process which culminated in contrasting views of the process. Sfard (1998) has characterized these contrasting views as ‘two metaphors for learning’—the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. The metaphor of learning as participation is summarized by Rogoff (2003), who emphasized that ‘human development is a process of people’s changing participation in sociocultural activities of their communities’ (p. 52). Framed in this way, language learning is manifested as participants’ progress along trajectories of changing engagement in discursive practices. Such changes lead from peripheral to fuller participation in a community of practice and growth of self-identity. IC is thus participants’ participation in recurring episodes of spoken interaction in context, episodes that are of socio-cultural significance to a community of speakers. Such episodes have been described at length by Young (2007, 2009) building on Hall’s (1995) interactive practices and Hanks’s (1996) communicative practices, and share similarities with the speech events described by Hymes (1974). To summarize, IC is characterized by these four defining features: •• •• •• ••

IC has been described (and its absence noted) in spoken interaction and/or face-to-face interaction. IC is characterized by participants’ understandings of the pragmatic meanings of communicative acts. IC is not the knowledge or the possession of an individual; rather it is co-constructed by all participants in a discursive practice. IC is participants’ participation in specific discursive practice—recurring episodes of spoken interaction in context, episodes that are of socio-cultural significance to a community of speakers.

These four features represent a broader and more detailed depiction of IC than has been taken by other colleagues in the field. Kramsch (1986) focused her attention on IC as the ‘construction of a shared internal context or ‘sphere of inter-subjectivity’ (p. 367). Hall (1999), on the other hand, ignored intersubjectivity and instead focused her definition on the pragmatic resources that participants deploy in interaction. She considered that interactional competence involves context-specific knowledge such as knowledge of interactional contexts (e.g., goals and topics of interaction, participant roles), knowledge of ‘linguistic action patterns’ (e.g., conventional meanings of linguistic forms), flexibility and adaptability in using linguistic resources, and ability to recognize interactional patterns in a specific situation and apply the patterns to a new situation 96

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(Hall, 1999, p. 137). Like Hall, many L2 pragmatics researchers have taken the individualistic and component-oriented view of pragmatic competence by adopting models of communicative competence (Bachman, 1990; Canale & Swain, 1983) to define pragmatic competence. However, the four features of IC presented above go beyond Hall’s definition of IC and contribute to a new conceptualization of pragmatic and interactional competence. As Hall recognized, IC involves several resources that participants deploy in interactional contexts. There are, however, two cardinal differences. First, in my view of IC, the resources deployed by all participants in interaction are contingent on what they perceive other participants doing and thinking; in other words, intersubjectivity is an essential component of IC. Second, just as IC is not the permanent possession of a specific participant, neither is it an ability that can be deployed in other contexts with other participants, because each discursive practice is unique. Indeed, perhaps the term ‘competence’ does not adequately describe IC because competence, especially ‘linguistic competence,’ has often been taken to refer to a characteristic of an individual speaker that can deployed independent of context.

Communicative Resources Deployed in Creating Intersubjectivity Young (2008, 2011) specified a set of resources that participants deploy in creating intersubjectivity in discursive practice. Building on previous research on the nature of human social interaction and the four defining features of IC presented in the previous section, Young’s set includes the following: ••

••

••

Identity resources •• Participation framework: the identities of all participants in a discursive practice, present or not, official or unofficial, ratified or unratified, and their footing or identities in the discursive practice (Goffman, 1979, 1981; Goodwin, 1990, 2000; Rae, 2001) Linguistic resources •• Register: the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon in a specific discursive practice, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) •• Modes of meaning: the ways in which participants construct interpersonal, experiential, and textual meanings in a practice (Bühler, 1934; Firth, 1957; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) Interactional resources •• Speech acts: the selection of acts in a discursive practice and their sequential organization (Martínez-Flor & Usó-Juan, 2010) •• Turn-taking: how participants in a discursive practice select the next speaker and how participants know when to end one turn and when to begin the next (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) •• Repair: the ways in which participants respond to interactional trouble in a given discursive practice (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977) •• Boundaries: how participants deploy and identify the opening and closing acts of a discursive practice that serve to distinguish a given practice from adjacent talk and/ or as transitions within a single practice (Geluykens & Swerts, 1994; Schegloff, 1968; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973)

IC involves knowledge and deployment of these resources in social contexts. However, the fundamental difference between alternative conceptualizations of IC, such as those presented by Hall (1999) (see also Hall, Hellermann, & Pekarek Doehler, 2011), and the four defining features of IC realized through the seven resources listed above is that the latter considers an individual’s 97

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knowledge and deployment of these resources contingent on what other participants do; that is, IC is distributed across participants and varies in different interactional practices. Therefore, the most fundamental difference between interactional and communicative competence is that IC is not about what one person knows; it is about what a participant in a discursive practice does together with others.

Empirical Studies of IC Development The Contributions of All Participants to Co-constructing a Participation Framework To my knowledge, there are no studies that have described all seven resources of IC. Some studies, however, have focused on one set of resources to the exclusion of others. For example, deployment of interactional resources in constructing a participant framework including all participants, present or not, official or unofficial, ratified or unratified has been described by Young and Astarita (2013) in their discussion of a discursive practice on a bus and by Nguyen (2006) in her analysis of the interactional patterns of pharmacy patient consultations. Linguistic resources of register and, in particular, the different modes of meaning deployed by a high school teacher and by a textbook author to describe the physics of light reflecting from a plane mirror were described by Young and Nguyen (2002). Besides these, researchers have paid attention to interactional resources in constructing IC and, in particular, to describing the ways in which L2 learners deploy different interactional resources as they develop. These have been well documented by scholars who have grounded their analyses in the methods of conversation analysis (CA) (see also Chapter 15 in this volume). The value of CA is stressed by Hall and Pekarek Doehler (2011), for whom IC involves: the ability to deploy and to recognize context-specific patterns by which turns are taken, actions are organized and practices are ordered. And it includes the prosodic, linguistic, sequential and nonverbal resources conventionally used for producing turns and actions, to construct them so that they are recognizable for others, and to repair problems in maintaining shared understanding of the interactional work we and our interlocutors are accomplishing together. (pp. 1–2) One of the clearest applications of CA to attempt to describe the development of IC by an L2 user is Pekarek Doehler and Berger’s (2018) study of a German L1 au-pair’s interaction with a host family in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The authors analyzed how Julie, the aupair, managed story openings over her 9-month sojourn with the family. They reported that Julie developed in three areas in the practice of story-telling: She displayed how the story related to prior talk; she secured recipiency from her interlocutor and grounds for the story; and she framed her story as a telling of a given type. They generalized from their longitudinal study of Julie to claim that development of IC involves speakers’ increased ability to design talk in a way for it to be attended to and understood by others, and to deploy context-sensitive conduct based on both sequential and linguistic resources. There is no doubt that Pekarek Doehler and Berger’s study is a brave attempt to document changes over time in social activities indexed by talk, though Schegloff (1993) and Markee (2017) have argued that such comparisons are impossible. However, is their study really about the development of IC? Pekarek Doehler and Berger have ignored identity and linguistic resources. Considering that one of the defining features of IC is that it is not the knowledge or the possession of an individual but rather it is co-constructed by all participants in a discursive practice, the weakness of Pekarek Doehler and Berger’s study is that

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they did not consider how Julie’s French-speaking interlocutors contributed to her development of IC. In five of the six conversational excerpts, the sole recipient of Julie’s stories was Marie, the host mother. But the authors focused entirely on Julie’s agency in placing her story-opening. The only evidence they presented for intersubjectivity came from the host mother, whose contributions were almost entirely response tokens (Gardner, 2002; Young & Lee, 2004). Studies that have considered the contributions of all participants in co-constructing a participant framework for the development of IC in a discursive practice include Cekaite’s (2007) study of a Kurdish immigrant girl in a Swedish kindergarten school classroom, Young and Miller’s (2004) study of changing discourse roles of student and tutor in an ESL writing conference, and Nguyen’s (2006) report of a novice pharmacist’s construction of ‘expertness’ together with clients in pharmacy patient consultations. These three longitudinal studies showed the influence of all participants in co-constructing IC in specific discursive practices. In Cekaite’s study, learning IC is defined (as in Young & Miller, 2004) by changing participant status and movement from peripheral to increasingly active participation in a discursive practice. A total of 90 hours of recordings was made over one academic year of a Swedish immersion class for refugee children. The nine children in the class were all beginning learners who had recently arrived in Sweden, and ‘Fusi,’ the focal participant, was seven years old at the beginning of the year. Cekaite distinguished three phases in the development of IC, which were distinguished by Fusi’s self-selection of topics, turn-taking, and her identity creation. In the early phase, Fusi was mostly silent and participated only very marginally in classroom interactions. She rarely interrupted or disturbed her teacher or other students. By the middle of the year, Fusi had become much more visible in the classroom. When calling for the teacher’s attention, she used assertive intonation to call loudly and abruptly, and she frequently left her desk without permission. Her talk and behavior resulted in reprimands, teacher discipline, or teasing by her peer group, and her teacher characterized Fusi as immature. By the end of the academic year, however, Fusi’s positioning in the classroom community had changed radically. Fusi took more initiatives in engaging in conversations with her teacher. She contradicted the teacher less frequently, and her peers stopped teasing her. Fusi’s trajectory, from a silent and compliant child at the beginning of the year, to a noisy student by the middle of the year, and finally to a skillful student at the end of the year, demonstrated not a unidirectional development of a single learner identity but, rather, included responses of her teachers and classmates at each stage of development. These allowed her to position herself very differently within the classroom community, depending in part on IC co-constructed by the classroom community. In support of the argument that IC does not reside in an individual’s ability to deploy interactional resources but is related to how these resources are jointly used by all participants in a discursive practice, Young and Miller’s (2004) study of ESL writing conferences showed how changing participation in a practice indexed development of IC. The participants were an intermediate Vietnamese learner of ESL and his experienced American writing instructor. In each writing conference, they discussed the student’s draft essay assigned by the instructor. They identified problem areas in the student’s writing, talked about ways to improve the writing, and revised the essay. Young and Miller observed that the student participated more fully in revision talk over four weeks of audio- and video-taping observation, which was observable by changes in these eight sequential actions occurring in every instance of revision talk: 1 2 3 4 5

Both participants display attention to the student’s paper. Both participants identify a problem in the student’s paper. One participant explains or justifies the need for revision. The instructor directs the student to produce a candidate revision. One participant utters a candidate revision. 99

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6 The instructor directs the student to write the candidate revision. 7 One participant writes the revision. 8 The instructor evaluates the revision. In the first observation of revision talk, the student’s legitimate peripheral participation was marked, in part, by his limited performance of these actions. His only participation was writing the revision, which he did after verbal and gestural prompting from the instructor. In contrast, the instructor’s fuller participation was demonstrated by identifying a problem in the student’s paper, providing an explanation of the need for revision, uttering a candidate revision, directing the student to write the candidate revision, and supplying an implicit negative evaluation. In revision talk two weeks later, however, the student participated more fully. After the instructor identified a problem in the student’s essay, the student himself explained the need for revision and suggested a candidate revision. Finally, in the fourth conference held three weeks later, the student participated more fully in the revision talk. Young and Miller also observed a shift in the prosodic and syntactic shape of the instructor’s turns that seemed to provide for fuller participation by the student. For example, the instructor produced several designedly incomplete utterances (Koshik, 2002). The student’s nonverbal participation also demonstrated fuller participation: He displayed greater awareness of when it was appropriate to produce a written revision. After the instructor had uttered a candidate revision, without further prompting, the student immediately began writing the revision. Although the student was the one whose participation was most obviously transformed, his writing instructor was a co-learner, whose participation changed in ways that allowed for the student’s fuller participation. Young and Miller’s (2004) study contributes to our understanding of IC as co-constructed development by all participants in a situated discursive practice. Although not a study of L2 learners, a third example of the co-construction of IC by all participants in a discursive practice is provided by Nguyen’s (2006) report of a novice pharmacist’s construction of ‘expertness’ together with clients in pharmacy patient consultations. These consultations involved the pharmacist talking with a patient about the medications they were intended to take. Nguyen’s data includes 18 videotaped observations of patient consultations by ‘Jim,’ a novice pharmacist over the course of an eight-week internship. The focus of Nguyen’s report is Jim’s developing identity as an expert in his encounters with patients. She recognized two different performances of Jim’s expertise as a professionally trained pharmacist interacting with a layperson: as a novice expert and an experienced expert. Nguyen (2006, p. 148) explains the difference as follows: Unlike the novice expert, the experienced expert is someone who not only has access to professional knowledge, but also ‘no longer relies on analytic principle (rules, guidelines, maxims)’, and ‘has an intuitive grasp of each situation and zeroes in on the accurate region of the problem without wasteful consideration of a large range of alternative diagnoses and solutions.’ (Benner 1984, p. 31; see also Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986) The contrast between Jim’s construction as a novice expert in the early days of his internship and his claim of experienced expertise later on can be seen in how he provided expert information to the patient. In one of the earlier consultations, Jim displayed his novice expertise to the lay patient by explaining physiological processes when he was explaining the side effects of a heart medication (Nguyen, 2006): Ph: Um when you take it you be sure you’re either sitting down or lying down, cause the way it works […] it makes some of your blood vessels dilate and that will help the blood flow to the heart. (p. 151) 100

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While Jim was displaying his novice expertise, the patient started to count money, orienting to the upcoming payment activity rather than to Jim’s explanation. In contrast, in his consultations during the last week of his internship, Jim described the side effects of a laxative by taking the patient’s lay perspective—thus, according to Nguyen, constructing himself as an experienced expert (Nguyen, 2006): Ph: If it tastes bad, ↓it probably doesn’t have a good taste, (.) you might wanna put in like a lemonade, or something like that, [it usually will (0.2) take the Ph grimaces, waving hand laterally Pt: [((breathy)) Ah: Ph: edge off a little bit, (p. 153) Nguyen’s study demonstrates how Jim as a participant in the same discursive practice changed his pattern of participation over time by recognizing how his patients responded to the novice expertise of one who had studied in a four-year professional degree program which had prepared him to become a pharmacist. His conversations with lay patients provided him with opportunities to reconstruct and modify his school-taught expertise in the local context of the pharmacy. Nguyen’s data show that while Jim could use a technical register at times, on most occasions, the patient selected vernacular expressions. It was also interesting that when Jim introduced technical information, the patient treated it as advice and instructions, but when the patient brought up expert information, both the patient and Jim treated it as challenges and problems that needed to be resolved. In effect, as a consequence of his interaction with lay members of the public, the resulting co-construction of IC was indexed by Jim’s identity changing over his eight-week internship from novice expert to experienced expert. The studies reviewed in this section share certain features: They were longitudinal studies (varying in length from a few weeks to a whole year); they focused on participants’ progress along trajectories of changing engagement in a single discursive practice (story-telling, teacherled conversation in a foreign language class, revision talk in a writing conference, and pharmacy patient consultations); and they included a focal participant embedded in a participation framework (Julie and her host family; Fusi and her teacher and classmates; the ESL student and his writing instructor; and Jim and his patients). They described development of IC over the duration of the studies.

Developing Intersubjectivity during Study Abroad There is a marked difference between the studies reviewed in the previous section and the analysis of the conversation that Saville-Troike (2003) reported between the Navajo father and his son’s Anglo-American kindergarten teacher. In that single moment of interaction in the Navajo Nation, the pragmatic differences between the two participants may have reinforced cultural stereotypes the Navajo man held of Anglo-Americans and the Anglo-American teacher’s stereotype of Navajos. Cultural differences between cognitive, affective, and behavioral capabilities of persons interacting in particular contexts have been discussed extensively as intercultural competence, defined by Spitzberg and Chagnon (2009) as ‘the appropriate and effective management of interaction between people who, to some degree or another, represent different or divergent affective, cognitive, and behavioral orientations to the world’ (p. 7) (see also Chapter 31 in this volume). In many contexts, therefore, IC presupposes intercultural competence. Thus, it is not surprising that IC has been studied extensively in study-abroad settings that present opportunities 101

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for intercultural communication. The social, cultural, and linguistic aspects of study abroad have continued to receive much attention since Freed’s (1995) monograph up to and including extensive work done by Kinginger (2013), among which are a smaller number of studies explicitly addressing the development of IC in study-abroad settings. Here I will review three studies that demonstrate learners’ development of a defining feature of interactional competence—the ‘sphere of intersubjectivity’ that Kramsch (1986) identified. Intersubjectivity was first studied by developmental psychologists observing interaction between mothers and infants (Trevarthen, 1977, 1979) and the concept was further developed in Wells’s (1981) studies of spoken interactions among British schoolchildren. Wells (1981) defined intersubjectivity quite clearly: The sender intends that, as a result of his communication, the receiver should come to attend to the same situation as himself and construe it in the same way. For the communication to be successful, therefore, it is necessary (a) that the receiver should come to attend to the situation as intended by the sender; (b) that the sender should know that the receiver is so doing; and (c) that the receiver should know that the sender knows that this is the case. That is to say they need to establish intersubjectivity about the situation to which the communication refers. (p. 47, emphasis in the original) Studies that documented intersubjectivity among participants in a study abroad setting include: Dings’s (2014) study of speaker selection, alignment activity, and topic management in conversations between an American learner of Spanish and a Spanish native speaker over the course of an academic year abroad in Granada, Spain; Ishida’s (2009) report of the development and use of the Japanese sentence-final particle ne by an American college student of Japanese during a nine-month sojourn in Japan; and Taguchi’s (2014) study of incomplete sentences as interactional resources by 18 learners of L2 Japanese in a large private university in Tokyo. Like many other studies, these three studies claim to report on the development of IC. They are, however, unique in clearly demonstrating intersubjectivity among all participants in specific discursive practices. Dings’s (2007) dissertation and her 2014 article were the first extensive study of the development of IC in study abroad. Dings analyzed six 30-minute conversations in Spanish between Sophie, an American study-abroad student living in Granada, Spain, and José, a native speaker of Spanish, recorded over two semesters. Among other interactional resources, Dings reported changes in how Sophie and José demonstrated their intersubjectivity by means of alignment moves such as assessments, collaborative contributions, and collaborative completions to index shared understanding—the ability to adopt the other’s point of view and the ability to speak in the other’s voice. Sophie’s increasing participation in alignment activity changed the nature of her interactions with José. Sophie’s emergent and evolving contributions to interactions allowed her to play a more active role in co-constructing communication. Another study that focused on a learner’s development of alignment in interactions is Ishida’s (2009) report of an American student studying Japanese in Japan. The student, Fred, recorded eight 30-minute conversations once a month with local Japanese people. Ishida focused on Fred’s use of the Japanese sentence final particle ne [ね]. According to Ishida, this particle has a range of interactional functions in Japanese including: an index of the speaker’s epistemic and/or affective stance, the speaker’s attempt to index a topic that the speaker believes to be known to the hearer, and an index of mutual alignment between the speaker and the hearer. Initially, Fred used ne only in turns that did not require ‘fine-tuning toward the previous speaker’s turn’ (p. 382). In later conversations, Ishida reported that Fred ‘came to use [ne] as an immediate response to the 102

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previous speaker’s turn and became more active in pursuing aligning responses through its use’ (p. 382). Fred used ne to index opinions that did not align with his interlocutor, while his use of ne in assessments helped achieve mutual alignment with his interlocutor. By focusing on the learner’s expanding interactional functions of a linguistic form, Ishida’s study showed how the learner developed overt attribution of intentional acts to others—intersubjectivity—and did so by means of expressions of alignment to what he perceived to be the knowledge or stance of his interlocutor. Finally, Taguchi’s (2014) report is perhaps the clearest demonstration of the development of intersubjectivity in study abroad. Participants (18 learners of L2 Japanese at a Japanese university) conversed with a peer for 20 minutes in Japanese. Taguchi analyzed two conversations, recorded 12 weeks apart at the beginning and end of the semester, focusing on their use of incomplete sentences (a common phenomenon in a Japanese conversation). By saying less, Japanese speakers are building with their interlocutors exactly what Wells (1981) described as intersubjectivity: ‘The sender intends that, as a result of his communication [or lack of it], the receiver should come to attend to the same situation as himself and construe it in the same way’ (pp. 46–47). According to Taguchi, incomplete sentences serve as the speaker’s projection of an upcoming transition relevance place in their own turn. When the speaker produces an incomplete sentence, the hearer orients to and reacts to it with a backchannel or reactive token (Young & Lee, 2004). The speaker leaves a sentence incomplete by using a clause ending with the conjunctive particle te [て], which projects a second clause produced by the hearer, who then continues by adding a clause ending in the same way. When completing the turn initiated by the first speaker, the second speaker not only produces syntactic completion but also imitates the voice of the first speaker by projecting the same stance, thus displaying emphatic alignment with the first speaker’s experience. Taguchi found not only a dramatic increase in the number of incomplete sentences produced by L2 learners of Japanese but also that the learners were producing and responding to incomplete utterances to show empathy, to assist in explanation, and to expand on the ongoing topic of conversation. As Taguchi concluded, the participants learned to deploy incomplete sentences as interactional resources to establish intersubjectivity with their interlocutors—a clear index of developing IC.

Study Abroad versus Classroom Instruction in the Development of Interactional Competence Though much research on IC and intercultural competence has been carried out in study-abroad contexts, there is considerable doubt whether study abroad is an effective context for developing IC. In a relevant discussion, Kasper and Rose (2002) conducted a comprehensive review of the development of pragmatic competence in an L2 during students’ residence in L2 communities (see also Taguchi & Roever, 2017 for a more recent review and Chapter 23 in this volume). Many of the studies reviewed by Kasper and Rose provided comparisons between the effect of exposure during study abroad and the effect of classroom instruction on pragmatics learning. Although methods of classroom instruction in pragmatics vary widely, all teaching approaches require some theoretical analysis of interaction and context, including concepts of relative status and/or social distance of interlocutors, degree of imposition of an action, and different conceptualizations of politeness in L1 and L2 communities. To the extent that instruction in pragmatics provides learners with a theory of IC in an L2 community, such instruction is top-down and concept based. On the other hand, exposure to interactions with target-language speakers during study abroad provides learners with considerable empirical information and experience about a variety of discursive practices. Whether, through this bottom-up process, learners can attend to such information in order to learn the pragmatics of the new community and position themselves 103

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as members of a new community of practice without previous or contemporaneous instruction is, in effect, a question about the effectiveness of a study-abroad context—a question that Kasper and Rose examined in considerable detail. The studies that Kasper and Rose (2002) reviewed dispelled what they termed three ‘myths’ about the effectiveness of study abroad on learning L2 pragmatics: ‘For developing pragmatic ability, spending time in the target community is no panacea, length of residence is not a reliable predictor, and L2 classrooms can be a productive social context’ (p. 230). To reframe Kasper and Rose’s claims for the present discussion of IC, we can conclude that exposure alone to discursive practices in an L2 community is not sufficient for developing IC, no matter how long or how intense the exposure is. Kinginger (2013) documented challenges that American students studying abroad face when the pragmatics of the target language community differs from the pragmatics of the home community. One example is the story told by Beatrice in a study abroad program in Paris. In her journal, Beatrice recounted what happened when her classmate, Olivia, requested permission from an instructor to miss a class when her family visited her. Although permission to miss a class is routinely granted in U.S. universities, the French instructor did not grant the permission, saying that it is ‘completely out of the question and how dare she ask something like that’ (p. 71). Beatrice recognized the different sociopragmatic practices in U.S. and French classrooms. She was not, however, able to recognize the status differences between professors in France and those at home in the U.S.A., which led to the French professor interpreting Olivia’s request as a challenge to his authority. This example indicates that it is critical to encourage students to attend to the differences between IC that they have experienced in their home community and IC that they experience in the L2 community, involving different configurations in which identity, linguistic, and interactional resources are deployed. We can encourage them to attend to the differences prior to study abroad—in other words, we can encourage students to theorize about a discursive practice before they participate in it. Acknowledging the importance of discursive practices in a study-abroad context, Taguchi and Roever (2017) claimed that learners gain opportunities to participate in a range of discursive practices while abroad, which can facilitate the process of ‘learning-as-participation’ (Young, 2008). As Young contended, we learn a language by participating in context-specific discursive practices. Learners acquire linguistic and interactional resources that characterize a discursive practice and enable them to participate in the practice. Discursive practices that learners engage in involve a number of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources that are specific to the practices. Taguchi and Roever contend that ‘pragmatic development takes place by participating in a range of social practices that involve different types of pragmatic resources’ (p. 187). The question then arises, what kind of pre-departure instruction might be effective to help learners understand the concept of discursive practices before their immersion in the new community? Hall (1999, 2004) and Young (2009) proposed concept-based instruction (Erickson, Lanning, & French, 2017), in which L2 learners study discursive practices in a community of practice outside the classroom, either in situ or through video recordings of authentic L2 community practices. Concept-based instruction would then involve two pedagogical phases. In the first phase, learners are guided through conscious, systematic study of the discursive practice, in which they mindfully abstract and reflect upon the sociocultural context of the practice and the configuration of identity, linguistic, and interactional resources that participants deploy. In the second phase, learners are guided through participation in the practice by more experienced participants. Systematic study of the practice does not require the teacher or learners to be skilled in ethnography or conversation analysis, but the study of the practice should focus on the configuration and deployment of resources by participants. In addition, the roles 104

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Turns at talk presented to students in a random sequence

Turns at talk rearranged into a conversation

porque suele llover muy poco. (because it tends to rain very little.)

. . . es relajante. pues aquí sí nos suele gustar mucho la lluvia

sí (yeah)



muy seco. (very dry.)

porque suele llover muy poco.

. . . es relajante. pues aquí sí nos suele gustar mucho la lluvia (. . . it’s relaxing. well here yeah we tend to like the rain a lot)

muy seco.

Figure 7.1 Sample OBA of alignment moves in Spanish.

of participants and the ways in which the practice constructs broader societal values should be considered. Analysis of a particular practice is thus framed by a general theory of discursive practice (Young, 2009), and it is this theory as applied to the interpretation of the practice that underlies concept-based instruction. There is considerable support for concept-based instruction of IC in the work of the Soviet psychologist Piotr Gal’perin and his theory of systemic-theoretical instruction (STI) (Arievitch & Stetsenko, 2000; Gal’perin, 1969/1989, 1974/1989, 1976/1989; Haenen, 2001) (see also Chapter 10 in this volume). Gal’perin was a contemporary of Vygotsky and shared many of his basic assumptions of cultural-historical psychology, among which was the crucial role played by cultural tools such as language, concepts, and artifacts in the development and operation of higher cognitive processes of attention, memory, and planning. Gal’perin attempted to transform the cultural-historical approach to human development into a model for the teaching–learning process. Instruction, in his view, is the provision of efficient cultural psychological tools to learners so they can solve problems in a specific domain. Comparing the kinds of cultural mediation available to learners, Gal’perin concluded that the most efficient tool for learners was a general procedure that learners could use to solve any specific problem in a given instructional domain. For Gal’perin, the initial step in the procedure was construction of a ‘schema for a complete orienting basis for an action’ or SCOBA (Gal’perin, 1974/1989, p. 70), which is in effect a theory of the domain of instruction. The new practice to be learned is first brought to the learner’s attention, not in the small stages that characterize behaviorist instruction, but as a meaningful whole from the very beginning. The process of STI involves instruction in a formal classroom setting, which can be used to develop intersubjectivity in L2 prior to study abroad. I take as an example Dings’s (2014) study of Sophie’s acquisition of alignment moves to index her shared understanding in conversations with a native speaker of Spanish. Given that the production of alignment moves is the object of instruction, the first stage in STI is materialization as an ‘orienting basis of action’ or OBA— using physical objects in a concrete, material way to represent the concept to be internalized. One way to do so is to present a dialogue in which two speakers’ utterances are presented randomly on separate cards and to have learners re-arrange the cards into a conversational sequence (see Figure 7.1). After working on several OBAs like this, students can be asked, with the aid of an instructor, to develop understanding of the forms, functions, and sequential contexts of alignment moves in Spanish conversations in a form of theoretical concepts. Those concepts serve as schemas for 105

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complete orienting basis of action (SCOBAs). Then, students develop their own formulation of the SCOBA by verbalizing the concepts, which may then be internalized as private speech and as inner speech or ‘thought’ (Gal’perin, 1974/1989). A few studies of concept-based instruction reviewed by Lantolf and Thorne (2006) and another study (Lantolf & Tsai, 2018) focused on the acquisition of morphosyntax. Future research is needed in pragmatics, in particular to investigate how concept-based instruction can be used to aid L2 learners in preparing for their experiences in study abroad and development of IC (see Chapter 10 in this volume for examples of such research).

Conclusion and Future Directions There are several differences between the aims of researchers in L2 pragmatics and researchers in IC. While L2 pragmatics research addresses the pragmatic meanings that speakers and hearers attribute to the conventional and context-specific meanings of utterances, the reach of IC research goes beyond pragmatics in its recognition of IC as co-constructed by all participants in a discursive practice rather than simply the knowledge or competence of a single speaker or hearer. Research in pragmatics has always highlighted the relationship between the meaning of an utterance and the context in which the utterance is produced; however, context is much grander than the time and place of utterance and includes the physical, spatial, temporal, social, interactional, institutional, political, and historical circumstances in which utterances are spoken and heard. In recognizing the importance of context, IC researchers have gone further in specifying that what speakers and hearers communicate in a given context is specific to that context, just as IC is co-constructed by all those specific participants. Another difference between research on L2 pragmatics and IC should be clear from the empirical studies reviewed in this chapter: Research on IC has focused entirely on spoken face-to-face interaction. In contrast, while many studies of L2 pragmatics have also focused on spoken interaction, they also examined written communication including written discourse markers, cross-cultural pragmatic differences in literacy, and written historical records of speech acts and terms of address. It is also the case that, given the roots of pragmatics in linguistics, much L2 pragmatics research has privileged language as the primary semiotic means and paid little attention to vocal prosody, gesture, gaze, bodily stance, and other nonverbal semiotic media. In contrast, three studies of IC reviewed in this chapter (Cekaite, 2007; Taguchi, 2014; Young & Miller, 2004) have identified nonverbal media as contributing to the construction of IC. Given the focus on spoken face-to-face interaction in L2 pragmatics and in IC, clearly, a systematic way of analyzing and explaining that interaction is necessary in future research. For many researchers, conversation analysis (CA) has provided a powerful tool and, as reviewed in this chapter, Pekarek Doehler and Berger (2018), Nguyen (2006), and Ishida (2009) have called explicitly on CA methodology to analyze their data. These are all comparative studies of phenomena analyzed over time. In making cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, or longitudinal comparisons among data, however, it is expedient to follow guidelines in performing comparative analyses recommended by Schegloff (2009, p. 378): 1 Explicitly state the target phenomenon or practice. 2 Describe the environments in which the target occurs. 3 Describe the ways in which other environments in which the target occurs are like or different from each other. 4 Specify what makes the target phenomenon or practice of interest.

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In specifying the communicative resources deployed by participants in creating intersubjectivity in discursive practice, Young (2008, 2011) presented four interactional resources which can be investigated using CA. These include: (1) the selection of acts and sequential organization in a discursive practice; (2) speaker selection and speaker change in dyadic and multi-party interaction; (3) the identification and repair of what participants perceive to be interactional trouble in a discursive practice; and (4) how participants open and close a given practice to distinguish it from adjacent talk. Given that IC is conceived as participants’ participation in specific discursive practice, future research needs to identify the linguistic resources that characterize those practices. Those resources are well defined within systemic functional grammar and include register, defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976) as the set of meanings and the configuration of semantic patterns, which are typically drawn upon in a specific discursive practice, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings (see also Chapter 17 in this volume). Other linguistic resources include metafunctions specified by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) as ideational (experiential and logical), interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. Future research on IC needs to include these linguistic resources when analyzing IC development by L2 learners. Finally, as has been stressed throughout this chapter, intersubjectivity cannot be understood by examining the contributions of a single speaker, even though that speaker is a L2 learner, whom we, as applied linguists, wish to aid in the achievement of interactional and intercultural competence. The identity resources listed by Young are fundamental to the co-construction of a participation framework by all participants in a discursive practice. As Goffman (1979) first recognized, the notions of speaker and hearer are far too simple, and ‘the relation(s) among speaker, addressed recipient, and unaddressed recipient(s) are complicated, significant, and not much explored’ (p. 133). Not only has participation framework been ignored by some IC researchers in SLA, but researchers have focused their attention on a single speaker in order to describe that speaker’s development over time. In tracing the development of interactional competence, researchers should consider participation framework as fundamental and, within that framework, examine how speakers and hearers establish intersubjectivity.

Further reading Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Malden, MA: Blackwell. This is a book-length treatment of second and foreign language learners’ acquisition of pragmatics. It provides an account of research findings and covers such central topics as the theoretical and empirical approaches to L2 pragmatic development, the relationship of pragmatic and grammatical development, the role of different learning contexts, the effect of instruction, and individual differences. Taguchi, N. (2015). Developing interactional competence in a Japanese study abroad context. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. This book describes the development of interactional competence by learners from a wide variety of backgrounds studying abroad in Japan. These individuals learn not only the forms of a new language, but how their new language creates identities of them in social situations, some of which the learners desire and some of which their interlocutors find strangely impolite. Through her innovative study of how interactional competence develops, the author paints an optimistic picture of how language learning develops through language use. Young, R. F. (2009). Discursive practice in language learning and teaching. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. Discursive Practice is a theory of the linguistic and socio-cultural characteristics of recurring episodes of face-to-face interaction—episodes that have social and cultural significance to a community of speakers. This book examines the discursive practice approach to language-in-interaction, explicating the consequences of

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grounding language use and language learning in a view of social realities as discursively constructed, of meanings as negotiated through interaction, of the context-bound nature of discourse, and of discourse as social action. The book also addresses how participants’ abilities in a specific discursive practice may be learned, taught, and assessed.

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Hall, J. K., & Pekarek Doehler, S. (2011). L2 interactional competence and development. In J. K. Hall, J. Hellermann, & S. Pekarek Doehler (Eds.), L2 interactional competence and development (pp. 1–15). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold. Hanks, W. F. (1996). Language and communicative practices. Boulder, CO: Westview. Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings (pp. 269–293). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ishida, M. (2009). Development of interactional competence: Changes in the use of ne in L2 Japanese during study abroad. In H. t. Nguyen & G. Kasper (Eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual perspectives (pp. 351–385). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i National Foreign Language Resource Center. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kinginger, C. (Ed.) (2013). Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Koshik, I. (2002). Designedly incomplete utterances: A pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 23(3), 277–309. Kramsch, C. (1986). From language proficiency to interactional competence. The Modern Language Journal, 70(4), 366–372. Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. New York: Oxford University Press. Lantolf, J. P., & Tsai, M.-H. (2018). L2 developmental education and systemic theoretical instruction: The case of English noun collocations. In A. E. Tyler, L. Ortega, M. Uno, & H. I. Park (Eds.), Usage-inspired L2 Instruction: Researched pedagogy (pp. 29–53). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Markee, N. (2017). Are replication studies possible in qualitative second/foreign language classroom research? A call for comparative re-production research. Language Teaching, 50, 367–383. doi:10.1017/ S0261444815000099 Martínez-Flor, A., & Usó-Juan, E. (Eds.). (2010). Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nguyen, H. t. (2006). Constructing ‘expertness’: A novice pharmacist’s development of interactional competence in patient consultations. Communication and Medication, 3(2), 147–160. Pekarek Doehler, S., & Berger, E. (2018). L2 interactional competence as increased ability for contextsensitive conduct: A longitudinal study of story-openings. Applied Linguistics, 39(4), 555–578. Rae, J. (2001). Organizing participation in interaction: Doing participation framework. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 34(2), 253–278. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. Saville-Troike, M. (2003). The ethnography of communication: An introduction (3rd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70, 1075–1095. Schegloff, E. A. (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26(1), 99–128. doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi2601_5 Schegloff, E. A. (2009). One perspective on Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives. In J. Sidnell (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Comparative perspectives (pp. 357–406). New York: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53(2), 361–382. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8(4), 289–327. doi:10.1515/ semi.1973.8.4.289, Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and on the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4–13. Shea, D. P. (1994). Perspective and production: Structuring conversational participation across cultural borders. Pragmatics, 4(3), 357–389. Spitzberg, B. H., & Changnon, G. (2009). Conceptualizing intercultural competence. In D. K. Deardorff (Ed.), The Sage handbook of intercultural competence (pp. 2–52). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 109

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Taguchi, N. (2014). Development of interactional competence in Japanese as a second language: Use of incomplete sentences as interactional resources. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 518–535. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12087.x Taguchi, N. (2015). Developing interactional competence in a Japanese study abroad context. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Trevarthen, C. (1977). Descriptive analyses of infant communicative behaviour. In H. R. Schaffer (Ed.), Studies in mother-infant interaction: Proceedings of the Loch Lomond symposium, Ross Priory, University of Strathclyde, September, 1975 (pp. 227–270). London: Academic Press. Trevarthen, C. (1979). Communication and cooperation in early infancy: A description of primary intersubjectivity. In M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before speech (pp. 321–347). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wells, G. (1981). Learning through interaction: The study of language development. Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press. Young, R. F. (2007). Language learning and teaching as discursive practice. In Z. Hua, P. Seedhouse, L. Wei, & V. Cook (Eds.), Language learning and teaching as social inter-action (pp. 251–271). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, R. F. (2008). Language and interaction: An advanced resource book. New York: Routledge. Young, R. F. (2009). Discursive practice in language learning and teaching. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Young, R. F. (2011). Interactional competence in language learning, teaching, and testing. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. 2, pp. 426–443). New York: Routledge. Young, R. F., & Astarita, A. C. (2013). Practice theory in language learning. Language Learning, 63(Suppl. 1), 171–189. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00743.x Young, R. F., & Lee, J. (2004). Identifying units in interaction: Reactive tokens in Korean and English conversations. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(3), 380–407. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2004.00266.x Young, R. F., & Miller, E. R. (2004). Learning as changing participation: Negotiating discourse roles in the ESL writing conference. The Modern Language Journal, 88(4), 519–535. doi:10.1111/j.0026-7902.2004. t01-16-.x Young, R. F., & Nguyen, H. t. (2002). Modes of meaning in high school science. Applied Linguistics, 23(3), 348–372.

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Part II

Theoretical Approaches

8 Cognitive Approaches in L2 Pragmatics Research Shuai Li

Introduction This chapter reviews L2 pragmatics research taking a ‘cognitivist’ perspective. According to R. Ellis (2008), cognitive approaches to L2 acquisition focus on learners’ internal mechanisms that account for the representation and acquisition of L2 knowledge (p. 405). This understanding of the ‘cognitivist’ stance in SLA suggests two areas of research. The first area is investigating the nature of L2 knowledge, that is, how L2 knowledge is mentally represented in terms of structure and organization (e.g., declarative vs. procedural, explicit vs. implicit). The second area is examining the cognitive processes (e.g., attention, restructuring, and monitoring) involved in knowledge acquisition (i.e., development of mental representation of knowledge). According to R. Ellis (2008), theorizations of cognitive SLA primarily address issues related to knowledge representation (e.g., Bialystok’s two-dimensional model and skill acquisition theories) or issues regarding cognitive processes (e.g., Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis, 1993, 2001). This chapter adopts R. Ellis’s classification of cognitive theorizations and reviews empirical L2 pragmatics research accordingly. A cognitive orientation has been prevalent in L2 pragmatics research almost since the field’s inception. For example, Færch and Kasper (1984) conceptualized pragmatic competence consisting of declarative and procedural components, which is consistent with the skill acquisition theories. In the 1990s, the cognitive orientation was reinforced by Kasper and Blum-Kulka’s (1993) edited volume, which only featured cognitive theories. Although the field has witnessed pluralization of theoretical orientations later on, the ‘cognitivist’ stance continues to hold a strong presence among alternative theoretical approaches (e.g., language socialization and sociocultural theory; see Chapters 9 and 10 in this volume) (Kasper & Rose, 2002; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Despite their presence in L2 pragmatics research from early on, cognitive theories were not widely adopted in empirical studies in the 1980s because the field was heavily influenced by the research paradigm of cross-cultural pragmatics. Until the end of the 1990s, cognitive theories were mainly used to provide post hoc explanations in empirical studies. It was not until after the early 2000s that researchers increasingly started to use cognitive theories to guide empirical research, assessing the applicability of those theories to L2 pragmatics research. Adopting R. Ellis’s (2008) classification of cognitive theorizations, this chapter first reviews studies informed by theories addressing L2 knowledge representation (i.e., the two-dimensional model, and the skill acquisition theory or ACT-R). The chapter then reviews studies conducted under theorizations of cognitive processes involved in L2 acquisition (i.e., the Noticing Hypothesis). 113

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Representation of L2 Pragmatic Knowledge The term pragmatic knowledge is interpreted differently in the field according to one’s theoretical background. First, a functional understanding of pragmatic knowledge concerns the description of various functions of linguistic forms in specific contexts of communication (i.e., form–function–context mappings). This understanding of pragmatic knowledge draws on pragmatics theories (e.g., pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge) (Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983), as well as certain models of communicative language competence (e.g., Bachman & Palmer, 2010) (see also Chapter 1 in this volume). On the other hand, a psycholinguistic understanding of pragmatic knowledge focuses on the mental structure and organization of the kind of knowledge that enables skillful and appropriate performance in communication (e.g., explicit vs. implicit pragmatic knowledge as theorized by Bialystok in 1993). Such understanding of pragmatic knowledge is based on psycholinguistic or cognitive theories (e.g., Bialystok, 1994, 2011; DeKeyser, 2017). There are overlaps between the two understandings of pragmatic knowledge. For example, from a skill acquisition perspective, knowledge of form–function–context mappings may serve as the declarative knowledge basis for developing procedural knowledge that enables appropriate and fluent pragmatic performance. It is also possible that the linguistic categories of pragmatics (e.g., speech acts) reflect the structure of mental representation at a particular stage of pragmatic development, as hypothesized by Bialystok (1993). The following sections focus on two cognitive theories: the two-dimensional model and the skill acquisition theory or ACT-R. I will discuss each theory for theoretical underpinnings, empirical evidence, and future research directions.

The Two-Dimensional Model Theoretical Underpinnings The two-dimensional model (Bialystok, 1994, 2011) posits that language development involves two cognitive processes: analysis of knowledge and control of processing. The knowledge component concerns the degree to which learners analyze their implicit linguistic knowledge so it becomes explicit (Bialystok, 2011, p. 50). There are three levels of knowledge representation ranging from implicit to the most explicit: (1) conceptual (i.e., linguistic knowledge is organized around semantic meanings and/or context of use, such as children’s initial access to language), (2) formal (i.e., linguistic knowledge is organized around linguistic structures, such as one’s metalinguistic awareness of grammatical rules), and (3) symbolic (i.e., linguistic knowledge is organized based on the symbolic relationships between linguistic forms and their real-world referents, such as knowing that the word table stands for a specific kind of object). The processing component, on the other hand, concerns cognitive procedures involved in accurate selection and coordination of linguistic knowledge, as well as cognitive procedures for efficient access to the knowledge to support performance.

Empirical Evidence The two-dimensional model has several implications for L2 pragmatic development. Regarding the knowledge component, Bialystok (1993) has argued that the mental representation of pragmatic knowledge falls into conceptual, formal, and symbolic levels. She contends that pragmatic performance minimally requires formal representation, where linguistic forms are organized around pragmatic functions (pragmalinguistic knowledge) (e.g., using modals for requesting), but ideally it should rely on symbolic representation, which allows understanding of pragmatic functions of linguistic forms in context (sociopragmatic knowledge) (e.g., understanding that the English bi-clausal structures are appropriate for making requests in high-imposition contexts 114

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due to the tone-mitigating function).1 Development in L2 pragmatic knowledge entails learning new pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic rules, and gradually sorting out the form–function–context mappings. A challenge for L2 learners is developing processing capacity for accurate selection of and efficient access to relevant pragmatic knowledge during communication. According to Bialystok (1993), the selection issue concerns whether one is able to identify a specific form, among alternatives, that is appropriate to express the intended pragmatic function in context (e.g., using the English bi-clausal structure in request-making), and whether one is able to choose an appropriate interpretation of an utterance in context among competing interpretations (e.g., in Chinese, questions such as ‘Where are you going?’ and ‘Have you eaten?’ can serve as greeting expressions in certain contexts and should be interpreted as such). On the other hand, the access issue also concerns efficient retrieval and display of relevant pragmatic knowledge to support fluent performance. The two-dimensional model provides a useful framework for investigating L2 pragmatic development in terms of knowledge and processing aspects. Although research explicitly referring to this model remains limited, empirical evidence supports the developmental pathways outlined in the model. Regarding the knowledge component, Hassall’s (2015) case study on the learning of Indonesian address terms illustrates the development from formal to symbolic representation. The learner, Ross, was a true beginner of Indonesian. Because he already had the concept of address terms from his L1 (English), developing formal representation of address terms in L2 was a straightforward process: he progressively added new address terms into his pragmalinguistic repertoire over time during his sojourn in Indonesia. However, developing symbolic representation that relates specific address terms to different addressees was more effortful. For example, Ross felt uncomfortable calling interlocutors requiring respect Bapak (‘father’) or Ibu (‘mother’) because that was in clash with his L1 norm. Moreover, although he discovered that the second-person pronoun anda was used infrequently and only in certain contexts, this awareness developed very slowly. After the sojourn, Ross was able to produce appropriate terms in all scenarios on a discourse completion test (DCT) except for one that dealt with peer interlocutors, suggesting that Ross was fine-tuning his symbolic representation of the Indonesian address term system during study abroad. To date, only a few studies have examined the processing aspect of L2 pragmatic development in conjunction with the knowledge aspect. Using on-line listening tasks, Taguchi’s (2007, 2008a, 2008b) longitudinal studies investigated the development of pragmatic comprehension in L2 English. She found that, while comprehension accuracy and speed both developed naturally over time, gains in accuracy and speed did not correlate (Taguchi, 2007); moreover, accuracy and speed demonstrated different developmental trajectories in a study-abroad context compared with a domestic instructional context (Taguchi, 2008a); finally, gains in accuracy and speed were affected by different cognitive and social factors (Taguchi, 2008b). In the area of L2 pragmatic production, S. Li (2014) used an oral DCT to investigate the development of request-making in Chinese during study abroad. He found that, regardless of proficiency level, L2 Chinese learners gained in the quality of requests (as rated on the clarity of intention, grammaticality, and appropriateness), but they did not gain in planning time for production; on the other hand, the advanced-level learners improved on production speech rate whereas the intermediate-level learners did not. In these studies, measures of accuracy/appropriateness of performance were indicators of pragmatic knowledge, and measures of speed/fluency of performance were indicators of processing capacity. Hence, findings of these studies support the two-dimensional model, showing that knowledge and processing are distinct aspects in pragmatic development with different developmental patterns. However, these studies have a methodological limitation because the underlying constructs and their indicators do not align perfectly. Whereas the temporal measures 115

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(e.g., processing speed, speech rate) reflect the efficiency of access to knowledge within the processing component, it is less clear which construct(s), knowledge or processing, the accuracy/ appropriate measures correspond to. Because the instruments used in these studies tap on-line performance, an incorrect judgment (as in Taguchi’s studies) or production of an inappropriate request (as in S. Li’s study) may indicate either a lack of the targeted pragmatic knowledge, or a lack of the processing ability for accurately selecting the relevant pragmatic knowledge, or a combination of both. Hence, no empirical study to date has fully adapted the two-dimensional model to examine L2 pragmatic development.

Future Directions As Taguchi and Roever (2017) observed, over two decades after being featured as a main cognitive model for investigating L2 pragmatic development (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993), empirical studies adopting the two-dimensional model as the a priori theoretical framework remains limited. There are two possible reasons for this. First, with its focus on development, the model requires a study with a longitudinal design, but longitudinal studies have been generally underrepresented in the field (Taguchi, 2010). Another reason is the field’s predominant focus on the appropriateness/ accuracy aspect of pragmatic performance, and to a far lesser focus on the fluency aspect. There are two possible future research directions under the two-dimensional model. First, there is a need to conduct refined analyses on the changes in the representation of pragmatic knowledge from the formal to the symbolic level. Adult L2 learners are considered to start with formal representation and then reach symbolic representation (Bialystok, 1993), but very few studies have documented such changes (e.g., Hassall, 2015). To explore such changes, future research can build on previous studies when selecting pragmatic features for investigation. For example, Takahashi (1996) examined transferability of two types of equivalent request-making strategies in Japanese and English: (1) functional equivalents (i.e., Japanese and English request strategies that match in pragmatic functions) and (2) conventional equivalents (i.e., Japanese and English request strategies that match in surface linguistic structures). Pragmatically appropriate request-making involves using the functional rather than the conventional equivalents. However, Japanese EFL learners rated the conventional equivalents to be more transferable to English than the functional equivalents, suggesting that they relied primarily on their L1 Japanese request strategies when making English requests. Because the learners were already familiar with various request-making strategies in English, they were likely at the level of formal representation of their pragmatic knowledge (i.e., form–function mappings). However, the learners were yet to reach the level of symbolic representation because they were unable to consider pragmatic functions in context when selecting specific request strategies. With these findings, future research can adopt a longitudinal design to examine how Japanese EFL learners develop symbolic representation of pragmatic knowledge for request-making (favoring functional equivalents) based on their existing formal representation (favoring conventional equivalents). Another example for future research is Xiao’s (2017) study that tracked L2 Chinese learners’ production of mitigations when expressing opinions in conversations with native speakers. He examined sentence-level mitigations (i.e., lexical and syntactic downgraders) and discourse-level mitigations (i.e., pre- and post-expansions for preparing and qualifying one’s opinions). He found that learners started with single pre- and post-expansions and gradually became able to use multiple pre- and post-expansions to prepare, qualify, and support their opinions. While the shift from single to multiple expansions suggests development at the level of formal representation (i.e., considering these as two mitigating strategies), it is unclear whether the learners made progress at the level of symbolic representation by employing multiple expansions as opposed to single expansion based on contextual considerations (e.g., expressing opinions on more vs. less sensitive topics). To test this hypothesis, researchers can replicate Xiao’s study by using conversation 116

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topics that differ in contextual dimensions (e.g., more vs. less sensitive topics, different interlocutors) and examine whether learners can switch between single and multiple expansions according to contexts. Another research possibility under Bialystok’s model is improving methods of investigation when examining the development of knowledge and processing components together. As discussed earlier, a problem of studies using on-line data collection instruments (S. Li, 2014; Taguchi, 2008a, 2008b) is the difficulty in teasing apart knowledge from processing. Hence, future researchers can combine off-line and on-line instruments for assessing knowledge and processing. For example, when studying L2 request-making, one can design multiple-choice questions or written DCT (that do not impose time pressure and thus are off-line tasks) to examine whether learners are able to use appropriate request strategies according to contexts. Researchers can ask participants to provide concurrent verbal reports while completing the tasks or interview them afterwards; in this way, researchers can ascertain participants’ existing pragmatic knowledge in request-making. Meanwhile, researchers can include role-play tasks in which learners produce requests under time pressure (and thus an on-line task). The role plays can be analyzed for appropriateness (e.g., ratings, strategy types) and fluency (e.g., speech rates), corresponding to accurate selection and efficienct access within the processing component.

The Skill Acquisition Theory: ACT-R Theoretical Underpinnings The skill acquisition theory that has been applied to L2 pragmatics research is the ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought—Rationale) proposed by Anderson (1993) and introduced to SLA by DeKeyser (2015). The theory posits that skill development (e.g., improvement in language performance) entails changes in the mental representation of knowledge across three stages: cognitive, associative, and autonomous. The initial cognitive stage involves explicit learning of declarative knowledge (e.g., knowing about adding the suffix –ed when expressing the past tense in English). Performance at this stage is slow and erroneous because it often entails effortful retrieval and implementation of relevant declarative knowledge. Next, at the associative stage, learners practice the targeted action (e.g., encoding the English past tense by adding the suffix –ed) by utilizing the learned declarative knowledge. Repeated practices trigger proceduralization, a process in which procedural knowledge develops. Procedural knowledge consists of ‘production rules’, namely ‘if … then …’ procedures (e.g., if one needs to describe past actions in English, then add the suffix –ed). Because procedural knowledge encodes various steps in executing the targeted action into one coherent chunk for processing, performance at the associative stage is much more accurate and fluent than performance during the cognitive stage. Finally, the autonomous stage involves a long fine-turning process called automatization. A large amount of practice is required in this process to develop automatized knowledge, which enables nearly error-free performance with complete spontaneity. There are important differences in the nature and function between declarative and procedural (and automatized) knowledge. First, declarative knowledge consists of factual information, but procedural knowledge encodes procedures involved in performing targeted actions. Second, although procedural knowledge allows accurate and speedy performance, its effects are highly skill-specific in that the procedural knowledge developed through practice in one skill can hardly transfer to support performance of another skill. For example, reading and writing entail different sets of cognitive processes and therefore draw on different procedural knowledge. The procedural knowledge developed from practice in reading can barely transfer to improve performance on writing, and vice versa. In contrast, declarative knowledge can be shared across skills (e.g., reading and writing both require knowledge of vocabulary and grammar). 117

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Empirical Evidence The skill acquisition theory has two implications for L2 pragmatics research. Concerning the nature of pragmatic knowledge, the theory allows conceptualizing the construct in terms of declarative and procedural components. This notion was indicated over three decades ago in Færch and Kasper’s (1984) framework, which distinguishes declarative pragmatic knowledge (referring to pragmatics resources such as pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge) from procedural pragmatic knowledge (consisting of meta-cognitive procedures such as context analysis, goal formation, planning, and monitoring). A second implication concerns the role of practice in facilitating pragmatic development, a topic that has rarely been investigated. In particular, it makes sense to examine what kind of practice and how much practice is needed for developing procedural pragmatic knowledge that supports accurate and fluent performance. A small body of research has explored the aforementioned issues. S. Li (2013) examined the effects of different amounts of practice on the development request-making in L2 Chinese. His study included three groups: an input-based practice group, an output-based practice group, and a control group. All groups first received metapragmatic instruction on targeted declarative pragmatic knowledge (i.e., form–function–context mappings for making Chinese requests). Afterwards, the input group practiced the targeted features receptively, while the output group engaged in production practices. Amount of practice was operationalized as the number of instances for practicing the targeted mappings in either receptive mode (e.g., identifying the most appropriate request-making forms for a given dialogue) or productive mode (e.g., filling in the blanks of a dialogue by using the targeted request-making forms). There were a total of eight instances of practicing for each group. The input group was assessed with a recognition task, while the output group by a production task for three times (i.e., immediately before, half-way through, and immediately after practice). Learners’ performance on the two assessment tasks was analyzed for appropriateness/accuracy and fluency. Overall, more practice resulted in better performance for both groups. However, the amount of practice needed to improve performance varied: four instances of practice led to significant improvement in appropriateness/accuracy of performance, but for performance fluency, the two treatment groups did not outperform the control group even after eight instances of practicing. These findings suggest that, while declarative pragmatic knowledge can be refined to a high degree with a relatively small amount of practice (such as those used in S. Li’s study), the development of procedural pragmatic knowledge requires a larger amount of practice. With a similar design, S. Li and Taguchi (2014) investigated whether the effects of practice were skill-specific (recognition vs. production). The input and output groups engaged in similar practice activities as in S. Li (2013); however, the groups were assessed by both recognition and production tasks. The results showed a cross-modality effect of practice on accuracy. The input group improved on the production task, while the output group gained on the recognition task. However, the practice effects were modality-specific in terms of fluency. Over time, the input group reduced the response times in the recognition task, but did not gain in production fluency; in contrast, the output group improved on production fluency, but did not gain in recognition fluency. These results indicate that, as the skill acquisition theory predicts, the practice effects on procedural pragmatic knowledge are restricted to the same modality, but the effects on declarative pragmatic knowledge are shared across modalities. An important issue that remains unresolved is how much practice is needed to develop procedural pragmatic knowledge. Because it is possible that the amount of practice in these studies was insufficient for developing the procedural pragmatic knowledge, future research can increase the amount of practice gradually and track its effects on proceduralization. This would entail a longitudinal research design to examine the cumulative effects of practice through multiple data collections over time. 118

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Another problem to be resolved in future research relates to more precise measures for capturing proceduralization. In the studies discussed above, raw temporal measures (e.g., response times, planning times, and speech rates) were calculated and compared over time and across groups. Changes in raw temporal measures may merely reflect a speed-up process rather than proceduralization, because proceduralization in the strictest sense refers to the restructuring of cognitive processes that can be captured by decreased coefficient of variation (i.e., the ratio of standard deviation over mean) (Segalowitz, 2010). Although Segalowitz’s position remains controversial (DeKeyser, 2017), using alternative and refined temporal measures that can capture the development of procedural pragmatic knowledge should enrich our understanding of proceduralization in L2 pragmatics research.

Future Directions There are two main directions for future pragmatics research informed by the skill acquisition theory. The first direction concerns various realizations of practice (e.g., types of practice, amount of practice, and timing of practice) and their effects on pragmatic development; the second concerns the external validity in practice activities and measures for assessing practice effects. Regarding types of practice activities, future researchers can be informed by existing instructional studies. For example, Takimoto (2012) compared the effects of two types of practice— task-type repetition (i.e., practicing target features with different exercises) and same-task repetition (i.e., repeating exactly the same exercise)—on the learning of request modifications in L2 English. He found that same-task repetition led to more gains than task-type repetition. Although Takimoto’s focus was on the development of declarative knowledge, task repetition can also trigger the development of procedural knowledge. Different roles that these two types of practice play in enhancing proceduralization would be an interesting topic to pursue in the future. Another example for researching types of practice activities comes from studies comparing deductive and inductive instructions (e.g., Rose & Ng, 2001; Takimoto, 2008). Deductive instruction involves the provision of metapragmatic information followed by practice activities, while inductive instruction provides practice activities that allow learners to infer metapragmatic rules. Both instruction types aim to develop declarative pragmatic knowledge and offer practices for using that knowledge, but they may differ in the depth of processing (Craik, 2002; Lockhart, 2002) involved in the learning process. Compared with deductive instruction, inductive instruction can push learners to process learning materials and the embedded form–function–context mappings more deeply, hence leading to better retention of gains (Takimoto, 2009). Previous studies (e.g., Rose & Ng, 2001; Takimoto, 2008) compared deductive and inductive instructions only against the development of declarative pragmatic knowledge (as indicated by appropriateness/accuracy measures). Future research can investigate whether and to what extent different depth of processing during practice can lead to different development of procedural pragmatic knowledge. Turning to the issue regarding appropriate amount of practice, existing findings (S. Li, 2012, 2013) are preliminary because they are limited to one target feature (i.e., request-making) and input- and output-based types of practice. Pragmatic features vary along different dimensions such as linguistic complexity (e.g., routines such as ‘take care’ vs. the bi-clausal structure ‘I was wondering if …’ for request-making), saliency (e.g., internal modifications being less salient than external modifications), and the amount of cognitive resources required for processing (e.g., conventional expressions being easier to process than non-conventional counterparts). Meanwhile, different types of practice can affect depth of processing differently (e.g., inductive and deductive instructions), as can the cognitive processes involved (e.g., input- and output-based practices). Hence, future research can examine how much practice is needed for learning different types of pragmatic features under different practice conditions. 119

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Another area for future investigation is the distribution of practice. Is it better to spread out practice sessions with wide intervals in between (i.e., spaced practice), or is it more beneficial to have massed practice with brief intervals? These questions have not been examined in L2 pragmatics. But studies on vocabulary and morphosyntax acquisition (e.g., Bird, 2010; Nakata, 2015; Suzuki & DeKeyser, 2017a, 2017b) have suggested a number of factors that can affect the learning outcome, including the nature of the targeted linguistic feature (e.g., grammar vs. vocabulary), timing of outcome assessment (e.g., immediate vs. delayed posttest), and individual differences in cognitive abilities (e.g. rote memory, analytic ability). Future research can also examine how these factors influence L2 pragmatics learning under different practice conditions. Finally, while the ultimate goal of developing declarative, procedural, and automatized knowledge is to support learners’ real-world communication, existing L2 pragmatics research informed by the ACT-R is purely lab-based with highly controlled practice activities and assessment tasks (e.g., lacking features of interaction). Hence, to what extent the practiced pragmatic performance transfers to real-life situations remains unknown. This brings us to the second main research direction, which concerns the external validity of practice activities and the evaluation of the effectiveness of practice. The crux of the matter is transfer-appropriate processing (TAP), which means that transfer of a skill from a learned task to a new task is likely to the extent that the cognitive operations in the new task are congruent with those in the learned task (DeKeyser, 2007a; Gatbonton & Segalowitz, 2005). The implication is that practice activities and assessment tasks should be designed with reference to target languageuse behaviors (DeKeyser, 2007b). Future research can incorporate methodologies informed by discursive pragmatics (e.g., Kasper, 2006; Youn, 2015) in order to design practice activities and assessment tasks that better resemble authentic language-use situations. For example, if instruction aims to enable learners to produce appropriate speech acts in face-to-face interactions, then features characterizing natural conversations (e.g., turn taking, engagement in conversation through appropriate sequential moves) should be incorporated into the development of practice and assessment tasks. So far I have reviewed studies that investigates the mental representation of pragmatic knowledge. In the next section, I will discuss research that examines the cognitive processes involved in the development of pragmatic knowledge.

Cognitive Processes Involved in L2 Pragmatic Knowledge Development R. Ellis (2008) distinguishes between micro and macro cognitive processes involved in L2 acquisition. The micro processes include attention, restructuring, and monitoring. The macro processes encompass two pairs of contrastive learning processes: incidental vs. intentional learning, and explicit vs. implicit learning.2 L2 pragmatics research has yet to examine the macro processes; instead, the field has primarily drawn on Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis (2001, 2010), which underscores the micro process of attention.

The Noticing Hypothesis Theoretical Underpinnings Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis (2001, 2010) concerns the cognitive mechanisms involved in the initial processing of L2 input, that is, the role of attention in converting input into intake that can lead to subsequent learning (i.e., changes in mental representation of linguistic knowledge). Noticing is theorized as a lower level of awareness, which refers to ‘conscious registration of attended specific instances of language’ (Schmidt, 2010, p. 725) (e.g., noticing an English request utterance produced with the bi-clausal structure in a situation where a large favor is being asked). 120

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Understanding, on the other hand, represents a higher level of awareness and entails generalizations across instances (e.g., realizing that using the English bi-clausal structure is appropriate for request-making in high-imposition situations). The strong version of the hypothesis posits that noticing is a necessary and sufficient condition for L2 learning to occur (Schmidt, 1993). The weak version (Schmidt, 1993, 2010) acknowledges the possibility of learning without attention (e.g., implicit statistical learning) and proposes that more attention leads to more learning. Nevertheless, the hypothesis has maintained a position arguing for a critical role of attention in L2 acquisition. On the other hand, understanding is considered to be facilitative but not necessary for L2 acquisition.

Empirical Evidence For L2 pragmatics learning, Schmidt (1993, 2010) has argued that noticing entails paying attention to the targeted pragmalinguistic forms, their pragmatic functions, and the associated contextual features, while understanding refers to making conscious connections between the noticed forms and the contexts in which these forms occur for conveying pragmatic functions. The hypothesis has three implications for L2 pragmatic development. First, the strong version of the hypothesis predicts that no pragmatic development can occur without attention. Second, the weak version of the hypothesis posits that more attention can lead to more pragmatics learning. Third, given the facilitative role of understanding, achieving understating is likely to result in better learning than mere noticing. The Noticing Hypothesis has been one of the most frequently referenced cognitive theories in L2 pragmatics research over different learning environments (naturalistic, study abroad, instructed, and virtual environment) (for a review, see Taguchi & Roever, 2017). However, as Taguchi and Roever (2017) observed, the hypothesis is typically not used as an a priori theory to guide empirical research; instead, it is often cited to provide post hoc explanations for learning outcome, that is, learners’ observable performance. Yet the Noticing Hypothesis cannot always account for learning outcome, especially when there is no data showing the cognitive processes (noticing and understanding) involved in input processing. A good example to illustrate this point is the line of research on L2 pragmatics teaching. A number of studies have compared explicit and implicit instructional approaches for their effectiveness (for reviews, see Taguchi, 2015; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). The key difference between the two approaches is whether explicit metapragmatic information is provided or not. Research findings have generally shown that explicit instruction is more effective than implicit instruction. For example, Nguyen, Pham, and Pham (2012) compared the effects of explicit and implicit conditions on the learning of English criticisms. They reported that both instructed groups outperformed a control group, but the explicit condition led to larger gains than the implicit instructional condition. Citing the Noticing Hypothesis as a post hoc explanation, the authors argued that the explicit metapragmatic information could guarantee learners’ attention to the targeted features, whereas such attention was not guaranteed in the implicit condition; moreover, the metapragmatic information could ensure learners’ pragmatic awareness at the level of understanding, which was not necessarily possible under the implicit condition; consequently, the explicit condition led to better learning outcome than the implicit condition. Nguyen et al.’s argument is also seen in other studies reporting an advantage of the explicit over implicit condition. The Noticing Hypothesis can support such explanations because it predicts that more attention leads to more learning and that achieving a higher level of awareness (i.e., understanding) facilitates learning. However, this argument becomes problematic in studies that revealed the opposite—the implicit condition being more effective than the explicit condition (e.g., Q. Li, 2012; Takimoto, 2006, 2009). Q. Li’s (2012) study is one example. This study taught request modifications to Chinese EFL learners. Three treatment groups received 121

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learning materials in print and engaged in the same practice activities. The explicit instruction group received additional metapragmatic information, the enhanced implicit instructional group received input with the targeted features highlighted, and the unenhanced implicit group was given plain copies of the learning materials. The two implicit groups improved more than the explicit group from the pretest to the posttest; at the delayed posttest, only the unenhanced (implicit) group retained gains across all targeted features. Q. Li interpreted that the provision of metapragmatic information might have diverted learners’ attention away from the targeted pragmatic features, which led to less pragmatic gain. Interestingly, while Q. Li (2012) and Nguyen et al. (2012) both acknowledged the essential role of attention to targeted pragmatic features in affecting learning outcome, they differed in whether the provision of metapragmatic information positively or negatively influenced learners’ attentional allocation. Clearly, the Noticing Hypothesis can be used to support Nguyen et al.’s (2012) findings but not Q. Li’s (2012) results. According to Schmidt (1993), the validity of the Noticing Hypothesis can only be verified with data showing whether and to what extent attention is directed to the targeted pragmatic features while learning. However, like Q. Li (2012) and Nguyen et al. (2012), most previous studies did not document the actual attention allocation. Hence, it remains unknown how different instructional conditions affect learners’ attention to the targeted pragmatic features, and to what extent those attended features are subsequently learned. Recently, a few studies (Kim & Taguchi, 2015, 2016) overcame this methodological problem by documenting actual learning processes in conjunction with learning outcomes. These studies were informed by Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis (2001, 2003), which posits that increased task complexity can create more opportunities of negotiation (that help focus learners’ attention on targeted features), which, in turn, enhance L2 learning. Kim and Taguchi (2015) compared the effects of simple and complex tasks on the quantity of pragmatics-related episodes (PREs; discussion around pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic factors) while completing a task, the quality of task completion, and the learning outcome of English request-making among Korean EFL learners. Both instructed groups received metapragmatic information followed by respective complex and simple tasks that differed in the amount of reasoning needed for task completion. In the complex task, learners collaboratively worked out the sociopragmatic factors of a scenario (e.g., setting, interlocutor relationship) while co-constructing a request-making dialogue based on the scenario. In the simple task, learners received explicit sociopragmatic information before co-constructing a dialogue. The complex task condition resulted in a larger number of PREs, which helped direct learners’ attention to the targeted features. The two groups did not differ at the immediate posttest (DCT measures), but only the complex task group retained their gains at the delayed posttest. This study is commendable for its methodological innovation, i.e., collecting data showing learners’ verbalized thinking processes during task-based interaction (as reflected in PREs). Such data can demonstrate that, even under explicit conditions, manipulation of task features can help direct more attention to pragmatic features, which, in turn, can lead to the retention of pragmatic knowledge. Two other lines of research have attempted to investigate what Schmidt (1993) called ‘instance of noticing’ in order to establish the connection between attention and learning outcome. The first line of research involves case studies relying on learners’ self-reports on their learning experiences (e.g., Hassall, 2015; Schmidt, 1993). Hassall (2015) contrasted the learning of Indonesian address terms between two Australians during study abroad. Both participants were interviewed and also kept diaries reporting instances of learning. These participants were strikingly different in the amount of noticing instances of address forms. Ross, who gradually expanded his social network while abroad, reported a number of instances of noticing related to specific address terms in different settings (e.g., classroom, airport, host family, and peer gathering). He also actively sought explanation for what he had noticed from expert speakers. In contrast, Amy, who 122

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felt embattled toward the host culture, reported very few instances of noticing. She also did not achieve the same level of understanding as Ross did. Pre- and post-DCTs revealed remarkable differences between the two participants. While Ross improved from not being able to respond to the DCT items at all to being able to choose appropriate address terms in most items, Amy’s ability remained unchanged over time, as she could complete only one item at posttest. The other line of research (Takahashi, 2005, 2012, 2013, 2017) investigated learners’ allocation of attention as they completed instructional tasks. Takahashi (2005) examined the amount of noticing of English request-making forms and its subsequent effects on learning among EFL learners under two implicit instruction conditions: form comparison (FC) and form search (FS). In the FC condition, learners produced their own requests, compared their productions with native speakers’ requests, and described the differences. Learners in the FS condition received request samples produced by native and non-native speakers, and searched for distinctly native expressions. All learners were asked whether they had noticed the targeted forms and whether they realized their pragmatic functions through a retrospective questionnaire. Compared with the FS condition, participants in the FC condition reported more noticing of the targeted features and their pragmatic functions. However, successful noticing did not invariably lead to subsequent learning as assessed by a DCT. In fact, there were individual differences in noticing and subsequent learning even under the same learning condition, suggesting that the effects of instruction conditions cannot be assumed to have uniform effects on individual learners. These findings indicate the importance of studying individual difference factors that (a) mediate the effects of instruction on the allocation of attention, and (b) mediate the role of noticing in affecting learning (see also Chapter 28 in this volume). To investigate these issues, Takahashi (2012) asked Japanese EFL learners to watch video-recorded conversations containing targeted request forms four times. After each view, learners identified expressions that they found challenging and rated the level of interest in learning those expressions. Takahashi found that pragmatic awareness (operationalized as noticing plus subjective interest) during learning was affected by learners’ motivation and listening proficiency. Using the same instruments, Takahashi (2013) further reported that learners’ pragmatic awareness led to the learning of structurally simple forms (e.g., internal modifiers) but not structurally complex forms (e.g., the bi-clausal patterns), suggesting that linguistic complexity can also mediate the effects of noticing on learning. Most recently, Takahashi (2017) focused on the learners who showed relatively higher levels of pragmatic awareness in her previous studies. She found that learners’ familiarity with the grammatical structures of the targeted pragmalinguistic forms facilitated their noticing of such forms. However, noticing did not invariably lead to learning (as assessed by a DCT), possibly because noticing represents a relatively shallow level of processing. Together, Takahashi’s findings demonstrate that noticing of pragmatic features is jointly influenced by learner-external environments (e.g. level of explicitness/implicitness in teaching) and learner-internal factors (e.g., motivation, proficiency, and grammar knowledge).

Future Directions As previously argued, the Noticing Hypothesis essentially concerns learners’ internal cognitive processes governing the allocation of attention during input processing. Although the strong version of the hypothesis claims that ‘no learning can occur without noticing’, L2 pragmatics researchers have often interpreted it as ‘noticing guarantees learning’. This is probably why there has been a tendency to overuse the Noticing Hypothesis to provide post hoc explanations for observed learning outcomes, while in reality there are several intermediary processes between initial input processing and learning. Again, this hypothesis is a theorization of very specific L2 learning processes (i.e., noticing and understanding), so future research adopting this hypothesis should focus on these processes in the first place. 123

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Research on pragmatics instruction can continue to benefit from the Noticing Hypothesis. Researchers have examined the effectiveness of instructional approaches (e.g., explicit vs. implicit, processing instruction) on L2 pragmatics learning by referring to their role in directing learners’ attention to targeted pragmatic features. Because each instructional approach typically includes different learning tasks, it is unclear whether it is an instructional approach or one (or several) specific learning task that is effective (or ineffective) in directing learners’ attention to learning targets. For example, different effectiveness of the two implicit instruction conditions found in Takahashi’s (2005) study is likely a result of the different operationalizations of the conditions and learning tasks used. Hence, future research should investigate the role of specific instructional tasks in promoting noticing (and understanding) of pragmatic features and whether and how noticing translates into subsequent learning. Methodologically, this means documenting both learning processes and learning outcomes to maximize the explanatory power, as shown in Kim and Taguchi (2015), reviewed earlier in this section. Another research direction to investigate is how attention to target pragmatic features is influenced by various individual difference factors in conjunction with the affordances of learnerexternal environments. Takahashi’s studies reviewed above demonstrated that, under implicit learning conditions, individual differences in motivation, listening proficiency, and grammar knowledge contributed to learners’ attentional allocation to pragmatic features. Presumably, other individual difference factors, such as working memory, structural sensitivity, and other factors related to pragmatics learning (Robinson, 2005) may also facilitate allocation of attention in different learning tasks. Hence, future studies can examine whether and how attention to pragmatic features is influenced by the interaction between task characteristics and individual difference factors. For example, researchers can investigate whether and how working memory (an individual difference factor) influences learners’ attention to structurally simple and complex pragmalinguistic forms (a factor about target feature property) in both cognitively demanding and less demanding tasks (a task feature factor).

Conclusion This chapter reviewed L2 pragmatics studies informed by SLA theories that share a ‘cognitivist’ perspective. At the core of the cognitive theorizations of L2 acquisition is the issue of mental representation of language systems. As VanPatten (2017) argues, acquiring a second language essentially means acquiring the mental representation of that language (i.e., how the knowledge of the language is structured and stored in one’s mind). The ongoing discussions in SLA research surrounding topics such as explicit vs. implicit knowledge, declarative vs. procedural knowledge, rule-based vs. instance-based representation, have all enriched our understanding of the L2 mental representation. Moreover, SLA theories focusing on the cognitive processes (e.g., explicit vs. implicit learning, incidental vs. intentional learning, input processing) all aim to clarify whether and how these theorized processes can lead to changes in L2 mental representation. From a cognitive perspective, the observed development in language use is essentially driven by the changes in learners’ mental representation of the language. L2 pragmatics research, however, has long focused on the use aspect of pragmatic knowledge, with only a very small body of research investigating the mental representation of pragmatic knowledge (i.e., how pragmatic knowledge is structured and stored in one’s mind) and the cognitive processes that can influence the changes in the mental representation. This tendency probably explains why pragmatics is noticeably underrepresented in mainstream discussions of cognitive SLA theories on issues such as the interface between explicit and implicit knowledge and the mechanisms underlying implicit and explicit learning (e.g., N. Ellis, 2017; Rebuschat, 2015; Suzuki & DeKeyser, 2017c). In fact, L2 pragmatics has much to contribute to these 124

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ongoing debates. For example, to what extent is pragmatic knowledge implicit? Bialystok’s (1994, 2011) theorization suggests the existence of implicit pragmatic knowledge that can gradually be analyzed to become more explicit. If so, how can we empirically examine this theorized explicit/implicit interface in pragmatic knowledge? On the other hand, as DeKeyser (2003) suggested, is it more profitable to discuss declarative/procedural pragmatic knowledge rather than explicit/implicit pragmatic knowledge? Moreover, do implicit learning mechanisms (e.g., statistical learning) work for acquiring L2 pragmatics? These are just some of the fascinating questions to be explored in the future. This chapter, therefore, calls for more empirical studies based on cognitive SLA theories to investigate the nature of pragmatic knowledge and its development.

Notes 1 One should note that learners’ subjectivity and agency can affect whether or not they choose to implement their knowledge at the level of symbolic representation in real-life communication. Interested readers can read more on this topic in Chapter 11 of this volume. 2 R. Ellis (2008) defines the macro and micro processes from the perspective of learners’ internal cognitive operations, rather than from the perspective of learner-external environment. Hence, although L2 pragmatics research has examined explicit vs. implicit instruction (focusing on learner-external environment), the field has yet to investigate explicit vs. implicit learning (focusing on learner-internal cognition) involved in L2 pragmatic development.

Further Reading DeKeyser, R. (2017). Knowledge and skill in ISLA. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), Routledge handbook of instructed second language acquisition (pp. 15–32). London: Routledge. This article introduces key constructs shared among skill acquisition theories that are applicable to SLA research. It discusses current issues, reviews key empirical evidence, and proposes future directions surrounding instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) research informed by the skill acquisition perspective. The article also offers several suggestions for classroom teaching. Schmidt, R. (2010). Attention, awareness, and individual differences in language learning. In W. M. Chan, S. Chi, K. N. Cin, J. Istanto, M. Nagami, J. W. Sew, T. Suthiwan & I. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of CLaSIC 2010 (pp. 721–737). Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies. This article introduces the origin and development of the Noticing Hypothesis. Citing research in cognitive psychology and SLA, it reviews empirical evidence for and major objections against the hypothesis. It highlights the importance of investigating the role of individual difference factors in affecting learners’ awareness as they process L2 input.

References Anderson, J. R. (1993). Rules of the mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (2010). Language assessment in practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Bialystok, E. (1993). Symbolic representation and attentional control. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka, (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 43–57). New York: Oxford University Press. Bialystok, E. (1994). Analysis and control in the development of second language proficiency. Studies of Second Language Acquisition, 16, 157–168. Bialystok, E. (2011). How analysis and control lead to advantages and disadvantages in bilingual processing. In C. Sanz & R. P. Leow (Eds.), Implicit and explicit conditions, processes and knowledge in SLA and bilingualism (pp. 49–58). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Bird, S. (2010). Effects of distributed practice on the acquisition of second language English syntax. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 635–650. Craik, F. I. M. (2002). Levels of processing: Past, present … and future? Memory, 10, 305–318.

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DeKeyser, R. M. (2003). Implicit and explicit learning. In C. Doughty & M. Long (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 313–348). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. DeKeyser, R. M. (2007a). Introduction: Situating the concept of practice. In R. M. DeKeyser (Ed.), Practice in a second language: Perspectives from applied linguistics and cognitive psychology (pp. 1–18). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DeKeyser, R. M. (2007b). The future of practice. In R. DeKeyser (Ed.), Practice in a second language: Perspectives from applied linguistics and cognitive psychology (pp. 287–304). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DeKeyser, R. M. (2015). Skill acquisition theory. In B. VanPatten & J. Williams (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction (pp. 94–112). London: Routledge. DeKeyser, R. M. (2017). Knowledge and skill in ISLA. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), Routledge handbook of instructed second language acquisition (pp. 15–32). London: Routledge. Ellis, R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ellis, N. (2017). Implicit and explicit knowledge about language. In J. Cenoz, D. Gorter & S. May (Eds.), Language awareness and multilingualism (pp. 113–124). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Færch, C., & Kasper, G. (1984). Pragmatic knowledge: Rules and procedures. Applied Linguistics, 5, 214–225. Gatbonton, E., & Segalowitz, N. (2005). Rethinking communicative language teaching: A focus on access to fluency. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 61, 325–353. Hassall, T. (2015). Individual variation in L2 study-abroad outcomes: A case study from Indonesian pragmatics. Multilingual, 34, 33–59. Kasper, G. (2006). Speech acts in interaction: Towards discursive pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, C. FélixBrasdefer, & A. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning (Vol.11, pp. 281–314). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Kasper, G., & Blum-Kulka, S. (Eds.). (1993). Interlanguage pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. New York: Blackwell. Kim, Y., & Taguchi, N. (2015). Promoting task-based pragmatics instruction in EFL classroom context: The role of task complexity. The Modern Language Journal, 99, 656–677. Kim, Y., & Taguchi, N. (2016). Learner–learner interaction during collaborative pragmatic tasks: The role of cognitive and pragmatic task demands. Foreign Language Annals, 49, 42–57. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Li, Q. (2012). Effects instruction on adolescent beginners’ acquisition of request modification. TESOL Quarterly, 46, 30–55. Li, S. (2012). The effects of input-based practice on pragmatic development of requests in L2 Chinese. Language Learning, 62, 403–438. Li, S. (2013). Amount of practice and pragmatic development of request-making in L2 Chinese. In N. Taguchi & J. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 43–69). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Li, S. (2014). The effects of different levels of linguistic proficiency on the development of L2 Chinese request production during study abroad. System, 45, 103–116. Li, S., & Taguchi, N. (2014). The effects of practice modality on the development of pragmatic performance in L2 Chinese. The Modern Language Journal, 98, 794–812. Lockhart, R. S. (2002). Levels of processing, transfer-appropriate processing, and the concept of robust encoding. Memory, 10, 397–403. Nakata, T. (2015). Effects of expanding and equal spacing on second language vocabulary learning: Does gradually increasing spacing increase vocabulary learning? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 37(4), 677–711. Nguyen, T. T. M., Pham, T. H., & Pham, M. T. (2012). The relative effects of explicit and implicit formfocused instruction on the development of L2 pragmatic competence. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 416–434. Rebuschat, P. (Ed.) (2015). Implicit and explicit learning of languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Robinson, P. (2001). Task complexity, task difficulty and task production: Exploring interactions in a componential framework. Applied Linguistics, 22, 27–57. Robinson, P. (2003). The cognition hypothesis, task design and adult task-based language learning. Second Language Studies, 21, 45–107. Robinson, P. (2005). Aptitude and second language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 25, 46–73. 126

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Rose, K. R., & Ng, K. F. (2001). Inductive and deductive teaching of compliments and compliment responses. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 145–169). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, R. (1993). Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 21–42). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, R. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, R. (2010). Attention, awareness, and individual differences in language learning. In W. M. Chan, S. Chi, K. N. Cin, J. Istanto, M. Nagami, J. W. Sew, T. Suthiwan & I. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of CLaSIC 2010 (pp. 721–737). Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies. Segalowitz, N. (2010). The cognitive bases of second language fluency. New York: Routledge. Suzuki, Y., & DeKeyser, R. M. (2017a). Exploratory research on L2 distributed practice: An aptitude x treatment interaction. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38, 27–56. Suzuki, Y., & DeKeyser, R. M. (2017b). Effects of distributed practice on the proceduralization of morphology. Language Teaching Research, 21, 166–188. Suzuki, Y., & DeKeyser, R. M. (2017c). The interface of explicit and implicit knowledge in a second language: Insights from individual differences in cognitive aptitudes. Language Learning, 67, 747–790. Taguchi, N. (2007). Development of speed and accuracy in pragmatic comprehension in English as a foreign language. TESOL Quarterly, 42, 313–338. Taguchi, N. (2008a). The role of learning environment in the development of pragmatic comprehension: A comparison of gains between EFL and ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 423–452. Taguchi, N. (2008b). Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning, 58, 33–71. Taguchi, N. (2010). Longitudinal studies in interlanguage pragmatics. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics, Vol.7: Pragmatics across languages and cultures (pp. 333–361). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Taguchi, N. & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Takahashi, S. (1996). Pragmatic transferability. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 189–223. Takahashi, S. (2005). Noticing in task performance and learning outcomes: A qualitative analysis of instructional effects in interlanguage pragmatics. System, 33, 437–461. Takahashi, S. (2012). Individual differences and pragmalinguistic awareness: A structural equation modeling approach. Language, Culture, and Communication, 4, 103–125. Takahashi, S. (2013). Awareness and learning in second language pragmatics. Language, Culture, and Communication, 5, 53–76. Takahashi, S. (2017). Pragmatics-Grammar interface in pragmalinguistics awareness and learning. Language, Culture, and Communication, 9, 87–111. Takimoto, M. (2006). The effects of explicit feedback on the development of pragmatic proficiency. Language Teaching Research, 10, 393–417. Takimoto, M. (2008). The effects of deductive and inductive Instruction on the development of language learners’ pragmatic competence. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 369–386. Takimoto, M. (2009). The effects of input-based tasks on the development of learners’ pragmatic proficiency. Applied Linguistics, 30, 1–25. Takimoto, M. (2012). Assessing the effects of identical task repetition and task-type repetition on learners’ recognition and production of second language request downgraders. Intercultural Pragmatics, 9, 71–96. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91–111. VanPatten, B. (2017). Processing instruction. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), Routledge handbook of instructed second language acquisition (pp. 166–180). London: Routledge. Xiao, F. (2017). Development in the use of Chinese mitigation in interaction. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 6, 39–72. Youn, S. J. (2015). Validity argument for assessing L2 pragmatics in interaction using mixed methods. Language Testing, 32, 199–225.

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9 Language Socialization and L2 Pragmatics Wenhao Diao and Joy Maa

Introduction This chapter discusses second language (L2) pragmatic development from the perspective of language socialization. Socialization is a concept originating in anthropology that refers to the process through which a novice acquires ‘knowledge, orientations, and practices’ to ‘participate effectively and appropriately in the social life of a particular community’ (Garrett & BaquedanoLopez, 2002, p. 339). Language socialization, therefore, is the dual processes of learning to use language to socialize and socializing through language into culturally meaningful ways of thinking, doing, and being (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). The focus of language socialization research is how children and other novices learn to use language ‘meaningfully, appropriately, and effectively’ and become members of a particular cultural community (Ochs, 1996, p. 408). Following the ‘social turn’ of SLA (Block, 2003), applied linguists are becoming aware of the limitations of traditional SLA research that emphasizes cognitive and psychological processes of L2 learning (including the learning of pragmatics). While cognitivist SLA research is increasingly being criticized for its exclusive focus on the universal, psychological aspect of language learning, language socialization has been proposed as an alternative to understanding learning as a socially situated and culturally conditioned process (Watson-Gegeo, 2004). As one of the alternative approaches to SLA (Duff & Talmy, 2011), L2 socialization concerns not only how learners acquire linguistic codes, but also how they make sense of the cultural meanings that are associated with the codes. This chapter presents a synthesis of research on L2 pragmatic development that utilizes the language socialization framework. According to Taguchi and Roever (2017), ‘pragmatics links linguistic forms and the ways in which they are used in a social context to perform a communicative act’ (p. 1). Because the language socialization paradigm emphasizes culturally meaningful and appropriate use of language in context, pragmatics learning has always been an important topic within language socialization research (Li, 2008). Our synthesis follows Duff’s (2012) definition that L2 socialization refers to ‘socialization beyond one’s first, or dominant, language and encompasses second, foreign, and (concurrent) bilingual and multilingual learning contexts’ (p. 565). Based on this definition, the chapter critically reviews existing findings on L2 pragmatic socialization. In what follows, we outline the theoretical underpinnings of language socialization and then review how the theory has been applied in inquiries into the development of L2 pragmatic competence. We conclude the chapter with suggestions for future research. 128

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Theoretical Underpinnings Language Socialization as a Theory for Pragmatics Learning Evolved from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the notion of communicative competence (Gumperz & Hymes, 1964), language socialization is fundamentally concerned with two questions: (1) how language development is interconnected with the learning of culture, and (2) how language development may vary in different social, political, and cultural contexts (Howard, 2014). Therefore, even though language socialization research often investigates pragmatics, it differs from other approaches in L2 pragmatics research in its scope and focus (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Critically, language socialization researchers are not as concerned about the mastery of pragmatic features per se (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). Instead, their goal is to link the ‘microanalytic analyses’ of these features in naturalistic discourse to the learning of ‘cultural beliefs and practices of the families, social groups, or communities’ (p. 186). Further drawing on Bourdieu’s (1977) work of power and habitus, Ochs and Schieffelin (2012) reiterated the aim of language socialization research, stating that it is to ‘capture the social structurings and cultural interpretations of semiotic forms, practices, and ideologies that inform novices’ practical engagements with others’ (p. 1). Language is thus conceptualized not just as ways of speaking, but also culturally varied ways of being and thinking (Bourdieu, 1977). These characteristics of language socialization research contribute to our understanding of pragmatics learning. Language socialization departs from cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches, which define pragmatic skills as the ability to map the discrete linguistic form with its pragmatic function and the contextual parameters (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). From the perspective of language socialization, language not only conveys referential meanings; more importantly, it constitutes symbolic practices that are indexical of social meanings such as emotions (how we feel), identities (who we are), and ideologies (what we believe). Indexicality, therefore, is central to language socialization (Ochs, 1992). The relationship between language and the meaning it indexes is a complicated one. A linguistic form can index multiple meanings and identities (Ochs, 1992; Silverstein, 2003). For example, when used as an address form, ‘dude’ in American English signals not only friendship and solidarity, but also affect and masculinity (Kiesling, 2004). Thus, learning pragmatics is to become aware of these indexical meanings in a given culture, and to be able to use the forms to enact relevant identities and discourses. Such an awareness can be developed in interactions through explicit metapragmatic comments (e.g., calling someone’s language ‘vulgar’) (Inoue, 2006) or direct corrections (Friedman, 2009). It can also emerge through routine participation in everyday discourse and observations of how a particular form is repeatedly used in similar situations. The first type is referred to as explicit socialization, whereas the second one is implicit socialization (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2012). In L2 socialization processes, both types are often present and can be linked with one another.

Language Socialization as a Research Method Language socialization is not only a theory; it is also a methodological approach. Kulick and Schieffelin (2004) have contended that a study has to meet three criteria to be considered as language socialization research. The first is an ethnographic design. Even though language socialization researchers acknowledge that universalities exist to an extent, the goal of this approach is to understand how processes of learning may be culturally conditioned or influenced (Garrett & Baquedano-Lopez, 2002). An ethnographic account of language learning can reveal what cultural factors may become salient in the process. Furthermore, the commitment to the ethnographic tradition also aligns with Hymes’ argument for ethnography of speaking (e.g. Gumperz & Hymes, 1964). In-depth ethnography has the potential to capture critical moments in which cultural meanings of a linguistic form emerge. 129

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The second criteria is longitudinal. Research framed by language socialization theory often adopts a longitudinal approach, documenting processes ‘over the course of developmental time’ and, when combined with an ethnographic design, ‘relates these individual development processes to the social cultural contexts in which they are embedded’ (Garrett & Baquedano-Lopez, 2002, p. 341). Although it is difficult to determine how long is ‘longitudinal,’ language socialization is regarded as a lifelong process that transpires in a variety of contexts and settings, such as home, school, and the workplace (Duff, 2008). Finally, a language socialization study has to demonstrate the learning of both ‘linguistic’ and ‘cultural practices’ (Kulick & Schieffelin, 2004, p. 350). A notable example is the cultural variations documented in caretaker–child discourse conventions across societies, as the child-centered ‘baby talk’ may not exist in certain societies (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). These observed variations in caretaker–child discourse conventions can explain differences in children’s pragmatic development in different communities, even when they speak the same language and live close to each other (Heath, 1983).

Second Language Socialization and L2 Pragmatic Development As an emerging but quickly growing subfield of SLA research, L2 socialization adds a new perspective to the research on language development in general and L2 pragmatic development in particular. As a theory of L2 learning, it raises a few important theoretical considerations. On the learner’s side, one issue often investigated from the language socialization perspective is the role of agency (Duff & Doherty, 2015; see also Chapter 11 in this volume). Agency is the socially and culturally mediated ability to act, which encompasses both compliance and resistance (Ahearn, 2001). L2 learners have ongoing histories with more than one language and affiliations with various communities. The identities and ideologies developed in these different languages and communities may contradict one another (Norton, 2013). When they do, learners may exercise their agency and choose to resist the dominant ideologies, norms, identities, and practices that are associated with the L2 features and/or the target group (Duff & Talmy, 2011). This theoretical perspective offers a plausible explanation for some learners’ reluctance to engage in the learning of the L2. Even for heritage speakers whose L2 socialization may take place simultaneously with—or even prior to—L1 socialization, resistance toward the heritage language may still occur due to a perceived need to assimilate and become ‘linguistically’ and ‘socially’ equal to peers who speak the societal language (He, 2014) (see also Chapter 30 in this volume). Learners’ agency can also manifest in forms of creativity and subversiveness (Duff, 2012). A case in point is the female learner of Chinese in Duff et al.’s (2013) study who redesigned a Chinese character by changing its radical to intentionally index her feminist views (p. 91). Rampton’s (2002) study offers another instance of learners’ subversive use of L2—in this case, L2 pragmatics. When an English teacher in this study said ‘thank you’ to his class after the students showed compliance to his call for order, one student interrupted and loudly said ‘danke,’ the German translation of ‘thank you’ (pp. 505–506). This student used ‘danke’ not to perform the speech act of thanking, but instead to mock and challenge the teacher in an English context. These instances of creativity and subversiveness show us why L2 learners may intentionally choose to not be native-like. Through the lens of language socialization, researchers can thus explore how learners agentively make sense of their L2 and assign new meanings to linguistic conventions and pragmatic norms. Agency is not the only socially mediated factor in L2 socialization; the opportunities for socialization may also be culturally conditioned. For many students learning a L2 in a foreign language environment, their socialization opportunities are often limited to the classroom setting, where the teacher takes a primary role in socializing the students into the language and culture (Duff, 2012). But L2 socialization may also take place outside of the classroom in a variety of 130

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settings, when the learner is a speaker of a heritage or minority language (e.g., home, community), a study abroad student (e.g., host homes, dormitories, service encounters), or an immigrant (e.g., the workplace). One caveat is that unlike L1 socialization, in which children’s eventual membership in a given community is usually assumed, for L2 learners, their legitimacy in using the language and their status in the community are often subject to negotiation. Research on identity has provided ample evidence that, even for immigrants who live in North America where their target language (English) is spoken, their access to speakers of the language can be limited (e.g., Norton, 2013). In a similar vein, overseas sojourners may also encounter cultural discourses that position them as non-legitimate speakers of the local language. For example, a few studies have shown that in several East Asian countries, even if a student of a non-Asian background has a strong desire to learn the local language, they may still be spoken to in English (e.g., Duff, Anderson, Ilnyckyj, Van Gaya, & Wang, 2013; Park, 2009). While these phenomena need to be understood in the global context of linguistic inequalities that lead to the assumption that speakers of English have no need to learn other languages, they have ramifications for L2 pragmatic socialization in these societies. In some cases, speaking inappropriately and being non-nativelike may actually be seen as pragmatically appropriate (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). In summary, the L2 socialization perspective emphasizes the connections between everyday discourse and the cultural context, and can account for the variability of pragmatics learning processes and outcomes. We now turn to a systematic review of existing studies focusing on L2 pragmatic socialization.

Review of the Literature Methods An exhaustive literature search was conducted with the purpose of examining how language socialization has been used to explain L2 pragmatics learning. The following key terms were entered for the initial search: ‘language socialization,’ ‘pragmatics,’ and ‘foreign/second language.’ Combinations of these terms were run through some of the most commonly used databases in applied linguistics (e.g., Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts; ERIC; MLA International Bibliography) to identify peer-reviewed studies (i.e., journal articles, book chapters, monographs) written in English. Unpublished theses (e.g., dissertations) were excluded. The initial search produced 1,215 results. Then, the following inclusion criteria were manually applied to ensure that the studies were relevant: 1 Studies had to be data-based and empirical. Review articles were excluded. 2 Studies had to investigate at least one pragmatic feature (e.g., speech acts, address forms, plain/polite language). Studies that dealt broadly with discourse or other topics (e.g., codeswitching) were excluded. 3 Studies had to incorporate language socialization as a theoretical framework in L2 learning. Studies on L1 acquisition were excluded. After the criteria were applied, 14 studies remained. An additional 11 studies were identified from major L2 socialization review articles (Duff, 2012; He, 2012; Kinginger, 2016; Li, 2008; Shively, 2017). The final pool included 25 studies.

Analysis Primary coding was conducted to catalogue the basic characteristics of each study, such as participant age, sample size, L1/L2, L2 proficiency (if reported), and data collection and 131

Wenhao Diao and Joy Maa Table 9.1  Secondary Coding and Categorization of Studies Target areas of socialization

Studies

Speech acts Address terms Interactional routines Stance-marking (e.g., honorifics, utterancefinal particles, style-shifting) Humor Cultural orientations (e.g., morality)

Li (2000); Shively (2011); Taguchi (2014) Byon (2003); DuFon (2010); Hassall (2013); Zhu (2010) Kanagy (1999); Ohta (1999); Shively (2016); Yim (2011) Byon (2006); Cook (2008); Diao (2016); Ishihara & Takamiya (2014); Iwasaki (2011); Siegal (1995); Yoshimi (1999) Shively (2013); Shively (2015b) He (2000); He (2001); He (2011); Lo (2004); Lo (2009)

analysis methods. Secondary coding was then applied to categorize the studies according to the target areas of pragmatic socialization (see Table 9.1). In the final stage of analysis, three overarching themes were formulated to organize the literature, based on how language socialization was interpreted and utilized in these studies. This thematic categorization was applied to better capture theoretical and methodological contributions of language socialization to L2 pragmatics research: 1 Pragmatic development as socialization into ways of functioning (DuFon, 2010; Hassall, 2013; Kanagy, 1999; Li, 2000; Ohta, 1999; Shively, 2011; Taguchi, 2014; Shively, 2016; Yim, 2011); 2 Pragmatic development as socialization into ways of being (Byon, 2006; Cook, 2008; Diao, 2016; Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014; Iwasaki, 2011; Siegal, 1995; Shively, 2013; 2015b; Yoshimi, 1999); 3 Pragmatic development as socialization into ways of thinking (Byon, 2003; He, 2000; He, 2001; He, 2011; Lo, 2004; Lo, 2009; Zhu, 2010). Studies that conceived of pragmatic development as socialization into ways of functioning considered how learners acquire the ability to select forms appropriate to context and the knowledge required to participate in expected patterns of interaction. In other words, studies in this category employed the language socialization framework to document learners’ acquisition of pragmatic norms of the target community (or their divergence from those norms). For example, some studies examined how L2 learners produce speech acts (e.g., Li, 2000; Shively, 2011) or engage in interactional routines (e.g., Kanagy, 1999). Research that framed pragmatic development as socialization into ways of being addressed the acquisition of knowledge of how to use language to present oneself in particular ways, which often involves an understanding of the social identities indexed by forms. This ways of being perspective is distinct from the first approach in that it does not view pragmatic acquisition as only knowing to use certain forms in certain contexts because that is the perceived norm (‘use Form X in Situation Y’). Rather, it is the understanding that Form X indexes specific meanings and can be optionally used in Situation Y to signal those or other meanings. Studies on acquisition of gender (e.g., Diao, 2016), humor (Shively, 2013), and style-shifting (e.g., Cook, 2008) fell under this category. Lastly, work in which pragmatic development was conceptualized as socialization into ways of thinking foregrounded the transmission of cultural orientations and ideologies that underlie and are instantiated through language, but are not necessarily limited to linguistic forms. This category included studies on the processes by which cultural morals (Lo, 2004) and communicative preferences (He, 2001) are instilled into learners. 132

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We acknowledge that these three approaches are by no means separate or mutually exclusive, in theory or in practice. Indeed, they are closely related. For instance, construction of identity often entails understanding how social relationships are ideologically organized in a community. What kind(s) of identity one constructs may also depend on whether they function as expected in a given situation. Conversely, it is possible for a learner to acquire knowledge requisite to functioning appropriately in a particular situation without comprehending the relevant cultural dispositions or the implications for their own identity(s). The following sections present synthesis findings and discuss 25 studies in the above three areas of L2 pragmatic socialization: socialization into ways of functioning, being, and thinking.

Findings Pragmatic Development as Socialization into Ways of Functioning The central concern in the first group of nine studies is the socialization of learners into normative pragmatic practices of the target community, such that they become capable of functioning as community members in specific situations, even though they may choose not to do so. These studies were found for three pragmatic targets: speech acts, address terms, and interactional routines. The speech act of requests was the focus in Li’s (2000) longitudinal case study. Li documented how an immigrant woman in the U.S.A. learned to make requests in the workplace. The participant initially struggled to communicate her requests effectively, due to her personality and her L1 preference for indirectness. However, she continuously expressed a desire to be socialized into L2 norms of directness, and over time she learned these through routine participation in interactions and expert assistance. She even began to socialize her English L1 speaking peers into appropriate public discourse, transforming herself into an active agent in a process of bidirectional socialization. Shively (2011) also focused on requests, following the service encounters of seven L2 Spanish learners in Spain and examining how they made their requests for service. Through observations and engagement in metapragmatic conversations with host family members, as well as a brief instructional intervention, some learners increased their use of target-like request strategies (e.g., imperatives) over time. However, not all learners acquired these strategies and the associated cultural conventions simultaneously. One participant interpreted the imperatives as ‘authoritarian,’ possibly due to her reliance on L1 cultural norms (p. 1830). Although she learned the appropriate forms, she remained unaware of the cultural perspective that informed the pragmatic behavior, which ‘[suggests] that L2 learning does not always go hand in hand with second culture learning’ (p. 1825). Additionally, as Taguchi (2014) demonstrates, multiple factors can complicate the socialization of speech acts. Participants in this study were L1 Japanese speakers studying in an Englishmedium university in Japan. The researcher assessed the students’ ability to express opinions in English over time, and found that they made little progress in how they conveyed their opinions in academic situations despite ample opportunities to do so. Qualitative data from interviews and observations revealed that teacher–student interactions did not promote the students’ use of target-like formal language, because the instructors did not provide corrective feedback and instead accepted informal language use to encourage their generally shy Japanese students to speak up. In this manner, the teachers became socialized into different instructional expectations by their students, and together they constructed a particular academic community where politeness and formality in expressing opinions were not emphasized. The ability to use appropriate address terms is another area of socialization that is key to functioning as a member of a community. Hassall (2013) examined the acquisition of vocative and pronoun address terms by L2 learners of Indonesian during their sojourn abroad. 133

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Although the learners gained knowledge concerning vocative address terms, in part due to prior L1 experience, their understanding of pronoun address terms remained limited. Similar to Taguchi’s (2014) conclusion, Hassall (2013) also attributed this lack of development to the absence of corrective feedback from native speakers. Meanwhile, the learners were also frequently addressed with a non-target-like form that native speakers did not generally use amongst themselves, possibly because the native speakers positioned the learners as only ‘partial members of the community’ (p.14). Still other studies have tracked L2 pragmatic development in terms of learners’ participation in expected routines. One of these is DuFon’s (2010) study, which investigated L2 socialization into leave-taking in Javanese Indonesian. Through modeling and explicit feedback, learners studying abroad in Indonesia became aware of how the practice of asking for permission was contingent upon cultural considerations of social status. Kanagy (1999), on the other hand, observed how young children participated in classroom routines in L2 Japanese. From the first day of class, students were guided to perform greetings, roll calls, and self-introductions. In addition to the exact expressions for these routines, students were taught appropriate bodily behavior (e.g., bowing and standing up straight). Such routines highlighted the importance of proper outward appearance in Japanese culture and constituted key mechanisms for ‘socializing messages conveyed regarding membership in the L2 classroom community’ (p. 1484). Over the school year, the students gained increasing autonomy over routines (both verbal and non-verbal) and became able to carry them out fluently. Ohta’s (1999) study also explored the potential of classroom interactional routines as a mechanism for socialization. The researcher examined how guided learner participation in teacher-led and student–student interactions spurred the acquisition of alignment expressions in college-level Japanese classrooms. In teacher-fronted interactions, teachers frequently produced assessments in turns following student responses. Such expressions were also scripted into the dialogue of student–student speaking exercises. When the students practiced these dialogues, the teachers joined in and guided them to index different types of alignment (e.g., understanding, affect). Through such ‘peripheral and active participation in routines’ (pp. 1508–1509), one learner became socialized into Japanese interactional norms, as evidenced by her increased and diversified use of alignment expressions. Similar findings were also reported in Shively’s (2016) study focusing on the learning of assessments through participation in L2 Spanish interactions. Participation in routines can also lead to the adoption of new responsibilities and roles. Yim (2011) documented socialization into English academic discourse through online communication. Students in a graduate-level course were required to post on forums regarding reading materials and take turns as the discussion leader. Eventually, the students became able to perform a variety of academic roles to contribute to class discussion (e.g., expressing knowledge/opinions, making requests).

Pragmatic Development as Socialization into Ways of Being The second group of nine studies deal with socialization into ways of being, or knowing how to index identities through language. One example is Cook’s (2008) study, which focused on stancemarking and identity construction. The author followed L2 Japanese learners while abroad and documented changes in their use of Japanese plain/polite forms. While the plain and polite forms normatively correspond to casual and formal styles, speakers often style-shift to manage interpersonal distance and negotiate different identities. By examining participants’ dinnertime conversations with their host families, Cook showed how family members style-shifted to construct different stances and voices (e.g., one host mother using the plain form to create solidarity and the polite form to signal authority). Eventually, learners acquired the social meanings of 134

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style-shifting through implicit and explicit socialization (e.g., one learner using the polite form while explaining an English word to index authority as an English speaker). In a similar manner, Byon (2003) also illustrated socialization into the indexing of casual/authoritative voices through stance-marking. Byon analyzed how teachers of Korean as a heritage language used the Korean sentence-final particle yo, which is typically associated with politeness, when performing duties associated with their instructor role. Students learned to use yo to signal respect towards the teacher, thereby engaging in ‘doing being students.’ Stance-marking can also index other identities such as gender (Ochs, 1992). Iwasaki (2011) documented four American male students’ use of Japanese plain speech and masculine expressions while abroad. In retrospective interviews, these students reported that Japanese native speakers frequently used plain speech with them where polite speech was normally expected because the students were positioned as Americans and therefore assumed to be friendly and casual. On the other hand, these learners were censured for their use of Japanese masculine language because it was seen as rude. Iwasaki surmised that the data represented local members’ attempts to socialize the learners ‘to a particular foreigner variety of Japanese that the L1 speakers felt was legitimate’ (p. 89). Diao (2016) also examined the socialization of stance and gender of study-abroad participants in China. The researcher revealed how students were guided to construct gender and sexuality in their speech through the use of affective Chinese sentence-final particles. Chinese youth often use these particles to index cuteness, a trait associated with young women. In conversations with her Chinese roommate, a female learner used sentence-final particles with a higher pitch to enact a cute girl persona, which was followed by her roommate’s immediate affirmation and encouragement. In contrast, a male learner’s roommate evaluated the frequent use of the particles as sounding ‘gay,’ guiding the learner to drop the particles from his speech. A third learner, however, did not experience comparable socialization for these particles, possibly because his roommate deemed that there was no need for a foreign student to master them. Socialization into ways of being also happens online, as documented by Ishihara and Takamiya (2014). L2 Japanese learners wrote blogs before and after studying abroad in Japan and received comments from blog readers, some of whom were L1 Japanese speakers. As these learners were being socialized into the meanings of particular linguistic practices, they also felt the need to utilize the linguistic practices to negotiate their emerging multiple identities abroad. The desire to establish an identity prompted the learners to actively seek information through and outside of their blogs regarding pragmatic aspects of the L2, which in return facilitated their socialization into L2 practices. Shively (2013), on the other hand, adopted the language socialization approach to study the acquisition of L2 humor by an American student studying in Spain. The learner’s initial attempts to use L1 strategies for humor were often met with a lack of response from Spanish speakers. In some cases, Spanish-speaking peers gave negative feedback about the learner’s inappropriate humor, thereby serving as expert peers who socialized him into local norms of humor practices. Over the course of the study, the learner came to change his approach, picking up L2 expressions he encountered and employing revoicing—‘[reproducing] the voices of other L2 users’—as a resource for humor (p. 939). A similar account of development was found in Shively’s (2015b) study, which focused on how L2 Spanish students were socialized through and into the practice of teasing while abroad.1 By observing and participating in interactions, learners gained an understanding of social expectations of the target culture, such as what constituted appropriate subjects for teasing and how to identify and respond to teasing. Socialization into ways of being, however, does not always result in learners’ engagement in the L2 norms or practices. This is not only because learners may be positioned as non-legitimate speakers of the language (Diao, 2016; Iwasaki, 2011), but also due to a number of sociocultural factors and learners’ own personal histories. Siegal’s (1995) work provided evidence of learner’s 135

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agency as one such factor. She examined four western women’s learning of Japanese honorifics. Her findings showed that as some of the women became aware that the honorifics could index a submissive identity, they chose to not use them. On the other hand, Yoshimi (1999) argued for the potentially negative impact of L1 socialization experience on L2 learning. Specifically, the researcher maintained that L1 English learners’ anomalous use of the Japanese discourse marker ne, which can be used to construct empathy and accomplish complex identity work, could be traced to L1 discourse practices.

Pragmatic Development as Socialization into Ways of Thinking The remaining seven studies focus on how expert members socialize novices into cultural orientations and ideologies, typically in heritage language contexts. He (2000) analyzed the role of teacher directives in socializing children into cultural ideologies in a Chinese heritage language classroom. Through the use of directives, the instructor communicated their expectations to the children and linked these expectations to Chinese cultural values, such as respect for one’s parents and a strong work ethic. In her later study, He (2001) further demonstrated how teachers socialized children into a cultural preference for ambiguity in verbal communication through classroom interactions. While He’s (2000, 2001) studies almost exclusively concerned the role of the expert as the socializing agent, her more recent study (He, 2011) foregrounded the active participation of learners in socialization processes. This study investigated episodes where the teacher revised the modality of their utterances when responding to students’ challenges. In one instance, the teacher was explaining a Chinese folk story about yielding to others and presented this action as a moral obligation using the expression yīnggāi (‘should’). One student then questioned the necessity of yielding and suggested sharing as an alternative. In response, the teacher changed their own stance on yielding to one of preferential option/comparison (gènghǎo and zuìhǎo, meaning ‘it is better/best’). These teacher–student exchanges demonstrated how traditional ideologies can become ‘subject to discussion, negotiation, and modification’ in heritage language communities (p. 12), which in turn highlights the bi-directionality of socialization of this kind. Zhu’s (2010) study also illustrates similar processes of negotiation of cultural orientations among Chinese heritage speaking children. She examined the use of Chinese kinship address forms as socialization into ways of both being and thinking. In Chinese, kinship address forms are used not only among relatives, but also for non-relatives to mark deference and hierarchy. Zhu showed how two children and their mother jointly chose between English and Chinese names and kinship terms to signal different roles and evoke the associated ‘cultural expectations’ (p. 198). In a different family, a teenager challenged his parents over the use of kinship terms for non-relatives. The child’s resistance not only led to the reconstruction of his own identity in relation to those around him, but also constituted a challenge to existing family norms and community ideologies. Using address forms to socialize novices into cultural notions of hierarchy is also evident in Byon’s (2006) study of an L2 Korean classroom. Socialization into hierarchy occurred by means of the instructor’s frequent use of assertive directives and reference to herself by her title of teacher, which highlighted her authority and power over students. Students were also taught to use the humble personal pronoun when referring to themselves and honorific verb suffixes for someone of higher social status. Lo’s (2004, 2009) studies, on the other hand, examined the socialization of morality. Lo (2004) explored how a Korean heritage language teacher employed evidential markers to cast students as (non)moral beings. Evidential markers were used when talking about ‘good’ students, since in Korean ‘expressions of uncertainty and distancing are conventionally associated with politeness’ (p. 247). In contrast, no such markers were used for the ‘bad’ students, who were thus framed 136

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as undeserving of respect. The marked absence of evidentials also allowed the teacher to assert greater authority over those who behaved poorly. Similarly, Lo (2009) revealed instances where the teacher criticized students for displaying affect, which were judged as ‘intentional displays of rudeness’ (p. 222). The instructor’s discourse thus socialized learners into the Korean cultural expectation of emotional restraint.

Appraisal of the Current Literature The majority of the studies discussed here give accounts of ‘successful’ learning of linguistic, cultural—and pragmatic—knowledge through language use. Contrary to a common criticism that language socialization research tends to emphasize the macro aspects of L2 learning over micro-linguistic level analyses (Ellis, 2009), many studies reviewed in this chapter present well-defined linguistic foci of socialization (e.g., speech acts, address forms, particles), with pragmatics as the overarching area of investigation. In some cases, pragmatics learning is observed when learners become capable of functioning to a greater degree as members of the target community by using particular pragmalinguistic forms or interactional conventions (DuFon, 2010; Hassall, 2013; Kanagy, 1999; Li, 2001; Ohta, 1999; Shively, 2011, 2016; Taguchi, 2014; Yim, 2001). In others, pragmatics learning is reflected in the ability to use language to construct a persona or identity (Byon, 2006; Cook, 2008; Diao, 2016; Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014; Iwasaki, 201; Shively, 2013, 2015b; Siegal, 1995; Yoshimi, 1999). In still others, it is the understanding of the morals and values of the underlying culture (Byon, 2003; He, 2000, 2001, 2011; Lo, 2004, 2009; Zhu, 2010). It is also clear that many factors, both personal and cultural, can interact with each other and complicate the learning process, illuminating the contingent nature of language socialization. As shown in the present review, community members may expect L2 learners to behave differently because of the ways they are positioned in local cultural discourses (Diao, 2016; Iwasaki, 2011). These expectations may further socialize learners into practices that diverge from the norms of the target community (Hassall, 2013; Taguchi, 2014). At the same time, learners have their own sense of agency and personal histories, which influence the choices they make regarding their own socialization (Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014; Siegal, 1995) or the socialization of others (Li, 2000). This sense of agency can also lead to (re)negotiation of existing community norms and ideologies (He, 2011; Zhu, 2010). In addition, prior L1 socialization may hinder L2 socialization in some areas (Yoshimi, 1999), as was the case of the student in Shively (2011) who learned the appropriate forms but interpreted them based on her L1 norms rather than the L2 cultural perspective. Methodologically, most studies surveyed in this synthesis adopted the principles of language socialization as outlined in Schieffelin and Ochs’s (1986) foundational paper. The majority of studies employed an ethnographic approach, typically utilizing audio/video recordings of spontaneous interactions between learners and experts. These were often combined with interviews and field observations and subject to qualitative analysis, although notably only nine studies interviewed the participants. All of these studies were conducted in a longitudinal manner, though the length of data collection varied from four months to 21 months. Finally, a minority of studies also incorporated a quantitative component to varying degrees (Diao, 2016; Hassall, 2013; Shively, 2011; Taguchi, 2014; Yim, 2011; Yoshimi, 1999). A few of these employed a pre-post design, using questionnaires or discourse completion tasks (Taguchi, 2014; Hassall, 2013). Still, the prevailing tendency observed in most studies emphasized process over product, with some studies even focusing exclusively on the role of the expert as opposed to learner’s discourse (Byon, 2003; He, 2000, 2001; Lo, 2004; 2009). The following section discusses the ramifications of this tendency as well as the other trends unveiled in this synthesis, along with suggestions for future research. 137

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Conclusion and Future Directions In this chapter, we have outlined the key issues in the L2 pragmatic socialization research and reviewed existing studies. Our review shows that, by adopting a language socialization framework, the scope of L2 pragmatics research has been expanded to examine how learners are socialized into different ways of functioning, being, and thinking. The L2 pragmatic socialization research has also allowed us to switch our focus from the outcomes to the processes of L2 pragmatics learning in everyday life. While these insights greatly contribute to our understanding of L2 pragmatics, much more work is still needed to further document L2 pragmatic socialization in various languages, communities, and contexts. Below we propose four key questions for future research to explore.

What Are the Socializing Pragmatic Phenomena? The adoption of the language socialization framework has enabled L2 researchers to investigate a wide range of pragmatic features to more fully understand pragmatics learning and development. Under the language socialization perspective, researchers are no longer limiting their investigation to the mapping of form–function–context alone (i.e., ways of functioning, as determined in this chapter). Areas that were typically under-researched in L2 pragmatics, such as ways of being (e.g., sounding cute or funny) and ways of thinking (morality, worldviews), are well within the scope of inquiries into L2 pragmatics learning under this framework. As exemplified by the three themes identified in this synthesis, a language socialization approach enables researchers to conduct nuanced analyses of both learners’ engagement in the use of L2 pragmatic conventions and their interpretations of the sociocultural meanings that are entailed in these cases of pragmatic acquisition. Yet, considering the paucity of research focusing explicitly on L2 pragmatic socialization (25 studies found in the exhaustive literature search), there is still a large variety of pragmatic phenomena, both verbal and nonverbal, that remain under-investigated. For example, although several studies examined speech acts, their focus was largely limited to requests and leave-taking. Other less researched speech acts, such as compliments, apologies, disputes, and even swearing, can also index a range of meanings, identities, and cultural orientations (e.g., affect, aesthetics, gender, sexuality, morality). Similarly, nonverbal behaviors (gestures, gaze, etc.) are embedded in cultural praxis and can index a myriad of meanings, but only a few studies have analyzed nonverbal behaviors (Kanagy, 1999; Lo, 2009). Future research needs to explore the symbolic aspect of pragmatics learning and document L2 pragmatic socialization as multimodal and embodied processes. Additionally, the existing literature focuses primarily on speaking, while other modalities such as listening have received less attention. In everyday communication, the listener is often expected to provide culturally appropriate cues to signal attention to the talk (e.g., saying uh-huh in English), but listenership has been largely overlooked in L2 pragmatics literature in general (but see Diao, Wang, Donovan, & Malone, 2018; Shively, 2015a; Young & Lee, 2004). Attentive listenership is a pragmatic skill that requires a metapragmatic awareness of the cues and their cultural meanings. A language socialization perspective can help reveal the relationship between learning to listen and becoming a competent member in a community.

What is the Target Community? In the current research on L2 pragmatic socialization, the target community is often assumed to be the entire speech community of the language and is treated as linguistically and culturally 138

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homogeneous. In several studies examining study-abroad participants, for example, the target culture is implied to be the culture of the host country (e.g., Cook, 2008; Shively, 2011). While researchers are increasingly aware of linguistic heterogeneity within societies, studies in L2 pragmatic socialization often continue to be based on monolingual assumptions about the target speech community. Yet societies are almost never linguistically homogeneous, even when members speak the same language (Bakhtin, 1981; see Chapter 29 in this volume). Speakers of a language in a society often approach pragmatics differently to index different (and sometimes opposing) identities, ideologies, or cultural/political views. One example is gender. As shown in our review, there is evidence of L2 learners resisting certain Japanese feminine forms because of their gendered meanings (Siegal, 1995). However, even in the case of Japanese women’s language, politics around gender can change cultural discourses, which may effect new ways of constructing gender linguistically (Inoue, 2006). L2 learners may become aware of the multitude of gender identities and performances within a society, and decide to adopt some but resist others by using language accordingly—or even engage in the creative use of the language to construct alternative gender orientations (Duff et al., 2013). In addition, when combined with compatible theories such as community of practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991), pragmatic features can be seen as a part of social practices that define communities and index membership statuses (Eckert, 2000). Yet, most studies reviewed here only looked at language classrooms, study abroad programs, and homes of heritage speakers, leaving many sites and communities under-explored. For example, Li’s (2000) study remains the only inquiry into L2 pragmatic socialization in the workplace. Other studies have only examined online L2 pragmatic socialization through blogging (Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014) or participation in discussion forums (Yim, 2011). Recent developments in internet technologies have created many new online platforms, transforming our participation in communities in fundamental ways (see Chapters 24 and 25 in this volume). In future research, there is a need to explore socialization processes in a number of possible communities and through a variety of media. Questions concerning the communities (of practices) that learners have access to, and the forms/norms that they are being socialized through and into, should not be taken for granted.

How to Better Document L2 Pragmatic Socialization? As our review illustrates, although all studies employed a language socialization framework, they did so in different ways. Some studies, notably those focusing on heritage language settings (e.g., He, 2001; Lo, 2004), examined exclusively the role of the expert in socialization and viewed the pragmatic phenomena as socializing means through which the novices/children became aware of cultural norms and ideologies (e.g., in He, 2011, the teacher uses zero-anaphora when citing students’ words, making the identity of the author ambiguous, to guide the class to focus on the content matter). These studies contrast with other studies reviewed, the latter of which mostly either implicitly or explicitly provided information regarding the outcomes of such socialization. This is often done through a quantitative or qualitative examination of the novices’ use of the focal pragmatic features and/or the inclusion of participant interviews to demonstrate their changing metapragmatic awareness. To understand these contrasting tendencies, we need to consider the fundamental questions that L2 pragmatics researchers ask versus those that are central to language socialization researchers. While L2 pragmatics researchers may share the language socialization concern of ‘how different kinds of culturally specific subjectivities come into being’ (Kulick & Schieffelin, 2004), particularly when examining minoritized populations such as heritage speakers, in L2 pragmatics literature there is often the inclination to use research to ‘produce implications for pedagogy that actually work for L2 teaching’ (Watson-Gegeo, 2004, p. 332). Inquiries in this 139

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spirit strive to demonstrate not only how learning takes place and under what cultural conditions (the process), but also what is being learned and to what extent (the outcome). With this difference in mind, future L2 research should incorporate different methodological traditions based on research goals, while still maintaining the strength of longitudinal ethnography that characterizes language socialization research. Greater use of ethnography and ethnographic interviews, furthermore, can also potentially reveal what participants and community members themselves perceive as salient in socialization processes, which conceivably may lead to new insights into the role of agency and how learners are culturally positioned. Another observation in our synthesis is that, while researchers often intended to produce longitudinal accounts of socialization, the length of the inquiries varied between a few months to a little over a year. Participants in these studies were also often limited to young adults (university students) or children. The duration of research and the focal age period pale in comparison with the exemplar studies conducted in the tradition of language socialization, such as Heath’s (1983) decade-long ethnography of language development in two communities. L2 learners generally do not become socialized into both the use of the form and the metapragmatic awareness of the meanings at once (Shively, 2011). However, existing studies often treat the acquisition of either as the endpoint. Thus, there still is a need for research tracking the gradual and non-linear processes of socialization (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Admittedly, it can be challenging to design a study of great length for L2 pragmatic socialization. Although not focusing on pragmatics, He’s (2014) research provides an innovative approach for documenting developmental time. She synthesized findings for participants from different age groups and constructed a composite narrative of a Chinese heritage speaker’s socialization from early childhood to adulthood. Following He’s work, future studies should continue to explore ways to document pragmatic socialization over a longer timescale. In terms of the potential for producing pedagogical implications, instructional interventions only appeared in two studies reviewed in this chapter (Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014; Shively, 2011). Findings from these studies point to pedagogical implications in terms of how to apply intervention to guide learners in the socialization process, such as encouraging learners to play a more active role in reflecting upon and directing their own socialization. These results point to the need to reconsider language socialization not only as a theory of learning and a method of research, but also as a pedagogical approach to language teaching. More research is needed in this direction.

How to Conceptualize ‘Novice’ and ‘Expert’ in L2 Pragmatic Socialization? Through prolonged tracking of L2 pragmatic socialization in everyday discourse between learners and expert speakers of the target language, several studies have established the antecedent– consequent relationship (Ortega & Iberri-Shea, 2005) between how such discourse unfolds and how learners become aware of certain pragmatic features and their social meanings. However, language socialization is an interactive and contingent process, and expertise cannot be assumed to be transmitted in one direction. Novices are not always socialized by ‘experts.’ As several studies in this synthesis have shown, learners can also be agents of socialization and socialize experts into different roles and ideologies (e.g., Li, 2000; Taguchi, 2014). Similarly, research on L1 socialization shows that children also socialize each other as learning peers (Goodwin & Kyratzis, 2012). Socialization between learning peers is arguably even more relevant to L2 learning. While opportunities for interaction with expert speakers of the target language may be limited for L2 learners, interactions among L2 learning peers are often abundant (see Hassall, 2013). Through these interactions, L2 learning peers may guide each other—perhaps in both their L1 and L2—to use certain pragmatic conventions and participate in interactions effectively through 140

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such use, thus socializing each other into knowledge and practices of the L2. Future work should address questions related to the socialization processes among L2 learning peers, such as what identities and relationships may emerge in these processes, what kinds of pragmatic conventions may become salient, how negotiations of forms and meanings take place, and in what languages. The need to further examine the multi-directionality of socialization in multilingual settings becomes even more pressing if we consider the multilingual reality of our globalized world today. Both L2 learners and the ‘experts’ with whom they interact may have multilingual repertoires but may not be equally proficient in all these languages (Blommaert, 2010). Yet to our knowledge, very few studies have investigated how the learning of pragmatic norms and interactional rules may take place between multilingual speakers, both of whom may not have—nor, perhaps, even need—the ‘perfect’ knowledge of target norms in monolingual societies. Future research needs to go beyond the assumptions regarding L2-learning novices and native-speaking experts, and examine how pragmatic conventions may be (re)negotiated among multilingual learners in multilingual contexts.

Note 1 Kinginger’s (2015) study also investigated the socialization of teasing in the study-abroad context. However, this particular study did not explicitly deal with the learning of L2 pragmatics, and thus it was excluded from this synthesis.

Further reading Duff, P., & Talmy, S. (2011). Language socialization approaches to L2 acquisition: Social, cultural, and linguistic development in additional languages. In D. Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 95–116). New York: Routledge. This article is an overview of how language socialization can be utilized as a framework to understand L2 development. It outlines theoretical and methodological principles of language socialization research. It then compares similarities and differences between language socialization research and other socially-oriented theories such as identity and power, the Vygotskyan sociocultural theory, and complexity theory. The article concludes with directions for future research. Although some of the gaps identified have been fulfilled in the research since, many are still relevant to the current L2 pragmatic literature. Duranti, A., Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. (Eds.) (2012). The handbook of language socialization. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. This handbook provides a historical overview of the language socialization framework and how it has been utilized to investigate the learning of language and culture in various communities. The introduction chapter gives a thorough explanation on the scope of language socialization research and its perspective on language learning. Although the book focuses on L1 socialization, there is a chapter by Duff on L2 socialization and a chapter by He on heritage language socialization. Duff’s chapter is a review of L2 socialization research, whereas He’s chapter also provides her own research as an example of heritage language socialization.

References Ahearn, L. M. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. (Originally work published 1975.) Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1972.)

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Watson‐Gegeo, K. A. (2004). Mind, language, and epistemology: Toward a language socialization paradigm for SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 88(3), 331–350. Yim, Y. K. (2011). L2 students’ discourse socialization in academic online communities. Canadian Modern Language Review, 67(1), 1–27. Yoshimi, D. R. (1999). L1 language socialization as a variable in the use of ne by L2 learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(11), 1513–1525. Young, R., & Lee, J. (2004). Identifying units in interaction: Reactive tokens in Korean and English conversations. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(3), 380–407. Zhu, H. (2010). Language socialization and interculturality: Address terms in intergenerational talk in Chinese diasporic families. Language and Intercultural Communication, 10(3),189–205.

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10 Vygotskian Cultural-Historical Psychology in L2 Pragmatics Rémi A. van Compernolle

Introduction Since the 1990s, there has been increasing interest in extending Vygotskian cultural-historical psychology (CHP), or sociocultural theory (SCT), to second language (L2) research (see Lantolf & Poehner, 2014; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). Concepts borrowed from Vygotsky and his later interpreters such as zone of proximal development (ZPD), mediation, and microgenesis have become commonplace as part of the vocabulary of ‘new mainstream’ L2 acquisition theory (Swain & Deters, 2007). In the L2 pragmatics literature, Vygotsky’s ideas have been used as an analytic lens for understanding processes of L2 socialization into appropriate language use and, more recently, as the basis for designing pedagogical arrangements aimed at fostering and assessing pragmatic growth. This chapter provides a synthesis of the extension of Vygotskian CHP to the study of L2 pragmatics and its development. My goal is to outline the scope of work in this domain in relation to developments in the broader field of L2 Vygotskian work and to provide a critical evaluation of the research literature. The synthesis is limited to research in which the study is framed explicitly within the CHP framework. Consequently, a number of studies that simply mention Vygotsky’s ideas in passing have been excluded. The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. In the next section, I provide a brief sketch of the general theory of psychology associated with Vygotsky and its extension to L2 research. I then offer an overview of the contributions of CHP-inspired research to L2 pragmatics, before turning to critical appraisal of this work, and I offer several directions for expanding on, and improving, current research in this important area of inquiry.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts Mediation The central theme of Vygotsky’s (1978, 1986) work is mediation. The basic idea of mediation is that humans use culturally constructed psychological tools to reorganize our biologically endowed psychological functions into conscious processes (Wertsch, 2007). In other words, culture creates an indirect, or mediated, relationship between our mental and material worlds. In particular, the role of language in mediating our psychology was a prominent focus throughout Vygotsky’s work. John-Steiner (2007) points out that in critically building on, and revising, the work of his contemporaries (e.g., Kohler, Piaget, Stern), Vygotsky suggested that children first acquire language 145

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as a communicative tool in their interactions with adults who can help to regulate their behaviors through speech (e.g., giving directions, prompts). However, communicative speech is eventually internalized (see below for discussion), giving rise to verbal thinking and intellectual speech, which is self-directed (i.e., as private speech and inner speech). Consequently, while speech has a social, interpersonal origin, it becomes an intrapersonal tool that allows individuals to regulate their own mental functioning and actions in the world. Language also mediates how we conceive of the world around us. This is because Vygotsky viewed language as constitutive of consciousness (Leitch, 2011), and not simply as a conduit for communicating thought. Language provides the resources for human consciousness to form, and since these resources vary within and across languages, human consciousness itself is inevitably variable. In this way, Vygotsky’s theory connects with more recent developments in linguistic relativity (e.g., McNeill, 2005; Mühlhäusler & Harré, 1990; Pavlenko, 2011; Slobin, 2003). The linguistic resources that are available to us shape the way in which we interact in and with the world, including other people.

Internalization Internalization is the process through which cultural tools (or mediational means such as language) are integrated into one’s psychological functioning (i.e., as part of consciousness). This concept differs from the idea of acquisition in two fundamental ways. First, internalization focuses on the development of conscious processes rather than implicit processes: Thus, while acquisition typically refers to implicit competence (see Paradis, 2009), internalization involves awareness (i.e., knowing something) and metaawareness (i.e., knowing that one knows something) in addition to tacit ability. Second, internalization assumes a bidirectional inward-and-outward growth process (Frawley, 1997): Cultural tools that mediate mental functioning do not remain ‘inside the head’ but are deployed, adapted, and transformed in externalized material activity. Indeed, internalization is conceived of as a creative process of making mediational means one’s own (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) through a process of personalization (van Compernolle, 2014a). The internalization of language in ontogenesis, as noted above, involves adapting intermental communicative speech1 to function intramentally (i.e., within the individual) to mediate thinking (John-Steiner, 2007). This means that language becomes a tool for thinking and problem solving, which may involve private speech (i.e., vocalized speech for the self) or subvocal/inner speech. This goes beyond the acquisition of sign forms (i.e., lexicogrammar) and learning to use those forms for interpersonal communication. As Wertsch (2007) has pointed out, Vygotsky operationalized the internalization of language in relation to the maxim that ‘sign-meaning develops’ (p. 185). The idea is that children first acquire and begin to use the linguistic forms made available to them in the environment, but the real work of development—that is, internalization of language—involves ‘a process of coming to understand the meaning and functional significance of the sign forms that one has been using’ (p. 186). Because internalization is transformative, personalized (van Compernolle, 2014a), and involves both an inward (internally focused) and an outward (externally focused) dimension (Frawley, 1997), the meaning and functional significance of sign forms is malleable from one use to the next. Indeed, Vygotsky (1986) distinguished between community-wide conventionalized sign meanings (in Russian znachenie) and the contextualized sense (in Russian smysl) that sign forms obtain in use (see Wertsch, 1985, p. 95). For example, the utterance of ‘door’ draws on the conventionalized meaning of the object signified by the word, but its sense depends on the specific context: It could be a directive or request to close a door left open (e.g., for privacy, to keep a pet from escaping a house) or to open a closed door (e.g., when carrying groceries into the house).2 Therefore, meaning and sense are interdependent: Meaning provides a shared social-semiotic system that people draw on during the sense-making process, in interpersonal communication as 146

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well as in intramental functioning (i.e., private and inner speech). Internalization may therefore be inferred in relation to one’s ability to adapt and creatively recontextualize conventionalized sign meanings to suit one’s communicative and/or intramental needs.

Zone of Proximal Development Internalization is a process of transition, meaning that its link to development needs to be conceptualized in terms of growth and change from one state to the next. Vygotsky (1978, 1986) proposed the notion of zone of proximal development (ZPD) to describe the transitional periods between more stable states of mental functioning (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2014), or what he referred to as one’s actual (i.e., current) developmental level. The concept captures psychological functions that are currently in the process of developing but are not yet under an individual’s independent control. In other words, the ZPD is future-oriented because it accounts for capacities that are emerging, as new or modified cultural tools are being internalized. Vygotsky’s (1978) oft-cited description of the ZPD as the difference between what one can do alone and what becomes possible with assistance is important because in many instances explicit mediation from a more competent person (i.e., intentional assistance in using appropriate tools; see Wertsch, 2007) is needed in order to gain control over still-maturing functions. To be clear, however, the ZPD is not a theory of assistance (Chaiklin, 2003). Rather, it is part of a larger unit of analysis that Vygotsky (1971, 1994) proposed to unite intellectual, affective, and environmental processes: perezhivanie, or ‘the process of experiencing and the state of “livingthrough”’(Valsiner & van der Veer, 2014, p. 160; see also González Rey & Martínez, 2016; Mok, 2015; and Smagorinsky, 2011). Vygotsky used the concept of perezhivanie to operationalize an approach to situated, unitary analysis of the formation of psychological functions in the ZPD. Rather than breaking developmental phenomena into discrete elements for separate analysis, he sought to understand their dynamic internal relations in specific circumstances. For example, an interaction with a more expert person who directs and guides a learner’s performance on a task is not in itself the ZPD, but it may be analyzed as one perezhivanie in which internalization processes operate and possibly contribute to the learner’s movement through the ZPD.

Extension of Sociocultural Theory to L2 Research Vygotsky’s ideas have been extended to L2 research in a number of productive ways since the early papers of Frawley and Lantolf (Frawley & Lantolf, 1985; Lantolf & Frawley, 1984). The majority of such research has used the theory as a lens through which to interpret L2 data. This work has helped to advance our understanding of the roles and contributions of private speech, assistance and scaffolding, collaboration, and so on in L2 development in classroom, tutoring, technologyenhanced, and study abroad contexts (see Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). Since the mid 2000s, however, focus has shifted to using the theory as a basis for designing applied studies that emphasize Vygotsky’s commitment to educational praxis (see Lantolf & Poehner, 2014). Consequently, such work involves pedagogical interventions (e.g., concept-based instruction, dynamic assessment) that aim to study L2 development by intentionally invoking it in educational contexts.

Contributions of Sociocultural Theory to L2 Pragmatics Early Developments In the 1990s and early 2000s, Vygotsky’s ideas were used as an analytic lens for interpreting L2 pragmatics phenomena. Central to this work was an interpretation of the ZPD concept in the broader L2 sociocultural theory (SCT) literature that emphasized (1) the potential benefits 147

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of expert–novice interaction (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994) and (2) the potential for peers to collaborate and collectively scaffold each other during task interaction (Donato, 1994). Thus, as Kinginger (2002) pointed out, analytic focus was on the formation of new L2 skills, scaffolding/ assistance, and/or metalinguistic growth during expert–novice or peer–peer interactive discourse. Kinginger (1998) provides an early example of such research. The study reported on the results of intercultural exchange between French university students and U.S. university learners of French that was mediated by videoconferencing technology. Kinginger documented miscommunication and missed opportunities for communication because the French students used an everyday register of spoken French with which the U.S. learners were unfamiliar. She interpreted the French authentic discourse as language beyond the learners’ ZPDs. However, the author noted that ‘the learners’ ZPD only became relevant again after the conference was over, in separate sessions devoted to examining the qualities of the spoken language’ (p. 511). The study highlighted the need for pedagogical arrangements intended to help learners to gain awareness of pragmatic norms (i.e., register of spoken/colloquial speech) since, if they do not already have some of the pieces in place to make progress (cf. the ZPD concept), native speaker input alone is insufficient. Belz and Kinginger’s (2002, 2003) well-known studies of French and German telecollaboration offered evidence that native-speaker peers could assist L2 learners in becoming aware of appropriate pragmatic practices, with specific focus on pronouns of solidarity (i.e., French tu and German du). The researchers found in general that the U.S. learners of French and German alternated between address pronouns, apparently without regard for how inappropriate use (i.e., the pronouns of power and distance, French vous and German Sie) could be interpreted as impoliteness. The native speakers in the study, however, provided explicit feedback to the learners, highlighting inappropriate pronoun use in relation to affective processes (e.g., native speakers were insulted or angry because vous/Sie made them feel old or rejected as a potential friend). Belz and Kinginger argued that the threat of loss of face pushed learners to eventually attend to their address form use and align with their native speaker interlocutors. Belz and Kinginger’s work made an important methodological contribution by extending microgenetic analysis to L2 pragmatics research. The approach, coined by Wertsch (1985), builds on Vygotsky’s (1978) genetic law of development, which holds that in order to understand how higher forms of cognition (in this case, developing sociopragmatic awareness in a new language) arise, we must understand their origins. Microgenetic analysis responds to this idea by tracing ‘the history of development during specific learning events’ (Belz & Kinginger, 2003, p. 615). This allows researchers to document and account for highly contextualized developmental processes as they occur ‘in flight’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57), which often go unnoticed in research that relies solely on the analysis of outcomes (e.g., pre-post designs). Kinginger (Kinginger, 2008; Kinginger & Belz, 2005) extended the genetic approach to documenting L2 pragmatic development to the context of study abroad. However, rather than relying on microgenetic analysis of interactions, this work took an ontogenetic perspective and analyzed learner narratives of personal experience through journals and interviews (later reinterpreted as perezhinvanie; see van Compernolle, in press-a) as a means of tracing the origins of development. Narratives are important because they provide evidence of the cognitive framing of experiences in ways that are culturally mediated by collective remembering (Wertsch, 2002) and the dialogic revoicing of the past in response to one’s present and imagined future circumstances (Bakhtin, 1981). In other words, narratives do not simply provide factual accounts of experiences but, from the SCT perspective, they are seen as tools that mediate memory and the (re)experiencing of the social situation of one’s development. Genetic analysis of narratives allowed Kinginger (2008) to reconstruct study-abroad experiences from the perspective of the learners in relation to developmental outcomes. It was shown that social-relational and affective processes shaped, and in turn were shaped by, learners’ pragmatic development (e.g., awareness and use of second-person pronouns, colloquial vocabulary). Because each individual had a unique experience, outcomes 148

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were highly variable. Kinginger’s analysis highlighted the ways in which learners constructed personalized understandings of appropriate pragmatic behavior on the basis of their experiences. Thus, while some learners adopted more or less conventionalized pragmatic practices, others chose to eschew conventions as extensions of their emerging L2 identities (see Kinginger, 2013; see also Chapter 11 in this volume). This focus on the formation of identity in relation to personal histories and experience compels researchers to conceptualize pragmatic development as an individualized process that requires an emic perspective on what counts as development rather than assuming a single uniform model.

Instruction and Assessment As noted, in the mid-2000s L2 SCT researchers began using the theory to design pedagogical interventions as a means of extending Vygotsky’s commitment to praxis to the field. Although some proposals for interpreting existing approaches to pragmatics instruction to the ZPD concept had been made before (e.g., Ohta, 2005), van Compernolle’s research (e.g., van Compernolle, 2010, 2011, 2014a; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a, 2012b) went deeper by designing a homegrown SCT approach to pragmatics instruction. He appropriated Vygotskian work in concept-based instruction (Negueruela, 2003) and dynamic assessment (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004; Poehner, 2005, 2008) as means of teaching and evaluating pragmatic development in ways that accounted for individual variation and identity at microgenetic and ontogenetic timescales, following the earlier work of Belz and Kinginger (2002) and Kinginger (2008).

Concept-Based Instruction Van Compernolle and Williams (2012a, 2012b) reported on a semester-long intervention that focused on sociolinguistic and pragmatic variation in an accelerated intermediate-level French course (i.e., students completed French 3 and 4 in a single semester). The study involved explicit conceptual instruction of variation and meaning potential (i.e., how variation in language could index identity and social relationship qualities, with focus on several pragmatic and stylistic variants in French such as T/V address and verbal negation with and without the proclitic particle ne), authentic language analysis tasks (cf. Kinginger, 1998), and small-group computer-mediated chat tasks designed to elicit different registers of language. Students also participated in end-of-semester oral interviews. The results showed that students in general were able to connect their conceptual knowledge of meaning potential to French language variation in awareness tasks, and in turn to connect their knowledge to their own communicative practices. Importantly, however, the approach also allowed learners to make their own choices regarding the appropriateness and desirability of pragmatic variation rather than uncritically adopting (idealized) native-speaker conventions (see Leung, 2005). This is what van Compernolle and Williams (2012a) referred to as sociolinguistic agency—the socioculturally mediated act of choosing from among sociolinguistic and pragmatic variants to create the meanings one wants to create. This view eschews aprioristic conceptions of ‘correct’ or ‘appropriate’ pragmatic behavior that are typically based on ‘narrowly empirical representations of abstracted language use’ (van Compernolle & Williams, 2012b, p. 185), or rules of thumb, that ‘fail to reveal deeper systematic principles’ (Lantolf, 2007, p. 36). The reader should note that the notion of sociolinguistic agency, as articulated by van Compernolle and Williams (2012a), does not suggest an ‘anything goes’ philosophy toward pragmatics, nor does it reject the importance of learning about normative pragmatic behavior within relevant speech communities. Instead, the point is to problematize and contextualize the meaning of community norms in relation to the choices available. Learners need to know what the norms are, but also what alternatives exist, in order to anticipate, and in turn interpret, the effects their 149

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pragmatic choices may have in real-life communicative activity. This kind of metapragmatic knowledge has the potential to assist learners in navigating pragmatic ambiguities, including dealing with the consequences of making a pragmatic choice that does not align with expected or normative behavior. In other words, teaching pragmatics through concepts is a way of teaching how the system works, what the choices are, and what their effects may be so that learners can make informed decisions about their own language use and to accurately interpret the pragmatic actions of others. Indeed, as Kasper and Rose (2001) pointed out nearly two decades ago, we must avoid prescriptivist instruction focused on idealized ‘proper’ or ‘polite’ behavior: ‘learners must be made aware of the consequences of making pragmatic choices, but the choice to act a certain way should be theirs alone’ (p. 3). The approach to concept-based pragmatics instruction was further developed in van Compernolle (2012, 2014a) for use in an enrichment program for learners of French who met one-on-one with a tutor over a six-week period. Galperin’s (1989, 1992) theory of the formation of mental actions was used as the guiding pedagogical principal. Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1986) analysis of concept formation, Galperin’s theory holds that mental actions involve three processes: orientation, execution, and control. The orientation process is especially important because it involves planning one’s actions and knowing which mediational means are relevant for executing one’s actions. In addition, the orientation also impacts on the control function, which entails monitoring and evaluating the execution of the action in relation to one’s orientation and the potentially changing circumstances in which one is acting. Van Compernolle’s study also drew on Paradis’s (2009) theory of the procedural and declarative determinants of L2 acquisition, most notably the idea that explicit metalinguistic knowledge can be used in performance and sufficiently ‘speeded up,’ or ‘accelerated’ (van Compernolle, 2014a), through practice to produce fluent speech. Van Compernolle’s (2012, 2014a) approach followed an iterative reflection–application–performance design: Learners were first introduced to the concepts of indexicality, self-presentation, social distance, and power as illustrated by variation between the second-person pronouns tu and vous, the first-person plural pronouns on and nous, and the presence versus absence of the negative particle ne in negation. Then, they engaged in problem-solving tasks in which they had to apply the concepts by choosing appropriate language forms and explaining their choices. Finally, they performed spoken strategic interaction scenario tasks (DiPietro, 1987) in which they also received assistance when their pragmatic performance faltered. The process was repeated twice. The results showed that the learners developed their conceptual awareness of French pragmatics, but that each individual created his or her own meaningful relationship with the concepts and their implications for appropriate pragmatic behavior (cf. agency and identity). At the same time, the approach was successful in developing learners’ accelerated use of their knowledge in performance: Quantitative (i.e., relative frequencies of variants and their distribution across tasks) and qualitative (i.e., line-by-line interaction analysis of speech production qualities) analyses demonstrated increased controlled use of appropriate pragmatic forms as well as greater fluency in speech production over time. Additional studies have corroborated aspects of van Compernolle’s (2012, 2014a) work. Van Compernolle and Henery (2014) and van Compernolle, Gomez-Laich, and Weber (2016) extended the framework to elementary-level French and Spanish classrooms, respectively, showing that it was feasible to implement this kind of instruction into existing curricula. Kim’s (2013) research has shown that concept-based instruction can be successful in mediating L2 English learners’ ability to detect and understand sarcasm, which is a particularly difficult dimension of pragmatics since it relies on an understanding of context, indirect or implied meaning, and often nonverbal and paralinguistic cues (e.g., speech delivery, facial expressions). Henery (2014) and Fernandez (2017) extended concept-based pragmatics instruction to the study abroad context. Both studies showed that concept-based interventions during the study abroad experience 150

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helped raised learners’ awareness of pragmatics as well as their ability to interpret the pragmatic practices of the members of the host communities they interacted with (see also Chapter 23 in this volume). Ohta (2017) expanded the framework to the teaching of honorifics in Japanese as expressions of modes of self. Her case study showed evidence of development in one learner’s understanding of the concept of wakimae (i.e., understanding the relative status of one’s interlocutor, social distance, and contextual formality) and use of plain and polite (desu/masu) forms. Finally, van Compernolle (in press-b) has demonstrated that concept-based instruction can be carried out in a relatively short period of time through technology-enhanced means (i.e., an online tutorial with problem-solving tasks). In addition, this study is the only one thus far that compared concept-based instruction to rule-based instruction (cf. van Compernolle & Williams’s 2012b critique of ‘rules of thumb’ instruction as being ‘narrowly empirical’ p. 185, cited above). The results showed no difference between groups in the ability to select appropriate pragmatic forms (both groups improved significantly from pre- to posttest and showed similar rates of attrition in a delayed posttest). However, the concept-based group outperformed the rule-based group in terms of their understanding of the social meaning and significance of pragmatics, a difference that remained stable in a delayed posttest.

Dynamic Assessment While van Compernolle’s (2012, 2014) work focused primarily on concept-based instruction, it also incorporated dynamic assessment procedures as a means of evaluating and promoting the growth of pragmatic knowledge and performance abilities. Drawing on Vygotsky’s ZPD concept, this approach to testing combines assessment and instruction as a unified activity: The point is to determine what the learner is capable of doing alone—his or her zone of actual development—and what becomes possible with support—his or her ZPD (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004; Poehner, 2008). Two task types were used to dynamically assess learners’ pragmatic knowledge in van Compernolle’s study: (1) appropriateness judgment tasks (AJTs), in which learners were prompted by their tutor to use the concepts to solve communicative problems (i.e., selecting tu/vous, on/nous, and ne presence vs. absence) and received assistance in appropriately using the concepts to do so, and (2) strategic interaction scenarios (SISs), in which learners and their tutor performed spoken scenarios and a tutor provided supportive feedback (e.g., prompts, recasts) when pragmatic performance faltered. Analysis of interactions around AJTs allowed the researcher to trace the microgenesis of new concepts (e.g., how tu/vous choice creates qualities of social distance and power) within (van Compernolle & Kinginger, 2013) and across (van Compernolle, 2013a) tasks. The SISs provided insights into the development of speeded up (Paradis, 2009) or accelerated (van Compernolle, 2014a) use of metalinguistic knowledge in performance, as the locus of control (cf. Galperin’s 1989, 1992 theory of the formation of mental actions) moved from the interpersonal plane (between the tutor and the learner) to the intrapersonal plane (within the learner) (van Compernolle, 2013b, 2014b). In other words, over time, learners became able to plan and execute their pragmatic performances independently and fluently (i.e., without hesitation in speech production). The use of dynamic assessment in van Compernolle’s (2012, 2014a) work foregrounded its instructional function: It was used to track and make instructional adjustments to account for learner development. This work is similar to that of Ishihara (2009, 2013), who drew on the notions of mediation and the ZPD in carrying out classroom-based formative assessments of L2 English pragmatics in a Japanese university context. In addition, although not framed as pragmatics, Ai’s (2017) work on an intelligent adaptive computerized test drew on dynamic assessment principles for evaluating and teaching the morphosyntax of Chinese ba-constructions (forms used for creating focus on the result or influence of an action). Emerging work by Qin (2018; Qin & van Compernolle, under review), however, has foregrounded the testing function of dynamic 151

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assessment. Qin’s research focuses on testing L2 Chinese learners’ implicature comprehension (i.e., understanding indirect meaning) in the speech acts of refusals and opinions, drawing on the scholarship of Taguchi (Taguchi, 2005, 2011; Taguchi, Li, & Liu, 2013) in interlanguage pragmatics (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Qin and van Compernolle (under review) report on the results of a computerized dynamic assessment of implicature comprehension that integrated graduated prompts into a multiplechoice test (24 target items total). Test-takers listened to a series of short audio-recorded utterances and then had to answer questions about the speaker’s intended meaning encoded in the utterance. If they did not select the correct answer on the first attempt, they were provided hints and given additional opportunities. Point values for each item reflected the number of attempts needed to respond correctly (i.e., 4 points for first attempt, 3 for the second attempt, etc.). The procedure yielded three scores: (1) an actual score, which included the first responses only; (2) a mediated score, which added points from the second, third, etc. attempts to the actual score; and (3) a learning potential score (LPS; Kozulin & Garb, 2002; Poehner & Lantolf, 2013; van Compernolle & Zhang, 2014) that accounts for the difference between the mediated and actual score. The LPS is meant to reflect a test-taker’s responsiveness to the support (i.e., prompts) offered during the test. The data showed a large degree of individual variation in responsiveness to mediation. While some learners produced high LPSs, others did not make much progress. The findings were interpreted within the ZPD concept: A high LPS indicates a learner with the pieces in place to make progress toward more independent functions (cf. ZPD), whereas a low LPS could mean that the test demands were beyond the learner’s ZPD (i.e., low actual, mediated, and learning potential scores) or that the test did not challenge the learner and so did not tap into his or her ZPD (i.e., high actual score with little room for gains in the mediated score, therefore producing a low LPS). This kind of information, according to the authors, could be useful in distinguishing between learners who appear similar in terms of their independent functioning, as revealed by actual scores, but who may be very different in terms of their emerging capabilities (i.e., ZPD). Classroom instructors could in turn use such information to design individualized teaching and learning plans for students. Qin (2018) has improved on the design of the test by including three distinct phases. In the first phase of the assessment, students attempt to comprehend indirect refusals (example item in Figure 10.1) with no assistance, which Qin refers to as a premediation test. The test is scored based on pilot data collected among Chinese native speakers (NS). A correct response is recorded if the test-taker places the slider within 3 standard deviations of the NS mean. The test also involves three levels of item difficulty based on the amount of Chinese that learners have to

Mike plans to travel to Beijing. He knows his high school classmate, Lucy, is a graduate student there. Mike asks Lucy if he can stay in her dorm for a few nights. Lucy says, Lucy means Mike can’t stay in her dorm. Question: To what extent do you agree with the above statement? Please use the slider below. –50 Strongly Disagree

+50

+35

Clear

Strongly Agree

Figure 10.1 Sample item from Qin (2018) (used with permission). Note: An audio file with the target speech act plays automatically in the test.

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comprehend (i.e., short sentence, long sentence, and full dialogue). In the second phase, testtakers engage in a mediation session where they revisit items they answered incorrectly in the premediation test and receive graduated assistance when needed in order to help them identify the meaning of the target utterances. The third phase, or postmediation test, involves (i) a second test of indirect refusals identical to the premediation test but with different items and (ii) a transfer test focused on indirect opinions. This design, which separates independent performance from mediation (assisted performance) enables Qin to more clearly distinguish test-taker’s actual/current level of development (premediation test) and their ZPDs (what has become possible in the postmediation test). Preliminary results suggest that the design is more sensitive to individual learner needs since there is a clear separation between independent and assisted performance, and assistance is tailored to participants’ premediation independent performance. This approach may therefore yield more useful diagnostic information than the test reported in Qin and van Compernolle (under review).

Teacher Education Teacher education has been the focus of a small number of studies. Ishihara (2011), for example, designed an intensive teacher development seminar for Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language teachers seeking recertification. She drew on Johnson’s (2009) sketch of an SCT approach to teacher cognition and development in an attempt to foster the growth of pedagogical content knowledge with regard to English pragmatics. She focused on a single case analysis that demonstrated how a teacher’s pragmatic awareness was challenged in interaction with other participants during a pragmatics training seminar discussion for teachers, which led to some development. However, Ishihara also outlined several challenges, not least of which involves overcoming teachers’ existing beliefs about language that may conflict with the kind of pedagogical content knowledge privileged in such seminars (see also Lantolf & Johnson, 2007). For their part, van Compernolle and Henery (2015) reported on the development of the French instructor ‘Mrs. Hanks’, who carried out the concept-based instruction pragmatics program reported on in van Compernolle and Henery (2014). The study outlined how Mrs. Hanks’s competence in presenting concepts and mediating her students was developed through biweekly meetings with a more expert collaborator, with whom she would watch videorecordings of previous class meetings and engage in role plays designed to model more appropriate ways of interacting with students. They then focused on Mrs. Hanks’s strategies for mediating her students’ application of the concepts of self-presentation, social distance, and power in relation to tu and vous during instructional conversations centered on appropriateness judgment tasks (i.e., choosing appropriate pragmatic forms in various situations and explaining one’s choices using the concepts). They concluded, similarly to Ishihara (2011), that a major challenge was overcoming previously acquired beliefs about language and language teaching methods (Mrs. Hanks was most familiar with a generic or vague interpretation of communicative language teaching), which required intense one-on-one mediation from the more expert collaborator.

Critical Appraisal of the Literature and Future Directions The research summarized above has provided unique insights into the nature and development of L2 pragmatics. It has also made theoretical and methodological contributions to L2 SCT scholarship in general. This work is not, of course, without its limitations. In the following paragraphs, I offer a critical appraisal of SCT-driven L2 pragmatics research as a whole with recommendations for future research. 153

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One of the principal contributions of SCT scholarship research in general has been a reconceptualization of development as the internalization of mediational means as opposed to the acquisition of L2 pragmatics. SCT research has brought increased attention not only to what learners know about pragmatics (i.e., awareness), but also how they perceive sociopragmatic concepts such as appropriateness and formality, which may be different from one learner to the next, and how such perceptions shape pragmatic practice in communication. In this way, pragmatic competence is not operationalized strictly in relation to adherence to native speaker conventions because individuals may choose to converge or diverge from conventions to suit their communicative needs and identities (Kinginger, 2008; van Compernolle, 2014a; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a). To be sure, other researchers outside of SCT have advocated for nuanced views of pragmatic abilities, with an eye toward understanding individual variability in perceptions of appropriateness (e.g., Brown, 2013; Iwasaki, 2011; Kasper & Rose, 2001). However, SCT is unique in that it offers frameworks and concrete procedures for engaging in agency-driven pragmatics instruction (e.g., concept-based pragmatics instruction) and assessment (e.g., dynamic assessment). Further, SCT contributes to pragmatics scholarship by avoiding reductionist accounts of the role of identity and agency as being purely social constructs (see also Chapter 11 in this volume). Indeed, van Compernolle and Williams (2012a; see van Compernolle, 2014a for extension) offer a framework that recognizes the mediated nature of, and the relationships between, Self, identity, and agency that dialectically unites psychological and social processes. One’s sense of Self is mediated by the past and is dependent upon the mediational means internalized in various perezhivanie (van Compernolle, in press-a). Identities, then, are situated performances of aspects of one’s Self that mediate between the Self and the material world. Agency, in turn, is mediated by the cultural tools made available in one’s past and which become relevant and available in the present (Ahearn, 2001). Consequently, L2 SCT pragmatics research sees the issue of identity and agency not simply in terms of individual choice, but in terms of the interplay, and tensions that arise, between cultural mediation (psychology) and external circumstances (environment). The literature has provided positive evidence that Self, identity, and agency shape, and are in turn shaped by, pragmatic development in study abroad (e.g., Kinginger, 2008) and in educational contexts (e.g., van Compernolle, 2014a; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a).3 However, there are several limitations to this research. First, French has been the primary focus on this work, and a very limited range of pragmatic features of discourse have been investigated, especially secondperson address forms. A greater range of languages and discourse features would help to round out scholarship in this domain. Second, the timescales for existing studies are relatively short, typically no more than an academic semester. It therefore remains to be seen in what ways, if any, Self, identity, and agency shape, and are shaped by, pragmatic development over longer periods of time and in more diverse contexts (e.g., beyond a single pedagogical program or study abroad experience). Third, research has yet to go beyond documenting that Self, identity, and agency are at play in pragmatic development and that individual variability exists. The question, then, is what should we do about it? This is particularly important for praxis in Vygotskian scholarship. As Lantolf and Poehner (2014) have argued, drawing on Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach, it is not enough to simply observe and interpret our object of study, ‘the point is to change it’ (Marx, 1845/2002). This would mean engaging in what Packer (2011) has referred to as emancipatory research, where researchers are not dispassionate objective observers but motivated activists with an interest in changing the course of pragmatic development (e.g., how Self, identity, and agency impact on development), as well as in providing students with opportunities to develop pragmatics in ways that help to reshape the Self, possibilities for identity performance, and forms of agency through the internalization of new mediational means. Concept-based pragmatics instruction has the potential to fill this gap, especially if the approach is further modified to include Engeström’s (1987, 1991) notion of learning by expanding. Students would be assisted not only in internalizing pragmatic concepts but in critically analyzing and in turn modifying the very 154

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pedagogical materials they are using to learn and develop in relation to conventional and unconventional pragmatic practices. For example, students can be encouraged to reflect on how their own desired L2 identities fit into the concepts and pragmatic practices under study, and how they might modify the concepts and categories of meaning (e.g., social distance vs. closeness) to suit their own communicative needs and identities. Such work would be especially interesting in contexts where learners are actually integrating into a host culture and/or developing social relationships beyond a pedagogical setting (e.g., study abroad, telecollaboration). The ZPD concept has also been usefully extended to L2 pragmatics research as a way of expanding our understanding of learner ability to include emergent capabilities that require support. Early work focused on the role of expert and peer assistance in raising learners’ awareness of pragmatics (e.g., Belz & Kinginger, 2002; Kinginger, 1998; Ohta, 2005), while later work used the concept as a basis for intentionally designing instructional arrangements (e.g., van Compernolle, 2014a) and assessment tools (e.g., Qin & van Compernolle, under review). Both foci have shown that learners can do more with assistance than without, including in interpersonal interaction but also as they engage with tools such as pedagogical materials and tests. However, focus has been predominately on rather low-level pragmatic knowledge and abilities (e.g., pronouns of address, speech acts) or a limited number of pragmatic concepts (e.g., social distance, power), which need to be expanded in future research. The ZPD concept is about much more than the development of discrete knowledge and skills; Indeed, because Vygotsky’s focus was on the reorganization of consciousness, research that draws on the ZPD idea should investigate much larger issues where pragmatics are important. As noted above, the development and reshaping of Self, identity, and agency is one area that L2 SCT pragmatics work should take a greater interest in, and it is one that should be framed in terms of the ZPD. Shifts in one’s sense of Self, and the instability observed as one negotiates who one was and who one is becoming, are essentially transitional zones of development (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2014). To be sure, lower-level pragmatic abilities and concepts certainly play a part in development, so the issue is one of situating research within the broader context of human development, going beyond pragmatic development. Instructional and assessment research has recently begun to show that Vygotskian pedagogical innovations—namely, concept-based instruction and dynamic assessment—are effective in promoting and evaluating pragmatic development. Yet, comparative research demonstrating how the outcomes or practical significance of such innovations is virtually nonexistent. As noted, van Compernolle (in press-b) is the only study in L2 pragmatics that compared concept-based instruction with another more traditional approach based on pragmatic rules. No such research exists in the domain of dynamic assessment. In both cases, two forms of comparative research are needed, as outlined earlier by van Compernolle et al. (2016) (i.e., ‘within theory’ and ‘across theory’ comparisons). ‘Within theory’ comparisons are needed in order to answer questions about instructional effectiveness and assessment functionality. Such work would involve manipulating instructional materials, task components, test delivery, and so on. For example, van Compernolle and Henery (2014) used appropriateness judgment tasks (AJTs) that included relatively straightforward situations as well as ambiguous situations together. Speaking with a close friend would be straightforward because all the various ‘rules’ based on age, friendship, etc. point to the use of tu, whereas speaking with an age-peer grocery store clerk would be ambiguous since two or more ‘rules’ are in conflict (i.e., age = tu; stranger + service encounter = vous). On the other hand, van Compernolle et al. (2016) separated these two kinds of situations: Learners first completed a straightforward AJT and only after engaging in an instructional conversation with the teacher did they move on to the more difficult ambiguous AJT. Unfortunately, the two studies are not directly comparable, so it is not possible to say whether one approach was more effective than the other. A study in which the outcomes of AJT sequencing (from straightforward to ambiguous situations) are directly comparable would be a great contribution to this line of inquiry. 155

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‘Across theory’ comparisons are equally needed in order to address questions of the relative effectiveness and functionality of divergent instructional and assessment practices. For example, concept-based versus rule-based pragmatics instruction (van Compernolle, in press-b) is a step in the right direction for investigating the outcomes of different forms of explicit pragmatics instruction (see Taguchi, 2015). To be sure, comparative studies need to take care to involve instructional conditions that are truly comparable and assessments of learning outcomes that do not favor one approach over another (Loewen & Sato, 2017). Dynamic assessment research would do well to compare the practical significance of test outcomes (e.g., diagnoses of learner abilities) in comparison to nondynamic assessments. For instance, Qin and van Compernolle (under review) argue that dynamic assessment provides more diagnostic information about learners, but it has yet to be shown whether, or for what purposes, an expanded evidential basis (e.g., mediated and learning potential scores) is actually useful for test administrators or teachers in concrete practice. As mentioned earlier, L2 SCT pragmatics research has done a lot to highlight the importance of pragmatic knowledge, awareness, and related concepts in development. Indeed, this is the focus of concept-based pragmatics instruction, following Galperin’s (1989, 1992) model of the formation of mental actions. However, there is a gap in the research linking the development of pragmatic knowledge to pragmatic performance, particularly in real-time interaction. Thus, while performance has been tracked in research on computer-mediated communication (Belz & Kinginger, 2002) and in one study of concept-based instruction (van Compernolle, 2014a), much of the SCT literature has deemphasized performance. Most studies have paid much closer attention to declarative knowledge and interpretive abilities (e.g., comprehension). This is unfortunate since, as Vygotsky (1986) would have argued, knowledge separated from practice is inert. Future research exploring the link between knowledge and performance, and especially praxis-based work examining how pragmatic performance may be intentionally developed through pedagogical (e.g., how to mediate the process of ‘speeding up’ Paradis, 2009] access to metalinguistic knowledge in speech), would make a significant contribution to the literature. For instance, van Compernolle’s (2018) programmatic proposal involves iterating on conceptual instruction, problem-solving, and spoken performance tasks to progressively increase time pressures on learners as a means of accelerating orientation, execution, and control functions.

Conclusion Researchers drawing on Vygotskian psychology have made a number of important contributions to the L2 pragmatics literature. The extension of constructs such as mediation, internalization, and the ZPD to L2 pragmatics has helped to emphasize the interpersonal (interpsychological) origins of development. In addition, SCT research has advocated a dialectical view on the relationship between pragmatic development and Self, identity, and agency. While early work applied the theory as an analytic tool, current scholarship has employed SCT as a larger metatheory for designing instructional interventions and assessments, following the broader trend among SCT researchers to unite theory and practice as praxis (see Lantolf & Poehner, 2014). To be sure, we are only in an embryonic stage of L2 pragmatics praxis, and there are many avenues for future work to pursue. But the shift toward praxis-driven scholarship is important because it has compelled, and should continue to compel, researchers to take an activist-interventionist stance that seeks to address questions of theoretical importance in the context of doing good in the lives of real people.

Notes 1 It is important to note that interpersonal speech is a primary locus of interpsychological activity, as Vygotsky (1978) pointed out. In other words, communication involves the sharing of mental states and intentionality (Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007), or what has been referred to as cognition on the ground (Maynard, 2006; and see van Compernolle, 2016 for extension to SCT). 156

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2 Lantolf and Thorne (2006) point out SCT’s shared view of the role of contextualized language with pragmatics, dating back at least to Wittgenstein’s notion of language games. 3 It should be noted that SCT shares some common ground with poststructuralist views of identity (e.g., Block, 2007; Norton, 2000), which inform much of the SCT research cited here. The unique contribution of SCT to this work is its emphasis on the dialectical nature of social and psychological processes, as outlined in the discussion of Self, identity, and agency (see van Compernolle, 2014a; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a). In my reading of the literature, poststructuralist work appears to focus on identity as a social phenomenon.

Further reading Lantolf, J. P., & Poehner, M. E. (2014). Sociocultural theory and the pedagogical imperative in L2 education. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. This book provides an in-depth discussion of Vygotsky’s approach to the study of psychology in relation to the dialectics of theory and practice, or praxis, and implications for designing and doing research in L2 educational environments. The authors provide in-depth discussion of the philosophical, methodological, and empirical basis for Vygotsky’s work and its application in L2 research. The book also helps to synthesize emerging praxis, namely L2 concept-based instruction and dynamic assessment. van Compernolle, R. A. (2014). Sociocultural theory and L2 instructional pragmatics. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. This book outlines the theoretical bases of concept-based pragmatics instruction and illustrates its implementation in an extracurricular enrichment program for learners of French involving one-on-one tutoring sessions. The book also outlines an SCT orientation to the construct of appropriateness in relation to pragmatic competence, and extends pragmatics instruction to account for Self, identity, and agency. The empirical parts of the book trace development across various awareness-raising and performance tasks, documenting the process of concept formation and accelerated access to metalinguistic knowledge during performance.

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11 Identity and Agency in L2 Pragmatics1 Noriko Ishihara

Introduction With the social turn in applied linguistics, research on identity and agency has been recognized as contributing vital insights to second language acquisition (SLA) (Block, 2003). In the context of globalization marked by increasingly conspicuous linguistic and cultural diversity, sociallyoriented research views the L2 user as an agent shaping the sociocultural structure while being shaped by that structure as they jointly negotiate their identities in a dynamic, interactive context. Engaged in a social activity of language learning and use, L2 users can be reconceptualized as multicompetent (Cook, 2007) or translingual (Canagarajah, 2013), with a focus on how they function across different domains in bi-/multilingual communities and simultaneously negotiate their complex identities (see also Chapters 30 and 32 in this volume). This perspective is in stark contrast with monolingual ideologies representing a ‘deficit’ model in which the language of learners, or ‘nonnative speakers’ is regarded as deviant (or at least divergent) from the idealized language of ‘native speakers’. In the monolingual model, nonnative language is viewed as a fossilized, failed copy of flawless native-speaker language. For example, in a conventional approach to interlanguage pragmatics research, learners’ pragmatic language use is typically compared to empirically-established native-speaker norms. The degree of success in language learning and acculturation is thus measured in terms of the extent of approximation to native-speaker norms; divergences are routinely characterized as negative pragmatic transfer or insufficient pragmatic competence. In a sociohistorically-informed view of language learning, awareness of linguistic and cultural variation is related to the power structure in the social, political, and historical context. For example, scholars investigating the use of English as a global language contend that users of English situated in outer- and expanding-circle2 contexts make deliberate language choices that do not necessarily align with those of native speakers of English in inner-circle countries for the purpose of identity assertion and group solidarity (Berns, 2015). Nativized language varieties are often marginalized as substandard, erroneous, or failed (Seidlhofer, 2011) due to the asymmetrical power structure embedded in the sociopolitical structure. While L1 speakers’ divergence from normative language use is often accepted positively as a manifestation of unique creativity, L2 users are not given the same legitimacy and may feel deprived of their agency to exercise creativity in expressing identities (Kasanga, 2006).

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Focusing on the constructs of identity and agency, this chapter first discusses theoretical underpinnings of these key constructs and their relationship to pragmatic language use, as well as a summary of research in this area. Appraisal of the current research and suggestions for future research will be offered at the end, as well as pedagogical implications.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts Identity Among the disciplines in which identity has been studied, social psychology is often cited for having influenced earlier work on identity in SLA (Duff, 2012). Social identity theory posits that identity is related to a desire for affiliation and group membership. Individuals derive their sense of self largely from the social categories to which they belong. Thus, social identity is concerned with both self-concept and social intergroup relations, and has emotional and value significance (Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Spencer-Oatey, 2007). This understanding of identity has been drawn upon in accommodation theories applied to SLA, which aim to explain, from cognitive and affective perspectives, L2 speakers’ fluctuating style-shifting, which results in convergence with or divergence from target-language speakers or cultures (Beebe & Giles, 1984). While accommodation theories can be used to study L2 speakers’ interactional variation in social contexts at a given time as well as their linguistic variation or the process of L2 acquisition over time, a social psychological framework of identity is often criticized as characterizing identity as static and monolithic (McNamara, 1997). Gumperz (1982) and Ochs (1993) are among those who claimed an indexical connection between (social) identity and language learning or use from the perspectives of contextualization and language socialization respectively (Kasper & Rose, 2002). The poststructuralist notion of identity3 has become prominent in applied linguistics, among other theoretical and methodological approaches including critical theory, feminist theory, and narrative inquiry influencing SLA (Duff, 2012). Based on Weedon (1997), Norton (2000) defines identity as ‘how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future’ (p. 5). Under the poststructuralist paradigm, identity is viewed as multi-faceted, in flux, and socially constructed. That is, individuals perform a repertoire of multiple identities, which is dynamically and discursively negotiated and jointly enacted in context. Block (2007) further characterizes identities as socially-constructed ongoing narratives that are performed, interpreted, and projected in verbal and non-verbal behavior, such as dress, gaze, and body language. Identity construction is a site of struggle often shaped by power, including how individuals are positioned by others as well as how they position themselves, which influences L2 users’ investment in and opportunities for learning and using language (Norton, 2000). Investment is made for an anticipated return on capital, such as symbolic and material resources associated with social power. The notion of investment emphasizes its socio-historically constructed relationship between language learner identity and learning commitment. More recently, Darvin and Norton (2015) renewed Norton’s earlier work on identity in today’s context of technological advances and mobility to illustrate how learners in rural Uganda and urban Canada performed ever more fluid identities on- and off-line and were afforded or denied agency within their sociocultural structures to participate in today’s digital age and globalization.

Agency Intertwined with the construct of identity is that of agency, which can be defined as a dynamically negotiated capacity to act, assume new identities, or resist certain positionings actively and purposefully (Duff, 2012; Rogers & Wetzel, 2013). A prominent characteristic of identity 162

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includes its agency-giving nature in relation to power and institutions (Norton, 2000), meaning that individuals’ agency or their capacities can be considered acts of identity. McKay and Wong (1996) were among the first to investigate identity construction and agency enactment in multiple discourses from a poststructuralist perspective. Their longitudinal ethnographic study revealed the unique and complex ways in which four Chinese immigrant adolescents in a Californian high school positioned (or failed to position) themselves in the social discourse while enacting agentive social identities (e.g., academic achiever in ESL; socially competent adolescent with advanced Chinese literacy). Although the term agency may evoke free will or intention, human agency can be understood more holistically in its interaction with the sociocultural structure (Ahearn, 2001). Agency can be understood as being mediated, facilitated, or constrained by the institutional structure as well as by the sociocultural, historical, and political configurations of the larger society (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; van Compernolle, 2014; Vygotsky, 1978). Like identity, agency is conceptualized not as a static individual property one possesses but as a dynamically constructed relationship one negotiates discursively (Miller, 2014). Being mediated socioculturally, agency also has the potential to form the structure itself, leading to the reproduction or transformation of the structure and its practices, making agency and structure interdependent and mutually-constitutive (Ahearn, 2001; Lu & Horner, 2013). Recent literature on agency in SLA has centered on studies examining the way in which learners’ identities and agentive capacities are discursively negotiated in relation to the dynamics of power. These studies elucidate the complex ways in which agency is mediated by norms, practices, institutions, and discourses through which it is supported or constrained (e.g., Duran, 2015; Varghese, 2012). Also, an increasing number of studies on teacher agency in applied linguistics illustrate the dynamic relationship between agency and structure in the context of educational reforms and language policies as well as in relation to the negotiation of positioning, power, legitimacy, identities, and self-esteem (e.g., Kayi-Aydar, 2015; Ishihara, Carroll, Mahler, & Russo, in press).

Identity and Pragmatic Language Use Identity is known to be interconnected with language learning and use, face, sociocultural mediation, language socialization, and communities of practice, and discursively constructed in relational context (Block, 2007; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; Haugh, 2007; Locher, 2011; Spencer-Oatey, 2007). Language learners do not acculturate to perceived native-speaker norms entirely and unidirectionally as if in a sociocultural vacuum but instead discursively negotiate their translingual identities, which are loaded with complex and sometimes conflicting values, beliefs, and worldviews. In language socialization theory, novice members, such as L2 users, are seen to participate in and progressively acquire the pragmatic norms and discourse practices of the community through activities mediated by language or other cultural artifacts (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Vygotsky, 1978). Effective participation in community practices in turn allows novices to gradually become competent and central members of that community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Therefore, identity reflects and embodies particular sociocultural values, discursive norms, and community practices reproduced over time by group members enacting similar identities. This cumulative linguistic outcome can be characterized as sedimentation (Pennycook, 2010), which is known to contribute to the appearance of stability of the practices. Notably, participation in sedimented practices can be viewed as part of learners’ agency through recontextualization (Lu & Horner, 2013), a conscious and agentive act of identity assertion. While language learners’ alignment with community norms can be understood as part of language socialization, resistance to local practices is also encompassed by language socialization theory. Novice members are not mere passive recipients of sociocultural community practices but 163

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actively and selectively co-construct and re-shape existing practices and outcomes of interactions (Garrett & Baquedano-López, 2002; Ochs, 1993). In fact, many researchers have pointed out that bilingual or multilingual speakers may choose not to enact certain aspects of their sociocultural identities as typically done by monolinguals, which in turn can influence their choice of language, semiotic resources, pragmatic norms, or discursive practices in each context. For multilinguals, the perceived or idealized behaviors of monolingual native speakers may not necessarily be an optimal model as their diversified identities and discursive negotiation reciprocally constitute one another. Researchers investigating the global spread and use of English offer similar arguments in response to today’s diversified contexts of interactions. Thus, unique language use by multilinguals is not a rare exception to the rule. Rather, this multilingual agency is often referred to as enacted in a third space (Bhabha, 1994; Kramsch, 2009) in which two or more languages are interdependent without being compartmentalized as separate systems (see also Chapters 30 and 32 in this volume). In fact, this hybridity has become as a central argument in identity theory (as described above) as well as in research studies investigating L2 pragmatic choices, some of which are reviewed in the next section.

Survey of the Current Literature on L2 Pragmatics, Identity, and Agency A body of literature on this topic is gradually emerging. Although the theoretical stance is not necessarily stated explicitly in the studies on this topic, their methodologies and terminologies can be used as indicators for the underlying frameworks of identity and agency they draw upon. For example, without using the constructs of identity or subjectivity, Al-Issa (2003) investigated the realization patterns of the refusal speech act in English elicited through a discourse completion test (DCT) from 50 Jordanian learners of English by comparing it with English refusals by 50 American-English speakers and Arabic refusals by 50 Jordanian speakers of Arabic. The learners’ refusals showed divergence from those of American-English speakers in terms of the selection of semantic formulas, length of responses, and the content of selected formulas. Semistructured interviews revealed learners’ pride in their L1 Arabic along with their awareness of American-English norms of refusals, which they did not see as desirable for them as emulating others’ values was not regarded as a virtue. Consequently, the author characterized this as a possible case of sociocultural transfer presumably motivated by learners’ beliefs, perceptions, and religion. The term transfer thus appears to be an indication of the author’s underlying cognitive view of this phenomenon. A more recent study of learner subjectivity and pragmatic language choice conducted within a socio-psychological framework is that of pragmatic transfer by Korean learners of English by Eslami, Kim, Wright, and Burlbaw (2014). Using a DCT and stimulated recall interviews, the requesting behaviors in English and Korean of 30 Korean learners of English were compared to requests by 30 American college students. The researchers detected cases of pragmatic transfer in the learners’ level of directness and perspectives in the request head act. Pragmatic transfer included cases in which participants consciously avoided using perceived L2 norms, demonstrating that not all of these learners aimed to emulate perceived American norms of requests. While learners categorized as convergent accommodated with native-like pragmatic uses presumably wishing to acculturate, others were found to have instrumental motivation viewing English as a utilitarian language, thus diverging by making requests in a way agreeable with their Korean subjectivities. The authors highlighted three factors––purpose of learning the L2, types of motivation, and length of intended residence––as affecting learners’ degree of pragmatic transfer. However, poststructuralist researchers may contest the static characterization of learners as 164

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either convergent or divergent, arguing that their authentic pragmatic choices are discursively constructed in relation to the subjectivities and power they negotiate within various contextual demands far beyond these three factors. A focus on sociocultural aspects of language learning and use is also reflected in a handful of studies in L2 pragmatics that explored learners’ pragmatic choices. Siegal (1994, 1996) pioneered this line of inquiry through a case study of four female Western learners of Japanese in Japan. Siegal researched these learners’ language use and positions negotiated by themselves and others in relation to race, gender, and social context. For example, Mary, a teacher of Japanese from New Zealand, emulated the behavior she perceived as humble and polite in Japan, which constructed her as a competent community member. In contrast, in an interaction with her native Japanese-speaking advisor, Mary diverged from local use of an epistemic modal by attempting to construct an equal footing with him. Siegal argues that Mary displayed what she understood as a polite demeanor to reposition herself not as a language student but as a researcher. That is, L2 speakers are portrayed as discursively negotiating their subjectivity as active agents whose language use positions them in a unique space in the community. Rather than blindly reproducing native-speaker norms, L2 speakers carve out their third space by developing creative language use and new identities. Following Siegal, LoCastro (1998) reported on her own pragmatic development (or lack thereof) while living and working in Japan. Despite her awareness of the expected use of honorifics, which she understood to be an indicator of a hierarchical social structure, her ideological subjectivities based on more egalitarian, less-gendered structures diminished her motivation to learn L2 pragmatic norms beyond minimal use of formal politeness routines. Although she aspired to function as a liberal feminist professional, her efforts to negotiate these identities were not fruitful due to constant conflicts with biases perceived in the local communities and intricate L2 norms and forms highly sensitive to layers of status differences, the model of which was rarely available to her (see also Brown, 2013). Thus, the ownership of multiple identities and desire to enact them can sometimes be an overwhelming challenge, causing learners to resist L2 pragmatic learning itself. Additional studies have demonstrated L2 speakers’ avoidance of social hierarchy indexed by the use of honorifics and gendered language in Japanese along with other pragmatic uses perceived as reflecting native-speaker norms (Ishihara, 2009, 2010; Ishihara & Tarone, 2009; Iwasaki, 2011; Jones, 2007; Masuda, 2011). For example, Ishihara’s (2009, 2010) phenomenological study documented L2 learners’ resistance to particular pragmatic language uses that they perceived as indexing L2 values, such as ritual apologies and extreme formality or directness in status-differential relationships, which conflicted with learners’ subjectivities. Ishihara defined pragmatic resistance as L2 users’ deliberate divergence from perceived pragmatic norms and language uses they are aware of and linguistically capable of producing. Excluded from this definition are cases where learners diverge from common pragmatic interpretation and production as they lack or fall short of an awareness of L2 norms or ability to produce target-like forms. Although aligning with L2 norms may be considered a more preferred approach, L2 speakers–– even expert speakers residing in the L2 community for decades––were found to sometimes negotiate their identities by refusing to adopt the pragmatic language uses they perceived as being in opposition to their subjective positions. In fact, L2 speakers may at times wish to maintain an optimal distance from the L2 community rather than being in constant and complete conformity to perceived native-speaker norms (Ishihara, 2010). As discussed earlier, pragmatic resistance can be viewed in a language socialization framework as enactment of agency potentially leading to change in community practices. (Also see Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014 and Kim & Brown, 2014, for negotiation of learners’ emerging multiple identities in technologically-­mediated telecollaboration.) 165

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In a similar vein, Iwasaki (2011) conducted ethnographic interviews with four male learners of Japanese who studied in Japan. The data showed that the learners’ style-shifting (e.g., the use of plain vs. ‘polite’ forms) was intertwined with their negotiations of identities and perceived community expectations of their language use. They understood the polite form as a safe register along with a creator of uncomfortable formality and social and psychological distance. Yet, they reported that L1 Japanese speakers neither expected them to use a formal register nor modeled colloquial language often associated with masculinity and vulgarity. After the study abroad, some of these learners tended to use the plain form more often than is typical in an idiosyncratic and divergent manner. One learner appeared to be resisting ‘an imagined essentialized national identity’ (p. 97) of friendly American men by relying on the polite form when in doubt. Iwasaki viewed these learners’ style-shifting as an aspect of language socialization in which they did not always reproduce or maintain local sociocultural practices but sometimes actively and selectively challenged, resisted, or co-constructed them. Iwasaki portrayed these learners as active agents indexing their complex identities through style-shifting. A more current book-length investigation of identity, agency, and pragmatics is Kidd’s (2016) study conducted with young learners of English in Japan. To investigate learners’ management of face and identities, the author analyzed video-taped classroom discourse in which 15 students aged 10 to 12 studied beginning-level English with an American teacher. Kidd triangulated his analysis through a questionnaire and interviews with the learners and teacher. The learners were found to sometimes emulate social practices the teacher enforced by constructing themselves as ‘good students’ and assuming the behaviors deemed expected by the teacher in a position of power. However, the teacher’s cultural model of schooling was not necessarily transparent to the students and occasionally conflicted with the local practices that the students characterized as Japanese. Consequently, the learners felt as if their Japanese identities were being denied and threatened, taking a protective stance as a result. For example, when unfamiliar classroom behaviors (e.g., individual participation without peer collaboration) were expected, the learners sometimes disengaged from class activities or attempted to save face through the use of silence. Because the teacher regarded these behaviors as undesirable, communication breakdown frequently occurred. Kidd characterized students’ silence as an agentive act of identity on their part, through which they reinforced Japanese identity by building solidarity with peers and distancing themselves from the teacher. Thus, a lack of cross-cultural awareness of face needs and management can influence learners’ process of identity negotiation and classroom engagement. Along similar lines, an in-depth investigation of Iranian learners’ identities was conducted by Nasrollahi Shahri (in press) in relation to their investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton, 2000), voice, and sociolinguistic agency in language choice. Through class observations, biographical and sociolinguistic interviews, and analysis of informal interactions, Nasrollahi Shahri revealed how his participants invested in different voices with the stated intention to construct L2-mediated identities in a contrastive manner. One participant, a master’s student aspiring for a doctorate, preferred formal word choices due to his investment in the English voice indexing science, higher education, and academic sophistication. In contrast, a younger participant preparing to go to college invested greatly in learning and using informal language. His metalinguistic commentary revealed that this linguistic choice was interwoven with his enthusiasm about U.S. media and celebrities. The participants thus gravitated differently toward a formal or informal register and accomplished their voices discursively by embodying their engagement with the language, which was linked to the identities and capital they wished to accomplish. Although Nasrollahi Shahri neither explicitly connected his study to pragmatics nor discussed sociolinguistic agency in depth in dealing with stylistic variation, register, indexicality, and epistemic orientations, this study showed that learners’ pragmatic choices can contribute to their agentive enactment of their voice and identities. 166

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Theoretically aligned with the poststructuralist approach yet methodologically unique is Liao’s (2009) mixed-methods study, in which the use of discourse markers by six Chinese International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) was investigated. The corpus-based quantification of discourse markers used in ITA-led class discussions and sociolinguistic interviews revealed that one participant associated discourse markers with informal and colloquial language and intentionally avoided them in order to portray herself as professionally formal. Like Nasrollahi Shahri (in press), Liao characterized L2 speakers as individuals with complex multiple identities, each with different voices and investments in L2 learning. Quantification of participants’ self-reported orientation in regards to native-speaker pragmatic norms can also be found in Davis’ (2007) study of preferences for North American pragmatic routines over Australian counterparts by Korean learners of English. Others include LoCastro’s (2001) survey of individual differences in attitude, identity, and pragmatic preferences in Japanese university students of English, Hinkel’s (1996) study of ESL learners’ perceptions and attitudes to L2 pragmalinguistic norms, and Kim’s (2014) investigation of pragmatic decisions and identities of Korean speakers of English. Learners’ identity negotiation and pragmatic language use has also been documented in the learning of other languages than English, such as culturally-specific greeting routines and address terms in Indonesian (DuFon, 1999; Hassall, 2013), honorific forms in Korean (Brown, 2013), and directives in making a request in Spanish (Shively, 2008). Taking pragmatics broadly beyond relatively clear-cut units of analysis such as speech acts, speech events, and discourse markers, a considerable body of research employs a fine-grained method of analysis of naturally-occurring discourse to investigate native, non-native, and bi-/ multilingual speakers’ conversation management, code-switching, and communication strategies. This line of research often uses conversation analysis (see also Chapter 15 in this volume) and associates discursive practices with interactionally-emergent identity assertion. For example, Cashman (2005) examined code-switching behavior among 12 multilingual speakers in an urban Latino community in the U.S.A. through conversation analysis of the bilingual talk-in-interaction. In this study, the author equates social identity with ethnic group membership, showing how the participants’ choice of language indexed their ethnic identities. The view of identity is similar in Zimmerman (2007), Greer (2012), and Mori (2012), in which membership categorization theory was used along with conversation analysis to demonstrate participants’ ethnic identities. Zimmerman (2007) argues that membership categories serve as a means for displaying how speakers orient to their identities in the interaction. In investigating how her Japanese and Korean participants claimed cultural expertise, Zimmerman documented how they used categorical language to define group membership according to nationality or ethnicity. At the same time, they also sometimes resisted essentialist notions of the category equating cultural identity and nationality/ethnicity by performing identities that did not consistently match their own bona fide identities. Focusing on ethnic identity, Greer (2012) demonstrated how multi-ethnic teenagers in Japan were ethnified (i.e., had their ethnicity made relevant through talk) and imposed a range of identity categories. His data consisted of video-recorded classroom and lunchtime interaction, documents, and interviews, which were interpreted through conversation analysis and membership categorization theory. Of note are the various discursive strategies these teenagers deployed to contest such labels. For example, they attempted to re-position themselves with a new label or refused to respond to the act of categorization itself. These skillfully mobilized discursive practices revealed the complex and dynamic negotiation of categorization performed by the multiethnic participants. Mori’s (2012) conversation analytic study dealt with the issue of reflexivity while investigating the influence of researchers’ identities and agendas on multilingual speaker’s construction of interview responses and expression of shifting multiple identities. The focal participant, a Korean-English bilingual studying Japanese, co-constructed her accounts in a locally-contingent 167

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manner according to the different discourses she engaged in with two researchers of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. For example, she largely projected Korean-American identity rather than just Korean when speaking with an interviewer she perceived as a native speaker of American English, while with a native-speaking Japanese language professor in the U.S.A., she drew on their shared experiences and perspective as (East) Asians. Highlighting a broader range of identities, Cook (2008) investigated the identities of learners of Japanese and their host family members as they negotiated an array of group memberships indexed through style-shifting in Japanese. Within a language socialization framework, audiorecorded dinnertime conversations between nine American and British learners of Japanese and their host families were analyzed using conversation analysis. The participants were found to style-shift strategically to index various identities they elected to perform in each interactional context. For example, a host mother routinely switched to the presentational stance using honorific forms when she enacted the identity of a parenting authority in the familiar interactional context of home. As shown above, studies investigating identity through conversation analysis focus largely on ethnic or national identity, even with an awareness that identity can encompass categories far beyond them. This focus may be due to a limitation inherent in the membership categorization theory that is closely aligned to the method of conversation analysis. Additionally, the notion of identity is not always clearly defined or theorized in those studies. More importantly, the construct of agency appears to be rarely linked to identity negotiation as in a poststructuralist tradition. Because conversation analysis is primarily focused on linguistic analysis and looks only into identities that emerge visibly from the interactional context (Kasper & Rose, 2002), conversation analysts presumably do not have an interpretive license to argue for the participants’ willful and agentive acts of identity. On the other hand, issues of identity are more explicitly discussed in studies of the use of global English, such as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes, often in relation to accents but sometimes to pragmatics. Because bi-/multilingual learners may not necessarily aspire to emulate inner-circle native-speaker norms, conformity or approximation to such norms––whether idealized or research-based––may be neither a goal nor a requirement for today’s globalized communication (Seidlhofer, 2011; Taguchi & Ishihara, 2018). In fact, it is sometimes argued that L1-influenced pragmatic norms, discourse patterns, and rhetorical styles may be preferred in ELF interactions especially where similar cultural backgrounds and identities are shared (e.g., Kirkpatrick, 2015). Simultaneously, such localized, culturally-tinted language practices index and constitute the speakers’ identities in the local community of practice (e.g., Babai Shishavan & Sharifian, 2013; House, 2009). While even empirically-established features of global English varieties may be viewed as reflecting a static view of identity and language, identity is often investigated in authentic interactive discourse and portrayed as being multiple, contextually contingent, and emergent in multicultural interactions in a poststructuralist framework. Moreover, ELF speakers sometimes engage in identity struggle in relation to power, while positioning themselves, others, and their ELF varieties within a hierarchical structure (Gu, Patkin, & Kirkpatrick, 2014; Jenkins, 2007). Instead of simply conforming to inner-circle norms, it has been recommended that we look to bi-/multilingual speakers’ translingual interactional styles for a potentially more appropriate goal for L2 users functioning in a third space. When English is brought into a new context, its use is appropriated in an in-between interactional style to suit the ambient culture and to negotiate diversified identities. For example, in Canagarajah’s (2013) work on translingual practices, multicultural participants uniquely negotiated various identities in a subtle, nuanced, and sophisticated manner while shuttling between languages and drawing on various semiotic, pragmatic, and discursive resources. While choosing from a repertoire of multiple identities and sometimes accentuating their unique voices, ELF users have been found to be largely goal-oriented and 168

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collaborative in global interactions, negotiating identities and interactional needs simultaneously in a contextually-contingent manner using an array of pragmatic strategies (Canagarajah, 2013; Kecskes, 2014).

Appraisal of the Current Research Practice Stepping back, this section offers an appraisal of the current research practice with regards to identity, agency, and L2 pragmatics from a critical perspective and presents some possible future directions. In particular, an observation can be made about an asymmetrical relationship between research on identity and agency in broader SLA and that in L2 pragmatics. While many L2 pragmatic studies of learner identities draw on a poststructualist theory of identity prominent in SLA, these are hardly referenced in the broader SLA literature. One reason may be that a great deal of research in interlanguage pragmatics in general is conducted from a positivistic point of view, relying at least in part on partial quantification of patterns in pragmatic language use. This orientation is sometimes found in L2 pragmatics studies investigating identity and agency (e.g., Davis, 2007; Liao, 2009; LoCastro, 2001). The underlying assumption is that identity, along with other concepts such as attitude and motivation, is measurable and quantifiable and can serve as an independent variable in predicting or explicating a causal relationship with language learning and use. However, this epistemological stance may be contested by researchers of identity and agency in broader SLA, who employ an interpretive approach with the aim to delineate a complex relationship between identity, agency, pragmatic language use, and discursive practices, without assuming straightforward or simplistic cause-and-effect patterns. Another epistemological disconnect appears to derive from the perceived legitimacy of the data collection methods used in researching identity. Some poststructualist researchers contend that participants need to be observed in or asked to account for authentic social interactions with real-life consequences and on the complex outcomes of social engagement. Arguably, such authentic social interactions can involve dynamic and discursive identity negotiations. However, in L2 pragmatics studies of identity, language elicitation methods such as role-play and DCT are sometimes used and followed up on through retrospective interviews (e.g., Al-Issa, 2003; Eslami et al., 2014; Ishihara & Tarone, 2009; Kim, 2014; Kubota, 1996). These researchers would argue that data elicitation methods can give rise to imagined identities through which researchers can look into how learners talk about the way they position themselves and are positioned by others; identity is after all an imagined construction in imagined communities. Although the legitimacy of language elicitation may be questioned in interpretive research in broader SLA, it is worth pointing out that some studies in L2 pragmatics do investigate naturally-occurring social interactions or their narrative reflections (e.g., Ishihara, 2009, 2010; Iwasaki, 2011; Kidd, 2016; LoCastro, 1998; Siegal, 1994, 1996), which may be in alignment with the interest of researchers of identity in broader SLA.

Future Directions Currently, only a few resource books on L2 pragmatics discuss issues of identity and agency extensively (e.g., Ishihara & Cohen, 2010, 2015; Kádár & Haugh, 2013; Kasper & Rose, 2002; LoCastro, 2012; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). In future research, the criticality and complexity of L2 users’ identity and agency will need to be studied as a central factor in L2 pragmatic development and pragmatics-focused pedagogy. This can be accomplished by incorporating theoretical developments in the larger field of SLA, especially a critical theory of power, into L2 pragmatics research. Notably, while there have been critical counterparts in applied linguistics (e.g., critical applied linguistics and critical discourse analysis), an area of inquiry that might be called critical pragmatics is yet to be established. In critical pragmatics, identity can be theorized and explored 169

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in depth in its discursive construction in relation to issues of power, positioning, agency, language ideologies, language ownership, legitimacy, and emotionality in a macro-social structure (see also Archer, Aijmer, & Wichmann, 2012). Such analysis may be further developed through relevant theories and perspectives, such as symbolic competence (Kramsch, 2009) and intercultural awareness (Baker, 2015). Moreover, L2 pragmatics research can be further advanced by qualitative, narrative, and discursive methods that stand on their own rights. Interpretive research in L2 pragmatics has sometimes been excluded from research synthesis articles. With greater legitimacy, these methods can serve to uncover the complex, fluid, and contextually-contingent interplay between identity, agency, and pragmatic language use, extending the social turn to pragmatics inquiries. Interpretive research can lead to a nuanced understanding of language-related practices transcending the view of pragmatic language use as representing static and monolithic traits of certain groups of language users. In turn, identity research in broader SLA can also be enriched by more firmly incorporating a pragmatics lens. Although pragmatics perspectives are highly relevant to the analysis of identity and language learning/use, these are currently largely neglected in resource books on identity (e.g., Preece, 2016). Theory and constructs in pragmatics, such as face, (im)politeness, humor, implicature, deixis, and speech act theory as well as insights gained in research in intercultural pragmatics (e.g., Cogo & House, 2017) can reinforce theoretical and interpretive rigor in SLA research (see for example, Canagarajah, 2013; Kidd, 2016; Pennycook, 2004). Investigations into intercultural interactions and translingual practices can also be further refined through a stronger emphasis on the perspectives of pragmatics. Such cross-fertilization will become possible through theoretical and interpretive bridge work, which is expected to synergistically advance the field.

Concluding Thoughts for Pedagogy Based on research on learner identity and agency, there is a need to expand the scope of pedagogical practices. While resources on teaching L2 pragmatics abound, most of them are developed based on inner-circle native-speaker norms, assuming that they serve as optimal models for learners. However, as discussed above, research on identity and agency in L2 pragmatics has proved otherwise, offering notable pedagogical implications for classrooms in which L2 pragmatics is taught and assessed. Given learners’ agency in L2 pragmatic choices, it could be considered a form of linguistic imperialism if native-speaker norms were imposed upon learners with conformity expected. Teachers should be advised to exercise sensitivity in accepting and assessing learners’ unique negotiation of identity, which may diverge from native-speakers’ norms. In doing so, teachers may wish to first explore learner goals and the status of their pragmatic knowledge. If learners wish to be integrated into the target culture by emulating native-speaker norms yet diverge from these in their language use, it is likely that learners are lacking or falling short of the pragmatic awareness or linguistic command that would enable them to mobilize that awareness. This gap in pragmatic knowledge can lead to a communication breakdown and develop into cultural stereotypes on either side of the interaction. Therefore, pragmatics-focused instruction is in order, centering on exposure to and understanding of the norms, explicit awareness-raising of the cultural meaning behind them, and interactive practice involving their linguistic realizations. The success of such interactions should be assessed in light of first-order interpretations (i.e., assessment made by interactional participants), rather than second-order interpretations (i.e., assessment by researchers) (Kádár & Haugh, 2013; Locher, 2011). On the other hand, if learners do not aspire to conform to inner-circle norms and their pragmatic divergence is a deliberate expression of their identities, sensitive teachers should honor the agency learners are striving to negotiate. Teachers may do so by ensuring learners’ 170

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emic understanding (insider perspective) of cultural meanings behind L2 practices and of the potential consequences of their pragmatic choices (Haugh, 2007). Some concrete instructional steps have been suggested along with ways to elicit learners’ goals and intentions upon which to perform assessment (e.g., Ishihara & Cohen, 2010, 2015; van Compernolle, 2014). Because learners’ receptive and productive goals are likely to differ, it will also be important to design distinct instructional goals and assessment strategies for pragmatic reception and production. These preliminary efforts in teaching and assessing L2 pragmatics will require a great deal of further research and pedagogical innovations if identity development is to be nurtured in the classroom. In addition, an important consideration in today’s era of globalization is the learners’ target community, which may be increasingly diversified and contingent on each interaction. If learners communicate interculturally with other multilingual speakers or wish to do so in future, their target involves globally diversified pragmatic norms and social practices beyond those of native speakers. Pragmatic instruction should therefore include a wider range of localized norms to cultivate awareness of global cultures (Gu, 2012; Murray, 2012). Learners’ metapragmatic awareness of multicultural language users’ norms and discourse strategies may also be addressed and developed in the classroom (see Taguchi & Ishihara, 2018). Along these lines, teacher development of critical language awareness, in which language use is studied in its contextualized discourse in relation to power in the larger sociocultural structure, may assist in fostering teachers’ and learners’ thirdness, supporting their translingual hybridity, agency, and identity development.

Notes 1 The writing of this chapter was funded by the Grant–in–Aid for Scientific Research (C) offered by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (#15K02802). 2 Outer-circle countries refer to former British or US colonies, such as India, Nigeria, Singapore, or the Philippines, where English is used as an official language along with local languages. In expandingcircle countries, English is taught as an academic subject and its use is typically limited to communication across national and cultural borders (e.g., China, Italy, Brazil, or Egypt). Inner-circle countries are where English is typically used as a native language by the majority, as in the U.S.A., U.K., or Australia (Kachru, 1990). 3 The terms identity and subjectivity are often used interchangeably in applied linguistics (Duff, 2012). Although the latter may be preferred in the literature based on feminist poststructuralism to stress its discursive nature of self (Vitanova, Miller, Gao, & Deter, 2015), the two terms are frequently used synonymously in the research on pragmatics and identity reviewed in this chapter.

Further Reading Deters, P., Gao, X. A., Miller, E. R., & Vitanova, G. (Eds.). (2015). Theorizing and analyzing agency in second language learning: Interdisciplinary approaches. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. This edited volume takes an interdisciplinary view of agency in second language learning, showcasing various theoretical, analytic, and pedagogical approaches to understanding and researching this construct. These diverse perspectives draw from multiple disciplines and contribute to our understanding of agency as one of the facets of the self. Ishihara, N. (in press). Understanding English language learners’ pragmatic resistance and subjectivity. In A. Gao, C. Davison, & C. Leung (Eds.), International handbook of English language teaching (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Springer. This chapter addresses the issues of identity and agency in L2 pragmatics by focusing on the phenomenon of pragmatic resistance in second and foreign language contexts as well as from global perspectives. It underscores the centrality of subjectivity in pragmatic language use and pragmatic development acknowledging multilingual hybridity. 171

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Norton, B., & De Costa, P. I. (2018). Research tasks on identity in language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 51(1), 90–112. This article presents an overview of how theories of identity have developed in applied linguistics historically and in relation to current trends in globalization, neoliberalism, and digital technology. The authors also offer broad and interrelated research questions and tasks for researching identity in language learning and teaching as well as a discussion of relevant methodologies.

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Kubota, M. (1996). Acquaintance or fiancee: Pragmatic differences in requests between Japanese and Americans. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 12(1), 23–38. Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Liao, S. (2009). Variation in the use of discourse markers by Chinese teaching assistants in the US. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(7), 1313–1328. LoCastro, V. (1998, March). Learner subjectivity and pragmatic competence development. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, Seattle, WA. LoCastro, V. (2001). Individual differences in second language acquisition: Attitudes, learner subjectivity, and L2 pragmatic norms. System, 29(1), 69–89. LoCastro, V. (2012). Pragmatics for language educators: A sociolinguistic perspective. London: Routledge. Locher, M. A. (2011). Situated impoliteness: The interface between relational work and identity construction. In B. Davies, M. Haugh, & A. J. Merrison (Eds.), Situated politeness (pp. 187–208). London: Continuum. Lu, M.-Z., & Horner, B. (2013). Translingual literacy and matters of agency. In A. S. Canagarajah (Ed.), Literacy as translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms (pp. 26–38). New York: Routledge. Masuda, K. (2011). Acquiring interactional competence in a study abroad context: Japanese language learners’ use of the interactional particle ne. Modern Language Journal, 95(4), 519–540. McKay, S. L., & Wong, S.-L. C. (1996). Multiple discourses, multiple identities: Investment and agency in second-language learning among Chinese adolescent immigrant students. Harvard Educational Review, 66(3), 577–608. McNamara, T. (1997). What do we mean by social identity? Competing frameworks, competing discourses. TESOL Quarterly, 31(3), 561–567. Miller, E. R. (2014). The language of adult immigrants: Agency in the making. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mori, J. (2012). Tale of two tales: Locally produced accounts and memberships during research interviews with a multilingual speaker. Modern Language Journal, 96(4), 489–506. Murray, N. (2012). English as a lingua franca and the development of pragmatic competence. ELT Journal, 66(3), 318–326. Nasrollahi Shahri, M. N. (in press). Constructing a voice in English as a foreign language: Identity and engagement. TESOL Quarterly. Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. Ochs, E. (1993). Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective. Research on Languages and Social Interaction, 26, 287–306. Pennycook, A. (2004). Performativity and language studies. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1(1), 1–19. Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as local practice. New York: Routledge. Preece, S. (Ed.) (2016). The Routledge handbook of language and identity. Oxford, UK: Routledge. Rogers, R., & Wetzel, M. M. (2013). Studying agency in literacy teacher education: A layered approach to positive discourse analysis. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 10(1), 62–92. Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 163–191. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Shively, R., L. (2008). Politeness and social interaction in study abroad: Service encounters in L2 Spanish (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Siegal, M. S. (1994). Learning Japanese as a second language in Japan and the interaction of race, gender, and social context (unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. Siegal, M. S. (1996). The role of learner subjectivity in second language sociolinguistic competency: Western women learning Japanese. Applied Linguistics, 17(3), 356–382. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2007). Theories of identity and the analysis of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(4), 639–656. Taguchi, N., & Ishihara, N. (2018). The pragmatics of English as a lingua franca: Research and pedagogy in the era of Globalization. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 38, 80–101. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.

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12 Interactional Usage-Based L2 Pragmatics From Form–Meaning Pairings to Construction–Action Relations Søren Wind Eskildsen and Gabriele Kasper

Introduction Proponents of usage-based linguistics (UBL) have argued that language use forms and drives the emergence of linguistic structure and language learning. For example, Tomasello (1992) argued that ‘[a] language is composed of conventional symbols shaped by their social-communicative functions’ (p. 67), and N. Ellis (2015) stated that ‘[the] functions of language in discourse determine its usage and learning’ (p. 49). Larsen-Freeman (2006) further underscored the social foundations of language, arguing that ‘language is social in nature’ and that ‘it is used for social action within a context of use’ (p. 593). Despite such viewpoints put forth by some of the most prominent and outspoken researchers, second language acquisition (SLA) research from a usagebased perspective has largely ignored the social aspects of language learning. Focus has been on one of the key assumptions within that framework, namely that language is an inventory of what is variously known as symbolic units, form–meaning pairings, or constructions. While this constitutes an important step away from syntactocentric approaches to L2 development, usagebased research on how L2 inventories develop still predominantly focuses on decontextualized instances of language use in the form of constructions rather than on the use of these constructions per se. Exploring the idea of an interactional usage-based approach to L2 pragmatics, we investigate whether it is possible to establish firm links between constructions and the actions they are used to achieve in social interaction. The idea is that UBL can benefit from a more socially anchored take on language that allows for a principled method of describing form–meaning pairings in their primordial clothing as construction–action relations. Given the introductory citations by Tomasello, Ellis, and Larsen-Freeman, our working assumption is not only that this is possible and worthwhile—it is the way it must be if we take seriously the idea that function determines language and its learning; that form–meaning pairings are shaped by their function. We will also argue that the reason why it has not been done yet is that the apparatus in and of itself does not entail a theory of social action. In the following we will briefly outline UBL and present the argument that we need to supplement it with a theory of social action. A section on L2 pragmatics follows before we move on to the empirical section. Finally, we conclude our chapter and outline points for future research. 176

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Theoretical Underpinnings Usage-Based Linguistics (UBL) UBL is a cover-term for a range of linguistic theories that, in brief terms, unite in abolishing the syntax–lexis distinction and the competence–performance dichotomy, and instead insist that all linguistic units are meaningful and that language is learnable on the basis of experience. It has been derived from the theory of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 1987), whose primary objective is to describe linguistic structures as they correspond to the human perception and categorization of the world. This means that UBL is concerned with semantics and the semiotic nature of language; i.e. the form–meaning pairings which language is seen to consist of. These form–meaning pairings, also called symbolic units or constructions, are described along a continuum of specificity (from fixed formulas to abstract schematic templates which in turn sanction the single instantiations) and complexity (from morphemes to full utterances). Language knowledge, in this conception, is a structured inventory of these constructions. Constructions are cognitive schemas that carry meaning. They range from fairly simple schemas, such as the schema for ‘plural’ that consists of two symbolic structures (the noun and the plural morpheme) to more complex schemas, such as the ‘double-object’ construction. This latter construction is exemplified by such instantiations as ‘he gave her flowers’, ‘they baked us a cake’, and ‘she smiled him her love’. What binds these instantiations together as one construction is the shared syntagmatic structure and the meaning with which it is coupled, namely that of ‘object transfer’ (Tomasello, 1998). Usage-based L1 research has revealed how a creative linguistic inventory comes into being on the basis of recurring linguistic material in use (e.g., Ellis, 2002; Lieven, Salomo, & Tomasello, 2009; Tomasello, 2003; Tomasello & Bates, 2001). This research has found language learning to be concrete, exemplar-based, and rooted in usage, following a trajectory from specific recurring multi-word expressions to partially fixed, partially schematic utterance schemas, to increasingly schematic constructions based on systematic commonalities among patterns—for example, shifting from ‘Where’s the ball?’ to ‘Where’s the X?’, and eventually to ‘Where COP NP?’ Although adults learning an L2 are operating on years of experience as language users and learn in different contexts than children, similar learning trajectories have been observed in adult L2 learning (Ellis & Ferreira-Junior, 2009a, 2009b; Eskildsen, 2012, 2017; Mellow, 2006; Roehr-Brackin, 2014; Tode & Sakai, 2016). This has been shown in larger corpus analyses of the development of L2 English verb-argument constructions (VACs) (Ellis & Ferreira-Junior, 2009a, 2009b). Examining three constructions, verb locative (VL), verb object locative (VOL), and ditransitive (VOO), the authors showed a high degree of reliance on specific, prototypical instances of each of the constructions centered on the verbs ‘go’, ‘put’, and ‘give’, respectively. The frequency distributions of these instantiations were found to be parallel to those found in L1 corpora. Inspired by such larger-scale research, case studies of L2 use over time have revealed that L2 speakers are constantly developing a repertoire of interrelated constructions based on recurring exemplars in experience and that interactional contexts in which L2 speakers participate have profound consequences for the developmental trajectories (Eskildsen, 2012, 2015, 2017). That is, development is not necessarily sparked by one highly frequent exemplar, but instead by a few less frequent but highly useful exemplars. This will be shown later in this chapter’s empirical section illustrating a learner’s ‘can’-uses (cf. Eskildsen, 2009). The key to understanding L2 development, then, lies in speakers’ concrete instances of meaningful language use in the L2 biography.

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EM and CA) This brings us closer to the importance of use. UBL posits that language emerges in and from usage events where people attend to language, perceive it, navigate it, conceptualize and try out 177

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its parts and notice new ones. We will argue here that UBL needs to draw on a theory of social action, i.e., conversation analysis, to capture how social practices are constructed and made visible for people to learn (from) them. UBL’s roots in Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar has brought with it a focus on human cognition, perception, construal and categorization of the world, but there is something more primordial than that, namely people’s in situ reasons for construing scenes—people’s reasons for putting together language to form strings of talk, namely getting some response from some co-participant(s) in some situation, primarily in social interaction. To understand in depth how language use in interaction drives L2 learning, we draw on ethnomethodological conversation analysis. Rooted in sociology and emerging in the 50s and 60s, particularly in the work of Garfinkel (1967), ethnomethodology (EM) is concerned with social order, and more specifically how people accomplish social order through methods of ­accomplishing everyday actions and practices in situ and in vivo, the key being specifically that social order is primarily to be understood from the participants’ perspective (Garfinkel, 2002; Goffman, 1983; Schegloff, Ochs, & Thompson, 1996). Whereas EM is not particularly interested in how people use language to accomplish these everyday practices, conversation analysis (CA), which derives from EM, seeks to explain the methods whereby the various interactional practices that specify social order are achieved in and through talk-in-interaction (see also Chapter 15 in this volume). It should be observed, however, that CA is not solely concerned with the modality talk but with all interactional behavior, including embodied actions such as gesture, gaze, and body posture, and uses of and orientations to configurations of space, objects, tools in the environment, etc. Crucial to an understanding of CA is the idea that when an action is produced, the next relevant action is occasioned, and this next action gives meaning to the prior one. In this view, the ascribing of functions to linguistic expressions is done by people in situ rather than a priori (cf. Levinson, 2013). In other words, by providing an answer to a question, accepting an invitation, or mitigating and producing an objection to a produced comment or assessment, people show their understanding of what their co-participant just said, thus ensuring constant construction and maintenance of intersubjectivity. If intersubjectivity is challenged, people can initiate repair and work through the challenge to restore intersubjectivity (for further detail on CA, see Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008; Schegloff, 2007; ten Have, 2007).

Conversation Analytic SLA Research (CA-SLA) Concerned with L2 learning as a socially observable phenomenon, i.e., as something that people do and demonstrably orient to in and through talk, CA-SLA has demonstrated that L2 speakers in and of themselves are not defective communicators; that people have ways and methods to display learning behaviour; and that repair practices, definition talk, or metalingual talk might lead to situated opportunities for L2 learning.1 A branch of CA-SLA has explored L2 speakers’ interactional competence—that is, socially shared methods of accomplishing particular actions, such as repair, turn openings and closings, story-telling, dispreferred responses, and how those methods change over time (for a recent stateof-the art overview, see Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2015; see also Chapter 7 in this volume). Some studies have also shown how people develop their interactional competencies with respect to the deployment of particular words, phrases, and interactional particles2 in an increasing variety of interactional contexts (Eskildsen, 2011, 2018b; Hauser, 2013; Ishida, 2009; Kim, 2009; Markee, 2008; Masuda, 2011).

Combining UBL and CA to Investigate L2 Pragmatics UBL affords an empirically viable, experiential, pattern-based model of language structure as well as a dynamic theory of language emergence that shares with CA the core concept that (L2) 178

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learning derives from observable phenomena in the environment (Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2015; Garfinkel & Sacks, 1970; Kasper & Wagner, 2014; but see also Hauser, 2013, for a critical discussion). In addition, UBL makes it possible to investigate the development of linguistic–semiotic resources that transcend lexical specificity, allowing for explorations of the emergence of more generic constructions as cognitive routines toward which CA takes an agnostic stance (Burch, 2014; Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2015; Hauser, 2013). CA, on the other hand, throws light on the situated specifics of the interactions in which the development from lexically specific items towards more generic utterance schemas takes place. Drawing on the CA-UBL combination, this chapter explores how L2 pragmatics is learned, but we also explore the extent to which the study of L2 pragmatics can gain insight from applying a perspective that draws on UBL and CA. Therefore, the focus of this chapter will be on an empirical description of L2 pragmatics from that perspective. This description concerns processes and practices of ascribing functions as social actions to linguistic expressions in situ. This will lead to a discussion of how these empirically derived functions can be directly linked to specific form–meaning patterns, which in turn informs the discussion of the benefit of moving from the notion of form–meaning patterns to construction–action relations. Before coming to the empirical section, a few words on L2 pragmatics are in order.

L2 Pragmatics from a CA Perspective Current L2 pragmatics is informed by a variety of approaches to pragmatics, discourse, and social interaction (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Historically, the strongest theoretical influence came from Searle’s version of speech act theory and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. These theories seek to explain how utterances are produced and understood as actions, an interest shared with CA. But their approach to action is rather different. For CA the habitat of action is social interaction. Actions do not have a life outside of the organization of turns and sequences, and therefore cannot be studied in isolation from them. In contrast, speech act research primarily asks how speech acts are implemented through isolated semantic structures and conventionalized linguistic resources, and how these conventions are associated with social context condensed to a few elements (e.g., interlocutor relationship) (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989). A particularly good candidate for illustrating how the projects of speech act research and CA overlap and differ is the action of requesting. Requests are the most studied action in both traditions, and they have also been extensively examined in L2 pragmatics, both from the perspectives of L2 use and acquisition. Requests are an attractive object for study because they are universal and ubiquitous across societies and languages. Requests invoke and constitute cooperation and cohesion among social members. Since they are so pervasive, repeated language practices solidify into pragmatic routines. These repertoires of routinized devices are available in the conventions of means and forms that have been studied in several decades of speech act research. An early example is Blum-Kulka’s (1989) cross-linguistic study of ‘conventional indirectness’ in multiple languages. This study showed that interrogatives with modal verbs (‘can/could you’ and ‘will/would you’, and their formal equivalents in Hebrew and varieties of Spanish and French) appeared with high frequency, but also that direct forms (imperatives and declaratives) were more prevalent in the other three languages than in English, in comparable situational contexts, suggesting that cross-linguistically equivalent forms do not map onto the same pragmatic meanings. In developmental L2 speech act research, the pioneering efforts were longitudinal case studies that examined how L2 speakers of English change the linguistic forms of requests in natural interaction over time (Achiba, 2003; Ellis, 1992; Schmidt 1983). Based on Achiba (2003) and Ellis’ (1992) analyses, Kasper and Rose (2002) proposed a five-stage trajectory of request development in which ‘can/could’ interrogatives are used as ‘productive sentence stems’ (Aijmer, 1996) in an increasingly flexible and context-sensitive fashion. More recent longitudinal and cross-sectional 179

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research on L2 requesting corroborates the five stages for L2 English (Taguchi & Roever, 2017), but equally robust corpora are not yet available for other target languages. At the same time, several analytical practices in developmental speech act research advise us to treat these research outcomes with caution for several reasons. First, data are transcribed without representing the talk beyond the words. The coarse granularity obscures a view on where the request is located in relation to other turns and how it is produced. Second, the transcription is monomodal. Multimodal action is not represented, even though requests can be done, denied, or granted through other means than language. Third, the requests are located and analyzed with pre-existing coding categories (e.g., direct, conventionally indirect, indirect), in isolation from their sequential contexts. This is problematic, among other things, when requests that are pre-empted by offers (without the request proper, there is nothing to code) and when multiple requests are made for the same request target. Similarly, treating requests as ‘speaker meaning’ (Thomas, 1995) erases the recipient and conceals the view on how the recipient’s actions shape the request trajectory. Since CA, in contrast, sees requesting as the participants’ joint accomplishment, the primary analytical interest has been in the role of pre-sequences and preference structure in the organization of requests as emerging actions-in-sequences (Schegloff, 1980, 1988, 2007; Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006). CA’s distinctive approach has been extended to research on request sequences in L2 interaction, in particular in a series of studies by Al-Gahtani and Roever on requesting by L2 speakers of Arabic (e.g., Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2015) and English (e.g., Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2013). These studies enable a view of request development as L2 speakers’ increasing interactional competence. Specifically, they show how L2 speakers progress from interactionally unprepared requests to using pre-sequences and preference organization in contextually sensitive ways. In the past decade, conversation analysts have turned the spotlight on the design of turns in ongoing interactional sequences, specifically the formats of initiating actions. Of particular interest is the question of how grammatical formats offer cues for recipients to ascribe a specific action to a turn (Levinson, 2013) and how these forms display the speaker’s orientation to relevant dimensions of the target action. Studies of requests in different languages and institutional settings show that alternative grammatical formats index differential entitlement to the requested action (Curl & Drew, 2008; Heinemann, 2006; Lindström, 2005). In addition, Curl and Drew’s (2008) study highlights that customers and patients display their orientation to contingency (‘factors that could compromise the grantability of the request’, Drew & Couper-Kuhlen, 2014, p. 14) in their selections of grammatical formats. Requests with low contingency and high entitlement are formulated with ‘can/could you’, while high contingency and low entitlement are encoded in ‘I wonder if you can/could’ (see also Craven & Potter, 2010; Nolan & Maynard, 2013, on the association of entitlement and contingency and their encoding in request formats). Lastly, Stevanovic (2011) argues that a key dimension that enables recipients to interpret declarative turn formats as requests is participants’ deontic status, their relative rights to decide a future course of action in a specific social domain. Formulations of speaker need (‘Mommy, I need a spoon’), speaker deficiencies (‘I can’t reach [the bottle on the shelf]’), or recipient’s future actions (‘You are taking a bath now’) (simplified from Stevanovic, 2011) are heard as requests as they activate the speaker’s higher deontic status vis-à-vis the recipient in the setting. Deontic stance, in contrast, describes the relative deontic rights that a speaker claims by selecting a particular turn format over alternatives to perform the same action (e.g., imperatives, modal interrogatives, or declaratives as grammatical formats for requests), which may or may not converge with the speaker’s deontic status (see also Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012). Taken together, there is strong evidence that grammatical action formats provide ‘recurrent and sedimented ways of accomplishing specific social actions in talk-in-interaction’ (Couper-Kuhlen, 2014, p. 624) and that alternative grammatical formats mobilize particular social dimensions in the target action. The association of action formats with dimensions of the target action clearly resonates with early speech act research (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) and politeness theory (Brown & 180

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Levinson, 1987), but what makes CA’s approach to action formation distinctive is that these associations are demonstrably live for the participants in mundane interaction. Orientations to actionrelated conditions are visible in sequence organization and repair, for instance in requesters’ revised versions of a first request format via self-repair and in the recipient’s treatment of the turn in their response (Couper-Kuhlen, 2014). These observable participant orientations afford researchers a key resource for grounding analytical claims in the endogenous organization of the interaction. People become sensitive to the social dimensions of requesting and their association with linguistic forms early in their lives. Since the mid-1970s, research in developmental pragmatics, language socialization, and developmental CA has accumulated evidence of how children learning a first language begin to use grammatical action formats and how they increasingly differentiate alternative language forms in contextually and especially sequentially fitting ways (Forrester, 2015). A key example is a series of studies by Wootton (1981, 1997, 2005), which examined how young children use grammatical resources in their requests to adults. At age two a child begins to replace imperatives with can I/can you constructions in contexts where she has no evidence that the adult expects the course of action formulated in the request (Wootton, 1997). This usage of can you has stabilized at age five, and it continues to be differentiated from alternative formats that convey the child’s orientation to distinctive sequential trajectories (Wootton, 2005). Can you is used neither when the request proposes consistent alignment or oppositional alignment with the ongoing or emerging activity. Such sequential orientations are indexed through imperative constructions (‘Do X’, ‘Let’s do X,’ ‘Don’t do X.’). In environments where an initial request has been turned down, another version with turn-initial (or free-standing) please upgrades the request to pleading as a method to pursue a granting response (‘please can you/can I’). Also in contexts where children re-issue a request to a parent after an earlier version was not granted, Wootton (1981) documents that at age four children differentiate between with the formats ‘I want’ and ‘can I’ in designing the subsequent request. With ‘I want’ the child objects to the recipient’s unwillingness to grant the request and aims for a change of stance on the matter. In contrast, ‘can I’ is a frequent format when the recipient has not responded to an initial request or the response is equivocal, and the child pursues an acceding response. The request studies and other developmental conversation-analytic research document that young children treat grammatical constructions as non-equivalent action formats from an early age. Distinctive from developmental pragmatics (Ninio & Snow, 1996), developmental CA submits that children’s selections of grammatical expressions exhibit their understanding of sequential contingencies and their inferencing heuristics as observable interactional work. In the remainder of this chapter, we will present data to illustrate how a grammatical construction emerges in an adult L2 speaker’s developing repertoire of request formats and how the request designs display the speaker’s orientation to the local interactional context.

Data and Analysis The data source for the present study is the Multimedia Adult English Learner Corpus, which consists of more than 3,600 hours of audio-visual recordings of classroom interaction in an English as a second language (ESL) context in the U.S.A. (for descriptions of the corpus, see Hellermann, 2008; Reder, 2005). The classrooms in which the recordings were made were equipped with video cameras, and students were given wireless microphones on a rotational basis. The teacher also wore a microphone. There were six ceiling-mounted cameras in each classroom, two of which were controlled by operators and followed the two microphone-assigned students. Classroom activities included various tasks (e.g., grammar exercises, reading, speaking) in a balanced mix of pair/group work, teacher-fronted activities, and ‘free movement tasks’ where students move around the classroom and do spoken tasks. 181

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The data used in this paper are centered on Carlos (pseudonym), an adult Mexican Spanishspeaking learner of English. Carlos had been in the U.S.A. for 21 months prior to joining the ESL program, and he progressed successfully through the four levels, from beginner to high intermediate. Carlos has been a focal student in previous research (e.g., Eskildsen, 2012, 2015, 2017; Eskildsen & Wagner, 2015), and he was originally chosen because he attended the school from 2001 – 2005 (although not consistently; see Eskildsen, 2017), which enables long-term investigations of his L2 learning. Moreover, he was a highly active student who often interacted with the teacher and his peers, and took an active role in organizing classroom activities.

Requesting in an L2: A Case Study of Carlos Eskildsen (2009, in press) showed that Carlos’ use of the modal ‘can’, a very common resource for making requests, sprang from an original source of ‘I can write’ uses. Carlos used ‘I can write’ to volunteer to write on the whiteboard—but only in cases where he was not nominated by the teacher or his embodied volunteering (for example, raising his hand) had gone unnoticed. While ‘can’ may not be prototypically associated with the pragmatics of volunteering a priori, its relation to the pragmatics of requesting is more well-described, as already outlined. Looking at Carlos’ data in their entirety reveals that ‘can’ was one of a range resources that he drew on to make requests. Other recurring ones were ‘one more time’ used to ask for repetitions in repair sequences and ‘you + verb (thing) + a person’ used to instruct fellow students toward task accomplishment. The various ‘can’-formats (e.g., ‘can you’ and ‘can I’) recurred in similar environments over time, which helped establish them as routines for making requests. The other uses, however, were less transparent in terms of the relation between usage and denotic status of the participants. We note with interest that the correlation between interactional environment and request format was extremely high; that is, different formats were used for different purposes. For instance, although we can demonstrate that Carlos was using, or learning to use, the ‘can you’-format to make specific requests, he resorted to other resources in environments where those specific requests were not relevant. The point of this section is to illustrate the development of various resources that Carlos drew on to make requests and the extent to which they are environmentally coupled. We will focus on the ‘can’-uses and also touch on some of other linguistic resources as they become relevant along the way. As shown in Eskildsen (2009), Carlos used ‘can you’ with only a few verbs. In the beginning only two verbs recurred with ‘can’, ‘write’ and ‘spell.’ These two patterns, ‘can you write’ and ‘can you spell’ were typically used as a request for help with the writing or spelling of a word. While some of the uses seemed to overlap, functionally, they were each typically coupled with a specific environment; while Carlos used ‘can you write’ to ask a co-participant for an inscription model, he used ‘can you spell’ to ask a co-participant to spell a word while he himself did the writing, usually letter by letter. Extract 1 serves as illustration of the prototypical environment for ‘can you write.’ In this example Carlos asked a fellow student, Gabriel, what his first language was (‘fierst’ indicates that Carlos’ pronunciation resembles the diphthong in the word ‘fierce’ rather than the vowel in standard pronunciations of ‘first’). The answer turned out to be Kinyarwanda, which, following a repair sequence, Carlos asked Gabriel to write. Gabriel complied with the request (see Appendix for transcription conventions). Extract 1 (November 19, 2001) 01 02 03 04 182

CAR: GAB:

what is your fierst (.) language    (2.8) Kinyarwanda    (0.8)

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05 06 07 08 09

CAR: GAB: CAR: GAB:

heh?    (1.0) Kinyarwanda kinyawe- can you: can you write for me writes

This usage, with minor variations such as the addition of ‘please,’ was found seven times in Carlos’s first year in class and then on one additional occasion in a high-intermediate class. There were two cases where the co-participants showed Carlos the word in a pre-existing text instead of writing it, which suggests that they understood his request as being concerned with access to the spelling of the word but not necessarily with themselves doing the writing. However, there was one case where the teacher complied with his request by spelling the word in question (Extract 2). Extract 2 (April 23, 2002) 01 CAR: can you write for me please the*:: a:h (0.9) the::                      *points to material 02 TEA: couple? 03 CAR: uhuh*                           *motions to hand his pen to TEA with left hand COM: TEA begins spelling ‘couple’ while CAR takes the pen in his right hand, turns his sheet around and begins writing the word. TEA spells and CAR writes the word letter by letter. This exchange, then, constitutes a deviant case: It is the only example in the collection of Carlos’s ‘can you write’ uses where the requestee complied with the request by spelling instead of presenting the troubling word visually. The teacher did so even though Carlos’s embodied conduct reveals that he was actually asking the teacher to write. There may be a number of reasons for this, but one could be that the teacher perceived it as more challenging, and hence perhaps a better learning opportunity, for Carlos to have to recognize the spoken rather than the written letters. Interestingly, the teacher’s response (spelling the troubling word) resembles what she does when Carlos asks her to spell. There were two examples of this around the same time in class with the same teacher. Extract 3 serves as illustration. The class were engaged in an activity in which they asked each other questions about when they are going to do certain things in the future. In this case, Carlos asked the teacher when she was going to go to the dentist and the answer was ‘next fall.’ In the beginning of the extract, Carlos was writing down her answer, word by word (lines 1–3). He then made his request for the teacher to spell ‘fall’, which she did (lines 4–5). Extract 3 (May 28, 2002) 01 TEA: next 02 CAR: n:ext 03 TEA: f:a:[ll 04 CAR:                 [k- can you spell: [for me 05 TEA:         [f a l l. COM: CAR writes it and TEA explains what it means. ‘Can you spell,’ however, was a phrase that Carlos used for more varied purposes than ‘can you write.’ One recurring use was a means to elicit the spelling of a fellow student’s name for task completion purposes, but Carlos also used ‘can you spell’ on one occasion to test a fellow student’s spelling and on another occasion, prompted by the teacher, to ask the entire class for 183

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help with the spelling of the word ‘people.’ In all these instances, then, he did not seem to be asking the co-participants to write anything—although that also happened on one occasion with a substitute teacher. What binds all these examples is that they were from Carlos’ first year in class. While there is evidence of the exemplar-based nature of the development of the ‘can you’ uses, with ‘write’ and ‘spell’—the two predominant verbs in the pattern and also the ones used frequently initially—we cannot say with certainty that he learned the pattern in class exclusively. But we see the growth of the pattern as it increasingly recruits new verbs, ‘show,’ ‘help,’ ‘go,’ ‘repeat,’ and ‘give.’ In fact, Carlos was using ‘can you write’ prior to the first request example in Extract 1. In that primordial example he used it for a different purpose, namely to give an instruction at the request of the teacher. Extract 4 shows this. Extract 43 (October, 15, 2001) Omitted lines 07 TEA: [tell *her wri:te your #first name (.) big [letters Omitted lines 11 CAR: i- (.) *i say she? (0.3) #say eh she?= 12 TEA: =please (.) *uhuh tell her uhuh Omitted lines 15 CAR: [heh heh can] you write *here eh (0.8) your first name Prior to the first line in the extract (line 7), the teacher instructed Carlos to tell a new student in the class that she needs to write her name on her name card (lines 1–2; omitted). After a repair sequence (omitted lines), the teacher repeats and elaborates her instruction (line 7). Following some overlapping talk and embodied conduct (omitted lines), Carlos asks for confirmation that he has understood the teacher correctly, using the format ‘I say she?’ (line 11). The teacher confirms by answering ‘uhuh’ and repeating her instruction (‘tell her’). Carlos then hesitates and the new student laughs (omitted lines) in overlap with which Carlos also laughs before complying with the teacher’s instruction as he makes the request for the new student to write her first name on the name card. She does not immediately understand the request but after some explaining from the teacher, Carlos, and fellow students, she eventually complies with the request (not shown). Throughout his time in class, with the exception of the final year, Carlos used ‘can you write/ spell’ to make requests pertaining to the writing/spelling of words. In this first instance, Carlos used the ‘can you’ phrase even when the teacher instructed him to use a more blunt directive (the imperative ‘write your first name’, line 7 in Excerpt 4). As a teacher, she was entitled to use direct imperatives, whereas Carlos did not have those rights. We cannot say with certainty, however, that Carlos was aware of this pragmatic distinction between the ‘can you’-format and the imperative. The following exchange (Extract 5) which took place four days prior to Extract 4, testifies to this. The teacher was instructing the students to put their pens away and stop writing because she wanted their attention (lines 1–2). Jamil, who was sitting next to Carlos, kept writing, which seemed to prompt Carlos to instruct him to put away the pen (line 4). He used the imperative here. The teacher aligned with Carlos and repeated the instruction (lines 5–6), with which Jamil ultimately complied (not shown). Carlos’ laughter in overlap with the teacher’s repetition might have been a token of mitigation. Extract 5 (October, 11, 2001) 01 TEA: I want everyone to put *(.) your pens down because you                                      *puts her pen on desk demonstrably 02    have to listen to me very carefully. (.) okay:? 184

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03      (3.1) 04 CAR: jamil (.) #put your pen in the*:[:.              #Jamil looks at CAR *CAR makes deictic gesture      twd. surface of his desk 05 TEA:                      [yeah put- put your pen 06         [down 07 CAR:      [hhh heh heh heh .hh In both examples (Extracts 4 and 5) Carlos acted in the interest of classroom management. In the first one, he did it explicitly on behalf of the teacher and in the second one voluntarily. In both cases, the addressee eventually complied. Apart from Extract 5, in which Carlos may have picked up ‘put your pen’ from the teacher’s talk, Carlos did not use the blunt imperative to make requests or perform directives. Rather, he used varieties of the ‘ditransitive’ or ‘double-object’ construction (e.g., ‘you tell me the story’) or a prepositional paraphrase of that (e.g., ‘you tell the story to me’) to do instructing. Analyzing and discussing such instances over time, Eskildsen and Wagner (2018) showed how these patterns were both highly embodied and exemplar-based in Carlos’s development. In particular, when we looked only at the patterns used for instructing, the exemplar-basis became even clearer, as only verbs ‘tell’, ‘say’, and ‘ask’ were found in this pattern (for a full discussion, see Eskildsen & Wagner, 2018). Patterns similar to ‘can you’, i.e., ‘can I + verb?’, were also found in Carlos’s data as a resource to make requests. Carlos used ‘can you + verb?’ to request his co-participant to carry out a particular action that was of help to him, whereas he used ‘can I + verb?’ to request permission to do something. As pointed out in Eskildsen (2009), ‘can I + verb?’ was not used productively by Carlos until his second term in class. Carlos’s first productive uses were ‘can I take?’ in an environment where he was collecting journals from his fellow students. The next instances were ‘can I see?’, ‘can I go?’, and ‘can I call’. These uses all happened in Carlos’s second and third terms in class, and in subsequent terms he expanded further on this repertoire by adding new verbs. Thus, the pattern developed in an exemplar-based fashion, from recurring lexically specific initiations, towards increased productivity as it recruited new main verbs. However, it remained limited in scope with few types and tokens over time, also at more advanced levels (Eskildsen, 2009).

Conclusion and Future Directions As we illustrated in the previous section, Carlos developed an array of routines for making requests. He used different linguistic patterns for different pragmatic purposes, even down to making choices between ‘spell’ and ‘write’ in the ‘can you’-instantiations. This pragmatic difference between these two constructions was not apparent in Carlos’s delivery of the expressions per se but in the reaction by the co-participants. It was that reaction, then and there, that gave Carlos’s expression purpose and meaning. In other words, Carlos achieved, through the use of specific linguistic means, specific social actions which did not become apparent as those specific actions until the co-participant ascribed functions to the expressions. Of course, it is not surprising that he used ‘can I’ and ‘can you’ patterns for different purposes, but the fact that there was functional distribution of instantiations of ‘can you write’ and ‘can you spell’ has some implications for how we approach the issue of explaining the emergence of linguistic structure as formmeaning patterns, because it suggests that the semiotic resource known as ‘language’ is a residual of social sense-making practices (Eskildsen, in press). The data, then, point to the situated socialinteractional reality of the idea that linguistic structure is epiphenomenal (Hopper, 1987), but at the same time the data indicate that reuse of semiotic resources in meaningful interaction is a central issue in L2 learning as L2 speakers seem to draw on linguistic resources that have proven 185

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useful in prior experience. Such reuse and reliance on available resources, used for recognizable purposes, is, essentially, what makes usage-based learning possible. The phrase ‘I can write’ was the primordial expression from which Carlos’s other ‘can’-uses emerged and it was used exclusively in situations where Carlos volunteered to write on the communal board. Eskildsen (in press) documented a close relationship between the expression ‘I can write’ and the action that it accomplishes (unnoticed volunteering), which has major implications for linguistic theory: Meaning—in this case the meaning of ‘can’—is inherently indexical and fundamentally context-dependent (Sealey & Carter, 2004). It does not make sense to extrapolate ‘can’ from the context of ‘I can write,’ which again is situated in a practice from which the expression derives its meaning and in turn makes the practice accomplishable in this particular way. Social practice and embodied language are mutually constitutive and meaning is primarily action. The action that Carlos accomplishes, in the sense that it is recognized as that particular action by co-participants, through the use of the expression ‘I can write’, is to index unnoticed volunteering and this is what gives meaning to both the expression and its constituents. The data thus indicate that the accomplishment of social action is the driving force for the emergence of linguistic structure, both in terms of language and language learning (cf. Drew & Couper-Kuhlen, 2014). Specifically for usage-based models of language this means that social action deserves more attention in endeavors to understand how people’s real-life achievement of pragmatic function gives rise to form–meaning pairings as action–construction relations. The idea of giving more prominence to an understanding of how constructions are used to accomplish social action is closely tied to an understanding of L2 learning as a matter of interactional competence (IC), that is the development of semiotic repertoires to carry out social action (Eskildsen, 2018a; Hall, 2018; Pekarek Doehler, 2018). In the present data Carlos’s IC has been shown as a matter of developing resources to make requests, and the way the requests are accomplished, through collaboration with co-participants, shows that IC is fundamentally dependent on local contingencies (see also Chapter 7 in this volume). Research on IC, then, is not concerned with an increasing grammatical correctness or even proficiency in traditional terms but with discerning how L2 speakers diversify, recalibrate, fit, and recipient-design their semiotic repertoires in response to environmental changes (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2015). The fittedness to local contingencies can also be witnessed in Carlos’s L2 development. We saw, for instance, how he resorted to other resources than ‘can’-patterns when making directives, namely slightly idiosyncratic versions of the ditransitive (‘you tell me the story’) or the related prepositional paraphrase (‘you tell the story to me’) (Eskildsen & Wagner, 2018). Moreover, there were instances in the data of the expression ‘one more time’ used to elicit repetitions which Carlos, over time, developed into ‘can you repeat (please)’ and ‘can you say that again’ (not shown due to space considerations). This development spanned Carlos’ entire time in the classroom (from 2001 to 2005). Given that usage-based theories ascribe crucial importance to discourse function, as indicated in the three introductory citations (cf. also Goldberg, 2003; Ellis & Cadierno, 2009), one might be inclined to think that UBL is inherently capable of capturing the intricate nature of the ‘construction–action relationships’ of language. However, despite the assumed concreteness of language and the locally contextualized nature of its learning, the focus in much UBL research in SLA to date has remained on the semantics of schematic constructions and how lexically specific patterns drive this semantic learning in development (Ellis & Ferreira-Junior, 2009a, 2009b). This interest in semantic schematicity does not easily translate into an interactional epistemology. In that sense, UBL is limited in epistemological scope by a concern with post-festum as opposed to in situ phenomena. However, seeing as language is something visibly done and used, here-andnow, and for that reason perhaps better thought of as languaging (e.g., Hellermann, 2018), and because we know that L2 learning is shaped by that here-and-now experience, it is a matter of 186

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future empirical research to investigate routinization and change over time in established links, in and through social practices, between participants’ social actions here-and-now and the semiotic resources they put to use to accomplish these social actions. What UBL can do is to help understand the long-term semiotic development that results from understanding and participating in social practices. But the crucial nut to crack for L2 learners is the understanding of the social practices and what actions to be performed. UBL is not automatically fitted to handle this intricate issue because it does not come imbued with a model for investigating social interaction. Therefore, to fundamentally understand the ways in which language use drives language development, UBL can benefit from situated analyses of social interaction through CA. This combination of CA and UBL makes for a powerful tool to investigate L2 pragmatics because CA can illuminate our thinking about people’s ascription of pragmatic function to specific semiotic resources and because UBL can trace, over time, how those specific semiotic resources are linked to other similar semiotic resources in development. Together, CA and UBL can investigate the social-interactional seeds of the frequency-biased build of people’s array of semiotic resources to carry out social action. In sum, we would like to urge usage-based researchers to take into serious consideration the fact of the primordial nature of talk-in-interaction, perhaps converging on an interactional usage-based approach to L2 studies (Eskildsen, 2018a; Pekarek Doehler, 2018). Langacker (1987) described language knowledge as an inventory of form–meaning pairings used for communicative purposes but, using insights from CA, we can enhance the notion of communicative purposes by proposing that they are actions occasioned by local circumstances of social interaction, such as responses to and continuations of prior turns-at-talk (Eskildsen, 2018b; Schegloff, 2007). People’s methods of carrying out social actions in ways that make sense to others, the sine qua non of pragmatics, are the driving force for the learning of the inventory of semiotic resources as it is conceived in UBL.

Notes 1 The research is too rich to be discussed at length here, but see, for example, Markee (1994), Brouwer (2003), Gardner & Wagner (2004), Markee & Kasper (2004), Hellermann (2008), Pekarek Doehler (2010), Pallotti & Wagner (2011), Kasper & Wagner (2011, 2014), and Eskildsen & Majlesi (2018). 2 This term refers specifically to the work by Ishida (2009) and Masuda (2011) who showed the learning and increasingly diversified uses of the Japanese particle ne. 3 The extract was adopted and simplified from Eskildsen & Wagner (2018). Both talk and embodied conduct have been omitted from the extract. We are interested primarily in line 15. For a fuller transcription and analysis, see the original source.

Further Reading Cadierno, T., & Eskildsen, S. W. (Eds.) (2015). Usage-based perspectives on second language learning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. This edited volume presents epistemological and empirical chapters that explore language as an embodied, semiotic, symbolic tool used for communicative and interactional purposes and understand language use as the preeminent condition for language learning. The chapters investigate a range of usage-based issues, for example, the environments of language use and learning, the frequency-biased nature of construction learning, the role of cognition, and the specifics of L2 speakers’ accomplishment of moment-to-moment sense-making activities. Drew, P., & Couper-Kuhlen, E. (Eds.) (2014). Requesting in social interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. This edited volume is a collection of research on requesting as a social action. It brings together leading scholars in the field to investigate how social actions such as requesting are formatted, understood and accomplished in situ. The chapters explore issues such as the role of prosody, syntax, and gesture and other embodied resources in the accomplishment of requests in a variety of contexts, including adult and child

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interactions, everyday and professional settings, and a range of languages (e.g., English, Danish, Finnish). It is a state-of-the-art investigation of a specific social action and how it is packaged semiotically across cultures and situations. This volume generates immense implications, not only for speech act theory but also for our understanding of linguistic conduct as social accomplishment.

References Achiba, M. (2003). Learning to request in a second language: A study of child interlanguage pragmatics. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Aijmer, K. (1996). Conversational routines in English. Harlow, UK: Longman. Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2013). ’Hi doctor, give me handouts’: Low-proficiency learners and requests. ELT Journal, 67(4), 413–424. Al-Gahtani, S., & Roever, C. (2015). The development of requests by L2 learners of modern standard Arabic: A longitudinal and cross-sectional study. Foreign Language Annals, 48(4), 570–583. Blum-Kulka, S. (1989). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196–213. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.), (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brouwer, C. E. (2003). Word searches in NNS-NS interaction: Opportunities for language learning? The Modern Language Journal, 87(4), 534–545. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Burch, R. A. (2014). Pursuing information: A conversation analytic perspective on communication strategies. Language Learning, 64(3), 651–684. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2014). What does grammar tell us about action? Pragmatics, 24(3), 623–647. Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Etelämäki, M. (2014). On divisions of labor in request and offer environments. In P. Drew & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in social interaction (pp. 115–144). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Craven, A., & Potter, J. (2010). Directives: Entitlement and contingency in action. Discourse Studies, 12(4), 419–442. Curl, T. S., & Drew, P. (2008). Contingency and action: A comparison of two forms of requesting. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 129–153. Drew, P., & Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2014). Requesting—from speech act to recruitment. In P. Drew & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in social interaction (pp. 1–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ellis, N. C. (2015). Cognitive and social aspects of learning from usage. In T. Cadierno & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.), Usage-based perspectives on second language learning (pp. 49–74). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ellis, N. C., & Cadierno, T. (2009). Constructing a second language. Introduction to the special section. Annual review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7, 111–139. Ellis, N. C., & Ferreira-Junior, F. (2009a). Construction learning as a function of frequency, frequency distribution, and function. The Modern Language Journal, 93(3), 370–385. Ellis, N. C., & Ferreira-Junior, F. (2009b). Constructions and their acquisition. Islands and the distinctiveness of their occupancy. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7, 187–220. Ellis, R. (1992). Learning to communicate in the classroom: A study of two learners’ requests. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14(1), 1–23. Eskildsen, S. W. (2009). Constructing another language—usage-based linguistics in second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 30(3), 335–357. Eskildsen, S. W. (2011). The L2 Inventory in Action: Conversation analysis and usage-based linguistics in SLA. In G. Pallotti & J. Wagner (Eds.), L2 learning as social practice: Conversation-analytic perspectives (pp. 337–373). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Eskildsen, S. W. (2012). Negation constructions at work. Language Learning, 62(2), 335–372. Eskildsen, S. W. (2015). What counts as a developmental sequence?: Exemplar-based L2 learning. Language Learning, 65(1), 33–62. Eskildsen, S. W. (2017). The emergence of creativity in L2 English—a usage-based case-study. In N. Bell (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play (pp. 281–316). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Eskildsen, S. W. (2018a). Building a semiotic repertoire for social action: interactional competence as biographical discovery. Classroom Discourse, 9(1), 68–76. Eskildsen, S. W. (2018b). L2 constructions and interactional competence: Subordination and coordination in English L2 learning. In A. Tyler, L. Huang, & H. Jan (Eds.), What is applied cognitive linguistics? Answers from current SLA research (pp. 61–96). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 188

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Eskildsen, S. W. (in press). Doing the daily routine: Development of L2 embodied Interactional resources through a recurring classroom activity. In S. Kunitz, O. Sert, & N. Markee (Eds.), Emerging issues in classroom discourse and interaction: Theoretical and applied CA perspectives on pedagogy. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Eskildsen, S. W., & Cadierno, T. (2015). Advancing usage-based approaches to L2 studies. In T. Cadierno & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.), Usage-based perspectives on second language learning (pp. 1–18). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Eskildsen, S. W., & Majlesi, A. R. (2018). Learnables and teachables in second language talk: Advancing a social reconceptualization of central SLA tenets. Introduction to the special issue. The Modern Language Journal, 102(Suppl.), 3–10. Eskildsen, S. W., & Wagner, J. (2015). Embodied L2 construction learning. Language Learning, 65(2), 419–448. Eskildsen, S. W., & Wagner, J. (2018). From trouble in the talk to new resources: The interplay of bodily and linguistic resources in the talk of a novice speaker of English as a second language. In S. Pekarek Doehler, E. González-Martínez, & J. Wagner (Eds.). Documenting change across time: Longitudinal studies on the organization of social interaction (pp. 143–172). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Forrester, M. A. (2015). Early social interaction: A case comparison of developmental pragmatics and psychoanalytic theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, R., & Wagner, J. (2004). Second language conversations. London: Continuum. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology’s program. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H. (1970). On formal structures of practical action. In J. C. McKinney & E. A. Tiryakian (Eds.), Theoretical sociology: Perspectives and developments (pp. 338–366). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17. Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Goldberg, A. (2003). Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 219–24. Hauser, E. (2013). Stability and change in one adult’s second language English negation. Language Learning, 63(3), 463–498. Hall, J. K. (2018). From L2 interactional competence to L2 interactional repertoires: Reconceptualizing the objects of L2 learning. Classroom Discourse, 9(1), 25–39. Heinemann, T. (2006). ‘Will you or can’t you?’: Displaying entitlement in interrogative requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(7), 1081–1104. Hellermann, J. (2008). Social actions for classroom language learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hellermann, J. (2018). Languaging as competence: EMCA methods for revealing consciousness and learning. Classroom Discourse, 9(1), 40–56. Hopper, P. (1987). Emergent grammar. Proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 139–157. Hutchby, I., & Wooffitt, R. (2008). Conversation analysis (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Ishida, M. (2009). Development of interactional competence: changes in the use of ne in L2 Japanese during study abroad. In H. T. Nguyen & G. Kasper (Eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual perspectives (pp. 351–386). Honolulu, HI: National Foreign Language Resource Center. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kasper, G., & Wagner, J. (2011). A conversation-analytic approach to second language acquisition. In D. Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 117–142). New York: Taylor & Francis. Kasper, G., & Wagner, J. (2014). Conversation analysis in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 34, 171–212. Kim, Y. (2009). Korean discourse markers in L2 Korean speakers’ conversation: An acquisitional perspective. In H. T. Nguyen & G. Kasper (Eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual perspectives (pp. 317–350). Honolulu, HI: National Foreign Language Resource Center. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar, Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2006). The emergence of complexity, fluency, and accuracy in the oral and written production of five Chinese learners of English. Applied Linguistics, 27(4), 590–619. Levinson, S. C. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In T. Stivers & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 103–130). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 189

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Lieven, E., Salomo, D., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Two-year-old children’s production of multiword utterances: A usage-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics, 20(3), 481–508. Lindström, A. (2005). Language as social action: A study of how senior citizens request assistance with practical tasks in the Swedish home help service. In A. Hakulinen & M. Selting (Eds.), Syntax and lexis in conversation (pp. 209–230). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Markee, N. (1994). Toward an ethnomethodological respecification of second-language acquisition studies. In E. E. Tarone, S. M. Gass & A. D. Cohen (Eds.), Research methodology in second language acquisition (pp. 89–116). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Markee, N. (2008). Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA. Applied Linguistics, 29(3), 404–427. Markee, N., & Kasper, G. (2004). Classroom talks: An introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 88(4), 491–500. Masuda, K. (2011). Acquiring interactional competence in a study abroad context: Japanese language learners’ use of the interactional particle ne. The Modern Language Journal 95(4), 519–540. Mellow, J. D. (2006). The emergence of second language syntax: A case study of the acquisition of relative clauses. Applied Linguistics, 27(4), 645–670. Ninio, A., & Snow, C. E. (1996). Pragmatic development. New York: Routledge Nolan, J. A., & Maynard, D. W. (2013). Formulating the request for survey participation in relation to the interactional environment. Discourse Studies, 15(2), 205–227. Pekarek Doehler, S. (2018). Elaborations on L2 interactional competence: The development of L2 grammarfor-interaction. Classroom Discourse, 9(1), 3–24. Pekarek Doehler, S., & Pochon-Berger, E. (2015). The development of L2 interactional competence: evidence from turn-taking organization, sequence organization, repair organization and preference organization. In T. Cadierno & S. W. Eskildsen (Eds.), Usage-based perspectives on second language learning (pp. 233–268). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Reder, S. (2005). The ‘Lab School.’ Focus on Basics 8(A). Retrieved on April 22, 2018, from http:​//www​ .ncsa​ll.ne​t/fil​eadmi​n/res​ource​s/fob​/2005​/fob_​8a.pd​f Roehr-Brackin, K. (2014). Explicit knowledge and processes from a usage-based perspective: The developmental trajectory of an instructed L2 learner. Language Learning, 64(4), 771–808. Schegloff, E. A. (1980). Preliminaries to preliminaries: ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Sociological Inquiry, 50(3/4), 104–152. Schegloff, E. A. (1988). Presequences and indirection: Applying speech act theory to ordinary conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 12(1), 55–62. Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A., Ochs, E., & Thompson, S. A. (1996). Introduction. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 1–51). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, R. (1983). Interaction, acculturation, and the acquisition of communicative competence: A case study of an adult. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 137–174). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Sealey, A., & Carter, B. (2004). Applied linguistics as social science. London: Continuum. Stevanovic, M. (2011). Participants’ deontic rights and action formation: The case of declarative requests for action. InLiSt, Interaction and Linguistic Structures, 52. Stevanovic, M., & Peräkylä, A. (2012). Deontic authority in interaction. The right to announce, propose, and decide. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(3), 297–321. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2006). Request sequences: The intersection of grammar, interaction and social context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ten Have, P. (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. Essex, UK: Pearson Education Limited. Tode, T., & Sakai, H. (2016). Exemplar-based instructed second language development and classroom experience. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 167(2), 210–234. Tomasello, M. (1992). The social bases of language acquisition. Social Development, 1(1), 67–87. Tomasello, M. (1998). Introduction. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language, Vol. 1 (pp. xiv–xxix). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomasello, M., & Bates, E. (2001). Language development: The essential readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Wootton, A. J. (1981). Two request forms of four year olds. Journal of Pragmatics, 5, 511–523. 190

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Appendix: Transcription Conventions CAR:, TEA: Participants Wei[rd wo]rd Beginning and end of overlapping talk    [yeah ] */#/ Mark beginning of embodied conduct */#/Word Description of corresponding embodied conduct. (1.0) Pause/gap in seconds and tenth of seconds (.) Micro pause (< 0.2 seconds) word= =word Continuous turn word Prosodic emphasis wo:rd Prolongation of preceding sound word?, word. Falling, rising intonation ↑,↓word   Shift to high/low pitch WORD   Loud volume °word°   Softer than surrounding talk   slower than surrounding talk ->wordA>V C>AV C>A=V C=A=V In the confirmatory approach (Mackey & Ross, 2015) only one of the five mean outcome orders above would be specified as the most probable. The researcher might for instance predict that the control (no intervention) condition will result in more instances of register misalignment in the assessment interview data than will the audio-only condition or the visual-only condition, and that the visual-only intervention will lead to fewer register misalignments compared to the audio-only condition. As the predicted order always precedes the quantitative test, the hypothesis is confirmed only if the observed mean differences corroborate the predicted order. An added advantage of the confirmatory approach is that it avoids the shortcomings of the conventional null hypothesis approach in which the no-difference null may be rejected, but not in the order substantiating the predictions originally formulated. A sequential mixed methods design such as the one outlined here thus affords two advantages. It begins with phenomena emerging from an inductive analysis of interaction undertaken for purposes other than the research itself. In addition, the phenomena discovered in the first phase establishes the basis for the construction of intervention types designed to test whether designed interventions can affect the relative frequency of the phenomena of interest.

Conclusion and Future Directions Mixed methods research designs have become increasingly popular in L2 research and are especially adaptable to L2 pragmatics research. Existing research purporting to use mixed methods has, however, tended to be asymmetric with some studies placing either a larger emphasis on the descriptive qualitative part, or a major focus on quantitative analyses followed by selected quotations from study participants. Few studies appear to be designed from the outset as mixed methods research with equal weights placed on qualitative and quantitative analyses. Further, what constitutes as the quantitative portion of mixed methods studies varies widely and often entails a few tables of frequency counts of phenomena without any formal tests of the frequencies against a random chance alternative. Such studies only superficially appear to be mixed methods and often do not maximize the advantages that mixed methods can afford researchers. A way forward is to approach mixed methods in a systematic manner with more methodological rigor. Recent trends in conversation analysis have moved in the direction of integration of qualitative and quantitative methods organized sequentially (De Ruiter & Albert, 2017). There appears to be considerable potential for adopting this approach in future L2 pragmatics research in particular, 222

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as we illustrated in the example study design. A qualitative analysis using CA in L2 listener responses helps us discover a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in L2 pragmatics research. Listener responses might involve less language compared to the speaker turn, but they play an important role in successful interaction as their token frequency is high and because they show ‘good listenership’ (McCarthy, 2003). The implication for sequential mixed methods research such as in our example will help us discover L2 listener behaviors, which in turn can help us design a study that helps them develop good listenership in the real world. Contexts of mixed methods SLA research reviewed in this chapter, such as task-based learning, classroom interaction, instructional or assessment role plays, formal proficiency interview assessments, and task instructions conducted prior to experiments, are similar in that the starting point of a mixed methods study is identifying phenomena arising from the analysis of interaction itself. Micro-level analyses of such interaction may reveal recurring patterns of phenomena indicative of, for example, L1 transfer of pragmatic norms to L2 interaction. Such phenomena provide the focus of possible interventions that researchers can devise to help learners notice how exemplars from target language uses differ from their own. Effectiveness of such interventions can be cast into a number of experimental and quasi-experimental designs and tested with conventional statistical methods. This chapter presented a hypothetical study evolving originally from a casual observation of oral proficiency interview interaction in which a recurring pattern of L1 listener responses did not align to the register of the interlocutor in L2 English. The kind of transfer phenomenon observed in the interaction is assumed to be indicative of a general tendency of L1 Japanese speakers to transfer a more formal register to L2 interactions in which the interlocutor’s register does not align. Such misalignments can be made amenable to a focused interventions designed to raise the consciousness of the L2 learners to notice differences between their L2 use and the language of their interlocutors. We expect that an approach starting with L2 interaction analysis will provide fertile ground for a discovery approach to a range of phenomena with implications for L2 pragmatics. By building the first phase of a study out of the organic material of interaction which is not itself originally constituted as part of the study, researchers can avoid some of the circularity of reference and analysis problems often seen in mixed methods research, and more robustly test interventions devised to influence the phenomena of interest. The approach outlined in this chapter also affords a way around the over-reliance on mono-method data collection and analysis techniques used in L2 pragmatics research (e.g., discourse completions tasks, closed role plays) (see Chapter 13 in this volume). The potential for expanding the methodological repertoire in L2 pragmatics research using sequential mixed methods designs is considerable as the range of phenomena inherently part of interactional competence, both indicative of L2 pragmatic abilities and other facets of proficiency, become the focal points of future research.

Suggested Readings De Ruiter, J., & Albert, S. (2017). An appeal for a methodological fusion of conversation analysis and experimental psychology. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(1), 90–107. This paper provides a rationale for a methodological convergence of conversation analysis with experimental psychology. They present shortcomings of each approach. The structural focus of conventional conversational analysis often begs the question of external validity. On the other hand, many experimental studies in psychology overly focus on ritualized null hypothesis testing without sufficient accounting for how study participants reveal their internalized understanding of their own social actions. De Ruiter and Albert call for recognition that conversation analysis and experimental psychology (and by extension, experimental designs in SLA and applied linguistics) share a common focus on the exclusive use of empirical data. Their article provides the grounding for sequential mixed methods in which preliminary conversation analysis of interaction can be used to discover phenomena amenable to experimental intervention and hypothesis testing needed to provide justification for claims of external validity. 223

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Heritage, J., & Robinson, J. D. (2011). ‘Some’ versus ‘any’ medical issues: Encouraging patients to reveal their unmet concerns. In C. Antaki (Ed.), Applied conversation analysis (pp. 15–31). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. This paper provides an example of sequential mixed methods research based on analyses of doctor–patient interactions. Observing systematic variation in diagnostic session closing turns, Heritage and Robinson surmised that the potential for incomplete diagnosis could be associated with the way physicians close the interactions. They designed an experimental video instruction module demonstrating how closing turns can be worded differentially to solicit more information from patients in diagnostic interview settings. Heritage and Robinson subsequently collected quantitative data about how many more health concerns were solicited from the patients of physicians trained to end their interviews with open questions relative to the control group physicians. Their results suggested that a simple intervention based on analysis of interaction could lead to an outcome with substantively important implications for health care quality. Riazi, A. M., & Candlin, C. N. (2014). Mixed-methods research in language teaching and learning: Opportunities, issues and challenges. Language Teaching, 47(2), 135–173. This paper provides theoretical foregrounds of mixed methods research (MMR) and discusses issues and challenges of the MMR in the field of language teaching and learning. The authors provide a good review of the differences between quantitative and qualitative paradigms, the nature and scope of the MMR paradigm, the philosophical underpinnings of MMR, the purposes of MMR, and techniques and procedures in MMR. By analyzing the trends of 40 MMR existing studies (2002–2011), they found that many of these studies lacked the principles and concepts of MMR. They emphasize that identifying the purpose of using mixed methods in one’s research is a key component to conceptualize mixed methods research.

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15 Conversation Analysis in L2 Pragmatics Research Junko Mori and Hanh thi Nguyen

Introduction Through the groundbreaking work of sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A. Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, and their associates, conversation analysis (CA) emerged as a distinct research paradigm in the 1960s. Rooted in the ethnomethodological tradition founded by Harold Garfinkel (1967), and sharing Erving Goffman’s (1963, 1967) interest in examining social order through details of everyday interaction, CA established itself as a rigorous empirical approach to the study of conversations and other forms of talk-in-interaction. CA’s primary aim is to discover and describe the mechanisms through which participants in social interaction understand and respond to one another. To this end, CA researchers have conducted meticulous examination of audio- and video-recordings of naturally occurring interactions to discern recurrent patterns across different data sets. In the last few decades, CA’s research framework and empirical findings on the fundamental architecture of interaction (to be discussed further below) have been adopted in a wide range of disciplines. The field of pragmatics in general, and L2 pragmatics in particular, is no exception to this trend. Pragmatics and CA are both concerned with participants’ choices of semiotic resources for meaning-making and interpretation in communication, and in so doing, they both place great importance on the role of context. CA has contributed to the expansion and reconceptualization of the scope of pragmatics research by introducing fresh perspectives on how to understand the nature of language use. Pragmatics, originally developed as a subfield of linguistics and semiotics, formed its foundations through theory-building afforded by intuition and introspection. Classic pragmatics work on speech act theory (Austin, 1975; Searle, 1969), conversational implicatures (Grice, 1975), and politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) provided profound insights into the relationship between linguistic resources and their performative functions, as well as the nature of social and cultural conditions that affect how speakers perform particular speech acts or how listeners may interpret them. From the CA perspective, however, these theories have limitations. Specifically, whereas earlier studies in pragmatics assume that researchers’ and informants’ introspection of what they think they do in hypothetical situations provide sufficient grounds for understanding pragmatic norms, CA considers that such intuitive reflections do not adequately or accurately capture the dynamic and intricate processes in which participants monitor each other’s ongoing verbal and nonverbal behaviors and contingently design their next contribution. Instead, CA demands every analytical claim to be accompanied by hearable or visible evidence that can be 226

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located in recorded data, and it aims to go through the kind of live analysis that participants themselves undertake. Thus, while CA and pragmatics (in its earlier form) share an interest in how meaning-making is accomplished through talk, they diverge in their ontological and epistemological stances. In L2 pragmatics research, CA has gained recognition as a credible approach, particularly since the late 1990s (e.g., Firth & Wagner, 1997; Kasper, 2006, 2009a; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). At the same time, L2 pragmatics has also begun to subscribe to a more interaction-oriented conceptualization of pragmatics, as seen in Kasper and Rose’s (2002) and Kasper and Ross’s (2013) reference to Crystal (1997), who defined pragmatics as ‘the study of language from the point of view of 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 other participants in the act of communication’ (p. 301). The timing of this development coincides with sea changes seen in CA and second language acquisition (SLA). While CA has often been criticized for its skewed data in which participants predominantly consist of monolingual American or British English speakers, a growing body of studies has shown that the fundamental organizations of talk-in-interaction in L1 English conversations are largely applicable to L2 and non-English data (Sidnell, 2009; Sidnell & Enfield, 2012; Wagner, 1996). In the meantime, since the mid 1990s, the field of SLA has taken a so-called social turn (Block, 2003; Lantolf, 1996) that has encouraged researchers to adopt a more interdisciplinary approach and to re-conceptualize language learning from more socially informed perspectives. In a seminal publication that contributed to this turn, Firth and Wagner (1997) aptly critiqued the mindset of portraying L2 speakers as deficient communicators vis-à-vis idealized native speakers that was prevalent in the then mainstream SLA studies. The authors demonstrated how such a mindset abounded in SLA research designs and analyses, which tend to focus on classroom data and oral interview tests or various types of experimental or quasi-experimental settings. To counter this tendency, Firth and Wagner advocated for an emic (i.e., participant-relevant) perspective to understand L2 speakers’ participation in social interaction with attention paid to the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use in a broader range of L2 interactions. Their proposition reflects CA’s essential stance and has prompted the subsequent rapid growth of CA studies in SLA. This chapter will first provide an overview of CA’s analytical principles and procedures and introduce its key concepts. Subsequently, it will review how CA is applied to L2 pragmatics research and what kinds of contributions have been made thus far. The last section will discuss ongoing challenges and possible future directions, exploring ways to maximize the use of CA in order to respond to specific needs of L2 pragmatics research.

Analytical Principles and Key Concepts As emphasized in the introduction, CA is a strictly data-driven program, which encourages researchers to begin with unmotivated observations of recorded interactions (Sacks, 1984). While it is a common practice for researchers to approach data with questions informed by previous studies, theoretical frameworks, or common presumptions, CA demands researchers to set aside such pre-specified agenda and to start documenting every noticeable feature of talk and other conduct through close listening and viewing of recordings. This is because CA considers that seemingly unremarkable details, such as onsets of overlapping talk, micro pauses, restarts, changes in volume and other voice quality, gaze or posture shifts, gestures, and the like, can crucially contribute to the participants’ meaning-making process. Transcription conventions initially developed by Jefferson (1973, 2004) and refined by subsequent CA researchers (e.g., Goodwin, 1981; Luff & Heath, 2015) illustrate the kinds of details that have been scrutinized. Thus, for CA, transcribing is not a simple clerical task, but rather a painstaking yet critical analytical process that generates and registers observations, accumulated through repeated listening and viewing. 227

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Discoveries of particular phenomena or practices that are made through these initial unmotivated observations may lead to empirically developed hypotheses, which can be verified (and modified, if necessary) by examining a larger set of data and developing a collection of comparable cases. By following these steps, the founders of CA discovered and described the fundamental organizations of talk-in-interaction, including turn-taking organization (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), sequence organization (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), repair organization (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977) and preference organization (Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1987). Sacks et al. (1974), for instance, demonstrated how conversational participants generally orient to the norm of one speaker at a time and systematically manage transfer of speakership. The recurrent patterns of turn-taking observed in a large volume of data exhibit that participants follow a basic set of rules to determine when the transfer of speakership should occur and who is expected to take the next turn. This does not necessarily mean that participants are always conscious of, or strictly regulated by, these rules. In fact, overlaps and gaps between turns occur from time to time. On such occasions, however, participants tend to interpret the significance of overlapping talk or lack of uptake vis-à-vis the normative expectations and work to restore orderliness. Central to turn-taking organization is the notion of turn-constructional units (TCUs). Unlike grammatical units defined by linguists’ etic judgment, TCUs reflect participants’ emic concerns. Grammatical, prosodic, and other features may serve as clues for participants to monitor an ongoing turn at talk and to project its imminent completion, but what matters most for the identification of a TCU is the recognition of action completion (Ford & Thompson, 1996). As detailed in Schegloff’s (2007) authoritative primer, participants’ understanding of action-in-progress is informed by their analysis of the composition (i.e., syntactic, semantic, prosodic, and other features) of an utterance, as well as its position relative to the ongoing development of a sequence of actions. To briefly outline, the most basic unit of sequence organization is an adjacency pair, which consists of two turns produced by two different speakers and relatively ordered in a way that its first-pair part (FPP) specifies a particular set of actions as a conditionally relevant secondpair part (SPP). Examples of such paired actions include summons-answer, greeting-greeting, invitation-acceptance/declination, request-granting/denial, and so on. Here again, the orderliness observed by CA is not something that dictates participants’ conduct, but rather it offers the frame of reference for interpreting each other’s conduct. The non-occurrence of expected types of responses to a FPP, for instance, is viewed as a noticeable absence that needs to be accounted for. To resolve issues preventing the immediate delivery of an anticipated SPP, participants may develop an insert expansion between the FPP and SPP. Further, an adjacency pair that constitutes a base sequence may be preceded by a pre-expansion that lays out the groundwork for the base FPP, or it is followed by a post-expansion that confirms the receipt of the SPP or engages in further negotiation/clarification of its contents. This process of coordinating each other’s actions is not always trouble-free. Participants regularly address problems of hearing, speaking, and understanding, and they work towards the establishment of intersubjectivity. Schegloff et al. (1977) explicated the mechanism of repair practices by focusing on who initiates repair, who actually undertakes repair, and when they do so with respect to the unfolding turn and sequence. For instance, the current speaker may stop talking in the midst of an ongoing turn and restart the talk, replacing an already produced word with a different choice, or insert an additional explanation. In addition to such cases of self-initiated self-repair, repair may also be initiated by a recipient of the trouble-source turn. Depending on the nature of problem, other-initiated repair can be issued in different formats, including open class repair initiator such as ‘huh?’ or ‘pardon?’, category-specific questions such as ‘who?’ or ‘when?’, repetition of the trouble source, or candidate understandings. These next-turn repair initiators occupy the position where SPPs could have occurred, and they prompt the speaker of 228

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the trouble-source turn to repeat or reformulate the earlier utterance. Such an exchange could cause a momentary digression from the originally projected course of sequence development, and therefore speakers tend to address detectable trouble sources within the same turn. Indeed, Schegloff et al. (1977) reported that self-repair is far more frequent than other-repair in ordinary conversations, indicating the participants’ preference for self-repair. The term preference, in CA, is used to refer to sequence- and turn-organizational features of conversation, rather than individual participants’ motivations. In addition to the preference for self-repair, other types of preference organization have been reported. Most widely discussed examples concern asymmetrical structures observed in the design of responding actions in SPPs (Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1987). As mentioned above, FPPs such as invitation or request tend to project acceptance/declination or granting/denial as the corresponding SPPs. These different types of responses tend to be designed in different formats. While responses such as acceptance or granting tend to be delivered in a preferred turn shape, characterized by its immediate delivery of a relatively straightforward response, responses such as declination or denial tend to take a dispreferred turn shape, which involves delays, prefaces, hesitations, as well as accounts. The structural difference indicates participants’ understanding of how these alternative responses are treated as affiliative or disaffiliative by the members. Similarly, the design of initiating actions has also been studied from the perspective of preference organization. For instance, offers tend to be treated as preferred actions over requests in that the latter tends to be withheld and prefaced by a pre-request sequence, which may trigger a preemptive offer. While the judgment of affiliative or disaffiliative actions can be linked to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) notion of face preservation and threat in essence, CA’s distinct contribution lies in the explication of how these different actions are systematically designed and treated by participants in actual interaction. As summarized above, the four fundamental organizations of conversations discovered through empirical analysis are not separable, but rather, they operate in an interconnected fashion and serve as the ‘architecture of intersubjectivity’ (Heritage 1984, p. 254). These generic organizations are considered to be applicable to a wide variety of talk-in-interaction taking place in diverse settings and are characterized as context-free. At the same time, CA is interested in investigating how these context-free mechanisms are utilized or adapted in a context-sensitive fashion, responding to particulars of each circumstance. Context, for CA, entails the local, sequential contexts established by the interaction leading up to the moment, as well as broader social contexts surrounding the interaction, including institutional expectations or macro-social structures under which participants are assumed to interact. CA, however, does not treat the latter as preexisting factors that inevitably and consistently impact participants’ conduct. Rather, CA examines how participants enact, renew, or orient to certain aspects of context contingently in talk, that is, how they make a particular interaction-external feature relevant to and salient through their conduct. For instance, in classroom interaction, the roles of teacher and student are not omnipresent. The institutional nature of classroom interaction is made visible as the participants engage in a distinct speech-exchange system and sequence organization that reveal unequal distribution of knowledge and control associated with their respective roles (for a concise summary, see, for example, Gardner, 2013; Markee & Kasper, 2004). While basic CA aims to uncover seemingly context-free mechanisms and continues to refine and expand the earlier findings summarized above, institutional CA has examined a broad range of naturally occurring institutional interactions including classroom interactions, doctor–patient interactions, news and research interviews, courtroom interactions, service encounters, and various types of workplace interactions (for a concise summary, see, for example, Heritage, 2005). Institutional CA uses basic CA as a resource to investigate how social institutions are talked and acted into being. As shall be discussed in the following section, both types of CA have significantly enriched L2 pragmatics research. 229

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Contribution of CA to L2 Pragmatics Research Respecification of Analytical Approach Perhaps CA’s most profound influence in pragmatics research is its introduction of emic and sequential analysis, which triggers the reconceptualization of key notions such as action, meaning, and context (Kasper, 2006) and consequently transforms the analytical approach to data. First, what people do with language is classically conceptualized in pragmatics as speech acts (Austin, 1975), which can be identified in a top-down manner by the analyst based on a given inventory. In contrast, CA views actions as sequentially emergent and contingently coconstructed by participants in unfolding talk-in-interaction (see also Chapter 12 in this volume). In CA, an action needs to be described from the participants’ perspectives. That is, an action’s meaning needs to be demonstrated in how others respond to it in the following turns and how these responses indicate the participants’ own analysis of the prior turns. This analytical process, next-turn proof procedure (Sacks et al., 1974), distinguishes CA from other approaches. CA also suggests that actions are often achieved over multiple turns, and a single turn may perform multiple actions, such that a question may be employed to initiate repair, which in turn may project disagreement, refusal, or non-alignment (Levinson, 2013). Second, traditional pragmatics tends to view meaning as existing outside of message production or as statically encoded in expressions. On the one hand, the study of implicature stipulates that meaning is created and inferred by referring to a set of maxims under the assumption of a shared principle of cooperation (Grice, 1975) (see also Chapter 3 in this volume). On the other hand, in classic speech act analysis, an utterance’s intended meaning (termed illocutionary act) is determined by classifying the utterance’s semantic components into pre-set categories (e.g., Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989) (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). Neither view recognizes the dynamic processes in which meaning takes shape and speech acts come into being in unfolding interaction. In CA’s view, meaning is made visible in participants’ observable conduct, and it is jointly achieved and negotiated in sequential context (for a more in-depth critique of the shortcomings of speech act theory’s approach to actions, see Curl & Drew, 2008; Schegloff, 1988). Finally, CA’s emic stance also means that context in L2 interactions is not treated as a priori and fixed factors that will then influence speakers’ choices (as in Brown and Levinson’s [1987] politeness theory); rather, context needs to be invoked, renewed, and made relevant by participants in moments of interaction (Schegloff, 1992, 1997). This approach forces the analyst to examine dynamic processes in which commonsense knowledge is talked into being by social members (see Kasper, 2006, for a further discussion on CA’s influence on pragmatic notions of action, meaning, and context). To illustrate how such respecification of analytical approach can enhance L2 pragmatics research, Kasper (2006), for instance, reexamined requests by a young ESL learner (reported in Achiba, 2002) using emic sequential analysis and showed how one can gain a more detailed understanding of the process in which the requests are revised contingently as a result of coconstructed negotiation with the other participant. Along similar lines, Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) demonstrated that CA-informed analysis of role-played requests by ESL learners of different proficiency levels can add further insights on previous findings. While confirming a previous finding in traditional pragmatics research (Félix-Brasdefer, 2007b) that lower-level learners tend to produce requests with less frequent pre-expansions compared to advanced-level learners, Al-Gahtani and Roever’s study also revealed that the requests by learners of different levels varied in their sequential organization (see also Chapter 2 in this volume). High-level learners tended to preface their requests with inquiries about the interlocutor’s availability and accounts for the requests as a way to project the upcoming request, whereas lower-level learners tended to issue the request first and then depended on the interlocutor to elicit any accounts. Importantly, 230

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Al-Gahtani and Roever’s findings extended L2 pragmatics research in its recognition of the interlocutor’s role in the co-construction of the requests, such as producing different forms of insert expansions with different levels of learners and producing more frequent reformulations of the learners’ requests with lower-level learners than with higher-level learners. CA-informed analysis of L2 speech acts such as those by Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) and others (e.g., Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2013; Golato, 2002; Huth, 2006; Taleghani-Nikazm & Huth, 2010) has fruitfully brought more informed understandings about the target and processes of L2 pragmatics.

Identification of Analytical Objects CA has also made striking contributions to the identification and analysis of interactional practices that have not previously attracted researchers’ attention. CA’s analytical starting point to examine talk-in-interaction as it is achieved by participants draws attention to interactional practices in their own right, and thus reveals important meaning-making mechanisms by L2 participants that have escaped preconceived or intuitive theorization, most notably top-down etic inventories of speech acts (see also Chapter 7 in this volume). Among these are practices that have been identified in CA research including turn-taking practices, preference organization, repair practices, sequential structure management, embodied actions, as well as practices that have not been previously documented. To illustrate, CA-informed analysis of L2 learners’ turn-taking practices reveals that novice Japanese learners of English may use vowel-marking (final [o] or [u] epenthesis), a phenomenon commonly taken to be a pronunciation deviation, to manage turns at talk. Specifically, they use vowel-marking to survive overlapped talk, to signal the upcoming of a repair or word search, or to indicate the production of further talk by the same speaker (Carroll, 2005). Additionally, they may produce restarts and sound elongation at a turn beginning while shifting gaze toward the listener to secure recipiency and establish intersubjectivity (Carroll, 2004). Further, L2 learners can develop turn-taking practices over time by taking more initiatives to claim the floor (Young & Miller, 2004) or by using incomplete turn-constructional units to construct meaning collaboratively and display affiliation with co-participants (Taguchi, 2014a). Timely bid for speakership in classroom interaction is another type of turn-taking practices examined. Over time, L2 learners may begin to use ‘heavy’ attention-getting devices (imperatives or high volume) (Cekaite, 2007) and fitting their turn initiations with the flow of an ongoing action (Cekaite, 2007; Pallotti, 2002; Wanatabe, 2017). Focusing on preference organization, Taleghani-Nikazm and Huth (2010) found that American learners of German are able to treat requests as dispreferred by producing pre-requests, which project the upcoming request and enable the recipient to produce an offer. Waring (2013), on the other hand, detailed how an ESL student learned to respond to routine questions such as ‘How was your weekend?’ This type of question is constructed by the teacher as projecting responses about leisure activities. Hence, responding to it with the disclosure of work-related (and not leisure) activities tends to be treated as dispreferred. Waring’s study documented how the student developed her sociopragmatic understanding about what the question projects. Notably, Waring pointed out that the student’s development emerged from the teacher’s in situ treatment of what counted as appropriate responses to the question. Research on repair practices in interaction involving L2 learners uncovers, for example, that over time learners may employ more diverse other-initiated repair methods, moving from only repeating the trouble source to repeating and spelling the target word, as well as producing accounts (Hellermann, 2011). Learners have also been shown to decrease the frequency of selfinitiated self-repair (Hellermann, 2009; Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2015) and increase self-repair repertoire to include not only stopping mid-turn and explicitly calling for help but also producing candidate formulation of the trouble source and paraphrasing the target item in the L2 (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2015). 231

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Another area that has opened up thanks to CA’s attention to the sequential organization of talk is L2 speakers’ practices of managing larger projects, including story-telling, topic management, and action transitioning. With a focus on story-telling, Barraja-Rohan (2015) traced an ESL learner over time and noted how her story initiations changed from being prompted by a co-participant’s specific question or reference to a specific topic to being formulated as a self-initiated story entry in response to a general question. These changes indicate the learner’s more active role in launching stories. Further, as time went on, the learner also developed lengthier stories persisting over multiple turns and being more sensitive to the co-participant’s responses (for an analysis of learners’ interactional practices as story recipient, see Y. Kim, 2016). Concentrating on how learners manage topics in conversations, Lee and Hellermann (2014) demonstrated that ESL learners were able to change from disjunctive topic shifts to smoother topic shifts by using discourse markers to signal the shift. In another longitudinal study, Nguyen (2012) documented an ESL learner’s development of interactional practices to transition from a casual chat to task-related talk, which included not only the co-construction of the closing of the current topic through turn-withholding and minimal token production but also the joint projection of the next activity through synchronized embodied actions (e.g., shifting body orientation from facing each other to facing the work area, readying work-related objects, and ending smiles). CA’s attention to embodied actions also lends new insights into how meaning-making is achieved and learning opportunities are created in an L2. Mori and Hayashi (2006), for example, showed that a learner was able to orient to embodied completion of turns by a more competent speaker to achieve understanding, and demonstrate intersubjectivity by verbalizing the intended meaning of the gesture used in place of the final element of the prior turn. This then occasioned ratification by the competent speaker in the form of a more precise and elaborate verbal expression, which may have also served as a learning opportunity for the learner. The application of CA to L2 data has also yielded the discovery of other types of interactional practices that reflect important practical concerns for L2 learners. This is exemplified by a longitudinal CA study of a Thai speaker of English by S. Kim (2018). Initially, the learner ran into troubles in answering an interview question about her future career choice, ‘air hostess,’ due to a pronunciation deviation. In subsequent interviews, she resolved the issue not by using a different word or by correcting her pronunciation, but by expanding her response over multiple turns in which she produced descriptors about her career before she produced the word ‘air hostess.’ In doing so, she preemptively achieved intersubjectivity with the interviewer before the problem arose. Kim’s study demonstrates that, by adhering to CA’s principle of grounding the analysis in the data, researchers can capture the innovative solutions that learners arrive at to make sense of and achieve a social interaction. Examples of other studies in this direction include Mori and Hasegawa’s (2009) study on Japanese learners’ employment of invented ‘Japanized’ words during a word search (e.g., ‘disgaizu shimasu’ [(we) disguise], pp. 84–85) and Firth’s (2009) study on multilingual business partners’ incorporation (in English) of nonstandard forms in each other’s turns to achieve fluency and a cooperative stance, as well as the use of stress, intonation, and pauses to produce ‘supportive synchronicity’ (pp. 137ff) in talk. With no pre-set inventory, the conversation analyst is free to pursue any interactional practice that is relevant to the participants.

Expansion of Learning Contexts CA’s requirement to analyze naturally occurring data has triggered researchers to look at L2 learners’ performance beyond discourse completion tasks (DCT) and role-plays in experimental settings (see also Chapter 13, this volume). CA-informed L2 pragmatics research has begun to explore the ways in which L2 speakers participate in social interaction in a wider range of 232

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contexts, including settings where L2 learning is, or is not, treated as a central focus of the ongoing activity. Research on learners’ interaction in study abroad and immersion contexts, for instance, reveals a range of pragmatic abilities that learners developed as they engaged in interaction with local community members such as host families and shop owners (see also Chapter 23 in this volume). Those pragmatic abilities include the ability to shift speech styles appropriately in conversations (Taguchi, 2014b), the ability to initiate story-telling (Pekarek Doehler & [Pochon-]Berger, 2015, 2016) and to perform affiliative assessments as a recipient in story-telling (Ishida, 2011), the ability to achieve alignment through specific linguistic resources (Dings, 2014; Ishida, 2009), and the ability to open up language-learning opportunities in business transactions (Eskildsen & Theodórsdóttir, 2017; Theodórsdóttir, 2011a, 2011b). Another body of work focuses on learners’ pragmatic capabilities in L2 conversations-forlearning, in which there is no explicit pedagogical agenda except for holding conversations in the target language. This body of studies has documented learners’ practices for telling stories (Barraja-Rohan, 2015), responding to stories (Y. Kim, 2016), producing repair and other-correction (Hauser, 2010), and using descriptors to preempt interactional troubles (S. Kim, 2018). A related body of research has examined learners’ interactional practices in teacher–student interactions outside the classroom such as office hours and tutoring sessions, demonstrating that learners developed the ability to respond to topic proffers (Nguyen, 2011), to co-construct writing revision activities (Young & Miller, 2004), and to transition between activities (Nguyen, 2012). Expanding into workplace settings, CA studies have shown how L2 users employ diverse and innovative resources to achieve work-related communication, often without highlighting their status as L2 learners (see also Chapter 27 in this volume). Firth (2009), for example, noted that business partners speaking in an L2 often proceeded to accomplish business-related tasks using linguistic expressions that they mark as deviating from expected norms. Such flagging for markedness—realized by slowed speech tempo, word cut-offs, hesitation markers, and rising intonation—served to signal to the recipient that what is being said is unusual and thus assists the recipient with interpreting the meaning. With respect to learning, Nguyen (forthcoming) showed that, while carrying out task-related talk, a novice L2 front-desk agent at a hotel became able to diversify her linguistic resources in the assessment of guests’ tellings about their trips and use different linguistic materials to achieve topic initiation and topic pursuit in less problematic ways. In this fashion, CA’s treatment of naturally-occurring data as primacy has truly opened up a broader and richer range of investigative foci in L2 pragmatics.

Longitudinal Documentation of Pragmatic Development As discussed above, several CA-informed studies of L2 pragmatics have documented learners’ longitudinal development. In this section, we will focus on these studies’ articulation of methodology. While traditional L2 pragmatics research on development has relied mainly on experimental design with quantitative coding and statistical analysis of cross-sectional or longitudinal data (Taguchi, 2010), CA’s fine-grained and emic qualitative approach in a longitudinal study design has made it possible to trace L2 learners’ development over time in a more holistic manner. An experiment design can enable the efficient documentation of a broad range of pragmatic behaviors, but there lingers an unanswered question about how learners actually perform pragmatic acts in real-life situations, where their actions bear real-life consequences (see Félix-Brasdefer, 2007a, for a discussion of the contrast between role-plays and real-life interactions). CA-based longitudinal studies, on the other hand, have shed light on the multi-faceted and co-constructed processes of L2 pragmatic development as learners engage in meaningful interactions with real-world practical concerns (e.g., Hellermann, 2011; Y. Kim, 2016; Lee & Hellermann, 2014; 233

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Nguyen, 2012; Pekarek Doehler & [Pochon-]Berger, 2015, 2016; Waring, 2013). What these studies have in common is how they identify the object of learning, how they document learning, and what they demonstrate to be the impetus for learning. To reiterate, in a CA-based approach, the object of pragmatic development is not preconceived but is determined by examining the learner’s interactional conduct with co-participants. Thus, the object of learning is something demonstrably relevant to the learners. A phenomenon’s relevance is discovered through initial unmotivated looking of naturally occurring interaction. Once the object of learning has been identified in this manner, analysts can draw on previous empirical findings to understand its nature. Subsequently, learning is documented by comparing the learner’s engagement in interactional practices over time. Comparison in CA work is done horizontally by describing a phenomenon in a collection (e.g., Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) or vertically by describing changes over time (see Zimmerman, 1999, on horizontal and vertical comparisons in CA). This comparison is not unlike traditional quantitative research on pragmatic development in that the goal is to identify differences in learners’ conduct across various points in time. What is distinct in a CA-based approach is that this comparison is done qualitatively and with keen attention to the local context of each instance. (The challenges of this comparison will be discussed below.) Finally, a CA-based approach to researching pragmatic development can also explicate the possible forces that may trigger a learner’s changes over time. Since talk-in-interaction is where members’ competence is publicly displayed, and since learners’ actions are coordinated with other interactants, CA researchers contend that interaction itself provides the mechanisms for learning (Hauser, 2011; Kasper, 2009b; Nguyen, 2017; Schegloff, 1989; see also Garfinkel, 2002). Through the management of actions and meanings in talk-in-interaction, participants exhibit to each other at any given moment their understandings about what has been achieved, what is going on, and what is being projected next. It is through these observable displays that a learner can see the outcomes of their actions and modify their conduct in future occasions if necessary to better achieve goals.

Ongoing Challenges and Future Directions A challenge in a CA approach to L2 pragmatics is the tension between, on the one hand, fieldspecific interests in L2 pragmatics such as revealing particular interlanguage patterns and the development of pragmatic abilities, and on the other, CA’s requirement for naturally occurring data and an unmotivated stance in analysis (see Mori, 2007). It takes considerably more effort and time to collect sufficient data about a target pragmatic phenomenon in naturally occurring L2 conversations, whereas simulations such as role-plays and oral and written DCTs can generate a large amount of data covering a range of contextual configurations in a short amount of time (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). A strategy for CA-based L2 pragmatics research has been to record L2 interactions as they occur and identify the analytical objects (e.g., story openings) after data collection (e.g., Nguyen, 2011, 2012; Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2015). This approach has the advantage of focusing on interactional practices that are relevant to the participants, but the unpredictability of research outcomes is a challenge. Regarding L2 pragmatic development, longitudinal CA-based studies also face the challenge of implementing a ‘same-but-different analysis’ across different points in time (Koschmann, 2013, p. 2). Fundamentally, tracing learners’ chronological development entails comparing the learner’s interactional conduct in different conversations, which may involve different co-participants, topics, actions, and locations. For the comparison to work, there has to be some consistencies across episodes, and yet, to ascertain development, the analysis needs to identify the presence or absence of differences over time. Both consistencies and differences are more challenging to demonstrate when dealing with naturally occurring conversations, which are inherently contingent and 234

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co-constructed. Researchers have attempted to resolve this issue by focusing on learners’ actions across comparable contexts over time and by considering learners’ conduct in the context of local contingencies, including co-participants’ actions. For example, Pekarek Doehler and Berger (2016) focused on the specific action of story opening by a German learner of French during her nine-month stay with a host family. Although the topics varied, the co-participants (host family members) and the setting (lunch and dinner conversations) remained stable. The analysts adopted such a strategy to narrow down contexts for tracking the learner’s changes over time (for further discussions on methodological issues and possible solutions, see, Hall & Pekarek Doehler, 2011; Nguyen, 2017; Pekarek Doehler, 2010; Pekarek Doehler & Berger, 2016). Notwithstanding these ongoing challenges, CA has provided a fruitful direction for L2 pragmatics and can help further expand the field. Below we outline some possible future directions for CA-based L2 pragmatics research. First, CA-based studies have thus far contributed answers to two of the three basic questions in L2 pragmatic acquisition research, namely, what is learned and how it is learned. As a future direction, research in this area can focus on the third question, why something is learned or is not learned. If we take CA’s ethnomethodological position that competence (and non-competence) is concretely and publicly displayed in social interaction (Garfinkel, 2002), by examining learners’ observable modifications of interactional practices, it may be possible to identify the impetuses for learning or non-learning, not as cognitive processes but as locally motivated solutions to interactional problems. Although some CA-based research on pragmatic development and nondevelopment has drawn on exogenous theories as a recourse (e.g., Brouwer & Wagner, 2004; Hellermann, 2008; Karrebæk, 2010; Young & Miller, 2004), more recent studies have begun to adopt this endogenous ethnomethodological standpoint to explain the impetus for learning either explicitly (e.g., Nguyen, 2019) or implicitly (e.g., Hellermann, 2011; Pekarek Doehler & Berger, 2016). Further, a CA approach to L2 pragmatics can also encourage researchers to reflect on fundamental notions of L2 and L2 development. Seen from the multilingual participants’ perspectives, interactional practices deployed in talk may be translingual, intercultural practices, that is, practices that transcend the L1–L2 distinction as participants draw upon whatever resources that are available to accomplish goals (e.g., Firth & Wagner, 2007; see also Chapter 12 in this volume). In response to the recent translingual turn in applied linguistics (Hawkins & Mori, 2018), CA, with its fundamental emphasis on emic perspectives, could contribute to the investigation of when and how the participants distinguish among named languages in ways that are critical to their ongoing activity, and when and how they flexibly assemble linguistic and non-linguistic resources available in situ, disregarding the significance of making such a distinction (e.g., Gafaranga, 1999; Hazel, 2017; Mondada, 2007). Understanding such shifts could also advance our understanding of the impetuses (or lack thereof) for L2 learning. Another area of L2 pragmatics that has been understudied in general and in CA-based research in particular is the investigation of implicature interpretation. So far, L2 pragmatics studies have assessed learner’s understanding of implied meanings by using discrete comprehension tests in an experimental design (e.g., Bouton, 1992; Taguchi, 2007, 2008). In CA, understanding is conceptualized to be observable in talk-in-interaction, and thus evidence of understanding can be obtained through the next-turn proof procedure (Sacks et al., 1974). It would be useful to examine learners’ implicature comprehension as it is at work in real-life conversations, in which learners’ understandings are displayed, claimed, negotiated, and bear visible consequences (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Finally, CA-based L2 pragmatics research can benefit from the incorporation of multimodality and new modes of communication (such as online chat, instant messaging, and social networking) and the expansion of its database to capture the range of pragmatic behaviors in naturally occurring social interaction. Meaning-making, whether in L1 or L2, is not limited to verbal 235

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conduct, but it is intertwined with embodied actions and manipulations of objects and spaces. With promising recent research on embodiment in L2 interaction (Belhiah, 2013; Eskildsen & Wagner, 2015), the field awaits further findings in this area. In addition, as more and more language learning is taking place in computer-mediated communication, researchers have begun to use CA to examine L2 learners’ pragmatic abilities in this environment (see also Chapter 24 and 25 in this volume). For example, González-Lloret (2009) revealed how L2 Spanish learners utilized punctuation marks to initiate repairs and used emoticons and onomatopoeia to initiate and respond to humor in online text chat. In another study, Balaman and Sert (2017) showed how Turkish learners of English became more adept at managing epistemic positioning displays (e.g., requesting and providing clarification, giving collaborative hints, displaying listenership and understanding), which in turn enabled them to accomplish tasks more efficiently. More research is needed to uncover L2 learners’ pragmatic patterns in these new, digitally mediated environments. Lastly, as learners engage in L2 interaction in increasingly diverse contexts, ranging from institutional settings (e.g., Nguyen, 2019, forthcoming) to entertainment (e.g., Piirainen-Marsh, 2011), researchers are compelled to expand their inquiry terrain as well.

Further Reading Have, P. ten. (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications. Written by the original founder of EMCA Wiki (http://emcawiki.net, currently hosted by the International Society for Conversation Analysis), this book offers an accessible introduction to CA’s theoretical roots and fundamental principles as well as the practical process of doing CA, including data collection, transcription, analytical strategies, and the application of CA in other fields. Writing for newcomers, the author introduces new knowledge gently with ample examples and data excerpts. At the same time, core issues in CA are discussed fully and concepts are dealt with thoroughly. This is a must-read for anyone interested in learning how to do CA. Stivers, T., & Sidnell, J. (Eds.). (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. Malden, MA/Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. A monumental reference for CA practitioners, this handbook contains state-of-the-art chapters written by leading authors in the field. Covering from methodological issues to key topics about mundane conversations and talk in institutional contexts, the chapters bring together up-to-date syntheses of CA findings over the years. In a field where, due to the nature of the mode of inquiry, findings are often incremental and accumulative, the handbook provides a comprehensive and coherent overview of what CA is about and what has been accomplished in CA. Wong, J., & Waring, H. Z. (forthcoming). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/EFL teachers (2nd ed.). New York/London: Routledge. Written with teachers of English as a second language in mind, this textbook offers a useful reference of CA topics that are relevant to language teaching. The authors explain key CA concepts clearly and succinctly, with references to classic CA works and with ample data excerpts for illustration. In addition to the main content, each chapter includes pre-reading questions, data analysis tasks, authors’ real-life anecdotes, teaching activities, and post-reading discussion questions. Readers not only learn CA concepts but also how to develop interactional practices for L2 learners. This is a multifaceted, dynamic, and fun book for selfstudy or use in a class with teachers in training.

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16 Corpus Linguistics Approaches to L2 Pragmatics Research Shelley Staples and Julieta Fernández

Introduction Although corpus linguistics has become a central methodology for second language acquisition research, relatively less work has focused on the area of second language (L2) pragmatics. In part, this is related to the fact that there are relatively fewer corpus linguistic studies of pragmatics in general (outside of L2 pragmatics) and fewer spoken than written corpora, meaning that methodologies within corpus linguistics for investigating pragmatics are newer and less well developed (Aijmer & Rühlemann, 2014). As Callies (2013) discusses, the relative lack of corpusbased L2 pragmatics research may also be related to the rather narrow focus of L2 pragmatics research on speech acts, which are difficult to identify (and may not even occur) in large corpus data sets. To explore the current state of corpus-based L2 pragmatics research and posit possibilities for future research, then, this chapter takes a broader view of pragmatic research, including not only speech acts and the challenges faced when identifying them in corpora, but also other aspects such as discourse organization and interactive communication (e.g., discourse markers) that are more commonly found in corpus-based studies, the use of pragmatic markers such as stance features, the use of prosody and non-verbal behavior, the use of formulas for pragmatic purposes (e.g., discourse organization and stance), and functional approaches to corpus linguistics that have implications for research in pragmatics. We begin with an overview of corpus linguistic methodology and corpus-based approaches to pragmatics research and then move to a survey of the corpus-based research focusing on L2 pragmatics followed by a critical reflection on this research. We end with a discussion of future research directions and provide suggestions for further reading.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts A corpus (plural, corpora) is a large, principled collection of texts that are representative of a given domain (register, genre, and situation) of language use (McEnery & Hardy, 2012). Corpus linguistics is primarily a method that includes both quantitative and qualitative analysis of language in a discourse context that employs computational programs for large-scale data analysis (for overviews of corpus linguistic methodology see McEnery, Xiao, & Tono, 2006 and McEnery & Hardy, 2012). Findings from corpus-based analyses of L1 data (and to some extent L2 data) in various registers have been used extensively to inform language teaching, particularly for 241

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vocabulary and grammar in English (see, for example, textbook series such as Touchtones, Focus on Vocabulary, and Grammar and Beyond). To an increasing extent, however, L2 corpora have been also used to investigate L2 pragmatics (e.g., Chen & Baker, 2016; De Felice & Deane, 2012; Hasselgren, 2002). In one sense, a corpus is ideal for studying pragmatics in that corpus compilers (when taking a corpus-linguistic approach) are always concerned with the context in which the language is produced. However, there are a number of limitations to studying pragmatics within corpora, let alone L2 pragmatic development, particularly when traditional pragmatic constructs such as speech acts are the focus. For example, it is not always easy to locate specific speech acts within corpora. There are many variant forms of a given speech act, and speech acts must generally be manually annotated in corpora (although there has been some effort in automatic annotation of speech acts). Corpora are typically created without targeted elicitation, while common research instruments in L2 pragmatics such as discourse completion tasks (DCTs) purposefully elicit participants’ language use, thereby tapping into their introspection, potentially affecting the eventual language use (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). While using corpora has the advantage of allowing researchers to observe the language that writers and speakers use in authentic discourse, it has the disadvantage that a researcher may need to spend long hours identifying or even finding a given speech act. In fact, although a large portion of the research in L2 pragmatics has focused on learners’ performance of speech acts, when it comes to corpus linguistics research in pragmatics analyses, often ‘the starting point is either a discourse particle with a fixed form that can easily be retrieved from a large corpus, or a speech function that is generally realized in a small number of variant patterns’ (Jucker, Schreier, & Hundt, 2009, p. 4). This different emphasis poses both challenges and opportunities in using corpus linguistics to research pragmatics. The challenge of identifying pragmatic aspects of language use within corpora can be addressed in a number of ways. If speech acts are the focus of the analysis, researchers can identify particular registers or genres in which those speech acts are likely to occur. For example, Reinhardt (2007) analyzed a corpus of office hour conversations to examine the use of directives by international teaching assistants (ITAs) since this particular register requires the use of directives due to its situational characteristics (e.g., ITAs often provide students with instructions on completing class assignments). A second way in which corpora can be used to investigate speech acts is to create a corpus in which particular speech acts are elicited through extended and naturalistic role plays. In this way, the corpus is more similar to a DCT in that it can be expected to produce the desired speech act, but unlike many DCTs, they result in more naturalistic data (e.g., there is turn-taking in an unfolding interaction) (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). For example, Staples (2015) investigates expressions of empathy by L2 English speaking nurses in a corpus of nurse–patient interactions that include a scenario in which the patient has just lost her father and her grief is related to some of the health care issues she faces. This scenario was developed by health care professionals to elicit the nurses’ response to the patient’s grief since this is known to be an area of difficulty in L2 pragmatics. Since the power of corpus linguistics is in its ability to identify linguistic and phraseological features, one can begin the analysis with common linguistic features that are known to convey pragmatic functions (e.g., discourse markers, stance markers, vague language) as has been done in many studies of L2 pragmatics (Gilquin, 2008; Hasselgren, 2002; Müller, 2005). Alternatively, after using corpus-based methods to identify frequent linguistic features (e.g., lexico-grammar, formulaic language, or prosody) these formal elements can be examined for their pragmatic functions. While this requires a more bottom-up approach to pragmatics research, it can potentially reveal aspects of pragmatics (such as prosodic patterns used to convey empathy) that are not identified from a top-down approach. Particular methods that are frequently used within more functional approaches to corpus analysis (such as move analysis or multi-dimensional analysis 242

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described below) can also potentially be utilized by pragmatic researchers to identify pragmatic aspects of language use within L2 contexts and thus to investigate L2 pragmatics. The key to corpus-based analysis of pragmatics is to go beyond formal quantitative analysis to identify pragmatic functions of forms in discourse contexts by using qualitative methods. Such an approach has actually been present to some extent in corpus methodology from its beginning, particularly with the examination of concordance lines, which display a keyword in context (KWIC), where the context is the larger discourse environment across a group of interactions/ written texts represented in the corpus. This method allows researchers to examine the pragmatic function of individual lexical or grammatical items within a larger discourse context. Newer tools, such as the freeware program AntConc (Anthony, 2018), allow researchers to toggle back and forth between KWICs and the full written text/transcript of an interaction. Coding schemes for pragmatic functions can then be applied to the emergent patterns within large data sets. In the next section, we focus first on how researchers have investigated speech acts and pragmatic markers in corpora, and then turn to corpus-based studies of prosody and non-verbal behavior that have implications for L2 pragmatics research. Finally, we discuss research on formulaic sequences that can be used to understand pragmatics aspects of language use within discourse.

Survey of the Corpus-Based Studies in L2 Pragmatics Speech Acts and Other Discourse-Level Units in L2 Corpus-Based Research A large portion of the research in L2 pragmatics has focused on learners’ performance of speech acts. In corpus linguistic L2 pragmatics research, we encounter the same challenges that researchers face in identifying speech acts in naturally occurring discourse, but on a much larger scale. Reinhardt (2007) exemplifies some of these challenges, such as how to identify representative strings of language in speech acts (in his case with directive intent, such as ‘must,’ ‘should,’ or ‘have to’) that can be searched and quantified in a corpus. Reinhardt’s study compared directive language use in office hour consultations by instructors who are L1 speakers of American English, as identified in a pre-existing corpus, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) (Simpson, Briggs, Ovens, & Swales, 2002), with those by international teaching assistants (ITAs) in training, using a learner corpus (ITAcorp, a corpus of spoken role-play data) compiled by Reinhardt (2007). Reinhardt found that the ITAs used fewer modal (e.g., ‘you should’) and semi-modal constructions (e.g., ‘you want to’) in their directives in comparison with the L1 speakers in MICASE. Instead, ITAs were found to over-rely on the construction ‘you can.’ As one of the few L2 studies that involve explicit tagging of speech acts, De Felice and Deane (2012) provide a model of how such research might be approached. They used role-play data from a TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) task that elicited an email in response to common workplace situations (e.g., customer complaints). The directions required the inclusion of specific speech acts (e.g., requests). The researchers divided the emails into individual utterances and then manually annotated them for speech acts, using both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Using computational methods, they then trained the tagger to identify and tag speech acts using these guidelines. Their study is noteworthy because it indicates that it is possible to develop an automatic speech-act tagger with fairly high accuracy.

Pragmatic Markers in L2 Corpus-Based Research Pragmatic markers are single or multi-word expressions that are left as signals so that the interlocutor(s) can interpret an utterance (Aijmer, 1996; Müller, 2005). Pragmatic markers ‘signal transitions in the evolving process of the conversation, index the relation of an utterance 243

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to the preceding context, and indicate an interactive relationship between speaker, hearer, and message’ (Fung & Carter, 2007, p. 411). As such, we use the term pragmatic markers (PMs) to include discourse markers (Müller, 2005), ‘smallwords’ (Gilquin, 2008; Hasselgren, 2002), general extenders (Fernández, 2013; Fernández & Yuldashev, 2011), and stance markers (Belz & Vyatkina, 2008; Gablasova & Brezina, 2015). The investigation of PMs has been one of the most fruitful areas of corpus-based studies of L2 pragmatics. In particular, many studies have compared PM use by L1 and L2 speakers and revealed that L2 speakers tend to use PMs less frequently or with less variety than native speakers in similar contexts (e.g., Aijmer, 2004; Fung & Carter, 2007; Gilquin, 2008; Müller, 2005). Müller’s (2005) study on discourse markers using the Giessen-Long Beach Chaplin Corpus (GLBCC) illustrates this approach well. The GLBCC is a spoken corpus of narratives by L1 speakers of American English and German EFL learners. Müller compared the frequency of use and functions of four discourse markers, namely ‘so,’ ‘well,’ ‘you know,’ and ‘like,’ in these two sub-corpora and found differences across the two groups. For example, while the groups used ‘well’ with approximately the same frequency, the German EFL learners used this discourse marker for two functions that were not found in the native speaker data (i.e., to summarize a point and continue talking). Moving away from L1/L2 comparisons, Polat’s (2011) study exemplifies the contribution of longitudinal learner corpora to the study of L2 pragmatic development. Polat interviewed her participant, a Turkish speaker who learned English ‘in the wild,’ over the course of a year, resulting in 24 interactions that she collected into a corpus. She then used AntConc (Anthony, 2018) to investigate changes in frequency of use for three discourse markers, ‘you know,’ ‘like,’ and ‘well,’ comparing her findings with the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE) (Du Bois et al., 2000–2005). Interestingly, the learner did not use ‘well’ at all, even though this is a frequent discourse marker in spoken contexts (Gilquin, 2008). In contrast, he started using ‘you know’ with strikingly higher frequency than found in the SBCSAE, and then his use declined by 50% throughout the year. Polat argued that learners in naturalistic settings might find some discourse markers more difficult to learn and use appropriately than others. Hasselgren (2002) and Gilquin (2008) show the important role that PMs play in L2 fluency. Hasselgren (2002) compared discourse markers and other PMs (which she calls ‘smallwords’) in two learner corpora of L1 Swedish learners of L2 English (intermediate and advanced levels) and a corpus of English L1 speakers. Adopting a relevance theoretical framework (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), she proposed that smallwords constitute a system of ‘prototypical cues’ that serve to facilitate the transfer of communicative intention. Her analysis showed that more fluent L2 speakers were able to employ a wider range of signals using a more native-like range of smallwords (including ‘right,’ ‘all right,’ and ‘well’). Gilquin (2008) investigated the use of smallwords as well as other hesitation phenomena (i.e., pauses, drawls, truncated words, and repetitions), arguing that they are inherent to unplanned interaction and essential in turn taking since speakers use them so as not to relinquish the floor. She compared these features in the French component of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI-FR), a corpus of interviews with L1 French learners of L2 English, with those used in the Louvain Corpus of Native English Conversation (LOCNEC), which contains interviews with L1 speakers of British English. Her results suggest that, while the learners overused silent and filled pauses to indicate hesitation, they used a smaller range of PMs than native speakers, relying largely on ‘well.’ A number of researchers have investigated vague language or general extenders (‘and stuff’), which also function as PMs in spoken discourse (Fernández, 2013; Fernández & Yuldashev, 2011; Hasselgren, 2002). Fernández (2013) used the Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpora (SPLLOC; Mitchell et al., 2006–2010), a rich resource for investigating L2 Spanish use at three proficiency levels (beginning, intermediate, and advanced). She found important register differences in the use of y eso ‘and that’ by the same L2 learners: General extenders were more frequent in dialogic tasks such as pair discussion and interview, and less frequent in monologic tasks such 244

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as narratives. In another study, Fernández and Yuldashev (2011) applied an analysis of general extenders to a synchronous CMC corpus of L1 and L2 English, revealing that L2 speakers used fewer disjunctive (e.g., ‘or something,’ ‘or anything’) and societal general extenders (those that are culturally related such as ‘a huge turkey, gravy, and stuff’). Stance markers, another category of PMs, have received a great deal of attention in corpusbased studies, but mostly in writing, particularly in the work of Ken Hyland (e.g., Hyland, 2004). A smaller number of studies have focused on L2 speech (Belz & Vyatkina, 2008; Gablasova & Brezina, 2015; LaFlair, Staples, & Yan, in press). Gablasova and Brezina (2015), for example, analyzed the interactions in the Trinity Lancaster Corpus (TLC) between native speaker examiners and advanced L2 learners of English (test takers), focusing on adverbial epistemic markers such as ‘actually,’ ‘possibly,’ and ‘sort of.’ The results showed that examiners used a wider range of stance markers and chose different markers (e.g., ‘certainly,’ ‘possibly,’ and ‘sort of’). Examinees used a narrower range of markers (e.g., ‘kind of,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘of course’), but with higher frequency. Belz and Vyatkina (2008) also investigated stance markers but in addition provided evidence of longitudinal development in PM use in L2 German across a period of two months. The Developmental Learner Corpus (DLC) used in the study is a richly documented (or ‘dense’) CMC learner corpus of L1 and L2 English/German interactions. At the beginning of data collection, L2 German learners used four German modal particles (MPs) (ja, den, doch, and mal, which are stance markers) and German pronominal adverbs (da-compounds) less frequently than their L1 German counterparts. The researchers then provided the L2 German learners with instruction on the use of these focal stance markers and pronominal adverbs (see Belz & Vyatkina, 2005 for more details). Toward the end of the exchange the L2 German speakers approximated the L1 German speakers in frequency, and thus demonstrated general ‘appropriateness’ in their pragmatics language use. Finally, Fernández, Gates Tapia, and Lu (2014) moved away from comparison of L2 data with L1 data to investigate the use of two PMs, pues and bueno, in a Spanish learner corpus of oral examinations. The authors compared PM rate of occurrence and functions by examinees (e.g., comment, hesitation, pre-closing, reformulation, reported speech, response, or thematic link marker) at two levels of language proficiency using quantitative and qualitative methods. The results showed that participants at higher levels of proficiency used more PMs and for a wider range of functions than their lower proficiency counterparts.

Multi-modality in L2 Corpus Pragmatics: Prosody and Gesture Prosody is an equally important yet somewhat less explored area within L2 pragmatics research (see also Chapter 6 in this volume). As such, even fewer corpus-based studies have examined the connections between prosody and pragmatics in L2 speech. One of the challenges of examining prosody in discourse is the variability that occurs across different contexts. For this reason, researchers interested in prosody often combine corpus data with more traditional tasks (e.g., text reading) (Gut, 2009; Verdugo & Trillo, 2005). Verdugo and Trillo (2005), for example, examined the prosody of tag questions in dialogues and texts read by L1 Spanish learners of L2 English and L1 English speakers. They found that the L1 Spanish learners overgeneralized the use of rising tone: They used it to express propositional uncertainty, but they also used it in situations where L1 English speakers would use falling tone (e.g., to demand pragmatic confirmation on the part of an interlocutor). One particularly impressive resource is the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (Cheng, Greaves, & Warren, 2008), which implements Brazil’s (1997) discourse intonation framework for prosodic coding (see Chapter 6 in this volume for an explanation of Brazil’s framework). The speakers in the corpus include both Hong Kong Chinese speakers (HKC) and native English speakers (NES). The corpus has been used by its creators, Winnie Cheng and Martin Warren, to provide rich descriptions of how prosody differs across speech acts such as disagreements and 245

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giving advice. They found, for example, that the most common pattern for speakers to use in disagreement was an acknowledgment marker followed by contrastive stress (Cheng & Warren, 2005). Another key factor in understanding prosodic patterns was the rich register variation afforded by their corpus (e.g., classroom teaching, business meetings, and service encounters). Two other corpus-based studies show the importance of examining register in relation to prosodic patterns (Pickering, 2001; Staples, 2015). Pickering (2001) investigated prosodic patterns among three groups of teaching assistants (TAs): L2 English speakers from Outer Circle countries such as China (NNES), L2 English speakers from Inner Circle countries (here, India; IES), and native English speakers from the U.S.A. (NES). Pickering found key differences among the groups, including that IES TAs used more rising tone than NES, resulting in the pragmatic effect of a lack of completion in their statements. Staples (2015) created a corpus of 102 interactions between nurses (52 L2 English and 50 L1 English) and patients (in this case standardized patients, i.e., actors trained to present the same case to nurses in the same way). Her work focused on the sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics of nurse–patient interactions at various linguistic (lexico-grammatical, interactional) and paralinguistic (non-verbal cues as well as prosodic and fluency features) levels. For her prosodic analysis, she focused on important speech acts within the particular interactions she investigated, including greetings and expressions of empathy. Key differences were found in the use of particular prosodic patterns by the L1 and L2 nurses, including pitch range and tone choice on empathetic statements. A lower pitch range on empathetic statements and increased stress on syllables within informational statements were correlated with lower patient satisfaction scores. One implication is that the pragmatic impact of lower pitch range on empathetic statements may be interpreted by an interlocutor as a sign that the speaker does not care or is uninterested in engaging in conversation about issues requiring empathy, such as the recent loss of a loved one. This investigation of prosody in selected speech acts illustrates a way to make more explicit connections between prosody and pragmatics in spoken corpus data. Along with prosody, the use of gestures and other non-verbal elements is also known to play a major role in the understanding of pragmatic communication (Knight, 2011). However, even more than prosody, analysis of non-verbal phenomena is in a fledgling state in corpus-based pragmatic research. Lin (2017) represents a novel use of a multi-modal corpus of interactions between Indian, Taiwanese, and Indonesian L2 speakers of English at three proficiency levels (low intermediate, intermediate, and advanced). Lin coded deictic, iconic, and metaphoric gestures in the 24 hours of data in her corpus and identified the gesture–speech relationship (e.g., reinforcing, integrating, or complementary). She found that higher proficiency level speakers used significantly more gestures that served reinforcing and integrating functions. Lower proficiency level speakers, on the other hand, produced more gestures as complements and other gestures that had no obvious relationship to the verbal content of their speech. Another important resource for multi-modal L2 pragmatics research is the Corpus Español Multimodal de Actos de Habla (COREMAH) (Spanish Corpus of Multimodal Speech Acts) (Vacas Matos, 2017). COREMAH is a fairly recent, pragmatically annotated, small corpus available for download or online search. It consists of 108 video recordings of L2 Spanish participants’ role-plays, totaling 18,737 words. It is divided into three speech acts (compliments, apologies, and refusals) and by Spanish proficiency of the speakers (learners at the intermediate and advanced levels, and native speakers). It is tagged by verbal or non-verbal strategy and can be searched by word or tag.

Formulaic Language in L2 Corpus Pragmatics An area that has received more attention in pragmatics research in recent years is the role of formulaic language. In particular, Bardovi-Harlig (2009; see also Chapter 4 in this volume) discusses the importance of formulaic language (which she refers to as conventionalized language 246

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or conventional expressions) in L2 pragmatic development. Importantly, within studies on L2 pragmatics, researchers focus on the ‘social aspect of use—namely, a speech community’s preference for a particular string’ (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009, p. 757). Since explorations of formulaic language abound in corpus-based studies, the methodology developed in this area can potentially help inform pragmatics research. Of note are the smaller subset of corpus-based studies of formulaic language that have specifically focused on functional analysis of the formulas in a discourse context, often using a top-down coding scheme such as that proposed by Biber, Conrad, and Cortes (2004), which identifies formulaic language in relation to its stance, discourse, and referential functions. For example, ‘I don’t want to’ within the statement ‘So I may not want to see her face to face because I don’t want to deliver bad news to her’ is a stance formula which allows the speaker to frame their own self-motivated wishes and desires. Although Biber, Conrad and Cortes’s (2004) work did not focus on L2 use of formulas, other research has specifically examined the relationship between the use of stance, discourse organizing, and referential formulas and L2 writing at different proficiency levels (Chen & Baker, 2016; Staples, Egbert, Biber, & McLair, 2013; Yan & Staples, 2017). Chen and Baker (2016) provide an especially useful example of this type of research. Importantly, Chen and Baker used both the three macro-categories of formulas (stance, discourse organizing, and referential) as well as micro-categories within these larger categories to examine writing samples evaluated for Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) level (Council of Europe, 2018). For example, within referential functions there are framing, quantification, and time/place/deixis functions. They found that formulas used for quantification (e.g., ‘a lot of’) were used more frequently at lower proficiency levels (CEFR level B1), while formulas used for framing (e.g., ‘the result of this’) were used more frequently at higher proficiency levels (CEFR level C1). Future research could extend such analysis to examination of spoken learner corpora.

Appraisal of the Current Research and Critical Insights As the review of research shows, a growing number of studies have investigated L2 learners’ pragmatics abilities by using corpus linguistic methods. Progress has been somewhat slow given that not many corpus resources have been created for pragmatics research. However, as more corpora are compiled and/or become increasingly available, more corpus-based studies have started to explore L2 learners’ use of different pragmatic features, including speech acts (e.g., Reinhardt, 2007), pragmatic markers (e.g., Fung & Carter, 2007), and prosody (e.g., Pickering, 2001). These studies were able to take a quantitative approach to determining areas in which particular groups of learners struggled with pragmatic competence in naturally occurring discourse. The studies show key differences in the ways in which L2 speakers use pragmatic elements when compared to L1 speakers (Fernández & Yuldashev, 2011; Gilquin, 2008; Müller, 2013; Verdugo & Trillo, 2005). In addition, a number of studies investigated the use of pragmatic markers by L2 speakers in specific contexts (e.g., classroom teaching, office hours, and nurse-patient interaction; Fung & Carter, 2007; Pickering, 2001; Reinhardt, 2007; Staples, 2015) to show that they used language differently from L1 speakers in particular speech acts (e.g., directives, providing rapport, empathetic statements). In some cases, this was shown to have a negative impact on interlocutors (e.g., Staples, 2015). This latter finding in particular shows perhaps one advantage of investigating pragmatics quantitatively in discourse contexts that are naturally occurring or intentionally simulating naturally occurring contexts (through extended role play). A smaller set of studies was able to link use of pragmatic features to higher proficiency levels of L2 learners (Chen & Baker, 2016; Fernández, Gates Tapia, & Xu, 2014; Hasselgren, 2002; Yan & Staples, 2017). In particular, pragmatic markers (e.g., ‘right’ and ‘well’ in English and 247

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pues and bueno in Spanish) were found to be used more frequently and with more variety at higher proficiency levels in spoken discourse. However, overt stance features (e.g., ‘my opinion is,’ ‘should not’) were used less at higher proficiency levels in writing. These findings show the ability for corpus-based studies to reveal clear patterns of pragmatic use on both quantitative and qualitative levels. Finally, two studies specifically investigated longitudinal development of pragmatic markers (Belz & Vyatkina, 2008; Polat, 2011). The small number of studies in this area reflects the difficulties in building longitudinal learner corpora. Small sample size in these studies (only one participant in Polat’s study and only two in Belz & Vyatkina’s study, although the larger corpus contained 16 students) introduces limitations that are usually less pronounced in corpus-based studies. However, these studies showed the emergence of pragmatic markers as well as the ebb and flow of pragmatic marker use over time in naturally occurring discourse by different learners. More and more robust longitudinal corpora are needed. As can be seen from the studies focused on the identification of speech acts reported above, corpora used for this type of research are often developed as extended role plays (De Felice & Deane, 2012; Reinhardt, 2007; Staples, 2015). This provides a model for how researchers can ­balance the desire for more authentic data in which to investigate speech acts and the ability to locate speech acts of interest in the corpus. Somewhat related to this, research in the area of corpus pragmatics often draws on smaller corpora, given the longstanding interest in the type of individualized data that requires a manual, one-by-one analysis of speech functions (Jucker et al., 2009). This also often stems from the fact that, as argued by Walsh (2013), smaller corpora (50,000 to 100,000 words) are likely to be context-specific, that is, ‘recorded in a single, ­homogeneous context and used in response to a particular question or problem’ (p. 102). Thus, pragmatics researchers new to corpus-based methods may want to approach corpus-based ­analysis through the development of smaller corpora or by using a subset data from a larger corpus. Although the potential for corpus-based studies of PMs is well attested and there are numerous models of how corpora can be used to investigate PMs, much of the research in this area begins from language that is frequently used by L1 speakers to identify whether or not those markers are used by L2 speakers. The focus on what is frequently produced by native speakers ‘can be at the expense of developing knowledge of what is possible and appropriate’ (Cook, 1999, p. 65). The research on formulaic language within corpus linguistics, particularly those studies with an emphasis on the functions of these formulas, have potential for a more bottom-up approach to L2 pragmatics. However, the existing coding schemes such as Biber, Conrad, and Cortes (2014) would benefit from more nuanced approaches that could be better informed by pragmatic theories and existing analytic coding schemes. For example, Biber, Conrad, and Cortes (2014) have a small section at the end of their framework for ‘special conversational functions,’ which include ‘politeness,’ ‘simple inquiry,’ and ‘reporting’ (p. 388). However, this category could be expanded to include other speech acts identified in pragmatic literature. In addition, the majority of the current corpus linguistics work in this area is focused on writing, so more emphasis on L2 spoken learner corpora is needed.

Conclusion and Future Directions In conclusion, corpus linguistic research on L2 pragmatics shows the usefulness in using corpora for understanding L2 speakers’ and writers’ use of pragmatic markers, speech acts, and prosodic cues for pragmatic functions on both quantitative and qualitative levels within extended and naturally occurring discourse. However, much more work in this area is needed, and thus this section focuses on key areas in which corpus linguistic researchers can focus in order to advance research in L2 pragmatics. 248

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Annotation for Speech Acts and Other Pragmatic Phenomena As discussed above, very few corpora are annotated for speech acts, which makes the work of an individual researcher time consuming. Those that have targeted speech acts have focused on native speaker corpora (e.g., Garcia, 2007; Koester, 2002), with the exception of De Felice and Deane (2012), described above. Tools such as Martin Weisser’s Dialogue Annotation and Research Tool (DART; Weisser, 2014b) can be used to automatically identify conventionalized speech acts (e.g., greetings), dialogue-managing speech acts (e.g., acknowledgment markers), and information-seeking (e.g., wh-questions asking for information), but these tools have yet to be applied to L2 data. Weisser (2014a; see also Weisser, 2018) provides a useful overview of the capabilities of DART, and compares it with other models from computational linguistics such as DAMSL (explained below; see Jurafsky, 2006). For example, DART automatically codes a question as wh- or yes/no and then provides options to the user for further pragmatic coding based on those structures (request for information, request for directive, and suggest are all options for wh- questions while the first two are the only options for yes/no questions). When a speech act is automatically assigned by the program, the researcher can still interact easily with the program to manually correct tags as needed. Another method commonly employed in corpus-based research that seems fruitful for L2 pragmatics researchers is to code for larger pragmatic units such as moves (Swales, 1990) and phases (a term used within conversation analytic frameworks; see ten Have, 1989). In move analysis, pragmatic units (e.g., identifying a niche or gap within introductions of research articles) are identified (manually), and then the language used within each move can be explored through automatic methods, usually part of speech tagging (e.g., Kanoksilapatham, 2007). Although less commonly applied to spoken discourse, researchers can similarly start by identifying larger phases (e.g., openings and closings) within which specific speech acts can be explored. For example, Staples (2015) manually divided the L1 and L2 English speaking nurse-patient interactions in her corpus into different phases such as openings, closings, examination phase, and counseling phase. She then automatically identified lexico-grammatical features such as first person pronouns and prediction modals (e.g., ‘I’m going to …’ or ‘I’ll …’). These features were used differently by the L1 and L2 nurses, and also varied depending on the phase in which they were found (e.g., to promote rapport in the exam phase and to indicate the doctor and nurses’ next actions in the counseling phase). These differences had important implications for the degree of ‘patient centeredness’ within the interactions, with L2 nurses tending to use more provider-centered language while L1 English speaking nurses tended to use more patient-centered language. Such work can be seen as a possible middle ground that can allow researchers to identify pragmatic functions within speech and writing but does not necessarily require the coding of individual utterances/sentences.

Prosodic and Non-verbal Phenomena The studies described here show important steps in the area of the prosody–pragmatics interface, but much more needs to be done in this area. Part of the reason for limited work in prosody relates to the limitations of automatic extraction of suprasegmental features from speech files. Important strides have been made in this area for features such as speech rhythm and fluency, but most studies using automatic segmentation of suprasegmental features have relied on read speech, which is not helpful for pragmatics research (e.g., Ferrenge, 2013). A mixture of automated and manual coding seems promising for identifying prosodic features in naturally occurring data (see, e.g., the C-ORAL-ROM project, Cresti & Moneglia, 2005). However, it is not clear how accurate semi-automated systems might be for L2 learner data. Gut (2009), for example, chose to use manual annotation for all suprasegmental elements of the LeaP corpus. For this reason, 249

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it is suggested that researchers first identify either speech acts or larger units of analysis such as phases performing a pragmatic act. In this way, similar to the work of Staples (2015), researchers can narrow down portions of the interaction that may be particularly pragmatically interesting and focus the prosodic analysis in that area. Finally, there is a need for more longitudinal corpora that contain prosodic annotation, to allow for examination of pragmatic development. Although there have been minimal explorations of non-verbal behavior and its relation to pragmatics in L2 corpora (Lin, 2017 and Vacas Matos, 2017 above; see also Staples, 2015), within corpus-based studies as a whole, research on non-verbal behaviors has started to take off (e.g., Knight, 2011; Knight & Adolphs, 2008). Knight and Adolphs (2008), for example, explored the use of head nods defined on five types: small (nonchalant) nods of short duration, small (nonchalant) multiple nods of longer duration, intense nods of short duration, intense and multiple nods of longer duration, and multiple nods, comprising a combination of the other types and of longer duration. They showed that the first type of nods were associated with information receipt, while the second type were associated with convergence. This research indicates the importance of investigating gesture for understanding pragmatic aspects of language use and provides an example of a fine-grained approach. Knight (2011) in her much more extensive discussion of multi-modal corpora also presents a study on the reliability of automated tracking of head movements in relation to backchanneling behavior. Based on her analysis, it seems that the program, Head Tracker, was good at recall (when a head nod occurred that was signaling backchanneling behavior, the automated tracking system caught it). However, it was not very precise (e.g., It annotated many more head nods than were coded manually as backchanneling behavior). Thus, at this point, as with prosodic and speech act analysis, it seems best if the researcher can interact with an automated system for semi-automated processing. Using a combination of automatic and manual coding will undoubtedly speed up the process from complete manual coding and thus shows promise for future research.

Multidimensional Approaches to Pragmatics Research The work on multimodality highlights the importance of considering all levels of linguistic and paralinguistic cues that contribute to pragmatic functions within texts. Moving farther away from traditional pragmatics research, we also introduce here a methodology common within corpus linguistics that allows researchers to examine functional aspects of language use through constellations of linguistic elements, namely multi-dimensional analysis (MDA; Biber, 1988). MDA takes as its starting point the notion that individual linguistic features are not used in isolation but work in concert to convey (pragmatic) functions such as rapport in interpersonal relationships or stance towards ideational propositions. Although most MDA studies have focused on L1 rather than L2 use, there is a growing body of research that shows the value of such an approach for identifying functional aspects of L2 use across proficiency levels (Biber, Gray, & Staples, 2016; LaFlair & Staples, 2017; Weigle & Friginal, 2015; Yan & Staples, 2017). For example, instead of investigating individual stance markers (or other PMs), the impact of a collection of linguistic forms used to express stance often emerge as a single dimension in MDA (e.g., first person pronouns, mental verbs, and complement clauses like ‘I think that …’). Generally speaking, we can categorize the use of stance into more overt approaches which use the features described above and less overt ways of expressing stance which use stance nouns and noun complement clauses (e.g., ‘the argument is that …’ or ‘the fact that …’) (Gray & Biber, 2015). Gray and Biber (2015) showed that these less overt (more indirect) stance expressions are more common in academic writing, while more overt expressions are more often found in speech. In terms of L2 use, there is evidence that writers at lower levels of proficiency use more overt approaches, while less overt approaches are used more frequently by more proficient L2 writers (Yan & Staples, 2017). 250

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Although MD approaches have been used since the late 1980s, they have focused almost exclusively only on lexico-grammatical features, since the focus of analysis has primarily been writing. Future MDA work can accommodate prosodic, interactional, and multimodal features within spoken discourse, which can enable researchers to identify functional elements that account for the multi-modal aspects of pragmatics. For example, the expression of attitudes, possibilities, and evaluations (stance) has been shown in previous MD studies to contain various lexical and grammatical characteristics, but we know that stance can also be expressed through intonation and stress patterns. An MDA that contains prosodic features thus could help identify the constellation of features that contribute to expressions of stance. In order to conduct MDA, however, researchers must have the skills to identify linguistic phenomena at numerous levels and also the ability to use appropriate statistical procedures (i.e., factor analysis, a type of multivariate analysis). Thus, it requires a high level of linguistic training as well as statistical knowledge. In another effort to integrate multiple variables into the investigation of speech acts, computational linguists have also developed speech act models such as Dialogue Act Markup in Several Layers (DAMSL; see, Jurafsky, 2006) which combine lexical, syntactic, discourse, and prosodic cues to identify ‘dialog acts,’ which code individual utterances according to pragmatic function such as agreements, appreciations, or requests (Stolcke et al., 2000). As Weisser (2014a) indicates, there are limitations to the DAMSL system, which make it difficult for practical use. In addition, unlike DART (Dialogue Annotation and Research Tool; Weisser, 2014a), it does not have a graphical user interface, which means that non-programmers will be hard pressed to use DAMSL. Similar to many tools for examining pragmatics in naturally occurring discourse, DAMSL has also not been applied to L2 data so the accuracy is questionable. However, the principles of DAMSL provide promising steps towards capturing the multi-dimensional aspects of pragmatic language use.

Integration of Technology Enhanced Language Learning and Corpus Pragmatics Finally, an area that has not been explored a great deal but which seems encouraging is the use of L2 corpora in technology-enhanced teaching of L2 pragmatics. As Taguchi and Sykes (2013) indicate, technology-enhanced approaches to SLA are of great interest to teachers, and with the growth of mobile applications, digital games, and geolocation in language teaching, there is an opportunity to investigate these new modes of language production and learning with corpusbased approaches. The affordances of technology for L2 pragmatics research discussed by Taguchi and Sykes (2013) include capturing difficult aspects of pragmatic performance (such as fluency and, as we discussed above, prosody), recording data from a large group of participants, and conducting automated computer-based analyses of large amounts of texts. Many of these affordances are shared with corpus-based approaches but have yet to be combined productively with newer technologies (mobile apps, games, etc.) for L2 pragmatic feedback (especially sociopragmatic feedback). We suggest that this area is ripe for future investigation of L2 pragmatic development and, along with the creation of more multi-modal corpora, we see this as a promising direction for future L2 corpus pragmatic research. For example, using a place-based mobile game (such as Mentira, see Holden & Sykes, 2013), a language teacher could build a dense, longitudinal, multimodal corpus of all of the interactions between a learner and characters in the game in order to draw learners’ attention to their own language production, accompanied with some form of self-assessment that would allow learners to reflect on their own intentions at the time of production (Ishihara & Cohen, 2010). This corpus-based approach would allow learners and teachers to focus on the pragmatic consequences of the learners’ choices, particularly their use of language in interactions with characters within the game. 251

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Further Reading Aijmer, K., & Rühlemann, C. (2014). Corpus pragmatics: A handbook. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. An important volume for understanding how pragmatic research can be conducted using corpus-based methodology. The handbook covers corpus-based research on speech acts, pragmatic markers, evaluation, reference, turn-taking, and other pragmatic principles. However, there is virtually no discussion of the use of corpus pragmatics for examining L2 data or L2 pragmatic development. Of particular interest is the chapter describing the large study of corpus-based analysis of speech acts conducted by Garcia (2007), which provides a model of how manual coding can be used at an initial stage followed by automated analysis. The chapter discussing pragmatic annotation of speech acts by Weisser provides a helpful overview of existing tools for such endeavors as well as their limitations. Granger, S., Gilquin, G., & Meunier, F. (Eds.). (2015). The Cambridge handbook of learner corpus research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. This new volume provides an important overview for researchers interested in conducting corpus research with L2 data. The handbook introduces readers to important considerations in collecting and building learner corpora, and provides examples of various corpus methodologies that can be applied to L2 data. It also contains information on annotation of spoken corpora. Particularly notable is the chapter on corpus pragmatics and the section on learner corpus research and SLA, which include discussion of formulaic language and developmental patterns in learner corpora more generally.

References Aijmer, K. (1996). Conversational routines in English: Convention and creativity. London: Longman. Aijmer, K. (2004). Pragmatic markers in spoken interlanguage. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 3(1), 159–172. Aijmer, K., & Rühlemann, C. (2014). Corpus pragmatics: A handbook. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Anthony, L. (2018). AntConc (Version 3.5.6) [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Retrieved on April 27, 2018, from http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2009). Conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource: Recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Language Learning, 59(4), 755–795. Belz, J. A., & Vyatkina, N. (2005). Learner corpus analysis and the development of L2 pragmatic competence in networked inter-cultural language study: The case of German modal particles. Canadian Modern Language Review/ Revue Canadienne des Langues Vivantes, 62(1), 17–48. Belz, J. A., & Vyatkina, N. (2008). The pedagogical mediation of a developmental learner corpus for classroom-based language instruction. Language Learning and Technology, 12(3), 33–52. Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at …: Lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 371–405. Biber, D., Gray, B., & Staples, S. (2016). Predicting patterns of grammatical complexity across textual task types and proficiency levels. Applied Linguistics, 37(5), 639–668. Brazil, D. (1997). The communicative value of intonation in English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Callies, M. (2013). Advancing the research agenda of interlanguage pragmatics: The role of learner corpora. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2013: New domains and methodologies (pp. 9–36). New York: Springer. Chen, Y., & Baker, P. (2016). Investigating criterial discourse features across second language development: Lexical bundles in rated learner essays, CEFR B1, B2 and C1. Applied Linguistics, 37(6), 849–880. Cheng, W., Greaves, D., & Warren, M. (2008). A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cheng, W. & Warren, M. (2005). //→ well I have a DIFferent //↘ THINking you know//: Disagreement in Hong Kong business discourse: A corpus-driven approach. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini & M. Gotti (Eds.), Asian business discourse(s) (pp. 241–270). Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Cook, G. (1999). Communicative competence. In K. Johnson & H. Johnson (Eds.), Encyclopedic dictionary of applied linguistics (pp. 62–68). Oxford: Blackwell. Council of Europe (2018). Common European framework of reference (CEFR). Retrieved on April 27, 2018, from https​://ww​w.coe​.int/​en/we​b/com​mon-e​urope​an-fr​amewo​rk-re​feren​ce-la​nguag​es/ 252

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Cresti, E., & Moneglia, M. (2005). C-ORAL-ROM: Integrated reference corpora for spoken romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. De Felice, R., & Deane, P. (2012). Identifying speech acts in e-mails: Toward automated scoring of the TOEIC® E-Mail Task. ETS research report no. RR-12-16. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Du Bois, J. W., Chafe, W. Meyer, C., Thompson, S.A., Englebretson, R., & Martey, N. (2000–2005). Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English, Parts 1–4. Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium. Fernández, J. (2013). A corpus-based study of vague language use by learners of Spanish in a study abroad context. In C. Kinginger (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad (pp. 299–332). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fernández, J., Gates Tapia, A., & Lu, X. (2014). Oral proficiency and pragmatic marker use in L2 spoken Spanish: The case of pues and bueno. Journal of Pragmatics, 74, 150–164. Fernández, J., & Yuldashev, A. (2011). Variation in the use of general extenders and stuff in instant messaging interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(10), 2610–2626. Ferrenge, E. (2013). Automatic suprasegmental parameter extraction in learner corpora. In A. DíazNegrillo, N. Ballier & P. Thompson (Eds.). Automatic treatment and analysis of learner corpus data (pp. 151–168). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fung, L., & Carter, R. (2007). Discourse markers and spoken English: Native and learner use in pedagogic settings. Applied Linguistics, 28(3), 410–439. Gablasova, D. & Brezina, V. (2015). Does speaker role affect the choice of epistemic adverbials in L2 speech? Evidence from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2015 (pp. 117–136). New York: Springer. Garcia, P. (2007). Pragmatics in academic contexts: A spoken corpus study. In M. C. Campoy & M. J. Luzón (Eds.), Spoken corpora in applied linguistics (pp. 97–126). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Gray, B., & Biber, D. (2015). Stance markers. In K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann (Eds.), Corpus pragmatics: A handbook (pp. 219–248). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilquin, G. (2008). Hesitation markers among EFL learners: Pragmatic deficiency or difference? In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Pragmatics and corpus linguistics: A mutualistic entente (pp. 119–149). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gut, U. (2009). Non-native speech: A corpus-based analysis of phonological and phonetic properties of L2 English and German. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Hasselgren, A. (2002). Learner corpora and language testing: Smallwords as markers of learner fluency. In S. Granger, J. Hung, & S. Petch-Tyson (Eds.), Computer learner corpora, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching (pp. 143–173). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Have, P. ten. (1989). The consultation as genre. In B. Torode (Ed.), Text and talk as social practice: Discourse difference and division in speech and writing (pp. 115–135). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris Publications. Holden, C. & Sykes, J. (2013). Complex L2 pragmatic feedback via place-based mobile games. In N. Taguchi & J. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 155–184). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hyland, K. (2004). Patterns of engagement: Dialogic features and L2 undergraduate writing. In L. Ravelli & R. A. Ellis (Eds.), Analyzing academic writing (pp. 5–23). London, UK: Continuum. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. New York: Routledge. Jucker, A., Schreier, D., & Hundt, M. (Eds.). (2009). Corpora: Pragmatics and discourse. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi. Jurafsky, D. (2006). Pragmatics and computational linguistics. In L. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (pp. 578–604). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Kanoksilapatham, B. (2007). Rhetorical moves in biochemistry research articles. In D. Biber, U. Connor, & T. Upton (Eds.), Discourse on the move: Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure (pp. 73–119). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Knight, D. (2011). Multimodality and active listenership: A corpus approach. New York: Continuum. Knight, D., & Adolphs, S. (2008). Multi-modal corpus pragmatics: The case of active listenership. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Pragmatics and corpus linguistics: A mutualistic entente (pp. 175–190). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Koester, A. J. (2002). The performance of speech acts in workplace conversations and the teaching of communicative functions. System, 30(2), 167–184. LaFlair, G., & Staples, S. (2017). Using corpus linguistics to examine the extrapolation inference: A case study of a high stakes speaking assessment. Language Testing, 34(4), 451–475. LaFlair, G., Staples, S., & Yan, X. (in press). Connecting corpus linguistics and assessment. In J. Egbert & P. Baker (Eds.), Using corpus methods to triangulate linguistic analysis. New York: Routledge. 253

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Lin, Y. L. (2017). Co-occurrence of speech and gestures: A multimodal corpus linguistic approach to intercultural interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 117, 155–167. McEnery, T., & Hardy, A. (2012). Corpus linguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McEnery, T., Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus linguistics: Method, theory and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, R., Dominguez, L., Myles, F., Arche, M., Marsden, E., & Tracy-Ventura, N. (2006–2010). Spanish Language Learner Oral Corpora (SPLLOC). Retrieved on April 27, 2018, from http://www.splloc.soton. ac.uk/index.html Müller, S. (2005). Discourse markers in native and non-native English discourse. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pickering, L. (2001). The role of tone choice in improving ITA communication in the classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 35(2), 233–255. Polat, B. (2011). Investigating acquisition of discourse markers through a developmental learner corpus. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 3745–3756. Reinhardt, J. (2007). Directives usage by ITAs: An applied learner corpus analysis (unpublished doctoral dissertation). The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Simpson, R. C., Briggs, S. L., Ovens, J., & Swales, J. M. (2002). The Michigan corpus of academic spoken English. Ann Arbor, MI: The Regents of the University of Michigan. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Staples, S. (2015). The discourse of nurse-patient interactions: Contrasting the communicative styles of U.S. and international nurses. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Staples, S., Egbert, J., Biber, D., & McClair, A. (2013). Formulaic sequences and academic writing development: Lexical bundles in the TOEFL iBT writing section. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(3), 214–225. Stolke, A., Ries, K., Coccaro, N., & Shriberg, E. (2000). Dialogue act modeling for automatic tagging and recognition of conversational speech. Computational Linguistics, 26(3), 339–373. Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taguchi, N.,& Sykes, J. (2013). Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Vacas Matos, M. (2017). COREMAH (Corpus Español Multimodal de Actos de Habla). Retrieved on April 27, 2018, from http://www.coremah.com Verdugo, D. R., & Trillo, J. R. (2005). The pragmatic function of intonation in L2 discourse: English tag questions used by Spanish speakers. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(2), 151–168. Walsh, S. (2013). Classroom discourse and teacher development. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Weigle, S. C., & Friginal, E. (2015). Linguistic dimensions of impromptu test essays compared with successful student disciplinary writing: Effects of language background, topic, and L2 proficiency. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 18, 25–39. Weisser, M. (2014a). Speech act annotation. In K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann (Eds.), Corpus pragmatics: A handbook (pp. 84–113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weisser, M. (2014b). Manual for the dialogue annotation & research tool (DART). Retrieved on April 27, 2018, from http:​//mar​tinwe​isser​.org/​publi​catio​ns/DA​RT_ma​nual.​pdf Weisser, M. (2018). How to do corpus pragmatics on pragmatically annotated data. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Yan, X., & Staples, S. (2017). Investigating lexico-grammatical complexity as construct validity evidence for the ECPE writing tasks: A multidimensional analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: Cambridge Michigan Language Assessment Research Reports.

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17 Systemic Functional Linguistics and L2 Pragmatics Marianna Ryshina-Pankova

Introduction Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language that focuses on how language functions and is structured to function to make meaning and achieve communicative goals in social contexts. Complementing the structural perspective on language that is concerned with how the elements are ordered together (syntagmatic view), this theory gives priority to the paradigmatic conceptualization of language as a system of choices, where each choice has meaning against the system of other options that are not selected. The aim of the chapter is to bring together the two fields—SFL and L2 pragmatics and demonstrate how SFL can enable new perspectives, reveal less explored research foci, and offer different methodological tools which would lead to further insights about the nature of L2 learning, communicative competence, and effective instruction. The chapter begins with a discussion of the commonalities between the two fields. Then, it presents some unique aspects of the systemic functional theory that can help enrich our understanding of L2 pragmatics. The theoretical overview is followed by a review of SFL-based studies of L2 performance and development that shows what, precisely, SFL can reveal about L2 pragmatics. The chapter concludes with applications of the SFL-based approach to instruction that aims to foster L2 pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence, as well as suggestions for future research.

Commonalties Between the Frameworks of SFL and Pragmatics In contrast to the formalist approaches to language, both pragmatics and SFL share a fundamental interest in investigating language in terms of its use as meaning-making in social contexts. The primary concern of Michael Halliday, the founder of SFL, with the questions of ‘how can we characterize a text in its relation to its context of situation?’ and ‘how do we get from the situation to the text?’ (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, p.12) can be compared to what Stalker (1989) calls a ‘general agreement’ with regard to the definition of pragmatics as: a system of rules which defines the relationship of meaning to the contexts in which it occurs, that is, it matches functions with particular language choices in particular contexts. (Stalker, 1989, p. 184, cited in Timpe Laughlin, Wain, & Schmidgall, 2015)

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The questions posed by Halliday and Stalker’s broad characterization of pragmatics assume a dialectic relationship between language use and the context in which it occurs and emphasize the importance of analyzing and describing this relationship. With regard to the study of L2 learning and production, an overview of various L2 pragmatics models led Timpe Laughlin et al., (2015) to formulate three principles that underlie L2 pragmatic competence: (1) language use as making meaning and expressing intentions; (2) the interactive and co-constructed nature of communication; and (3) the fundamental role of context, which includes participants and relationships between them, and institutional and cultural settings as a point of reference for language use. At the same time, Timpe Laughlin et al. conclude that the reviewed theoretical models view these principles as the background of pragmatic ability, ‘the necessary underpinnings and conditions for the generation of pragmatic meaning’ (p. 15), while pragmatic competence is ‘also a fundamental component of the language ability’ (p. 15), that is, it includes the ability to use grammatical, lexical, and discourse organizational resources for performing particular speech acts, registers, dialects, and genres. While the framework derived by Timpe Laughlin et al. through incorporation of the various theories, models, and principles synthesizes pragmatic competence into various interrelated components, the question about specific principles of relating the sociopragmatic elements, as aspects of context and intended meanings and purposes, to the pragmalinguistic ones, as grammatical, lexical, or discourse structures, remains open. In other words, while the components identified seem to be encompassing, the relations between the components stays untheorized. In specifying salient elements of context and delineating ways they relate to the systems of lexis and grammar there lies a unique contribution of the SFL theory to our understanding of pragmatics (and its extension to L2 pragmatics) as ‘the study of language from the point of view of 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 other participants in the act of communication’ (Crystal, 1997, p. 301). Most importantly, in SFL, context is not just in the background of pragmatic meaning-making, and it does not precede it. Rather, it is theorized as a stratum in the model of language where the social and the linguistic are sides of the same coin: the social being encoded through the linguistic and the linguistic activated by the social.

Connecting Language, Communicative Functions, and Contextual Factors in SFL Halliday’s theory of language as social semiotic, i.e., as language signs creating meaning within a social system and in turn being shaped by it, theorizes language as a stratum in a multilayered model that consists of the contextual, the semantic, and the lexicogrammatical (the term used in SFL to emphasize the continuity between lexis or vocabulary and grammar or syntax) levels (Figure 17.1). The contextual layer is divided into the context of culture represented by genres as purposeful staged communicative actions; and the context of situation that is described as a configuration of three most salient dimensions: field of discourse as the nature of activity or subject matter, tenor or participants, their roles and relationships, and mode as the role language plays in the situation. At the semantic level, field-construing meanings are referred to as the ideational metafunction (how we render and reflect on reality around us and inside us), tenor-construing meanings relate to the interpersonal metafunction (how we relate to and act on others), and mode-construing meanings concern the textual metafunction (how we organize ideational and interpersonal meanings in a structured way through oral, written, or hybrid texts). The two contextual strata, the semantic layer with metafunctions and the stratum of lexicogrammar, are connected to each other through the process of realization (Figure 17.1), ‘whereby different orders of abstraction 256

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Context: Genre

Context: Register: field, tenor, mode Context: Semantics ideational, interpersonal, textual meanings Context: Lexicogrammar transitivity, mood, modality, theme

Expression: Phonology

Expression: Phonetics

Figure 17.1 SFL model of language as social semiotic (adapted from Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014).

“re-present” the “same information”’ (Hasan, 2012, p. 268). In particular, genres are realized through situational combinations of field, tenor, mode; these activate particular ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings, which get enacted lexicogrammatically, and ultimately through phonology or graphology. Systemic functional grammar (SFG) further specifies which language system enacts which aspect of context. For example, tenor and interpersonal meanings are encoded in lexicogrammar through the choices in the systems of mood (indicating interactional roles like giving information through a declarative or demanding it through an interrogative), modality (modifying interactions by the degree of probability, usuality, or obligation/inclination, for example, through modal verbs), and evaluation (as when expressing affect, judgment, or appreciation); field and ideational meanings are realized through transitivity, as choice of participants, processes, and circumstances; and mode and textual meanings are encoded through the system of theme/rheme (the start of the clause, its point of departure) and cohesion devices (for example, conjunctions). To illustrate, the situation of cooking activates the ideational meanings related to food and manipulations with it, combined with an expert to non-expert relationship between participants, and interpersonal meanings of offering formal instructions occurring in written mode, where language plays a constitutive role. These are realized through the genre of recipe with its textual episodes of ‘ingredients,’ ‘instructions,’ and often ‘serving suggestions,’ and verbs that take the initial or thematic position in the clause and nouns related to cooking (mix the dough), adverbs of time (first, then), place (in the bowl), and manner (thoroughly), additive conjunctions to show sequence (and), and the grammatical system of mood (imperative). 257

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Connecting Language Use to Language System, Performance to Competence Not only does the SFL framework specify the relationship between the structures of context and semantics and the structures of language, it also revises the common conceptualization of the relationship between the language system and language use as two opposites. Rejecting the understanding of langue and parole as two binaries, Halliday posits them on the continuum and in the relation of instantiation: The language system as the potential is actualized in the instances of language use. They are not opposites but ‘two points of existence of the “same” phenomenon’ (Hasan, 2012, p. 269), ’two states in the natural life of linguistic elements, one of having “become” (part of a system), and the other on the way to “becoming” (part of a system)’ (Hasan, 2012, p. 270). The only way to describe the system that is just an idealized theoretical concept is by describing all specific instances of language use. Since it is impossible to do that, the theory proposes an interim category of instance type or genre that is specific enough to enable description of language resources of a concrete contextualized instance yet abstract enough for this description to apply to other instances of the same type, i.e., social activities that are enacted through language use that occurs recurrently in similar situational and cultural contexts. Such theorization of language presents pragmatics and pragmatic competence, as the study of contextualized language use, at the center and as the substance of linguistic inquiry, rather than as a separate skill that supplements what we call ‘knowing a language.’

Implications of SFL for the Study of L2 Learning and Use The SFL model of language described above contributes to the study of pragmatics in general and L2 pragmatics in particular, as it provides the following affordances for applied linguistic research. With regard to identifying pragmatic meanings, the SFL framework makes new phenomena visible in three interrelated ways. First, the interest in interpersonal meanings, the traditional focus of research in pragmatics, now extends to ideational and textual meanings that can be included as important areas of investigation of meaning-making in use. Second, the study of face-to-face oral social encounters can be complemented by the research of other communicative contexts that include interaction enacted through the written or hybrid (e.g., computer-mediated communication) modes. Consequently, the traditional unit of analysis in L2 pragmatics—decontextualized discrete speech acts (see the pervasive preference for choosing them as the focus in Timpe Laughlin et al., 2015)—can now be supplemented by the more encompassing focus on discourse and genre. Seeing any language use in terms of participation in contextualized interpersonal interactive discourse moves the research inquiry beyond the focus on oral dialogic encounters commonly examined in L2 pragmatics and toward exploration of a variety of genres, including the literacy ones. And third, from the perspective of form, rather than randomly identifying certain linguistic resources that are seen as typically contributing to pragmatic meaning-making (for example, personal pronouns, particles, qualifiers, or tag questions), SFG delineates in a systematic way connections between networks of choices within various lexicogrammatical systems and structures of context. In this sense, it enables one to discover new target pragmatic constructs, in line with Taguchi’s call to ‘expand the scope of target pragmatic features’ (Taguchi, 2015, p. 38) and identify those that are specific of particular languages. Thus, SFL provides applied linguists with a powerful analytic instrument for a detailed description of linguistic resources that are used for contextualized meaning-making, enacting language users’ intentions, communication goals, and interpersonal relationships. To conclude this section, a more encompassing approach to what constitutes pragmatic language use, a different view of how it relates to linguistic competence, and a thoroughly delineated 258

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system of lexicogrammatical resources enacting pragmatic meanings offer new opportunities for detailing the nature of L2 pragmatic competence and its development. Explicitly connecting the sociopragmatic and the pragmalinguistic aspects, the SFL model views L2 pragmatic competence as an ability to function in a broad range of social contexts through verbal interaction by choosing from a variety of resources with the awareness of the function and communicative purpose that they encode. Development of this competence is unlikely to be fully complete due to the difficulty of gaining exposure to and participation in the totality of all cultural contexts. Finally, connecting pragmatic competence to oral or written communication, as encoding of culturally determined situationally contextualized social processes in patterned texts, and defining L2 development in terms of the ability to produce such texts in an increasing range of contexts have important implications for teaching L2 pragmatics. Beyond instructional approaches that focus on directly interactional language (e.g., speech acts) and successfully prepare students for personal and transactional communication in the target culture (see a review of the effective instructional approaches in Taguchi, 2015; see also Chapter 19 in this volume), other approaches to pedagogy, such as in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or genre-based curricula, become visible as pragmatics-oriented and can be further researched for their contribution to sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic learning.

Investigating L2 Pragmatic Meaning-Making and Development Through SFL Across Contexts This section first points out a typical methodology, research assumptions, and procedures common to SFL-based research and lists instructional contexts where it has been conducted. It then provides the reader with an overview of studies and their findings that demonstrate the contribution of SFL to the investigation of L2 learning and use with regard to three types of pragmatic meaning making: interpersonal, ideational, and textual.1

Methodological Aspects and Research Contexts The typical research method that characterizes SFL-based studies involves collecting learnerproduced spoken and written texts as instances of contextualized and meaningful language use at a particular time and over time into small or large corpora and conducting a detailed analysis of the data. A typical analysis approaches the data from the semantic point of view, as it applies the SFL concepts of genre, register, or the three metafunctions and records their realization through particular lexicogrammaical systems as described in SFG (e.g., analyzing interpersonal meanings in the genre of appeal through a focus on mood). Quantitative and qualitative orientations are often combined in such an analysis. Quantitatively, researchers gain insights into the frequencies and salient patterns of use, whereas the qualitative analysis describes the meaning-making practices of L2 learners within these patterns in detail. These semantic and lexicogrammatical regularities of L2 learner language-use are then interpreted with regard to their appropriateness and effectiveness for achieving contextualized communicative goals and are sometimes juxtaposed with typical meaning-making practices in the target culture. In line with the theoretical position discussed in the previous sections, according to which language learning comes about through language use, many of these studies, cross-sectional and contrastive in their majority but some longitudinal, connect instances of L2 learner language with its regularities and changes to language-learning trajectories and draw provisional conclusions about L2 development in general. The following example (see Ryshina-Pankova, 2018, for a more detailed illustration) can illuminate the difference between the formal and functional SFL-based approach to the data analysis. If, within the context of telecollaborative exchanges, studies in L2 pragmatics might typically focus on the use of questions (interrogatives) as resources that enable interlocutors to initiate, 259

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develop, and deepen intercultural exchanges, the focus of an SFL-based investigation would be first and foremost not on the form (interrogatives) but on the discourse semantic function of turns as requests for initiation or elaboration of dialogue. The functional approach will enable analysts to identify other mood forms besides interrogatives, for example, declaratives that are frequently used to initiate and develop conversations that the form-oriented analysis might miss. At the same time, the focus on the form-like interrogatives for determining the ability of the interlocutors to deepen exchanges might be misleading, since interrogatives also include the so-called clarifying questions (e.g., ‘Did you mean … ?’, ‘Did you say … ?’) that do not have the conversationsteering and content-development function. Because of its emphasis on meaning-making, the SFL approach to the study of L2 pragmatics has been used to analyze L2 language use and learning in contexts where interpersonally purposeful and content-oriented language use, oral or written, is of particular importance. These contexts of investigation include immersion English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts where there is a strong pressure to communicate in L2 (e.g., Llinares, 2007); online language-learning through telecollaborative discussions or chats where communication with chat partners has real communicative consequences (e.g., Oskoz & Perez-Broncano, 2016; Ryshina-Pankova, 2018); content- and genre-based foreign language (FL) and heritage learner instruction that aims at integrating language and culture learning (Byrnes, 2009; Colombi, 2006; Ryshina-Pankova, 2010, 2011; Ryshina-Pankova & Byrnes, 2013; Warren & Winkler, 2015); L2 academic writing where students need to learn the appropriate ways of constructing knowledge and expressing stance and attitude (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Lancaster, 2011; Liardét, 2013, 2015; Schleppegrell, 2004); and CLIL as the context of teaching school subjects through a FL in European secondary schools (e.g., Llinares & Morton, 2010, 2017; Llinares & Nikula, 2016). In what follows, rather than describing SFL-informed studies within the instructional contexts mentioned above, I will organize my presentation of the SFL approach to L2 pragmatics by highlighting some of the findings of this research with regard to such pragmatic functions as building social relations and expressing stance as interpersonal meaning-making; constructing knowledge or ideational meaning-making; and shaping and organizing texts as textual meaning-making. Importantly, while this overview of research starts with the findings related to the interpersonal function, a traditional area of interest in mainstream L2 pragmatics research, it also reports on the studies that investigate ideational and textual meaning-making as they, too, reveal to us the peculiarities of language use in context.

Interpersonal Meaning-Making in L2 Three major areas of investigation of interpersonal meaning-making in L2 can be distinguished: (1) studies of spoken or spoken-like discourse that focus on the speech functional analysis through exchange structure and different types of meaning-making it enables; (2) expression of stance through modality in L2 oral and written production; (3) and encoding of one’s position and negotiation of other viewpoints through Appraisal and Engagement in written or hybrid academic genres. The first strand of studies explores how L2 users negotiate meanings by adopting and assigning each other roles in a dialogue. These investigations draw on the SFL theorization of the ways interpersonal meanings are encoded through exchange structure (Eggins & Slade, 1997; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) and realized through a choice of particular speech functions by interlocutors, such as giving or demanding information in initiating moves or reacting to them through supporting or confronting moves. These studies demonstrate how choosing among these functional options enables conversation participants to construct content knowledge or exchange intercultural information, and whether and what L2 lexicogrammatical resources are used appropriately to achieve these goals. Llinares and Morton’s (2017) study is a good illustration of such an investigation. They analyzed secondary school CLIL students’ use of speech functions in the context of history learning 260

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in English. This study revealed different patterns in the use of the discourse structuring moves across two types of classroom contexts, role plays and interviews, and with regard to interaction with average and above-average students, where the rating concerned their level of English, as evaluated by the teachers. For example, in interviews, interviewers’ more frequent use of prolonging moves that elaborate on the initiation moves (e.g., introduced by, for example, ‘I mean,’ ‘and,’ ‘but,’ or other moves that provide causal, conditional, or spatial-temporal information) enabled average-rated students to complete the interview task and be partially successful in demonstrating content knowledge. The analysis of role plays revealed how this type of interactional task enabled learners to use challenging and confronting moves that were not present in other class interaction contexts but are considered to form an important part of argumentation ability as a valued skill in educational contexts. Additionally, the study demonstrated that the linguistic realization of some of the exchange structure moves by the students was not in line with the expectations of the academic register. Both average- and high-rated learners struggled with the use of appropriate lexicogrammatical resources for encoding the prolonging moves of enhancement, an important semantic strategy for constructing historical knowledge, which would qualify the previous statements by reference to time, place, manner, cause, or condition. The role of specific discourse-semantic moves and their particular linguistic encodings as affording a display and at the same time development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is under focus in Ryshina-Pankova’s (2018) study of written telecollaborative chats between advanced collegiate learners of German and students in a German university. The study shows how a balanced use of initiating, prolonging, responding, and elaborating moves by both interlocutors in chat dyads promotes deep engagement with each other’s culture. Furthermore, the study identifies a particular type of challenging moves (the so-called rejoinder disalignment moves) as providing an opportunity for telecollaboration partners to shift their cultural perspectives. For example, in the following excerpt (translated from German), the Rejoinder-rebound moves by the German speaker (in b, d, and e) cautiously question the assumptions of the language learner about the importance of national pride, opening the space for relativizing her cultural perspectives and potentially changing them (as one might infer from f and g). a. LL*: I think national anthems are important when there is a good connection between the music and national pride (Initiation Statement Opinion). b. GS: Why do you find national pride important (Rejoinder-rebound)? WH c. LL: Because it produces memories and feelings for the home country (Rejoinder-resolve). d. GS: Ok, but in a big country there are really very different feelings and memories about the home country (Rejoinder-rebound). D e. GS: Can one summarize all of them in one song (Rejoinder-rebound)? PI f. LL: Yes, this is correct, it is difficult to summarize all of them (Respond-agree). g. LL: Yes, indeed (Respond-agree). *LL stands for language learner; GS stands for German speaker. With regard to linguistic encoding of the moves, the analysis points out felicitous realizations of some of them through particular linguistic structures. For example, encoding of the initiating moves through Wh-interrogatives and declaratives allows for most dialogic space in a response and thus fosters intercultural exchange; and realization of the disalignment moves through declaratives and interrogatives rather than declaratives with negations appears to offer a less direct way of countering the interlocutor’s opinion without jeopardizing the dialogue. The second research perspective on the realization of interpersonal meanings in L2 learner discourse concerns the use of modality in various genres to encode a speaker or writer point of view. Studies in this strand analyze how modality as a resource for qualifying claims in terms of their usuality and probability (modalization) or obligation and inclination (modulation) is 261

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expressed by L2 users and how it is encoded in terms of various lexicogrammatical structures that make these expressions explicitly or implicitly subjective and objective (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). Table 17.1 illustrates these various options. The subjective choices include the use of modal verbs, as in the implicit constructions, and the use of mental and relational clauses, as in the explicit alternative that renders the extent of commitment to a proposition. The objective choices are divided into the explicit ones, realized through relational clauses with an empty subject ‘it,’ and the implicit options rendered through the use of modal adjuncts. Within secondary school contexts, Xuan and Huang (2017) conducted an analysis of writing samples by ESL learners in the final year of their junior secondary schooling in China and found that learners encoded potentiality through an overuse of the modal auxiliary ‘can.’ A similar finding of the restricted use of modality resources is reported by Whittaker and Llinares (2009), who found that ‘can’ was the only and most frequent resource that was used for encoding a range of modal meanings. They also note a lack of qualifying statements as an important feature of the academic register in the oral and written discourse of secondary school CLIL students in the subjects of history and geography, saying that ‘our students’ generalisations are absolute, using the simple present tense, rather than qualified by a modal verb or adverb’ (p. 231). Referencing the categorization of modality into implicitly and explicitly subjective and objective (Table 17.1, Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), Xuan and Huang (2017) make another insightful observation with regard to the deployment of modality resources by L2 writers. They found that in their data the use of modality was limited to implicitly subjective (e.g., ‘We should remember’) as the most frequent choice in L2 written texts, but not necessarily the most appropriate one in academic writing contexts. The same preference of non-expert L2 writers for subjective modality options is noted by Schleppegrell’s (2004) and Liardét’s (2015) investigations of L2 written academic texts. Schleppegrell’s contrastive study of L1 and L2 laboratory reports demonstrates the frequent use of explicit subjective modality in L2 reports (e.g., ‘I believe,’ ‘I find’) in contrast to the more appropriate explicitly objective option (e.g., ‘It is not possible to + verb’) deployed by proficient L1 writers that helps conceal the source of the belief and present the argument as an objective perspective. Similarly, Liardét (2015) found that the Chinese university learners of English relied on explicitly subjective options in their written essays that made their reasoning less compelling and credible. Finally, the third approach to the exploration of interpersonal meanings draws on the SFLbased Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005) that provides researchers with a detailed system of options for the analysis of L2 users’ ability to evaluate their experience in terms of various attitudinal resources (system of Attitude that consists of Affect, Appreciation, and Judgement) and to express stance and negotiate with others through various strategies of Engagement that either open or close the dialogic space (e.g., referring to other perspectives, rejecting them, or proclaiming one’s own). Attitudinal meaning making is explored in Warren and Winkler’s (2015) study that demonstrates how the focus on Attitude in German contentbased instruction at the introductory level led L2 learners to develop and expand their dialogic speaking tasks on the topic of traveling to a city in Germany by producing a higher number

Table 17.1  Subjective and Objective Orientation in Modality

explicit implicit

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subjective

objective

I think I am sure We should remember

It is important to learn It is possible to draw conclusions Certainly Probably

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of turns as well as more coherent conversations. L2 learners in the experimental group (as contrasted with the control group) elaborated on their experiences through the use of a variety of linguistic resources that encode such interpersonal meanings as emotions of surprise and happiness, as well as evaluations of quality. With regard to the system of Engagement, contrastive studies of L2 learner academic texts in English report the greater use of expanding dialogic strategies, like supporting one’s claims by reference to other researchers, in high-rated essays as opposed to the preference for contractive strategies, like proclaiming one’s own position, in the low-rated texts (e.g., Ho, 2011; Wu, 2007). Enhancing our understanding of the use of dialogic resources, Lancaster’s (2011) contrastive study of economic policy papers in English by L1 and L2 upper-level undergraduate students points out that it is not only the prevalence of particular strategies that makes an academic essay successful, but also the dialogic balance—the ability to structure and alternate between Engagement devices, like expansion and contraction, in a textually explicit way.

Ideational Meaning-making in L2 The most common type of studies within this strand investigate the ways L2 learners achieve abstractness and technicality as necessary elements of academic meaning-making in literacy contexts. Prioritizing the semantic perspective, these investigations describe resources L2 learners deploy to represent reality metaphorically as an object for reflection and interpretation, as in explanatory or argumentative genres, rather than dynamically, as in narrative genres. A semantic concept that is employed to identify these resources is that of grammatical metaphor (GM) (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). GM can be understood as a strategy to construe reality in non-typical or incongruent ways, whereby the typical correspondence between grammatical form and grammatical function is disrupted. In Excerpt 1b below, a dynamic process of arriving is not construed through the grammatical class of verbs, which is typically used to render processes; rather it is construed as a noun arrival, a grammatical class that typically encodes people or things. Nominalizations like arrival are a typical example of GM. But GM is a semantic term that encompasses other resources of incongruent representation, not only nominalizations. In Excerpt 1b, a logical relation of causality that is typically encoded through conjunctions (‘because’ in 1a) is rendered here through the verb prevented that is also considered a GM. Excerpt 1a: I didn’t arrive on time because I was sick. Excerpt 1b:Being sick prevented me from timely arrival. In research on L2 ideational meaning-making, longitudinal studies from various instructions contexts, such as Spanish as a heritage language or German and English as FL, report an increase in the use of GM as nominalizations toward higher curricular levels of instruction (Byrnes 2009; Colombi 2002, 2006; Achugar & Colombi, 2008; Ryshina-Pankova, 2010; Yasuda, 2015). Colombi (2002, 2006) and Achugar & Colombi, 2008, just like Byrnes, Maxim, and Norris (2010), connect this increase to another common measure of L2 development, lexical density, but treat it as more than a change in the use of formal resources. Rather, these studies point out how GMs in the form of nominalizations allow for a different type of making and connecting meanings: within the clause (Excerpt 1b), rather than across clauses (Excerpt 1a), and as more abstract and objective ­construal—more pragmatically appropriate—in academic contexts. The challenge of representing content and relationship between its aspects in this way is also noted in the studies by Llinares and Morton (2010) and Llinares and Whittaker (2010) who, in their analysis of L2 oral and spoken texts in the subject of history by secondary school children in CLIL contexts, found that the production of historical explanations by these L2 users was limited to the across-clausal representation of causality realized through the use of conjunctions (‘because’), in contrast to the preferred use of circumstantial elements realized through 263

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prepositional phrases with nominalizations (‘due to the spread of plague’) in the discourse of their Spanish L1 peers. Other studies of L2 learner performance in academic genres, at a single moment rather than longitudinally, explore the qualitative implications of the use of GM further. For example, these studies indicate that it is not only the quantity of GM used that distinguishes high-rated from lowrated texts, but rather ways it is deployed as a tool for content (re)conceptualization and textual structuring that enables L2 writers to move from concrete to abstract, and from abstract to concrete representations (Liardét, 2013, 2016; Ryshina-Pankova, 2010; Ryshina-Pankova & Byrnes, 2013).

Textual Meaning-Making in L2 The ability to make effective and appropriate textual meanings is most often studied within the context of L2 writing and advanced literacy development. In particular, SFL-inspired research in this area examines L2 learner ability to create coherent and cohesive texts by structuring the ideational and interpersonal meanings in them. While a thorough review of such studies is not feasible in this handbook chapter, I would like to single out research on two interrelated resources—nominal group and thematization patterns—that SFL analysts focus on to reveal the organizational features of L2 texts, as well as how learners progress as L2 writers. Specifically, the analysis of these two elements can give us crucial information about two aspects of textual meaning-making: (1) how knowledge construction and enactment of relationships are managed in a cohesive way; and (2) how writers achieve coherence with the registerial, genre-based, or context-related goals of their written language production. An illustrative study that focuses longitudinally on the first resource, the nominal group or a group of words that describe an entity (a noun), is that by Whittaker, Llinares, and McCabe (2011) where they analyzed the structure of the nominal group in a variety of textual genres written in English by CLIL secondary school students of history over a period of four years. Corroborating other evidence on the importance of the nominal group for cohesive and registerappropriate writing (e.g., Christie, 2010; Halliday, 1989; McCabe & Gallagher, 2008), the study connects L2 writing development with the increase of complexity in the nominal group that occurs through the reduction of reliance on pronouns and unmodified nouns (e.g., ‘these peasants’) and the increase in the use of pre- and post-modification, for example, via prepositional phrases or relative clauses (e.g., ‘the obligations and rights of the peasants in the feudal system’). Another approach to the analysis of textual meaning-making within SFL is enabled through the focus on theme that helps organize texts rhetorically. When defined in simple terms, theme is syntactically the first element in the clause that creates local interclausal cohesion. Semantically, it is the clausal or textual ‘point of departure’ (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) that, through particular realizations, helps foreground certain ideational or interpersonal meanings to achieve the global communicative goals and generic coherence (e.g., fronting of temporal and locative circumstances in narratives to anchor the happenings in time and space). Theme analysis can provide interesting insights about development and progression in L2 textual meaning-making. For example, Ryshina-Pankova’s (2006, 2010, 2011) studies of theme in the genre of book review in German by American learners of German across three consecutive instructional levels reveal various changes in theme selection toward higher curricular levels. Ryshina-Pankova (2006) reports an increase in the use of complex theme (defined as a theme with more than three lexical elements, e.g., the seemingly uncomplicated life path of the main character) and its structural variety (modifications of the nominal group through prepositional phrases, appositions, and relative clauses), a finding that is in line with the above-mentioned research on the development of the nominal group in L2 writing in general. Significantly, this study demonstrates what implications the deployment of complex nominal groups in the strategic theme position has for achieving the goals of the book-review genre: Lexically complex themes 264

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enable writers to summarize story plots by including a large amount of details about the book and its author; they also enable evaluation, a crucial aspect of reviewing and recommending a book. Rather than the number or structural variety of lexical items, the complexity of theme can also be interpreted as the use of experiential GM in this position (e.g., the appeal of the story). Ryshina-Pankova (2010) demonstrates an increase in the use of GM in themes in the book reviews of more advanced learners of German, where thematized GMs not only help summarize the previous discourse and move it forward, but also contribute to the development of argumentative reasoning in this persuasion-oriented genre. Finally, theme can be examined in terms of the ways it foregrounds certain interpersonal meanings. For example, in their investigation of L2 writers’ IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exams, Coffin and Hewings (2004) describe how beginner-writer essays thematize subjective interpersonal stance (e.g., ‘I believe’), which makes their argumentation inappropriately assertive. Ryshina-Pankova (2011) further notes the movement from foregrounding writer opinion (e.g., ‘I found the book interesting …’) about a book in lower curricular level texts in German to intersubjective and reader-oriented themes that highlight the audience in higher curricular level texts (e.g., ‘If you enjoy reading about adventure in space …’) (2011). In conclusion of this overview of research of L2 language learning and use, we can reiterate how SFL can expand the current scope of L2 pragmatics research in terms of objects and methods of investigation. First, the focus of SFL-based studies encompasses all three types of pragmatic meaning-making—interpersonal, ideational, and textual. Second, rather than starting with singling out specific language forms (as in traditional L2 speech-acts studies), they employ a discourse semantic approach that, through a fine-grained analysis of form–social function links, reveals what meanings are made and how they are encoded lexicogrammatically. Third, the analyses describe L2 verbal production and evaluate its effectiveness and appropriateness in view of the communicative characteristics and goals of social contexts where it occurs, for example, connecting L2 discourse to intercultural communicative learning goals in telecollaboration or to content-learning in content- and language-integrated programs, or to L2 writing in the contexts of secondary or tertiary schooling. Finally, the longitudinal studies provide us with an insight into some developmental trajectories in meaning-making by L2 learners: a progression from subjectively oriented to intersubjective and dialogic, and from less to more differentiated expression of interpersonal relationships; a movement from congruent to incongruent representation of reality; and a developing ability to organize discourse coherently and cohesively through specific selections in theme and an increase in complexity of the nominal group.

Fostering L2 Pragmatic Development as a Meaning-Making Ability: SFL-Inspired Instructional Approaches At the center of the SFL-inspired teaching of L2 pragmatics is the genre-based approach to pedagogy and curriculum construction that was originally developed in Australia by the so-called Sydney School, a group of systemic functional linguists who designed what proved to be a very successful pedagogical framework and instructional materials for supporting L1 literacy development and closing the gap between learners of different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Rose & Acevedo, 2006). In genre-based approaches, teaching ‘linguistic forms, functional meanings, and relevant contextual features’ as the ‘necessary condition for pragmatics input to become intake’ (Taguchi, 2011, p. 291) is structured around the concept of genre as a ‘staged goaloriented social process language users are engaged in as members of culture’ (Martin, 1984, p. 25). Genre serves as a building block that enables both: charting curricular progressions and learning trajectories, and integrating language with cultural context and content learning. While not yet widely used in L2 education, the approach has been successfully implemented in some collegiate content- and language-integrated FL programs (e.g., Byrnes et  al., 2010; Crane,  2006; 265

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Maxim, Hoeng, Lancaster, Schaumann, & Aue, 2013; Ryshina-Pankova, 2016; Yasuda, 2011, 2015); in L2 writing (e.g., Chang, 2010; Devrim, 2013; ); as well as in CLIL contexts (e.g., Lorenzo, 2013). The curriculum-oriented proposals like Byrnes et al. (2010) and Lorenzo (2013) conceptualize pragmatics learning as language use in various types of contexts that are represented by a variety of textual genres and explored through the analysis of the connections between pragmatic, discourse-semantic, and lexicogrammatical features in them. Byrnes et al. (2010) offer a description of a text- and content-based curriculum organized around the primary–secondary discourse genres continuum (Gee, 1998) that is spelled out as various trajectories within ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings (e.g., from congruent to incongruent; from overtly dialogic to implicitly dialogic; from oral-like to written-like). These trajectories are then related to the discourse-semantic and lexicogrammatical features of particular texts as materials for learning within a variety of content themes. Lorenzo’s model provides us with a map of genres and their rhetorical structures for the school subject of history learned through an FL in CLIL. In both of these projects the authors raise the importance of production tasks and how they may be modelled after the original genres to enable meaningful and scaffolded genre (re)construction by the learners, as well as assessment of their performance (see also Byrnes, Crane, Maxim, & Sprang, 2006; Ryshina-Pankova, 2015). Pedagogical implementation of the approach draws on sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and emphasizes the active role of the instructor who explicitly models the genres and carefully scaffolds learner production of them through instructional conversations within the ‘deconstruction-joint reconstruction-independent construction’ cycle (Rothery & Stenglin, 1995). The specific steps teachers can take while exploring the context of textual production and languagecontext links, as well as design tasks for learner independent production, are presented for the genre of political appeal (Byrnes et al., 2010), summary (Yasuda, 2015), story (Liamkina & Ryshina-Pankova, 2012; Byrnes & Sprang, 2004), interview (Weigert, 2004), and discussion (Ryshina-Pankova, 2016). Furthermore, teacher-talk in the genre-modeling stage is also detailed in the Reading to Learn/Learning to Write framework (Rose & Martin, 2012). To summarize, the genre approach to instruction helps language educators create an environment for meaningful and culturally contextualized language use and thus overcome the commonly cited limitation of the L2 classroom as decontextualized and remote from the authentic communication in the target culture. Unlike speech acts that are mostly used in the context of oral and mundane interaction, the concept of genre enables instructors first to focus on whole texts as ‘complete instances of language and social use’ (Perrett, 2000, p. 93); and second, to teach the pragmatics of both oral- and written-like communication employed in more formal, institutionalized, academic, and professional, contexts, thus giving learners access to literacy discourses and content knowledge in various domains. Furthermore, learner exploration and appropriation of language used in these various contexts are supported through an instructional approach that is centered around explicit teaching of the form-contextualized meanings-social purposes connections that instructors help learners notice, analyze, and reflect on and ultimately (re)create in their own discourse.

Conclusion and Future Directions While the overview of the studies above illustrates how systemic functional theory provides researchers of L2 pragmatics with powerful tools to understand L2 language learning and language use in various contexts, future SFL-inspired investigations can offer further insights about L2 pragmatics within the following research directions: ••

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Conducting more longitudinal studies on the realization of interpersonal, ideational, and textual meanings within particular genres could give us a more comprehensive picture of the

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••

••

••

••

changes in L2 pragmatics and help us design and improve instruction in line with these findings (e.g., Ryshina-Pankova, 2010; Whittaker et al., 2011). The longitudinal research within or across genre groups could address cross-sectional data by learners within articulated and coherent programs of L2 study and real longitudinal data within or across various genres and text types. Research that will encompass a range of genres, as well as focus on various features within them, would enhance our understanding of the characteristics, peculiarities, and challenges of pragmatics-related language use in different contexts (e.g., Oskoz & Perez-Broncano, 2016). Within this strand, researchers can address various categories of genres: oral ones that are harder to capture; hybrid ones like telecollaborative chats; or those that represent primary vs. secondary discourses. Studies on the effect of SFL- and genre-based instruction on learning outcomes could provide us with explicit evidence of pedagogical and curricular practices that foster the learning of sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics (e.g., Pang, 2002; Warren & Winkler, 2015; Yasuda, 2015). While within this research direction a significant caveat could be the ethical difficulty in setting up a control group as a group not exposed to genre-based instruction, comparisons can still be made across various task conditions: unpreceded by modeling, preceded by modeling but without a joint functional analysis, and preceded both by modeling and scaffolding through the analysis. Investigations of classroom interaction through SFL would help us understand how teachers can enable learners to expand their ability to communicate appropriately and effectively in L2 (e.g., Llinares & Morton, 2017). Researchers pursuing this orientation could focus on SFL-based classroom conversation analysis within content- and language-integrated curricula, conduct contrastive investigations of language use in various participation frameworks (for example, teacher-fronted or group-work activities), or compare and contrast activities and tasks by identifying which offer more affordances for contextualized and purposeful meaning making measured through SFL-based tools (e.g., Miller, Mitchell, & Pessoa, 2016). Finally, combining SFL with other frameworks that are traditionally used in L2 pragmatics research, like conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, or speech-act analyses, can result in rich multifaceted accounts of L2 pragmatic performance and development (e.g., Llinares, 2013; Llinares & Nikula, 2016; see also Chapters 2, 15, and 16 in this volume).

Note 1 While the chapter on L2 pragmatics and SFL could include an overview of studies that produce rich descriptions of communication in various social contexts as these are crucial for informing L2 teaching and the analysis of L2 learner production, I will only focus on the investigations that address L2 language use and development directly.

Further Reading Byrnes, H. (2009). Instructed foreign language acquisition as meaning-making: A systemic functional approach. Linguistics and Education, 20(1) (Special issue). This special issue of the journal is a collection of five papers that inform the reader about the ways SFL can be used in FL teaching, curriculum construction, and assessment of learner development. It opens with Jim Martin’s piece on the concept of genre and is followed by the articles on the various aspects of FL acquisition and teaching research: from the focus on the development of meaning-making abilities by the learners of Chinese by Jingzi Huang and Bernard Mohan, genre-based pedagogy in the context of Spanish heritage learning by Cecilia Colombi, writing development in German as a FL by Heidi Byrnes, and teaching grammar as a meaning-making resource to the learners of Japanese by Kazuhiro Teruya.

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Eggins, S. (2004). Introduction to systemic functional linguistics. London: Continuum. This book offers an accessible yet thorough introduction to the systemic functional theory of language through the chapters that focus on its most important aspects such as genre, register, transitivity, mood and modality, and theme. It ends with a detailed registerial and lexicogrammatical examination of three texts within the same field, their differences and similarities, which illustrates to the reader the basics of the systemic functional approach to text analysis. Eggins, S. & Slade, D. (1997). Analysing casual conversation. London: Cassell. Focusing on the dimension of tenor, Eggins and Slade present the reader with the systemic functional approach to conversation analysis. Using transcripts of authentic conversations between participants of different ages, socio-economic class, race, and gender in everyday contexts as illustration, they equip the readers with the tools of approaching various aspects of conversations. Among them, they discuss the discourse semantic structure, speech functions, their lexicogrammatical realizations, and attitudinal meanings that are being exchanged. These aspects of analysis are then connected to the issues of identity, gender, and construction of relationship of power and solidarity. Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Drawing on the framework of SFL, the authors develop a fine-grained model of evaluative meanings that captures various semantic and lexicogrammatical options for encoding attitude, stance, alignment, or disalignment with other interlocutors, and ways these evaluative meanings can be graded, amplified, or softened. The descriptive apparatus presented in the first part of the book is applied in the second part to the analysis of journalistic texts that demonstrates how evaluative resources construct various journalistic genres and encode explicit and implicit ideological positions.

References Achugar, M., & Colombi, C. (2008). Systemic functional linguistic explorations into the longitudinal study of advanced capacities: The case of Spanish heritage language learners. In L. Ortega & H. Byrnes (Eds.), The longitudinal study of advanced L2 capacities (pp. 36–57). London: Routledge. Byrnes, H. (2009). Emergent L2 German writing ability in a curricular context: A longitudinal study of grammatical metaphor. Linguistics and Education, 20, 50–66. Byrnes, H., Crane, C., Maxim, H., & Sprang, K. (2006). Taking text to task. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 152, 85–109. Byrnes, H., Maxim, H., & Norris, J. M. (2010). Realizing advanced foreign language writing development in collegiate education: Curricular design, pedagogy, assessment. The Modern Language Journal, 42, S–1. Byrnes, H., & Sprang, K. (2004). Fostering advanced L2 literacy: A genre-based, cognitive approach. In. H. Byrnes & H. Maxim (Eds.), Advanced foreign language learning: A challenge to college programs (pp. 47-85). Boston, MA: Thomson/Heinle. Chang, P. (2010). Taking an effective authorial stance in academic writing: Inductive learning for second language writers using a stance corpus (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Chang, P., & Schleppegrell, M. (2011). Taking an effective authorial stance in academic writing: Making the linguistic resources explicit for L2 writers in the social sciences. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 10, 140–151. Christie, F. (2010). The ontogenesis of writing in childhood and adolescence. In D. Wyse, R. Andrews, & J. Hoffman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of English language and literacy teaching (pp. 146–158). Oxford, UK: Routledge. Coffin, C., & Hewings, A. (2004). IELTS as preparation for tertiary writing: distinctive interpersonal and textual strategies. In L. Ravelli & R. Ellis (Eds.), Analysing academic writing: Contextualized frameworks (pp. 15371). London: Continuum. Colombi, M. C. (2002). Academic language development in Latino students’ writing in Spanish. In M. J. Schleppegrell & C. Colombi (Eds.), Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: Meaning with power (pp. 67–86). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Colombi, M. C. (2006). Grammatical metaphor: Academic language development in Latino students of Spanish. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 147–163). London: Continuum. 268

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Oskoz, A., & Perez-Broncano, O. (2016). What did you say? How did you say it? Linguistic choices in online discussions. Foreign Language Annals, 49, 772–788. Pang, T. (2002). Textual awareness and contextual awareness building: A comparison of two approaches to teaching genre. In A. M. Johns (Ed.), Genre in the classroom (pp. 145–161). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Perrett, G. (2000). Second and foreign language development. In L. Unsworth (Ed.), Researching languages in schools and communities (pp. 87–110). London: Cassell. Rose, D., & Acevedo, C. (2006). Closing the gap and accelerating learning in the middle years of schooling. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 42, 32–45. Rose, D., & Martin, J. R. (2012). Learning to write, reading to learn: Genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the Sydney school. Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Equinox. Rothery, J., & Stenglin, M. (1995). Exploring literacy in school English (Write it right resources for literacy and learning). Sydney: Metropolitan East Disadvantaged Schools Program. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2006). Creating textual worlds in advanced learner writing: The role of complex theme. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 164–183). London: Continuum. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2010). Toward mastering the discourses of reasoning: Use of grammatical metaphor at advanced levels of foreign language acquisition. Modern Language Journal, 94, 181–197. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2011). Developmental changes in the use of interactional resources: Persuading the reader in FL book reviews. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20, 243–256. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2015). Foreign language curriculum as a means of achieving humanities learning goals: Assessment of materials, pedagogy and learner texts. In J. Norris, J. Davis, & Y. Watanabe (Eds.), Student learning outcomes assessment in college foreign language programs (pp. 249–274). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i National Foreign Language Resource Center. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2016). Scaffolding advanced literacy in the FL classroom: Implementing a genredriven content-based approach. In L. Cammarata (Ed.), Content-based foreign language teaching: Curriculum and pedagogy for developing advanced thinking and literacy skills (pp. 51–70). New York: Routledge. Ryshina-Pankova, M. (2018). Discourse moves and intercultural communicative competence in telecollaborative chats. Language Learning and Technology, 22, 218–329. Ryshina-Pankova, M., & H. Byrnes. (2013). Writing as learning to know: Tracing knowledge construction in L2 German compositions. Journal of Second Language Writing, 22, 179–197. Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004). Technical writing in a second language: The role of grammatical metaphor. In L. J. Ravelli & R. A. Ellis (Eds.), Analysing academic writing: Contextualized frameworks (pp. 172–189). London: Continuum. Stalker, J. C. (1989). Communicative competence, pragmatic functions, and accommodation. Applied Linguistics, 10, 182–193 Taguchi, N. (2011). Teaching pragmatics: Trends and issues. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 289–310. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Timpe Laughlin, V., Wain, J., & Schmidgall, J. (2015). Defining and operationalizing the construct of pragmatic competence: Review and recommendations (ETS Research Report No. RR-15-06). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press. Warren, M., & Winkler, C. (2015). Developing multiliteracies through genre in the beginner German classroom In Y. Kumagai, A. López-Sánchez, & S. Wu (Eds.), Multiliteracies in world language education (pp. 29–57). New York: Routledge. Weigert, A. (2004). What’s business got to do with it?” The unexplored potential of business language courses for advanced foreign language learning. In. H. Byrnes & H. Maxim (Eds.), Advanced foreign language learning: A challenge to college programs (pp. 131–150). Boston, MA: Heinle Thomson. Whittaker, R., & Llinares, A. (2009). CLIL in Social Science classrooms: Analysis of spoken and written productions. In. Y. R. de Zarobe & R. M. J. Catalán (Eds.), Content and language integrated learning: Evidence from research in Europe (pp. 215–234). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Whittaker, R., Llinares, A., & McCabe, A. (2011). Written discourse development in CLIL at secondary school. Language Teaching Research, 15, 343–362. Wu, Siew Mei. (2007). The use of engagement resources in high- and low-rated undergraduate geography essays. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6, 254–271. 270

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18 Psycholinguistic Approaches to L2 Pragmatics Research Thomas Holtgraves, Gyeongnam Kwon and Tania Morales Zelaya

Introduction Historically, psycholinguistic approaches to second language (L2) pragmatics have been ­relatively rare. An early review of SLA and pragmatics (Kasper & Rose, 1999) noted the lack of empirical research on processes involved in production and comprehension of pragmatic meanings among L2 learners. Though the situation has improved somewhat since then, pragmatic processing (in SLA and otherwise) remains under-researched. In addition, it is only recently that the field of pragmatics itself has taken an experimental turn and begun using psycholinguistic methods to examine pragmatic phenomena (e.g., Noveck & Sperber, 2004). As a relatively new field, experimental pragmatics has dealt with only a limited range of phenomena, and there are only a handful of studies examining L2 pragmatics. Still, we argue in this chapter that a psycholinguistic approach has much to offer to L2 pragmatics, especially as a vehicle for testing theoretically grounded propositions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a relatively broad overview of psycholinguistic research on pragmatics and SLA, describing methodological techniques and theoretical approaches, as well as some of the major findings and their theoretical implications.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts The hallmark of a psycholinguistic approach is the use of a clearly defined experimental procedure that includes both experimental manipulation and control. Researchers can manipulate a variable of interest, such as the context within which a scalar expression occurs, or whether a meaning is conveyed directly or indirectly, and then examine the impact of that variable on comprehension-related measures such as comprehension speed, memory, electrophysiological response, and so on. Control of other variables is typically achieved via the random assignment of participants to conditions. Applying this approach to SLA typically involves the additional variable of participants’ language background. For example, native speakers (L1) and nonnative speakers (L2) can be compared on the dependent variable of interest (e.g., comprehension speed), and more importantly, whether the manipulated independent variable has the same or different effects for L1 and L2 participants. Other variations on this would be to include multiple groups differing in, for example, degree of exposure to a second language. Such an approach has the

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potential to provide meaningful information regarding the nature of pragmatic processing in L2 as well as possible L1–L2 differences in pragmatic processing. One of the most popular measures used by psycholinguistic researchers has been reaction time. Sometimes this is used as a measure of sentence or utterance comprehension speed. For example, the difference between two utterances conveying the same meaning, but one doing so indirectly and the other directly, can be compared using reaction-time data. Other times it is used as a means of assessing the time taken to perform a related task. For example, to investigate whether comprehension of an utterance involves activation of a particular meaning, researchers might use a lexical decision task (LDT; deciding whether a letter string is a word) following the presentation of an utterance. On some trials the target word for the LDT represents the meaning of the previously presented utterance. The speed of the lexical decision on those trials, relative to control trials (i.e., when the target word does not represent the meaning of the prior utterance), can then be taken as an indication of the extent to which that meaning has been activated. More recently, electrophysiological measures, in particular event-related potentials (ERPs), have been used as a means of assessing online processing of pragmatic phenomena. For example, the specific neural responses involved in the comprehension of different types of speech acts have been assessed in this way (e.g., Egorova, Shtyrov, & Pulvermuller, 2013). Interestingly, this research suggests a different time course for the comprehension of different types of speech acts (e.g., naming vs. requesting), suggesting the possibility of parallel syntactic and pragmatic processing. And there are now many research examples of functional imaging (e.g., fMRI) (for examples, see Abutalebi & Della Rosa, 2012) being used to examine pragmatic phenomena. This neurobiological technique allows for the identification of networks involved in pragmatic comprehension. For example, research points to the important role played by Theory of Mind networks (e.g., temporo-parietal junction) in the comprehension of certain types of indirect meaning (e.g., Basnáková, Weber, Petersson, van Berkum, & Hagoort, 2014). We are not aware, however, of any research examining L2 pragmatic processing with these approaches. However, we see no reason why they could not be successfully employed in that manner. There are of course limitations with psycholinguistic approaches. One issue is how large a difference must be observed before concluding that there is a real difference. This is typically answered by evaluating the results using some type of inferential statistical procedure, that is, estimating the probability of obtaining the observed difference in the sample of individuals participating in the study, if in fact there was no difference in the general population from which these individuals are sampled (i.e., the null hypothesis). If the probability of observing such a difference is low (typically less than .05), then the researcher will conclude that the effect is real (i.e., significant and unlikely to simply reflect chance variation). There has been, and continues to be, controversy regarding the logic of null hypothesis testing (Levine, Weber, Hullett, Park, & Lindsey, 2008). There are other statistical procedures that can accompany or replace null-hypothesis testing (e.g., confidence intervals, effect sizes), and their use has and will continue to grow. Another potential problem with psycholinguistic approaches to L2 pragmatics is the issue of generalizability. Testing the effects of a language variable by manipulating certain words raises the issue of whether any observed effects are simply unique to those words, or whether the effects can be generalized to other words in that class. This is the reason why psycholinguists often treat both participants and language as random variables, testing for the generalizability of results over both participants and verbal stimuli. Relatedly, the language materials used in psycholinguistic research are often created specifically for that experiment. Though this allows for precise experimental control, there is the question of whether these experimental materials generalize to actual language use. The gain in manipulation and control comes at the expense of realism. As with all research there are trade-offs. 273

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Survey of Recent Empirical Findings and Critical Insights We organize the material in this section around several specific pragmatic phenomena that have been investigated experimentally. We begin with the comprehension of indirect meaning, followed by implicit speech acts (i.e., speech acts that do not contain the performative verb) and scalar expressions (e.g., ‘some’). Finally, we review research from the text comprehension literature.

Comprehension of Indirect Meaning One of the most heavily investigated topics in L2 pragmatics is the comprehension of indirect meaning, a popularity paralleling the interest in this topic in the experimental pragmatics literature overall (see also Chapter 3 and Chapter 32 in this volume). At a very general level, indirect meaning refers to a situation in which the literal interpretation of an utterance does not completely specify a speaker’s intended meaning. It is important to note at the outset that there are multiple types of indirect meaning, including irony, metaphor, sarcasm, indirect requests, jokes, and so on. In general, the processes involved in comprehension vary over these different types of indirect meaning. One high-level scheme for categorizing these different types of indirect meaning is to differentiate between conventional and nonconventional indirect meaning, a distinction that is roughly similar to that made by Grice (1975) between generalized implicatures (contextindependent meaning and hence conventional) and particularized implicatures (context-dependent and hence nonconventional). Researchers have explored various aspects of the processing of these different types of indirect meaning using a variety of methods. Indirect requests are the most commonly investigated type of conventional indirect meaning. In English, conventional means for performing an indirect request include questioning one’s ability (‘Could you loan me your car?’) or willingness (‘Would you loan me your car?’) to perform the requested act (Clark, 1979). In an early study, Takahashi and Roitblat (1994) investigated whether conventional indirect requests in English are processed differently by native English speakers (L1) and high-proficiency Japanese learners of English (L2). Their experiment was designed to test competing models of indirect request comprehension: the direct access model of indirect meaning (e.g., Gibbs, 1986), whereby indirect meaning is directly retrieved without the literal meaning ever being instantiated, and what is often referred to as the standard pragmatic model (e.g., Grice, 1975), whereby hearers activate both the literal and indirect meaning and then reject the literal meaning in favor of the indirect meaning. Participants read stories that induced either a literal interpretation or a conventional indirect interpretation of a sentence. For example, there were two versions of a story ending with the question ‘Why don’t you come over here?’ with one version prompting a request for action (i.e., indirect) interpretation, and the other version prompting a literal interpretation. The primary dependent measure was reading times for subsequent target sentences that paraphrased either the literal meaning or the conventionally indirect meaning. Target sentences were read more quickly (by both L1 and L2) when they paraphrased a conventional indirect interpretation of the sentence than when they paraphrased a literal interpretation, and they were also read more quickly (again by both L1 and L2) if they paraphrased the interpretation induced by the context, relative to when it did not match the context. This suggests that in these contexts L1 and L2 speakers process both the literal and nonliteral meanings of the primed sentence (hence the underlying comprehension process is the same for both L1 and L2). In contrast to conventional indirect forms, nonconventional forms, or particularized implicatures, are typically viewed as requiring some consideration of the context, most notably the prior discourse context, in order to be understood. One common example of a particularized implicature is to violate the relation maxim (e.g., subtly changing the topic) when responding to a sensitive question (Holtgraves, 1998). For example, when Charlie asks Dan what he thought of his class presentation, and Dan replies, ‘It’s hard to give a good presentation,’ Charlie is likely to 274

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interpret Dan’s reply as conveying a negative opinion of his presentation. In contrast to conventional indirect forms (i.e., generalized implicatures), this interpretation can be derived only by considering the utterance in terms of its relation to the preceding discourse context. Taguchi (2002) used introspective verbal reports to examine L2 English learners’ ability to understand the implied meaning conveyed with indirect replies, as well as the processes involved in this understanding, and the role of language proficiency. Participants listened to dialogues and replies that violated Grice’s maxim of relevance (and thus had an implicit meaning). In addition, participants reported on how they had arrived at their answer. Taguchi identified six strategies: use of paralinguistic cues, adjacency pair rule, background knowledge/experience, key word inferencing, logical reasoning, and speaker intention, with the first two strategies occurring more frequently than the others. Participants responded correctly 70% of the time with the error rate highest for disclosure items. Higher proficiency students were more accurate in understanding the implicit meaning of the utterances than their lower proficiency counterparts, though followup analyses suggested that this is largely a function of differences in confidence. There was a trend that high proficiency participants used more sophisticated strategies, whereas low proficiency participants tended to rely on experience/background information. Because comprehension of implied meaning elicits different strategies simultaneously, pragmatic competence can be considered a multidimensional process. Moreover, pragmatic inference can be interpreted as relevance-seeking, as articulated in Relevance Theory (RT) (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). That is, people select among contextual cues the ones that best confirm the relevance of an utterance. Given that participants in both groups were actively searching for the speaker’s implied meaning and were generally accurate in doing so, Taguchi concluded that inferential abilities may appertain to humans in general and this ability guides L2 interpretation/comprehension. Taguchi (2005; see also Taguchi, 2008) investigated L1–L2 differences in the processing of conventional forms (indirect requests and refusals) and less conventional forms (i.e., particularized implicatures). Conventional indirect forms were expressions whose indirect meanings were relatively clear (e.g., ‛Would you X?’ as a request). Less conventional forms were based on violations of the relation maxim (Grice, 1975). For L1 participants, processing speed and accuracy were roughly equal for both forms. In contrast, L2 participants processed the moreconventional forms more quickly and accurately than the less-conventional forms. Moreover, L2 proficiency was significantly related to accuracy for both forms. However, for reaction time, the relationship was significant only for the more conventional forms. In addition, in contrast to the speed–accuracy trade-off model, comprehension accuracy and reaction time were not associated. These results illustrate how L1–L2 processing differences can vary over different types of indirect meaning. Slightly different results were reported by Taguchi, Li, and Liu (2013), who examined the comprehension of conventional and non-conventional implicatures in L2 Chinese as a function of proficiency and learning context (foreign language learners vs. heritage language learners). Comprehension was assessed with a 36-item listening test consisting of three types of implicature (as in Taguchi, 2008). Comprehension accuracy, but not speed, varied as a function of implicature type, and accuracy was significantly lower for the nonconventional indirect opinion than the other two forms (see also Bouton, 1988, 1992). Other researchers have examined whether there are age differences in the comprehension of indirect utterances by nonnative speakers (Lee, 2010). Participants in Lee’s (2010) study were Hong Kong Cantonese children (second, fourth, and sixth graders) who were learning English at school, and their native language was Cantonese. A multiple-choice comprehension exercise consisting of direct and indirect versions of five different speech acts (i.e., request, apology, refusal, compliment, and complaint) was used to examine comprehension ability. Comprehension accuracy increased in a linear fashion for both the direct and indirect speech acts. Indirect forms, particularly indirect refusals, compliments, and complaints, were difficult for the youngest children. 275

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In addition, think-aloud protocols demonstrated changing strategies for comprehending indirect forms. For example, the youngest group relied more upon the literal meaning and formulaic expressions than did the older children. The comprehension of indirectness in L2 has received considerable experimental attention. This research has demonstrated that there are different types of indirectness with different processes involved in their comprehension. Moreover, it is clear that pragmatic acquisition is not constant over these different types; in general, L2 learners appear to have greater difficulty with less conventional forms (e.g., particularized implicatures) than with more conventional forms (e.g., generalized implicatures). At the same time, this research also suggests that the comprehension of indirectness involves processes that are the same for both L1 and L2 speakers (a point that we elaborate upon below).

Speech-Act Recognition Indirect speech acts are usually viewed as involving the performance of multiple illocutionary acts, with the indirect act conveyed via performance of the direct act (e.g., requesting another to open a window by asserting ‘It’s stuffy in here’). Most of the indirect meanings discussed in the prior section were of this type. It is also possible, however, to perform a single illocutionary act in an implicit manner. That is, an important distinction can be made between speech acts that are explicit and those are that are implicit. The former (referred to as explicit performatives by Austin, 1962; see also Bach, 1994) are utterances containing the performative verb, that is, the verb that names the speech act being performed with the utterance. For example, ‘I promise to shut the door’ contains the performative verb ‘promise’ which names the speech act being performed. Implicit speech acts, in contrast, do not contain the performative verb. For example, an explicit speech act such as ‘I promise to finish it by tomorrow’ could also be performed implicitly with ‘I’ll have it finished tomorrow,’ an utterance that does not contain the performative verb. Implicit speech acts are probably far more common than utterances that contain performative verbs (though this no doubt varies over speech acts with some performative verbs—e.g., promise—being frequently used and others—e.g., request—being rarely used). To explore this issue Holtgraves (2008) examined whether implicit performatives were automatically recognized by native speakers of English. Participants in four experiments read utterances that either performed a specific (implicit) speech act like ‘remind’ (e.g., ‘Don’t forget to go to your dentist appointment today’) or control utterances that contained many of the same words as the speech act utterance but did not perform the speech act (e.g., ‘I’ll bet you forgot to go to your dentist appointment today’). Immediately following the utterance, participants performed either a lexical decision task (LDT) (judge whether a string of letters is a word, Experiment 2) or a recognition probe task (judge whether a word appeared in the preceding utterance, Experiment 1). The logic of these experiments was as follows. If comprehension involves automatic speech act activation, participants performing an LDT should be significantly faster at verifying a word (e.g., ‘remind’), naming the speech act performed with the utterance, relative to the control utterance. They were. For the recognition probe task, participants should be significantly slower at verifying that the word was not in the prior utterance, due to the confusion created by the activation of the speech act term at comprehension. And again, they were. This effect was very brief and occurred when the to-be-performed task occurred right after comprehension (250 ms later) but not when it occurred later, at 2000 ms after comprehension. Holtgraves (2007) examined whether automatic speech-act recognition occurs also with nonnative (L2) English speakers. The materials and procedure were the same as Experiment 2 in Holtgraves (2008). Hence, participants read scenarios and corresponding utterances and then performed an LDT (250 ms later) where the target words were either the relevant speech act verb or a control verb. L1 performance on the LDT was significantly faster for the speech-act 276

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verbs than control words, demonstrating automatic activation of the speech-act term (consistent with the results reported in Holtgraves, 2008). In contrast, L2 participants did not display this pattern; they were not significantly faster for the speech-act verbs than the control verbs. Hence, automatic speech act activation did not occur for the L2 participants. Note that this does not mean the L2 participants were unable to recognize the speech act being performed; only that it did not occur online. Subsequent analyses indicated that there was a significant positive correlation (r = .61) between years spent speaking English and the degree of speech-act activation, suggesting that increasing facility with a language may entail a change from relatively effortful processing to relatively automatic processing. This developmental sequence has been demonstrated for other language components such as grammar and vocabulary (DeKeyser, 2001; Juffs, 1998; Segalowitz & Hulstijn, 2005); this research suggests that it may occur for speech-act recognition as well. This, then, raises the issue of the developmental sequence of automaticity. For example, does syntactic and semantic competence become automatic before pragmatic competence is automatic, or is automaticity for these components achieved simultaneously?

Scalar Expressions Scalar expressions are words that can be ordered on a scale with respect to their strength (Levinson, 1983). Much of the empirical research has focused on the quantity expression ‘some’ but many other expressions, such as those regarding frequency (e.g., ‘sometimes’), evaluation (e.g., ‘good’), and so on can be regarded as scalar as well. Scalar expressions are typically viewed as having both a semantic (or logical) meaning (e.g., the semantic meaning of ‘some’ is ‘more than one’) and a pragmatic meaning (e.g., the pragmatic meaning of ‘some’ is ‘not all’). The pragmatic meaning of a scalar expression is referred to as a scalar implicature, and this meaning is optional, i.e., it is not logically required. The distinction between pragmatic and semantic meaning can be verified by considering whether the meaning can be cancelled; the pragmatic meaning can be cancelled (e.g., ‘Some of your cookies were left, in fact, all of your cookies were left’ is an acceptable sentence) but the semantic meaning cannot be cancelled (e.g., ‘Some of your cookies were left, in fact, none of your cookies were left’ is not an acceptable sentence). A critical issue for researchers has been whether, when, and how scalar implicatures are generated. There are two, overarching approaches in this regard. One approach, attributed primarily to Levinson (2000), suggests that scalar implicatures are lexicalized and hence represent the default interpretation (though they can be overridden by the context). The alternative approach, the prototype of which is Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), suggests that whether a scalar implicature occurs is entirely context-dependent. In general, the majority of research has provided support for a contextualist view, that is, the pragmatic meaning (i.e., implicature) is more likely to be generated if there is contextual support, and the generation of the implicature is a time-consuming, effortful process (Bott & Noveck, 2004; Noveck and Posada, 2003; Breheny, Katsos, & Williams, 2006). However, some research has demonstrated that this effect will vary as a function of syntactic features of the utterance (Degen & Tanenhaus, 2011), the speaker’s knowledge state (Bergen & Grodner, 2012), and so on. Most of the research on scalar implicatures examined their use in non-conversational contexts. A complicating factor is the possibility that the use and comprehension of some scalar terms might be influenced by politeness considerations. Bonnefon and colleagues (Bonnefon, De Neyes, & Feeney, 2011; Bonnefon, Feeney & Villejoubert, 2009) have argued that scalar terms can be used to convey negative (i.e., face-threatening) information in a polite way. Hence, rather than saying ‘No one liked your talk,’ a speaker might more politely say ‘Some people disliked your talk.’ These researchers have provided evidence that when the conveyed information is negative, recipients recognize that ‘some’ may be serving a politeness function and that this serves to block the pragmatic (i.e., ‘not all’) interpretation. Hence, participants are more likely to indicate 277

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that ‘some’ means ‘all’ when the information is negative (e.g., ‘Some people disliked your talk’) than when the information is positive (e.g., ‘Some people liked your talk’). The specific processes involved in the comprehension of scalar terms in these types of contexts have yet to receive much empirical attention, though some preliminary evidence suggests that the pragmatic meaning in these contexts is often expected and as a result processed more easily than the semantic meaning (Holtgraves & Kraus, 2018). There has been relatively little research examining the comprehension of scalar terms in L2. However, Slabakova (2010) did investigate the interpretation of ‛some’ in different contexts including under-informative sentences (e.g., Some elephants have trunks). L1 participants were native English speakers and native Korean speakers (performing the task in Korean). L2 participants were Korean speakers studying English (performing the task in English) who were classified as either advanced or intermediate. The task for participants was to indicate whether they agreed or disagreed with each sentence. The critical dependent measure was the interpretation of under-informative sentences (e.g., Some elephants have trunks); agreement with this sentence indicates activation of the semantic meaning (because more than one elephant has a trunk), while disagreement indicates activation of the pragmatic meaning (because all elephants have trunks). The study showed that L2 participants were significantly more likely to generate pragmatic meanings than were L1 participants. Importantly, there was no significant difference between L1 English and Korean participants, meaning that L2 Korean speakers were more likely to generate the pragmatic meaning than were L1 Korean speakers. This effect occurred in the absence of a context (Experiment 1) as well as when a picture context, which supported the semantic but not the pragmatic interpretation, was provided. This suggests a tendency of L2 speakers to generate the implicature (i.e., pragmatic meaning) even when it is not supported by the context. The author suggests that scalar implicatures are lexicalized and that L2 speakers often do not have the processing resources to undo them, even when confronted with a context that undermines the pragmatic interpretation. Further research exploring the comprehension of scalar terms in L2 is clearly warranted. For example, there are multiple scalar terms that have received little attention, and some of them are relatively ambiguous. For example, the pragmatic meaning of ‘like’ is ‘don’t love.’ Hence, a speaker who says ‛I liked your paper’ might be implying that she doesn’t love your paper. It would be interesting to examine whether L2 learners can comprehend the implied meaning. Another interesting area to examine would be differences in L2 sensitivity to the discourse context that provides support (or not) for the generation of the implicature (see Bonnefon, Dahl, & Holtgraves, 2015). That is, are L2 speakers more (or less) sensitive to the politeness considerations that influence whether the pragmatic meaning is generated?

Text Processing Text-processing researchers typically focus on the processes involved in the comprehension of expository and narrative texts rather than on the processing of conversation remarks. Still, many of these comprehension processes are similar to the pragmatic processes involved in conversation comprehension. Importantly, the majority of this research employs psycholinguistic techniques and is hence relevant for this chapter. Text processing is typically viewed as occurring at multiple levels: a surface level (the exact words), a text-based level (word meaning), and a situation model (an overall representation of what the text is about). Generation of the situation model requires the integration of multiple sources of information including the surface and text-based level, as well as working memory (for the achievement of local coherence) and long-term memory (for global coherence). More importantly, construction of the situation model typically involves the generation of various types of inferences, inferences that in many respects share features with the previously discussed implicatures. 278

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A fair amount of research has examined the generation of causal inferences. For example, if a text states ‘Mark threw the vase against the wall; Mary had to sweep up broken glass,’ readers typically make the causal inference that the vase broke and Mary is sweeping up pieces of the vase. There is some research suggesting that nonnative speakers have difficulty making causal inferences (e.g., Morishima, 2013). One reason for this may be that the processing of the surface and the text-based levels are not as automatic for L2 speakers, and hence nonnative speakers must devote more resources than native speakers at processing lower-level information. As a result, nonnative speakers have fewer resources available to build the global context and generate causal inferences (for a review, see Raney, Obeidallah, & Miura, 2002). In terms of generating causal inferences at the discourse (rather than sentence) level, Foucart, Romero-Rivas, Gort, and Costa, (2016) used ERPs to examine the processing of sentences that varied in terms of their causal relatedness (highly related, intermediately related, and unrelated). The neural response of interest was an N400, a component that is typically viewed as indicating the degree of effort involved in semantically integrating incoming material with a context. Native speakers have been shown to display an enhanced N400 as a function of causal unrelatedness (Kuperberg, Choi, Cohn, Paczynski, & Jackendoff, 2010). That is, when causal relatedness is less explicit in the text, greater processing is required in order to incorporate the material, and this results in a larger N400. Foucart et al. (2016) used Kuperberg’s et al.’s procedure with L1 (English) and L2 (Spanish) participants. Kuperberg et al.’s findings were replicated for L1, and the pattern was similar for L2, suggesting that the latter process different sources of information in order to achieve coherence in a manner similar to L1. However, for the L2 participants, the neural response was slightly delayed; a finding the authors interpret as indicating a greater processing cost for these participants. Some researchers have argued that any of the difficulties at the discourse level for L2 speakers is a function of reduced working memory (WM) which is required for lower-level (e.g., text-based) processing (Juffs & Harrington, 2011; Van Den Noort, Bosch, & Hugdahl, 2006). Consistent with this idea, once L2 proficiency increases and processing at lower levels becomes less demanding, more resources are available for processing higher levels of information. And in fact, there is research demonstration that language fluency does influence the ease of situation model development (Horiba, 2000; Tang, 1997; Zwaan & Brown, 1996). Moreover, other researchers have demonstrated that the capacity to generate complex (relative to simple) inferences increases with proficiency and higher WM capacities (Horiba, 1996; Rai, Loschky, Harris, Peck, & Cook, 2011). In terms of the processing of pragmatic information, Foucart et al. (2015) examined sentence processing in which there were either semantic or pragmatic incongruities using the procedure from Van Berkum, Van den Brink, Tesink, Kos, and Hagoort (2008). They investigated whether L2 (Spanish) speakers take the speaker’s identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech, and whether this has an influence on their online interpretation of the sentence. While both the native and the nonnative groups showed a similar response (N400) to semantic violations, their response to pragmatic violations (i.e., speaker inconsistencies) slightly diverged; late bilinguals showed a positivity (LPP) much earlier than native speakers. These results suggest that, like native speakers, late bilinguals process semantic and pragmatic information incrementally, meaning, as they encounter it. However, what seems to differ between L1 and L2 processing is the time course of these processes. The authors suggest that this difference may originate from late bilinguals’ tendency to rely more on speaker identity (i.e., pragmatic information) than native speakers when they face semantic integration difficulties, a finding that is consistent with the demonstrated tendency of L2 to over-generate scalar implicatures (Slabakova, 2010). This conclusion is consistent with other research suggesting that the integration of semantic and pragmatic information is costlier in L2 than in L1. There have been several studies in this 279

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regard. Some have examined whether semantic processing is influenced by world knowledge violations (e.g., ‘Mozart composed classic/jazz music’; Martin, Garcia, Breton, Thierry, & Costa, 2016; Romero-Rivas, Martin, & Costa, 2016). In these studies, a similar N400 component was observed (reflecting semantic integration difficulty) in L1 and L2, but the N400 was sometimes longer lasting in the L2 group, suggesting that integrating world knowledge online requires extra processing in L2. Other studies have examined whether processing is influenced by one’s own moral values (‘Nowadays, pedophilia should be prohibited/tolerated across the world’; Foucart, Moreno, Martin, & Costa, 2015). In this study both L1 and L2 speakers of English revealed a larger late positivity (LPP) for immoral statements than moral statements. However, only L1 speakers showed an N400 modulation by morality value, meaning that for L2 speakers valuation was integrated online (LPP) but did not interfere with semantic processing (absence of an N400). In general, these studies show that L2 speakers, like L1 speakers, process semantic and pragmatic information incrementally. However, for certain types of pragmatic information, online integration follows a different time course in L1 and L2, and/or requires extra processing for L2. Text-processing researchers frequently use various types of memory measures as a means of examining (off-line) text comprehension processes. Several early SLA studies used recall memory measures as a means of examining the role of schemas in L2 comprehension and memory (Carrell, 1984; Wolf, 1987). Carrell (1984), for example, manipulated the structure of texts such that participants read either a text that conformed to a story schema or was inconsistent with a story schema (i.e., the expected temporal sequence was disrupted). Recall was significantly better for the former than the latter (as previously demonstrated with L1, Mandler, 1978). Interestingly, L2 performance on some memory measures was more similar to fourth and sixth grade L1 performance than adult L1 performance. Carrell suggested that because L2 speakers must devote more resources to linguistic encoding, they have fewer resources for creating higher-level structures that would facilitate recall, a finding consistent with the previously discussed research suggesting that language fluency influences the ease of situation model development (Horiba, 2000; Tang, 1997; Zwaan & Brown, 1996).

Conclusion and Future Directions In this chapter we reviewed research that took a psycholinguistic approach to studying the acquisition of pragmatics in L2. Though existing research is rather limited, several generalizations did emerge. First, it is clear that comprehension of indirect meaning presents a particular challenge to L2 learners. Moreover, this challenge is partially independent of the acquisition of syntactic and semantic competence. While it is doubtful that a pragmatic module is implicated in this divergence, it is clear that extra language knowledge is required for successful comprehension of meaning in L2. Second, there are many different types of indirect meaning with different processes involved in their comprehension; it is clear that these different types of meaning are not equally challenging to L2 learners. The development and evaluation of programs that are sensitive to these differences would seem to be particularly useful. Moreover, research in this domain has not paid equal attention to the different types of indirect meaning. Some types of indirect meaning (e.g., indirect requests) have been extensively studied, while other types (e.g., jokes and humor in general) have not (see Chapter 5 in this volume). Clearly, future research should pursue the examination of these under-studied types of indirect meaning. Third, many studies suggest that similar cognitive and neural processes are involved in L1 and L2, but with slightly different time frames for their occurrence. For example, both L1 and L2 speakers display the same neurophysiological reaction when encountering causally unrelated discourse (an N400), but the reaction is slightly delayed for L2 speakers relative to L1 speakers. As pointed out by several researchers, this appears to be partly due to working memory demands 280

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in L2 for lower-level processing (processing of words and sentences), which inhibits higherlevel, inferential processing. Whether this holds for all types of inferential processing or not (e.g., processing of implicature, humor, and sarcasm) would be a useful avenue for research. In other words, are L2 learners more likely to develop automaticity for some types of indirect meaning than for other types of indirect meaning? In terms of research techniques, the use of behavioral measures (e.g., reaction time) should continue to provide important information regarding pragmatics and SLA. This technique, for example, can be diagnostic regarding the automaticity of various pragmatic components of language use, such as whether speech acts are automatically activated when processing conversation utterances. More recently, L2 researchers have begun using eye-tracking methods as a means of analyzing real-time cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of a target language (Winke, Godfroid, & Gass, 2013). One of the advantages of eye-tracking is that it does not require a response from a participant, thereby avoiding the confounding of comprehension processes and processes underlying motor responses. Hence, eye-tracking can expand the scope of the investigations in future L2 pragmatics research. Of course, much language research is now conducted with electrophysiological (ERP) and imaging (e.g., fMRI) techniques designed to explore the neural substrates of grammatical and lexical processing. More recently, researchers have begun using these techniques for pragmatic phenomena, and this could be extended to pragmatic phenomena among L2 learners. For example, ToM areas (e.g., right tempora-parietal junction) have been shown to play an important role in the comprehension of certain types of indirectness (e.g., particularized implicatures; see Basnáková et al., 2014). Other researchers have demonstrated that different neural substrates are involved in the comprehension of different types of speech acts (e.g., requests vs. assertions) (Egorova, Shtyrov, & Pulvermüller, 2016). An extension of these research areas using L2 participants would be particularly informative. Psycholinguistic research on L2 pragmatics might also be relevant for active theoretical debates, such as the relative roles played by pragmatics and semantics in language processing. For example, the tendency for L2 speakers to rely on pragmatic information very early in utterance processing demonstrates the early and critical role played by pragmatics in online language comprehension. Also, longitudinal studies would be particularly useful as a means of exploring the developmental sequence (e.g., for examples, see Abutalebi & Della Rosa, 2012). Though our focus has been on the standard concerns with comprehension, the acquisition of a second language can have important cognitive consequences. For example, there is a relatively new line of research suggesting that reasoning (moral and otherwise) is different in L2 than in L1 (Costa et al., 2014). These researchers have demonstrated that people are more likely to make utilitarian decisions when making moral judgments in L2 than in L1. The reason for this effect is not entirely clear, though these authors suggest that it is due to the reduced emotional response associated with L2. The implications of this are substantial and research on the extent to which this effect generalizes to other domains would seem to be warranted. The majority of research on L2 has focused on English as a second language. However, L2 learning will no doubt vary as a function of L1–L2 similarity. For example, it is easier to learn L2 if it is part of the same family of languages of L1. Similarly, though there may be very general pragmatic principles that transcend specific languages (e.g., relevance), languages most likely vary in terms of the extent to which their corresponding pragmatic systems overlap. The systematic pursuit of the impact of this overlap on SLA and pragmatics would seem likely to yield important results. Experimental pragmatics remains a relatively new research endeavor, one with multiple opportunities for growth. Incorporating a concern with SLA into experimental pragmatics would likely be a fruitful addition to this enterprise. 281

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Further Reading Jegerski, J., & VanPatten, B. (2014). Research methods in second language psycholinguistics. New York: Routledge. This edited volume provides an introduction to the major psycholinguistic approaches to SLA. Note that the coverage does not include pragmatics, though the covered techniques can certainly be applied to pragmatic phenomena. The techniques covered include: self-paced reading, self-paced listening, eye-tracking with text, visual world eye-tracking, event-related potentials (ERPs), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), translation recognition tasks, and cross-modal priming with sentences. The chapters provide complete and detailed coverage of each technique, including its historical background, a concrete example of the use of the technique, and the pros and cons associated with each technique. Novek, I., & Sperber, D. (Eds.) (2004). Experimental pragmatics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. This volume, edited by two of the leaders in experimental pragmatics, in many respects helped launch the field. There are 15 chapters, each authored by major researchers in the area. Note that it does not provide any coverage of SLA. Instead, it provides an excellent, if now somewhat dated, overview of the field of experimental pragmatics. The topics covered include scalar expressions, reasoning and pragmatics, Relevance Theory, and others. This is an excellent source of coverage of classic pragmatic phenomena that have been studied experimentally. Traxler, M. J., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of psycholinguistics (2nd ed.). London: Elsevier. This has been the standard reference for psycholinguistics. The volume includes 30 chapters that are written by the field’s most renowned scholars and covers a range of areas including language production, comprehension, and acquisition.

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Martin, C. D., Garcia, X., Breton, A., Thierry, G., & Costa, A. (2016). World knowledge integration during second language comprehension. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 206–216. doi:10.1080/2 3273798.2015.1084012 Morishima, Y. (2013). Allocation of limited cognitive resources during text comprehension in a second language. Discourse Processes, 50, 577–597. doi:10.1080/0163853X.2013.846964 Noveck, I., & Posada, A. (2003). Characterizing the time course of an implicature: An evoked potentials study. Brain and Language, 85, 203–210. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00053-1 Noveck, I. A., & Sperber, D. (Eds.). (2004). Experimental pragmatics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Rai, M. K., Loschky, L. C., Harris, R. J., Peck, N. R., & Cook, L. G. (2011). Effects of stress and working memory capacity on foreign language readers’ inferential processing during comprehension. Language Learning, 61, 187–218. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00592.x Raney, G. E., Obeidallah, S. M., & Miura, T. K. (2002). Text comprehension in bilinguals: Integrating perspectives on language representation and text processing. Advances in Psychology, 134, 165–183. doi:10.1016/S0166-4115(02)80010-3 Romero-Rivas, C., Martin, C. D., & Costa, A. (2016). Foreign-accented speech modulates linguistic anticipatory processes. Neuropsychologia, 85, 245–255. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.03.022 Segalowitz, N., & Hulstijn, J. (2005). Automaticity in Bilingualism and Second Language Learning. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 371–388). New York: Oxford University Press. Slabakova, R. (2010). Scalar implicatures in second language acquisition. Lingua, 120, 2444–2462. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2009.06.005 Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Taguchi, N. (2002). An application of relevance theory to the analysis of L2 interpretation processes: The comprehension of indirect replies. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 40, 151–176. doi:10.1515/iral.2002.006 Taguchi, N. (2005). Comprehending Implied Meaning in English as a Foreign Language. The Modern Language Journal, 89, 543–562. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00329.x Taguchi, N. (2008). Pragmatic comprehension in Japanese as a foreign language. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 558–576. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00787.x Taguchi, N., Li, S., & Liu, Y. (2013). Comprehension of conversational implicature in L2 Chinese. Pragmatics & Cognition, 21, 139–157. doi:10.1075/pc.21.1.06tag Takahashi, S., & Roitblat, H. L. (1994). Comprehension process of second language indirect requests. Applied Psycholinguistics, 15, 475–506. doi:10.1017/S0142716400006883 Tang, C. (1997). On the power and status of nonnative ESL teachers. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 577–580. Van Berkum, J. J., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C. M., Kos, M., & Hagoort, P. (2008). The neural integration of speaker and message. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 580–591. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20054 van den Noort, M. W., Bosch, P., & Hughdahl, K. (2006). Foreign language proficiency and working memory capacity. European Psychologist, 11, 289–296. doi:10.1027/1016-9040.11.4.289 Winke, P., Godfroid, A., & Gass, S. (2013). Introduction to special issue: Eye-movement recordings in second language research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35, 205–212. doi:10.1017/ S027226311200085X Wolf, D. (1987). Some assumptions about second language text comprehension. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9, 307–326. Zwaan, R. A., & Brown, C. M. (1996). The influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation-model construction. Discourse Processes, 21, 289–327. doi:10.1080/01638539609544960

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Pedagogical Approaches

19 A Meta-Analysis of L2 Pragmatics Instruction Luke Plonsky and Jingyuan Zhuang

Introduction Second language (L21) pragmatics has been the object of an increasingly large body of research over the last 30 years. This same time period has also witnessed major growth in (quasi-)experiments on L2 pragmatics instruction (Taguchi, 2015). Studies in this line of research have examined pragmatics instruction across many contextual and learner factors, treatments and target features, and outcome measures. The findings of work in this area have been summarized in a series of review papers (e.g., Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Kasper & Rose, 2002; Taguchi, 2011, 2015), which have reached a general consensus that instruction is more effective than mere exposure to input. Despite such a generalization, there are substantial variations in the effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction across studies. Inconclusive findings point to the multidimensional nature of instruction on L2 pragmatics as well as to the possibility of moderators affecting instructional outcomes (i.e., variables that might be associated with larger or smaller effects). Jeon and Kaya (2006) conducted the first meta-analysis on L2 pragmatics instruction, synthesizing 13 studies published prior to 2003. Their results revealed that direct instruction produced a notable difference over no instruction. However, findings on the relationship between the effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction and different instructional methods (explicit vs. implicit), outcome measures, and length of instruction were not entirely conclusive. Following Plonsky’s (2012b) discussion on the value of replication at the meta-analytic level, the current study seeks to build on the work of Jeon and Kaya (2006) to provide a more precise and reliable estimate of the magnitude of the effects of pragmatics instruction. We will synthesize findings from 50 primary studies available as of 2016. We should note at this point that, while two new meta-analyses of L2 pragmatics instruction (Badjadi, 2016; Yang, Eslami, Son, & Willson, 2016) have been conducted recently, their contributions are lacking in various respects. First, neither meta-analysis included primary studies published before 2003, hence reducing their comprehensiveness. Second, these metaanalyses only considered two moderators—instructional methods and outcome measures— while many other moderators indicated in previous reviews (e.g., Taguchi, 2015), remain unexplored at the meta-analytic level. Third, neither study was concerned with methodological practices or study quality in primary research, which is the responsibility of all metaanalyses (Plonsky, 2014).

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Therefore, to realize the full potential of a meta-analytic replication in this field, this study seeks to update and extend Jeon and Kaya (2006), applying more comprehensive and current methods. Similar to Jeon and Kaya (2006), the objectives of this study are threefold: to estimate the overall effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction, to explain potential moderators of the overall effectiveness (i.e., to explain systematic variability in outcomes), and to understand substantive and methodological features of primary studies in this domain.

Literature Review L2 Pragmatics Instruction In simple terms, L2 pragmatics is the study of ‘how leaners come to know how-to-say-whatto-whom-when’ (Bardovi-Harlig, 2013, p. 68). Similar to other domains of instructed second language acquisition (ISLA), early studies in the 1980s and 1990s were mainly concerned with whether L2 pragmatics is teachable and whether instruction is more effective than non-instruction (i.e., exposure only). Having obtained a generally affirmative answer to these questions, researchers shifted their focus to explore questions of greater nuance such as whether the effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction might vary as a function of different types of instruction and different target pragmatic features. The remainder of the literature review is devoted to presenting the background on these and other factors predicted to be associated with the effects of pragmatics instruction such as learning context, treatment and target features, outcome measures. We also briefly address the importance of research and reporting practices in this domain.

Contextual and Learner Factors Contextual and learner factors, such as second vs. foreign language environment, classroom vs. laboratory setting, learners’ age, and learners’ proficiency level, have been shown to moderate the effects of interventions in several meta-analyses of ISLA (e.g., Lee, Jang, & Plonsky, 2015 on pronunciation instruction). First, we might expect pragmatics instruction to lead to larger effects in a second language than a foreign language environment, due to the limited opportunities for practice in the latter. This expectation has been supported by Taguchi (2015), who observed that the majority of instructional studies have been conducted in a foreign language environment, indicating researchers’ recognition that pragmatics needs to be taught explicitly in an input-poor context. Second, the effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction may be related to a learner’s age. When discussing the challenges that L2 learners experience in learning pragmatics, Taguchi (2015) noted that ‘adult L2 learners experience a unique challenge in their pragmatic development, stemming from the co-existence of first language (L1) and L2-based pragmatic systems’ (p. 1). Therefore, although pragmatics instructional studies have mostly been carried out with adult learners, it is reasonable to speculate differential effects for studies involving children. Critically, to our knowledge, no studies have directly compared instructional effects among learners across different learning contexts or age groups. Finally, there may be an interaction between learners’ proficiency and the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction. Such interaction has been revealed in several other domains of ISLA. For example, Lee et al.’s (2015) meta-analysis on the effects of pronunciation instruction revealed that larger effects were obtained with beginner and advanced learners, as opposed to intermediate learners. However, whether and how proficiency and instructional effectiveness interact in the case of pragmatics is still underexplored, both in primary and secondary studies. The few

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recent instructional studies that included learners of different levels of proficiency found a lack of any such interaction. For instance, Fordyce (2014) found that all three proficiency groups of L2 English learners benefited from the explicit instruction on various epistemic forms. Yang (2016) also suggested that the two proficiency groups seemed to have benefited equally from web-based instruction on gratitude expressions in L2 Mandarin Chinese. The need for more research on proficiency effects on instructional outcomes is further justified by the abundant evidence on the generally positive effect of proficiency on L2 pragmatic competence and performance. For example, Xiao (2015) synthesized 28 non-instructional studies that employed a cross-sectional design to investigate the effect of proficiency on adult learners’ pragmatic competence. The findings revealed an overall positive relationship between the two, with most learners of higher proficiency also exhibiting greater pragmatic competence. Also, based on their in-depth review of the literature, Taguchi and Roever (2017) noted that proficiency helps pragmatics, since learners of higher proficiency have more vocabulary, a larger repertoire of grammatical structures, and greater automatization in accessing linguistic knowledge.

Treatment and Target Features Determining what type of instruction is most effective for teaching pragmatics has been a central issue of investigation. However, answering this question is far from straightforward. The first challenge concerns how we might categorize different types of instruction, which often reflect the theoretical models of SLA that the researchers follow, such as Schmidt’s (1993) Noticing Hypothesis (e.g., Alcon-Soler, 2005), Anderson’s (1993) skill acquisition theory (Li, 2012), Swain and Lapkin’s (1998) collaborative dialogue (Taguchi & Kim, 2016), and sociocultural theory (e.g., van Compernolle & Henery, 2014) (see also Chapters 8 and 10 in this volume). Categorizing treatment into explicit instruction or implicit instruction has been the most widely used approach in L2 pragmatics instruction (Taguchi, 2015) and elsewhere in ISLA. Following Kasper’s (2001) definition, explicit instruction involves direct metapragmatic explanation and is usually followed by focused practice. In contrast, implicit instruction does not involve metapragmatic explanation but tries to develop learners’ implicit understanding of the target by using input flood, input enhancement, consciousness raising, and implicit feedback. Jeon and Kaya’s (2006) meta-analysis confirmed that explicit instruction yielded clearly larger effects than implicit instruction both for between-groups contrasts (d = .7, 95% CI [-.12, 1.53] vs. d = .44, 95% CI [-1.43, 2.3] for explicit vs. implicit instruction, respectively) as well as within-groups contrasts (d = 1.91, 95% CI [.42, 3.39] vs. d = 1.01, 95% CI [-.01, 2.03]). However, due to the small sample size and correspondingly large variability in results across studies as shown here in the 95% confidence intervals, any definitive conclusions regarding the superiority of explicit or implicit instruction require additional evidence. Further complicating this issue, the dichotomous way of labeling instructional types has been questioned (e.g., Taguchi, 2015). For example, explicit instruction often involves some implicit activities, so whether it is the metapragmatic information or, in fact, the implicit activities that makes a difference, is unknown. At the same time, implicit instruction also differs on a continuum of implicitness; for example, consciousness-raising is more explicit than simple input exposure, yet both are often labeled as ‘implicit’ instruction. In addition to different types of instruction, the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction may also be moderated by its duration. Jeon and Kaya (2006) reported that the average effect size for long treatments (i.e., more than five hours of instruction in total) was larger than for what the authors termed short treatments (i.e., less than five hours of instruction in total). However, the two average effect sizes were again based on very small sample sizes and had wide and overlapping 289

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confidence intervals. Furthermore, the cut-off point for long or short treatment appears to have been determined arbitrarily. With these considerations in mind, it seems that further evidence is needed to make more stable claims regarding the relationship between effectiveness and length of instruction. Though target pragmatic features were not included in Jeon and Kaya’s (2006) moderator analyses, the authors noted that out of 13 studies, six targeted speech acts (e.g., requests), either in isolation or in association with certain language forms (e.g., conditional clause in a request-making expression). The remaining seven studies targeted syntactic-semantic features (e.g., gambits), a mixture of syntactic-semantic structure and sociopragmatic features (e.g., formulaic expressions for formal and informal contexts), and implicature (e.g., Pope questions). The popularity of speech acts as pragmatic targets was also observed in Taguchi’s (2015) review. Given that pragmatic targets differ in their linguistic difficulty and in other features (e.g., amount of sociocultural knowledge required), it will be beneficial to explore how the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction varies across target pragmatic features. Such a finding will speak to the teachability of different pragmatic features and will have useful implications for L2 pedagogy. Interestingly, Jeon and Kaya also found that, although the most commonly targeted learner population was that of a relatively advanced proficiency, when learners were of lower proficiency, researchers tended to choose more formulaic or form-driven pragmatic targets. This observation suggests the potential interaction among pragmatic targets, types of intervention, and learner profiles, as proposed by Roever (2009).

Outcome Measures The literature review has so far focused on the independent variables of instructed L2 pragmatics research (i.e., learning context, type of instruction). In this section, we discuss different outcome measures and their potential to moderate the effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction. Outcome measures for the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction can be classified into receptive tasks (e.g., appropriateness rating, multiple-choice questions) and productive tasks (e.g., written or oral discourse completion test or DCT, role play). Productive tasks can be further organized on a continuum of open-endedness or authenticity. For example, BardoviHarlig (2013) evaluated common productive tasks and categorized them from most to least authentic as follows: conversation and institutional talk, open role plays and simulated tasks, closed role plays and oral DCTs, written DCTs and written production tasks (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). Differential instructional effects on different outcome measures have been found in several primary studies (e.g., Lyster, 1994) and in Jeon and Kaya’s (2006) meta-analysis. For example, Lyster (1994) investigated the effect of functional-analytic teaching on French immersion students’ learning of address forms (tu and vous). While the experimental group outperformed the control group on multiple-choice and written production tasks, there was no such advantage on an oral production task. Jeon and Kaya (2006) compared studies that used elicited data (e.g., multiple-choice questions, DCTs) plus more naturalistic data (e.g., role-plays, interviews) with studies that used only elicited data. They found that the average pre-to-post effect size calculated from elicited plus naturalistic data was much larger than that calculated from only elicited data, meaning that the instructional effect was stronger when naturalistic data was involved. However, the two average effect sizes were based on very small sample sizes and had wide and overlapping confidence intervals. Consequently, the evidence for a relationship between effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction and type of outcome measure is suggestive but inconclusive. Further complicating the moderating effect of outcome measures is the multi-layered interaction among types of instruction, outcome measures, and target pragmatic features, as pointed out by Taguchi (2015). 290

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Research and Reporting Practices The last section of the literature review addresses methodological characteristics in primary studies and the potential relationship between certain research and reporting practices and the effects of L2 pragmatics instruction. Concerns about research and reporting practices of primary studies have motivated researchers to explore methodological characteristics, often in the context of research syntheses and metaanalyses (e.g., Liu & Brown, 2015 on corrective feedback in L2 writing; Norris & Ortega, 2000, on L2 grammar instruction; Ziegler, 2016 on SCMC and interaction) or to investigate a certain methodological practice across different substantive domains (e.g., Plonsky & Derrick, 2016 on reliability coefficients; Plonsky & Gonulal, 2015 on factor analysis). Some meta-analyses and methodological syntheses (Plonsky, 2011; Plonsky & Gass, 2011) have taken a step further and examined the relationship between methodological characteristics and study outcomes (i.e., methodological characteristics as potential moderators of overall effect sizes). In order to better understand the domain of pragmatics instruction, the current study also examined the presence of several research and reporting practices generally and as potential moderators of the overall instructional effects in L2 pragmatics.

Research Questions Motivated by the body of theoretical and empirical research in this domain as well as the concerns of practitioners, this meta-analysis addressed the following two research questions: 1 What is the overall effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction? 2 What is the relationship between the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction and the following types of moderating variables: (1) contextual and learner factors, (2) treatment and target features, (3) outcome measures, and (4) research and reporting practices?

Methods Data Collection Literature Search An exhaustive and principled literature search was conducted to locate all L2 pragmatics instructional intervention studies available as of the end of 2016. In order to mitigate the well-known problem of publication bias (for an overview, see Chapter 30 in Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009) and to treat the impact of design quality on study results as ‘an empirical a posteriori question, not an a priori matter of opinion’ (Glass et al., 1981, p. 222), unpublished research (e.g., dissertations) was included as well as more traditional publications (e.g., journal articles). A wide set of search techniques as suggested in Plonsky and Brown (2015) was employed. First, four library-housed databases (ERIC, LLBA, PsycINFO, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses) and two non-library databases (Google and Google Scholar) were searched using combinations of keywords (e.g., second language, foreign language, interlanguage, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, pragmalinguistics, instruction, and teaching) as well as narrower, domainspecific terms (e.g., request, refusal, politeness, implicature, downgrader). Two additional techniques were also applied: ancestry and forward searches. The former were conducted by examining the references of previous review papers as well as already-discovered primary studies; the latter were carried out with Google Scholar to locate primary studies that have cited seminal review papers and existing meta-analyses on pragmatics instruction (e.g., Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Taguchi, 2015). 291

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Study Eligibility Criteria Of the initially very large sample of studies identified (over 105 studies), a total of 50 remained in the meta-analysis. In order to be included, the study had to: 1 investigate the effects of instruction on one or more L2 pragmatic features by employing a pre-post (within-group) and/or experimental-control (between-group) design 2 provide sufficient quantitative data suitable for calculating an effect size 3 be written in English. For two or more reports based on the same study (e.g., a dissertation followed by a subsequent journal article or two journal articles; Alcón-Soler & Guzman-Pitarch, 2010, 2013; Alcón-Soler, 2005, 2007), the most recent study or the one with more usable data was included.

Coding Each study in the sample was then coded on eight categories of substantive and methodological features as well as effect sizes (the full coding scheme is available for download on IRIS, irisdatabase.org, see Marsden, Mackey, & Plonsky, 2016): (a) study identification, (b) contextual and learner factors, (c) design features and practices associated with study quality, (d) reporting practices, (e) outcome measures, (f) target features, (g) treatment features, and (h) type of instruction. The coding scheme was developed through an iterative process that incorporated previous reviews and meta-analyses of L2 pragmatics instruction and ISLA in general, recommendations from peers and experts in meta-analysis, and the results of pilot coding on four studies.

Calculating and Aggregating Effect Sizes Cohen’s d was chosen as the effect size based on the nature of the designs of primary studies (i.e., comparing group scores on learning outcome measures). This index can be interpreted as the magnitude of an observed difference between two sets of scores (i.e., control vs. experimental; pre vs. posttest) in standard deviation units (Norris & Ortega, 2000; Plonsky, 2012a, 2014). The contrasts used to calculate Cohen’s d for different designs were defined as follows: 1 For studies that had a between-group design (i.e., control vs. experimental group), effect sizes were calculated by contrasting each treatment group with the control group on the immediate posttest and again on the delayed posttest (if there was one). In order to adjust for the potential pretreatment difference between treatment group and control group, when there was a pretest, pretest effect sizes were always subtracted from the posttest effect sizes (see explanation in Plonsky, 2015). 2 For studies that had a within-group design, effect sizes were calculated by contrasting the performance of the treatment group on the immediate posttest with its performance on the pretest. If there was a delayed posttest, effect sizes were also calculated by contrasting the performance of the treatment group on the delayed posttest with its performance on the pretest as well as on the immediate posttest. As discussed in Plonsky and Oswald (2014), effect sizes calculated from within-group contrasts often appear larger than those calculated from between-group contrasts because participants in the former serve as their own control, thus reducing the variance and standard deviation (SD), which makes up the denominator in the formula for Cohen’s d. The difference can be corrected using pre-post correlations, but such data were not reported in any primary studies in 292

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the current sample. Therefore, effect sizes calculated from between-group contrasts and withingroup contrasts were aggregated and analyzed separately. If multiple outcome measures were taken by the same group of participants, the effects were averaged to yield a single d value for that sample. In total, effect sizes were obtained from 98 unique samples from 50 primary studies.

Analysis In order to address Research Question 1 (the overall effect of pragmatics instruction), effect sizes for between-groups and within-groups were (separately) combined and averaged. When doing so, each effect size was weighted by its corresponding sample size. This means applying a mathematical adjustment to the value of the effect size based on the size of the sample from which it was obtained, in order to yield more accurate results by allowing for effects from larger samples and, therefore, less sampling error to contribute more to the meta-analytic mean (see Plonsky & Oswald, 2015). Considering that potential outliers would skew the data and produce misleading results, effect sizes that fell 2.5 standard deviations above or below the mean were removed from the overall and moderator analysis. For Research Question 2 (explaining systematic variability in overall effects or moderators of those effects), subgroups of studies were formed based on the substantive and methodological features that were coded (e.g., study contexts, treatment features), and the effects for those groups were then aggregated as for Research Question 1. Unfortunately, the number of studies in some subgroups was quite small, and certain contrasts (e.g., second vs. foreign language) were therefore not included in this phase of the analysis. By doing so we avoid presenting unstable moderator effects based on very small numbers of results. When moderators were measured as continuous (not categorical) variables (e.g., length of instruction), a correlational approach was adopted to examine their relationship with instructional effects.

Results In this section, we present the results concerning our two research questions related to the overall effects of pragmatics instruction (RQ1) and the relationship between those effects and a number of potential moderator variables (RQ2). We begin, however, by considering whether and to what extent the effects in our sample might be affected by a publication bias. In addition to these results, a complete synthesis of substantive and methodological features of this domain can be found in an Appendix on the IRIS Database (iris-database.org; Marsden et al., 2016).

Publication Bias In order to assess the extent to which the sample of studies might be affected by publication bias, a funnel plot (i.e., a scatterplot of effect sizes on the x-axis and sample sizes on the y-axis) was created for between-group contrasts (i.e., control vs. experimental group) and within-group contrasts (i.e., pretest vs. immediate posttest) (see Figures 19.1 and 19.2). In the absence of bias, relative symmetry on both sides of the mean would be expected (see Borenstein et al., 2009, p. 283 for an explanation). However, as presented in Figures 19.1 and 19.2, the effects are not spread equally on both sides of the mean effect size, especially for within-group contrasts (Figure 19.2). Instead, effects larger than the mean (on the right) have much greater variability than effects smaller than the mean (on the left), suggesting a bias in the sample toward statistically significant or larger effects. In other words, the sample of observed effects may not be entirely representative of the true population of effects of pragmatics instruction. More specifically, it appears as though smaller effects may not be getting published due to authorial and/or editorial bias. The 293

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Figure 19.1 Funnel plot of effect sizes (Cohen’s d; x-axis) and sample sizes (N; y-axis) for betweengroup contrasts. Note: 2 out of 57 effect sizes (marked with ▲) were identified as outliers and removed from subsequent analyses.

results of the study should therefore be considered to overestimate—if only slightly—the true effects of L2 pragmatics instruction. In addition to indicating that the sample may not be entirely representative of the population of effects, the two plots show that there is substantial variability among studies in observed effect sizes. Variability is particularly pronounced, as we would expect, among studies based on smaller samples (at the bottom of the plots), which contain greater sampling error. Higher up on the plots where the sample sizes are larger, the effect sizes tend to cluster closer to the mean and exhibit less variability.

Overall Immediate and Delayed Effects (RQ1) The results for Research Question 1, which was concerned with the overall effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction, are presented in Table 19.1. Treatment groups on average greatly outperformed their control group counterparts on immediate posttests: d = 1.52. The average change among treatment groups from pretest to immediate posttest was similarly large (d = 1.45), indicating that L2 pragmatics instruction was very effective. Based on Plonsky and Oswald’s (2014) benchmarks for interpreting d values in L2 research, both effect sizes would be characterized as 294

Pragmatics Instruction

100

d= 1.45

90

80

70

Sample size (N)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 –1.0 –0.5 0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5 3.0 3.5 Effect size (d)

4.0

4.5

5.0

5.5

6.0

6.5

7.0

Figure 19.2 Funnel plot of effect sizes (Cohen’s d; x-axis) and sample sizes (N; y-axis) for withingroup contrasts. Note: 3 out of 95 effect sizes (marked with ▲) were identified as outliers and removed for subsequent analyses. Table 19.1  Overall Results for the Effectiveness of L2 Pragmatics Instruction Contrast/design

Between-group Within-group

K

55 92

M (d)

1.52 1.45

SE

0.02 0.02

95% CIs Lower

Upper

1.48 1.41

1.55 1.49

Note: K refers to the number of samples being aggregated; M = mean effect size; SE = standard error; CIs = confidence interval

quite large, with the confidence intervals supporting each conclusion as both trustworthy and fairly precise. With regard to the retention of such instructional effects over time, Table 19.2 shows that on delayed posttests, treatment groups still on average outperformed their control/comparison group counterparts. The difference here, however, was less pronounced (d = 0.64). Likewise, the average change by treatment groups from pretest to delayed posttest was substantial (d = 1.01), while 295

Luke Plonsky and Jingyuan Zhuang Table 19.2  Retention of the Instructional Effects Contrast/design

K

Delayed: Treatment vs. Control 16 Treatment: Delayed vs. Pre-test 34 Treatment: Delayed vs. Immediate 34

M (d)

 0.64  1.01 −0.31

SE

95% CIs

0.02 0.02 0.02

Lower

Upper

 0.61  0.97 −0.35

 0.67  1.06 −0.27

the average decrease from immediate posttest to delayed posttest was fairly small (d = -0.31). Hence it could be concluded that the retention of the overall instructional effects in treatment groups was considerable. The focus of Research Question 2 was on potential moderators of the overall effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction. Variability across the sample was examined as a function of different (1) contextual and learner factors, (2) treatment features and target pragmatic features, (3) outcome measures, and (4) research and reporting practices. Tables 19.3 and 19.4 present the results of moderator analyses for several contextual and learner variables. For within-group contrasts, larger effects were observed in high schools and language institutes (vs. universities) and in classroom contexts (vs. labs). The pattern with proficiency is fairly consistent for both between-group (except for advanced learners where there is little data available) and within-group contrasts: Larger gains seem to be evident with more proficient learners. In viewing these results, we would urge caution due to the small number of studies that make up some of the subgroups, indicated in the ‘k’ column. Perhaps more important than understanding these individual moderators is the finding borne out in these data that pragmatics instruction can be effective across all learner demographics and contexts. With regard to the variables related to treatment methods and target pragmatic features, the patterns are again largely homogenous for both between-group and within-group contrasts (Tables 19.5 and 19.6). Effects across the five instructional features align in that they all show evidence of an advantage. More specifically, the effect of pragmatics instruction is substantially larger when it includes any of the following four instructional features: metapragmatic information, enhanced input, feedback, and opportunity for practice. In contrast, consciousness raising seems to have a relatively small effect (between-group mean difference: d = 0.12; within-group mean difference: d = 0.11). Another treatment-related variable to consider is the length of instruction. Previous meta-analyses have operationalized treatment length either as the total amount of time (e.g., more than or less than five hours in Jeon & Kaya, 2006; more than or less than 4.25 hours in Lee et al., 2015) Table 19.3  Moderator Analyses across Contextual and Learner Factors for Between-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Proficiency  High-beginner/low-intermediate  Intermediate  High-intermediate/low-advanced  Advanced   Not reported

k

 7 15 12  3 18

M (d)

1.27 1.62 1.80 1.67 1.37

SE

0.06 0.05 0.03 0.03 0.03

Note: Proficiency was determined based on what the author reported in the original study.

296

95% CIs Lower

Upper

1.15 1.53 1.74 1.61 1.31

1.40 1.72 1.85 1.74 1.43

Pragmatics Instruction Table 19.4  Moderator Analyses across Contextual and Learner Factors for Within-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Institution   Language institute   High school  University Context  Classroom  Laboratory Proficiency  Beginner  High-beginner/low-intermediate  Intermediate  High-intermediate/low-advanced  Advanced   Not reported

k

M (d)

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

11 4 77

1.86 2.31 1.31

0.04 0.08 0.02

1.78 2.14 1.27

1.95 2.48 1.35

82 10

1.48 1.05

0.02 0.06

1.44 0.92

1.52 1.17

1 10 33 22 3 23

0.87 1.06 1.21 1.72 1.98 1.49

NA 0.09 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03

NA 0.89 1.14 1.65 1.90 1.43

NA 1.24 1.28 1.80 2.06 1.55

Table 19.5 Moderator Analyses across Treatment and Target Pragmatic Features for Between-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Pragmatic target   Speech act  Other Treatment features   Metapragmatic information    No – implicit instruction    Yes – explicit instruction   Input enhancement   No   Yes   Consciousness raising   No   Yes  Feedback   No   Yes   Practice opportunity   No   Yes, without production (only receptive-skill practice)    Yes, with production

k

M (d)

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

45 10

1.59 1.20

0.02 0.01

1.55 1.18

1.64 1.23

23 32

1.27 1.68

0.03 0.02

1.21 1.64

1.34 1.73

42 13

1.43 1.84

0.02 0.05

1.39 1.74

1.47 1.94

21 34

1.44 1.56

0.03 0.02

1.38 1.51

1.50 1.60

32 23

1.28 1.81

0.02 0.03

1.24 1.75

1.32 1.88

16 3

1.00 2.48

0.03 0.11

0.94 2.26

1.05 2.69

36

1.65

0.02

1.61

1.70

Note: The yes/no refers to the presence/absence of the corresponding feature. Metapragmatic information refers to ‘explicit explanation about pragmatic rules’ (Taguchi, 2015, p. 21). Input enhancement refers to ‘techniques used to draw learners’ attention to input by highlighting the text or using bald face’ (Taguchi, 2015, p. 21). Consciousness raising refers to ‘tasks that draw learners’ attention to target pragmatic features without explicit metapragmatic information’, including ‘recognition tasks’ (Taguchi, 2015, p. 21). Feedback refers to ‘feedback on learners’ use or understanding of target pragmatic features’ (Taguchi, 2015, p. 21).

297

Luke Plonsky and Jingyuan Zhuang Table 19.6  Moderator Analyses across Treatment and Target Pragmatic Features for Within-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Pragmatic target   Speech act  Other Treatment features   Metapragmatic information    No – implicit instruction    Yes – explicit instruction   Input enhancement   No   Yes   Consciousness raising   No   Yes  Feedback   No   Yes   Practice opportunity   No   Yes, without production (only receptive-skill practice)    Yes, with production

k

M (d)

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

73 19

1.52 1.21

0.02 0.03

1.47 1.16

1.56 1.27

35 57

1.22 1.58

0.03 0.02

1.16 1.54

1.29 1.63

72 20

1.39 1.65

0.02 0.04

1.35 1.57

1.43 1.74

37 55

1.38 1.49

0.03 0.02

1.32 1.44

1.44 1.54

55 37

1.24 1.73

0.02 0.03

1.20 1.67

1.29 1.79

25 5

1.23 1.42

0.03 0.05

1.17 1.32

1.29 1.51

62

1.54

0.02

1.49

1.58

or as the time span (e.g., more than or less than two weeks in Plonsky, 2011). In this metaanalysis, both total amount of time and the time span are used as measures of treatment length (see Table 19.7 for descriptive statistics). Rather than categorizing these time-related variables as in previous meta-analyses, we have preserved the data for time as a naturally occurring continuous variable. This approach allows the relationship between length and instructional effects to be modeled more precisely using correlations (see Plonsky & Oswald, 2017, for a discussion on problems associated with dichotomizing continuous data). First, for total amount of time, measured as the total length (in minutes) of the instructional intervention, results showed a medium, positive correlation between length and instructional effects for both between-group contrasts (r = 0.44, k = 55) and within-group contrasts (r = 0.41, k = 92). In other words, the total amount of time spent teaching L2 pragmatics is moderately associated with post-treatment performance. For the other operationalization of length of instruction, time span, measured as the number of weeks the intervention lasted, the correlation is relatively small for both between-group (r = 0.23, k = 55) and within-group designs (r = 0.21, k = 92). For retention of instructional effects as measured on delayed posttests, both total amount of time (minutes) and time span (weeks) were revealed to have medium-to-large positive association with instructional effects (between-group: r = 0.54, 0.44 respectively, k = 16; within-group: r = 0.45, 0.53 respectively, k = 34). Importantly, for both measures of treatment length, the correlation with delayed effects turned out to be consistently larger than the corresponding correlation with immediate effects, revealing that the edge of longer treatment becomes more notable in the long run. As pointed out by Taguchi (2015), instructional interventions differ not only in overall length (as measured in minutes or weeks) but in their intensity as well. We therefore also examined the relationship between study effects and intensity of instruction operationalized as amount 298

Pragmatics Instruction Table 19.7  Descriptive Statistics of the Length of Instruction Operationalization

Mean

SD

Min

Max

k

Total amount of time (minutes) Time span (weeks)

418.99

379.56

20

1800 45

5.65

4.29

1

16

43

Note: k refers to the number of primary studies (among a total of 50 studies) that reported the corresponding time-related information.

of treatment time in minutes per week. The results showed that intensity of instruction is only slightly associated with instructional effects: r = 0.13 (k = 55) and r = .08 (k = 92) for betweengroup and within-group contrasts, respectively. Turning to the effects of pragmatics instruction with different outcome measure variables (Tables 19.8 and 19.9), the effects from studies based on receptive measures were smaller than those of studies using productive outcome measures. This pattern holds up for both between- and within-groups contrasts. We also examined the moderating effect of production modality, oral (e.g., oral role play) and written (e.g., written DCT). Between-group and within-group contrasts both showed that oral production tests yielded smaller effects than tests involving written production. In addition, free outcome measures yielded larger effects than controlled measures (e.g., multiple choice) in both between-group and within-group contrasts. The fourth and final set of moderators that we examined involves several preferable research and reporting practices (Tables 19.10 and 19.11). The features we examined as part of this analysis, following Plonsky and Gass (2011) and others, are: (1) inclusion of delayed posttests, (2) inclusion of a control/comparison group, (3) random assignment to experimental conditions, (4) reporting of reliability, (5) reporting of exact p-values, and (6) reporting of effect sizes. Once again, the patterns of effects for both between- and within-group contrasts were largely congruent in that studies with the preferable practices had larger or very similar effects in all cases except for the feature of random assignment and, in the case of within-group contrasts only, reporting of effect sizes.

Table 19.8  Moderator Analyses across Outcome Measures for Between-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Task  Receptive  Productive Type  Controlled  Free Production Modality  Oral  Written

k

M (d)

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

11 32

1.08 1.57

0.03 0.03

1.02 1.52

1.13 1.62

31 13

1.49 1.83

0.03 0.05

1.44 1.73

1.54 1.92

 4 29

0.92 1.63

0.02 0.03

0.88 1.58

0.96 1.69

Note: Controlled outcome measures refer to ‘highly structured methods for data collection (e.g., DCTs (Jeon & Kaya, 2006, p. 194, termed as ‘elicited’ in their meta-analysis). Free outcome measures refer to less structured methods ‘where naturalistic data were collected (e.g., interviews, role-plays)’ (Jeon & Kaya, 2006, p. 194, termed as ‘natural’ in their meta-analysis).

299

Luke Plonsky and Jingyuan Zhuang Table 19.9  Moderator Analyses across Outcome Measures for Within-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Task  Receptive  Productive Type  Controlled  Free Production Modality  Oral  Written

k

M (d)

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

20 45

1.34 1.55

0.04 0.02

1.27 1.51

1.41 1.60

53 19

1.43 1.68

0.03 0.04

1.38 1.60

1.48 1.76

19 35

1.12 1.61

0.03 0.04

1.05 1.54

1.19 1.68

Table 19.10  Moderator Analyses across Research and Reporting Practices for Between-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

Delayed posttest  No  Yes Control/comparison group  No  Yes Random assignment  No   Yes, at the individual level   Yes, at the class level Reliability reported  No  Yes Exact p-value reported  No  Yes Effect size reported  No  Yes

k

M (d)

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

34 21

1.43 1.65

0.02 0.03

1.38 1.59

1.47 1.72

 5 50

1.29 1.53

0.06 0.02

1.17 1.49

1.40 1.57

15  9 31

1.93 1.29 1.34

0.03 0.04 0.03

1.86 1.21 1.29

1.99 1.37 1.40

27 28

1.06 2.02

0.02 0.03

1.02 1.97

1.10 2.08

17 38

1.44 1.56

0.03 0.02

1.38 1.51

1.50 1.61

37 18

1.41 1.76

0.02 0.03

1.37 1.70

1.46 1.82

Discussion Research Question One – Overall Effects The results of the current meta-analysis showed that, overall, L2 pragmatics instruction produced a generally large effect and that this effect is retained considerably over time. Several further remarks are in order here. First, the overall results of Jeon and Kaya (2006, shown in Table 19.12) and the present metaanalysis both demonstrate a positive effect of pragmatics instruction. The difference, however, is in the magnitude of that effect, which was quite a bit smaller in Jeon and Kaya’s (d = 1.52 in this study vs. d = .59 in Jeon and Kaya’s study). One possible explanation is that, due to the small sample 300

Pragmatics Instruction Table 19.11  Moderator Analyses across Research and Reporting Practices for Within-Group Contrasts Grouping variables and values

M (d)

k

Delayed posttest  No  Yes Control/comparison group  No  Yes Random assignment  No   Yes, at the individual level   Yes, at the class level Reliability reported  No  Yes Exact p-value reported  No  Yes Effect size reported  No  Yes

SE

95% CIs Lower

Upper

56 36

1.45 1.45

0.02 0.03

1.40 1.39

1.49 1.52

24 68

1.45 1.45

0.03 0.02

1.38 1.40

1.51 1.50

30 17 45

1.52 1.32 1.43

0.03 0.05 0.03

1.47 1.22 1.37

1.58 1.41 1.49

39 53

1.22 1.65

0.03 0.03

1.17 1.60

1.26 1.71

23 69

1.23 1.53

0.03 0.02

1.18 1.49

1.29 1.58

49 43

1.49 1.39

0.03 0.03

1.44 1.34

1.54 1.45

Table 19.12  Summary of Jeon & Kaya’s (2006) Overall Results Contrast/design

Between-group Within-group

K

 7 16

M (d)

0.59 1.57

95% CIs Lower

Upper

0.05 0.63

1.13 2.51

size (K = 7), the estimate of the between-group effect size in Jeon and Kaya (2006) was not very accurate, which can be seen in the wide confidence intervals in their study. Another possibility is that the effects of pragmatics instruction have increased since Jeon and Kaya (2006). Scatterplots of years and effect sizes (Figures 19.3 and 19.4) support this explanation: For both between-group and within-group contrasts, there is a general tendency of increase in the effect sizes over time. As discussed in Plonsky and Oswald (2014), such an overall upward trajectory of effect sizes over time in the domain of pragmatics instruction may be attributed to the methodological adjustments or improvements, such as longer and stronger instructional treatments. Second, situating the current overall meta-analytic results within other meta-analyses in the general field of ISLA (see Plonsky, 2017), the overall effect size of 1.52 in L2 pragmatics studies is quite large. We expect that scholars and practitioners alike may be surprised to know that pragmatics instruction generally produces effects as a large as or larger than instruction on L2 grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Third, the findings on the considerable retention of instructional effects were also encouraging, echoing findings from the few meta-analyses that have explored longer-term effects of treatments (e.g., Mackey & Goo, 2007; Norris & Ortega, 2000). This finding is also encouraging for practitioners such as language instructors and curriculum developers. 301

7.00

6.00

5.00

Effect size (d)

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00 1985

1990

1995

–1.00

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Year

Figure 19.3 Scatterplot of years and effect sizes for between-group contrasts (with outliers). 7.00

6.00

5.00

Effect size (d)

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00 1985 –1.00

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Year

Figure 19.4 Scatterplot of years and effect sizes for within-group contrasts (with outliers).

Pragmatics Instruction

Research Question Two – Moderators Beyond the overall effects, the current meta-analysis also explored whether and to what extent the effects of pragmatics instruction might vary as a function of several moderators, including different instructional features, length of instruction, outcome measures, and methodological characteristics. First, regarding instructional features, the results of the current study support the findings of previous meta-analyses on L2 pragmatics instruction in that (a) explicit instruction was more effective than implicit instruction and in that (b) instruction with feedback was more effective than instruction without feedback (Badjadi, 2016). In line with Taguchi (2015), this meta-analysis also found that pragmatics instruction that provided opportunities for practice was more effective than instruction without opportunities for practice. Comparing instruction with only receptive-skill practice and instruction with opportunities to practice producing the pragmatic target (whether in combination with receptive-skill practice or not), the results were mixed. For within-group contrasts, practice that includes production (d = 1.54, k = 62) yielded larger effects than receptive-only practice (d = 1.42, k = 5), whereas for between-group contrasts, receptive-only practice (d = 2.48, k = 3) seemed to yield unexpected larger effects than practice that includes production (d = 1.65, k = 36). This is, however, in need of further empirical evidence, since the sample sizes for the subgroups with only receptive-skill practice were very small. As for the instructional feature of input enhancement, it did not seem to yield a very substantial increase in effects when included compared to when not included, implicating that simply directing learners’ attention to the target feature without deeper processing does not necessarily result in additional learning (see also Taguchi, 2015). Such a finding echoes those of Lee and Huang’s (2008) meta-analytic results that L2 readers who were provided with enhancement-embedded texts only minimally outperformed those who were exposed to unenhanced texts with the same target forms. Second, regarding the length of instruction, the current result confirmed that longer instruction (operationalized as total duration in both minutes and weeks) is more effective than shorter instruction, which was found in Jeon and Kaya (2006). On the other hand, the intensity of instruction, operationalized as amount of instructional time per week, did not seem to have a notable association with instructional effects. This finding is somewhat counter-intuitive and may indicate that our measure for instructional intensity failed to capture the essence of this construct. In other words, having more time devoted to instruction each week did not necessarily mean that the instruction was necessarily more intense. Students may simply pay insufficient attention to timeintensive instruction. Or perhaps a more dispersed approach may facilitate deeper processing of the form-meaning connections inherent in pragmatic features (see Rogers, 2017, for a discussion of massed vs. distributed learning). It is also possible that a greater number of target features were taught when the instructional time was more time-intensive, leading to information overload. Taguchi (2015) pointed out that in several studies, one way of measuring instructional intensity is to count the number of instances in which learners processed the target pragmatic feature. Unfortunately, such an approach has not been widely used in primary studies, thus preventing us from applying it at the meta-analytic level. Third, this meta-analysis found that free outcome measures (e.g., role plays) yielded larger effects than more controlled outcome measures (e.g., multiple-choice questions, DCTs). This finding is somewhat counter-intuitive, given that more open-ended tasks generally involve greater linguistic and cognitive demands and thus might be expected to reveal smaller or at least more variable gains for groups receiving instruction. The current observation is also contrary to the finding that controlled outcome measures yield larger effects than free outcome measures as found in several other meta-analyses of ISLA (e.g., Lee et al., 2015 on pronunciation instruction; Norris & Ortega, 2000 on grammar instruction) as well as in some primary studies of instructed L2 pragmatics (e.g., Lyster, 1994). One potential explanation for this finding is that outcome 303

Luke Plonsky and Jingyuan Zhuang

measures and instructional types may interact. That is, studies that include opportunities for students to practice pragmatic features in the form of written production, for instance, may be more likely to test the effects of the instruction using similar tasks. A match between instruction/practice tasks and learning outcomes tasks may therefore be associated with larger effects. As long as there is such a match, the type of outcome measures used (e.g., free or controlled) may not be as relevant in predicting the magnitude of instructional effects. The influence of such a match on the instructional effects revealed by certain outcome measures is further supported by Badjadi’s (2016) meta-analytic finding that the effect of implicit instruction as measured by comprehension tasks was larger than that of explicit instruction, although the mean effect size across all outcome measures for explicit instruction (d = 1.96) is larger than that of implicit instruction (d =1.01). This is probably because in implicit instruction, learners tended to be presented with tasks involving input enhancement, consciousness raising, and structured input activities, and hence had ample opportunities for comprehension-related practice, which gives them an edge in comprehension-based outcome measures. Another possible explanation may be that freer tasks such as role plays can be somewhat more problematic in terms of scoring and thus lead to results that are less reliable and include more error, which can attenuate or reduce observed effects. In a review on testing of L2 pragmatics, Roever (2011) pointed out that role plays pose challenges in scoring, since ‘the rating of interactive performances is complicated by the co-constructed nature of interaction’ and thus that ‘interlocutor variations may affect test-taker ratings’ (pp. 473–474). Among the currently meta-analyzed studies that employed free outcome measures, role play is the most commonly used task and, in many cases, learners are paired with teachers or native speakers instead of their peers, which may have contributed to improved performance or, depending on your point of view, inflated posttest results. Finally, the study revealed that nearly all research and reporting practices related to study quality and experimental control were associated with larger effect sizes. For example, similar to Plonsky and Gass’ (2011) findings, primary studies with delayed posttests tend to yield larger effect sizes than those without. Also, similar to Plonsky’s (2011) findings, primary studies that reported instrument reliability tend to yield larger effect sizes than those that do not. We are not suggesting that these features of a quality study cause larger effects in any way; rather, we would propose that researchers who engage in these practices associated with greater experimental rigor may be more informed in terms of both the ‘what’ (i.e., substance) of this domain and the ‘how’ (i.e., method), enabling them to produce both stronger studies and larger effects.

Pedagogical Implications Practically speaking, the most important, if obvious, take-away from this study is likely that pragmatics instruction can indeed yield large gains in L2 users’ pragmatic competence. Critically, this finding holds up across a wide range of learner contexts, demographics, proficiency levels, treatment types, pragmatic targets, and outcomes. Based on our results, we would encourage language instructors to design activities and to implement pragmatics instruction that is explicit (i.e., includes metapragmatic explanations), that provides learners with opportunities to practice and produce the forms being targeted, and that includes feedback. In addition, recognizing the limited class time available to most teachers, longer, more distributed periods of instruction (in terms of total time devoted to instruction and meaningful practice/use) can also be expected to produce larger gains and better retention of gains over time. However, due to the wide variability in the duration of treatments and in curricular goals, it is not practical to provide more specific guidance as the exact length needed to induce substantial gains in pragmatic competence. We would also highlight that learners’ L2 proficiency, generally understood as grammar and vocabulary knowledge, is positively associated with the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction. Learners of higher proficiency seem readier to learn the pragmatic targets through instruction, so 304

Pragmatics Instruction

it may be more effective for language instructors to devote more time to pragmatics instruction in intermediate- to advanced-level courses than in beginner-level courses. Alternatively, when designing teaching materials, instructors can carefully monitor the type and level of linguistic resources being targeted. This means that teachers can conceptualize materials at two levels—linguistics and pragmatics. Linguistic input (e.g., grammar and vocabulary) needs to be fully accessible to learners so the focus of instruction can remain on the pragmatic implications of the input.

Future Directions This chapter concludes with a few suggestions for future research on L2 pragmatics instruction. First, from a substantive perspective, echoing what has been suggested in Taguchi (2015), the domain of pragmatics instruction may benefit in terms of generalizability if primary researchers can go beyond the most traditional and widely investigated learner populations (i.e., university students), target languages (i.e., English), and pragmatic features (i.e., speech act). Relatively little is known about learners at younger ages. Also, compared to the foreign language context, instructed L2 pragmatics taking place in second language (as opposed to foreign language) contexts is still underexplored. In addition, studies conducted outside the U.S.A. almost exclusively investigated English as a foreign language, so little is known about how learners outside the U.S.A. develop pragmatic competence in other foreign languages. Second, from a methodological perspective, future research should include more methodologically rigorous design features, such as delayed posttests, multiple outcome measures, and estimates of reliability. One methodological issue concerns the definition of immediate posttest and delayed posttest. Currently, the term seems to lack any standard in the domain, hence complicating the overall picture of retention. In fact, the time interval between treatment and immediate posttest in one study may even be longer that the time interval between treatment and delayed posttest in another study. Last, from the perspective of rigorous research reporting and the broader notion of transparency, we would remind primary researchers to report on their research design and data analysis as thoroughly as possible. For example, a number of studies in our sample did not report on important aspects of the instructional treatment, such as the length, the time intervals between pretest, treatment, and posttests, and the treatment provider (e.g., a classroom instructor or a researcher). Also, the lack of basic descriptive statistics, especially standard deviations, led to the exclusion of many primary studies, thus greatly reducing the evidence available for meta-analysis. These issues not only made it more difficult for researchers and practitioners to understand primary work being reported (see Larson-Hall & Plonsky, 2015; Marsden, Thompson, & Plonsky, 2018), but they also impeded potential replication and meta-analytic efforts. As one very concrete suggestion, we would encourage all authors of studies in this area, past and present, to upload their instruments and instructional materials to the IRIS database (iris-database.org; see Marsden et al., 2016). (Note: The 50 studies included in the meta-analysis can be downloaded on the IRIS Database.)

Note 1 Unless otherwise mentioned, our use of the term ‘L2’ in this paper refers to any additional language, regardless of it is being learned in a second or foreign language context.

Further Reading Oswald, F. L., & Plonsky, L. (2010). Meta-analysis in second language research: Choices and challenges. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 85–110. This review paper provides an overview of the major considerations and decision points involved in metaanalysis. The paper discusses several strengths of the synthetic/meta-analytic approach. It also describes the stages of conducting a meta-analysis in L2 research 305

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Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. This book is an outstanding overview of the field of second language pragmatics. Chapter 8 of the book, teaching and assessing L2 pragmatics, may be of special interest to readers of the present meta-analysis. In particular, the first part of this chapter offers a comprehensive review of research on pragmatics instruction and points out valuable directions for future research.

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20 Assessment in L2 Pragmatics Soo Jung Youn and Valeriia Bogorevich

Introduction Theoretical and practical interest in assessing second language (L2) pragmatics has resulted in an increasing body of literature over the last few decades (e.g., Hudson, 2011; Hudson, Detmer, & Brown, 1992, 1995; Roever, Fraser, & Elder, 2014; Ross & Kasper, 2013). L2 pragmatic competence requires a constellation of a wide range of elements, such as the knowledge of linguistic forms, functions, contexts, norms of interaction, cultural appropriateness, and social relationships among speakers (Kasper & Rose, 2002; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). In order to assess these dimensions of L2 pragmatics, researchers need to operationalize a theoretical construct definition based on a critical understanding of varied types of validity evidence elicited from appropriate assessment-task types. Assessment of the context-rich nature of L2 pragmatics, in turn, presents various challenges, particularly in ensuring validity and reliability, which are two central concepts in language assessment. The purpose of this chapter is to address these challenges. We first define key terms of validity and reliability being fundamental to understanding unique issues involved in assessing L2 pragmatics. We then survey a range of theoretical frameworks that serve as a basis for construct definition in L2 pragmatics. In addition, we intend to establish the link between theories in L2 pragmatics and validity evidence brought to bear in making an inference about learners’ pragmatic competence. Finally, we discuss various pragmatic assessment test types used in both large-scale and classroom-based assessment contexts, focusing on research issues that impact validity and reliability.

Validity and Reliability For the past decades, validity theory has evolved over the course of seminal discussions. Validity is essentially concerned about investigating whether a test ‘measures accurately what it is intended to measure’ (Hughes, 1989, p. 22). Traditionally, validity is expressed through its three interrelated types (i.e., construct, content, and criterion validity) (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955). Content validity focuses on showing that the content of the test is representative of the domain that is tested, and criterion validity concerns the relationship between a test and a criterion (e.g., academic success, pragmatic competence) to which we intend to make predictions. Construct validity plays a central role: It involves defining a theoretical construct and collecting types of 308

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evidence that illuminate the nature of construct. One of the recent validation theories is an argument-based approach, which focuses on developing an interpretive argument in which evidence has to be provided to support assumptions (see Chapelle, 2012; Kane, 2006 for a review). This approach is different from the traditional three types of validity. The argument-based validity framework does not subdivide validity into types, but it rather concentrates on developing an interpretive argument where a variety of assumptions and inferences are made about the test in relation to intended uses. Regardless of the validity theories, defining a construct based on theoretical frameworks and demonstrating which test instruments provide trustworthy evidence about the construct in consideration of intended uses of scores are fundamental to measurement practices. However, because of the diverse dimensions involved, pragmatic competence is not easily turned into a manageable scope of construct definition, which can result in two major threats to construct validity: construct under-representation and construct-irrelevant variance. Construct under-representation refers to the ‘degree to which a test fails to capture important aspects of the construct,’ while constructirrelevant variance is the ‘degree to which test scores are affected by processes that are extraneous to its [sic] intended construct,’ as defined by the standards for educational and psychological testing (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999, p. 10). To reduce these threats, researchers need to carefully define and operationalize the construct based on a theoretical framework and develop a pragmatic test instrument accordingly. Such a careful process enables researchers to obtain validity evidence that accurately represents the construct definition. Reliability, on the other hand, indicates the degree of the consistency of measurements when the testing procedure is repeated on test-takers (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999). In other words, reliability shows how probable it is for the same test-takers to be awarded the same score if they take the same or comparable test twice within a short period of time. Reliability is critical for the assessment practice because if a test returns unpredictable results, no stable inferences about test-takers’ competence can be made based on scores. Nonetheless, completely consistent measurements are impossible to obtain due to the subjectivity involved in the scoring process; an individual’s obtained score always reflects a small amount of measurement error. As a result, several issues can be at stake when developing a test for pragmatic competence. For fixed-response test items (e.g., a multiple-choice test item), ensuring that each item reliably measures the target construct depends on the quality of the items and the degree to which construct-irrelevant variables are controlled. For example, in a multiple-choice test, it is challenging to determine valid distractor options because appropriate pragmatic behaviors are context-specific. On the other hand, for performance-based pragmatic assessment, it is critical to design assessment tasks that elicit test-takers’ expected performances and train raters to award scores consistently in relation to rating criteria descriptions. Achieving a satisfactory level of inter-rater reliability when scoring pragmatic performance is not always straightforward, which can lead to a threat to reliability. In the following section, we will discuss validity and reliability issues involved in different pragmatic test types. Taken together, all the aspects of assessment procedure in L2 pragmatics, i.e., defining constructs, designing tests, administering tests, and making interpretations about test scores, can be subject to validity threats and sources of unreliable scoring. Hence, a critical understanding of the theoretical construct definition and distinct characteristics of each test type is essential in L2 pragmatic assessment. We will turn to these particular issues in the next section.

Defining the Construct of L2 Pragmatics L2 pragmatics has been conceptualized under ontologically distinct theoretical frameworks (see Kasper, 2009, for a comprehensive review) (see also Chapter 1 in this volume). Naturally, depending on the theoretical perspectives and research methods, the definition and scope of pragmatics vary in the prior and current conceptualization of L2 pragmatic assessment. Of various 309

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theories, we discuss two distinct theoretical frameworks that have been influential in defining and operationalizing L2 pragmatics as an assessment construct: (a) rationalist speech-act pragmatics, and (b) a discursive approach to L2 pragmatics.

Rationalist Speech-Act Pragmatics Early interlanguage pragmatic research has been strongly influenced by a model of cross-cultural pragmatics based on speech act theory (Searle, 1976) (see also Chapter 2 in this volume). This trend is most evident in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989), which compared native and non-native speakers’ speech-act realization patterns. Naturally, early conceptualization of L2 pragmatics as an assessment construct is mainly grounded in rationalist speech-act theories. A theoretical premise of speech-act research paradigm is that participants are seen as individual rational actors who use their linguistic resources to satisfy their intended communicative goals. Such conceptualization is applied to the pioneer research on L2 pragmatic assessment conducted by Hudson, Detmer, and Brown (1992, 1995). Hudson et al. focused on assessing L2 English learners’ pragmatic knowledge of three speech acts (i.e., request, refusal, apology) using various prototype measures, including multiple-choice discourse completion tests (DCTs), open-ended written DCTs, oral DCTs, role plays, self-assessment for the DCTs, and self-assessment for the role plays (see the next section for a review of these test types). In operationalizing the construct (pragmatic knowledge), they carefully considered three social variables from politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987): (a) interlocutors’ social distance, (b) relative power between interlocutors, and (c) absolute ranking of imposition. In particular, these variables served as a basis for predicting the different difficulty level of test items, which was closely related to ensuring the satisfactory level of reliability. When scoring test-takers’ performances on the test instruments, Hudson et al. considered the following criteria: ability to use the correct speech act and typical speech-act expressions, amount of speech in a given situation, formality level, directness level, and politeness level on a Likert rating scale (range: 1–5). In doing so, they considered two intersecting domains of pragmatics, i.e., sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics (Leech, 1983). Sociopragmatics focuses on knowledge of contextual variables that can be specific to target cultural norms, such as participants’ relative power, social distance, and the degree of imposition involved in speech acts. Pragmalinguistics indicates the relationship between pragmatics and conventions of language use. From the perspective of pragmatic test design, these two dimensions provide very useful frameworks in ensuring that key pragmatic competence is well represented in the performance elicited from pragmatic tests. In addition, as established in L2 pragmatics research (e.g., Taguchi, 2007), it is important to note that the contextual variables (e.g., power, degree of imposition) play a central role in determining the varying level of difficulty. For example, test items that involve a high-level imposition request with a more distant relationship among speakers tend to be more challenging than a low-level imposition request to an interlocutor who is more familiar to the speaker. While Hudson et al. mainly focused on three speech acts, Roever (2005, 2006) expanded the scope of L2 pragmalinguistics involving routine formulas (i.e., formulaic expressions used in specific social situations) and implicatures (i.e., indirect meaning of language) using webbased assessment instruments. Thus, Roever’s work expanded the scope of construct definition. For the validity evidence, he found a moderate degree of overlap between test sections and reported a strong L2 proficiency effect on both implicatures and speech acts using correlations and factor analysis. However, Roever reported that routines were more related to the amount of L2 exposure than proficiency. The quantitative validity evidence, in turn, supports that pragmalinguistic knowledge is part of a broader construct (i.e., language proficiency). In addition, specific variance contributed by the sub-constructs of implicature, routines, and 310

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speech acts further emphasize the importance of assessing different components within the construct of pragmatic competence. Taken together, research on L2 pragmatic assessment that employs the speech-act research paradigm focuses on an individual learner’s ability to produce speech acts by utilizing different resources (e.g., formulaic expressions, amount of speech in a given situation). As a result, such resources serve as the primary validity evidence brought to bear in making an inference about an individual learner’s L2 pragmatic competence. When it comes to assessing learners’ spoken performances, role-play performances are considered and scored based on the aforementioned rating criteria, as in Hudson et al. However, ways in which such role-play performances are scored do not fully reflect how participants co-construct meaning and accomplish pragmatic actions turnby-turn. Common analytical approaches in the speech-act paradigm include researchers primarily interpreting participants’ intentions and motivations when it comes to analyzing how the actions are accomplished (i.e., etic perspective), rather than from a participant-based perspective (i.e., emic perspective). In addition, the validity and reliability of pragmatic test instruments in this line of research have been primarily quantitative in nature. Nonetheless, Hudson et al.’s project was the seminal attempt that illustrated how L2 pragmatic competence can be measured and that prompted additional research on assessing L2 pragmatics in different foreign languages including Korean and Japanese (Ahn, 2005; Yamashita, 1996; Yoshitake, 1997; Youn & Brown, 2013).

Discursive Approach to L2 Pragmatics In his insightful discussion on testing of L2 pragmatics, Roever (2011) argues that the speech-act research paradigm as an assessment construct under-theorizes L2 pragmatics in interaction. This, in turn, results in construct under-representation and, therefore, a major validity threat. Pragmatic competence goes beyond individual learners’ abilities to accomplish pragmatic actions in written discourse or within a single turn. The abilities to accomplish pragmatic actions in spoken interaction turn-by-turn importantly constitute pragmatic competence (Kasper, 2006; Pomerantz & Heritage, 2013), which are eventually reflective of real-life language-use situations (see also Chapter 7 in this volume). When considering such dimensions of L2 pragmatics, a rationalist speech-act perspective can be limited when it comes to defining and operationalizing how learners accomplish pragmatic meaning and actions turn-by-turn, given that the rationalist pragmatics primarily conceptualizes L2 pragmatics in individual-cognitive terms. Therefore, the reconceptualization of how pragmatic actions are accomplished in interaction has various implications for assessing L2 pragmatics in terms of expanding the construct definition (Roever & Kasper, 2018; Ross & Kasper, 2013). By attending to pragmatics in interaction, we can obtain different types of validity evidence, such as interactional features utilized in achieving pragmatic actions (e.g., turn-taking, alignment). Roever’s (2011) argument is based on theoretical and analytical developments in examining L2 pragmatics in spoken interaction, particularly a discursive approach to L2 pragmatics (Kasper, 2006) (see also Chapter 2 in this volume). Such developments in conceptual frameworks in L2 pragmatic research have been driven by discontents toward the rationalist pragmatics and the move toward conceptualizing pragmatics as an interactional phenomenon (see Kasper, 2006, for an in-depth discussion). Diverse alternative theoretical approaches have been proposed in order to theorize ways in which pragmatic actions are accomplished in spoken interaction. Such conceptualizations are rooted in Goffman’s (1983) accounts of interactional order, Garfinkel’s (1967) ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982), and Conversation Analysis (CA) (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) (for further discussion see D’hondt, 2009). Of these, in this chapter, we will focus on CA, which considers that pragmatic meanings are achieved in the turn-by-turn sequences of interaction (Kasper, 2006) (see also Chapter 15 in this volume). CA’s theoretical and analytical tenets have challenged several key notions in rationalist pragmatics research, such as action and intentionality. For the seminal notion of ‘action’ in pragmatics, CA 311

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conceptualizes that actions are jointly accomplished in sequential organization by participants rather than by outcomes of an individual rational actor’s mind. This underscores CA’s emic perspective, that is, focusing on pragmatic meanings from participants’ perspectives rather than what a researcher interprets about pragmatic meaning. The discursive approach to defining L2 pragmatics improved test design and how the construct is being operationalized. For example, Walters’ (2007, 2009) work on designing and validating pragmatic tests exemplifies how a DCT as a pragmatic test can be revised. Walters questioned the validity of DCT-elicited test results, particularly DCT’s capability of capturing actual language features in spoken interaction. He employed CA-informed test methods to develop a more valid way of assessing pragmatic competence in L2 English. In his study, based on CA concepts, he focused on operationalizing three sub-skills of assessment, compliment, and pre-sequence, and trained raters to evaluate learners’ performance on these areas. However, Walters’ pragmatic tests rely on test-takers’ elicited responses on a directed role play that does not involve test-takers’ pragmatic performances in extended conversations. This means that Walters’ pragmatic tests may be insufficient to assess test-takers’ pragmatic performances over multiple turns. Unlike Walters, Grabowski (2009) and Youn (2015) focused on assessing pragmatic performances in extended discourse. For example, Youn (2015) designed and validated task-based pragmatic assessments in an English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) context for classroom assessment purposes. Based on a detailed needs analysis of various stakeholders (i.e., students, instructors, program administrators) in an EAP context, Youn (2018a) first identified meaningful and important language-use situations that require L2 pragmatic competence and used them to develop role-play scenarios. Following the discursive approach to L2 pragmatics, Youn analyzed L2 learners’ role-play performances using CA to identify critical features, which formed the basis for developing data-driven rating criteria. In order to ensure better construct representation, the analytical rating criteria in Youn’s study included five rating categories on a three-point scale: contents delivery, language use, sensitivity to situation, engaging with interaction, and turn organization. It is noteworthy that the last two rating categories explicitly focused on assessing what interactional resources test-takers employed to accomplish pragmatic actions in spoken interaction. While the discursive approach to L2 pragmatics allows the broader construct definition, a question remains as to what types of validity evidence can be elicited and considered in making an inference about test-takers’ pragmatic competence. The broader construct definition extending to pragmatics in spoken interaction means that the types of validity evidence should involve how an individual test-taker accomplishes pragmatic actions turn-by-turn, such as how they initiate the actions and organize turns effectively, which essentially contributes to better construct representation. To this end, CA’s analytical apparatus and accumulative findings in the CA literature have provided researchers with a firm empirical basis for construct validity. To obtain validity evidence, researchers have analyzed test-takers’ spoken pragmatic performances qualitatively using CA. For example, Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) examined how learners at different proficiency levels accomplish requests turn-by-turn in role-play performances. They found that lowerlevel learners’ requests were typically forwarded abruptly without pre-sequences (e.g., ‘Can I ask you a favor?’), which typically come before the main action (i.e., request) (Schegloff, 2007). This finding indicates that whether test-takers utilize a pre-sequence or not can be a meaningful type of validity evidence to be considered in making an inference about test-takers’ pragmatic competence in spoken interaction. Additional types of validity evidence are also found in the recurrent interactional organizations reported in the CA literature. For example, dispreferred actions, such as refusals and disagreements, are normally accomplished with hesitation, delay, or accounts at the start of the response (Pomerantz, 1984). Such normative accountability of actions, which is the key to understanding the ethnomethodological basis of CA (Seedhouse, 2004), can function as baseline data for scoring test-takers’ pragmatic performances. 312

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The remaining question, however, is how the features of L2 pragmatic interaction can be isolated and how such interactional features function quantitatively. To address this question, Youn (2018b) investigated how the fine-grained interactional features, such as turn length, sequential organizations, and the number of acknowledgment tokens, function in predicting L2 pragmatic interaction at different levels. She found that the interactional features successfully functioned to predict L2 pragmatic interaction, just like other pragmatic dimensions (e.g., pragmalinguistic knowledge). These findings indicate that the descriptions of rating criteria for assessing L2 pragmatic interaction should specify concrete interactional features (e.g., sequential organization, discourse markers). Further research in this area is necessary in order to strengthen assessment practices, such as developing rating criteria for L2 pragmatic interaction and training raters according to the criteria. So far, we discussed the distinct theoretical frameworks (i.e., rationalist speech act pragmatics and discursive approach to pragmatics) and their roles in construct definition. Understanding the theoretical frameworks is critical in determining the key validity evidence for construct interpretation. The two theoretical approaches discussed here are distinct in terms of methodological approaches to eliciting the validity evidence. For example, the rationalist speech-act assessment approach primarily relies on quantitative data analyses (e.g., correlations, factor analysis) to support the construct validity; the discursive approach to assessing pragmatic interaction considers the evidence gathered from mixed methods (see Chapter 14 in this volume). Despite the distinct ontological and epistemological differences between these two theoretical frameworks, it should be noted that the insights gathered from both frameworks have been influential in test design. For example, when designing pragmatic assessment tasks, researchers rely on the contextual variables (e.g., power, social distance) coming from politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) in designing test items. Even if one subscribes to the discursive approach to L2 pragmatics, the variables from politeness theory can be still helpful in designing assessment-task types. We should also note that each theoretical framework is not exclusively associated with a specific assessment test type. For example, Roever et al. (2014) developed a fixed-response test item (e.g., extended written DCTs with rejoinders) to measure test-takers’ abilities to take a turn, with a premise that L2 pragmatic competence requires the diverse interactional features. We will discuss these issues involved in designing pragmatic tests in the next section.

Operationalizing L2 Pragmatic Competence: Pragmatic Test Types L2 pragmatic competence is grounded in a strong theoretical and analytical framework. Nonetheless, operationalizing the theoretical construct based on the choice to best represent the construct is not an easy endeavor, requiring empirical research and validation efforts. This section reviews various pragmatic test types developed and examined in the existing research, such as discourse completion tests, multiple-choice items, performance-based assessment tasks, and web-based test items (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). In each case, unique research issues and challenges that threaten their validity and reliability are synthesized.

Discourse Completion Tests One of the most common test types for eliciting pragmatic knowledge is discourse completion tests (DCTs). DCTs are production tests that present a hypothetical communicative situation, called a prompt, and invite test-takers to respond to it. In other words, DCTs resemble openended questionnaires or short-answer test questions. For example, a typical DCT prompt can state ‘You forgot the book you and your classmate need to use in class. You say to another classmate: 313

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_____________.’ DCTs can be either written or oral. A written DCT involves reading a situation and writing a response to it, whereas an oral DCT means listening to a situation description and providing an oral response. Despite its popularity, using DCTs as a test type for assessment purposes impacts the strength of validity evidence for the construct. Test-takers’ DCT-elicited responses can be reflective of what they think they would say instead of what they would actually produce in real-life situations (Golato, 2003; Kasper & Rose, 2002). Additional issues include how likely situations in DCTs correspond to authentic data (e.g., Beebe & Cummings, 1995; Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; Yuan, 2001), which then questions the plausibility of prompts used in DCTs. Furthermore, DCTs are criticized for questionable comparability with spoken production tasks such as role plays (Sasaki, 1998; Kasper, 2008; Kasper & Ross, 2013) due to ‘under-representing the discursive side of pragmatics’ (Roever, 2011, p. 469). Taken together, DCT-elicited responses serve as relatively weak evidence in making inferences about test-takers’ pragmatic competence. Thus, researchers must carefully design DCTs and evaluate the extent to which DCTs elicit the types of validity evidence appropriate in relation to construct definitions. Nonetheless, the advantage of the DCTs is their practicality (Roever, 2014). They can be digitized, administered to a large number of test-takers, and easily modified. Moreover, compared to performance-based test items (to be explained later), DCTs can be relatively efficiently scored and cost-effective for test developers and administrators. In order to ensure reliability, DCTelicited responses need to be scored by trained raters using well-defined rating criteria.

Multiple-Choice Questions Another method of testing pragmatic competence is multiple-choice questions (MCQ). MCQs can be categorized as a sub-type of DCTs, as MCQs include a communicative situation that is called a stem (referred to as the ‘prompt’ in DCTs) and standardized options, which include a key (correct answer) and distractors (wrong answers). Of various dimensions of L2 pragmatics, MCQs are commonly used to assess learners’ ability to recognize routine formulas (Figure 20.1) and interpret implicatures (Figure 20.2). Sample items in the figures were created by the authors based on Roever et al. (2014). Hudson et al.’s (1992, 1995) pragmatic test battery (see the previous section) included 24 MCQs, which were used in several subsequent studies. Even though MCQs are considered to be one of the most practical test instruments due to objective scoring (Brown, 2001), developing MCQ items

Your classmate and you want to rent a video camera at a library. The library website did not allow you to book it online, so you came to the library. There were many people in line. Now, it is your turn. What will the library worker probably say to you? a) Hi, what can I do for you today? b) Hi, here is your video camera. c) Hi, what book did you need? d) Hi, can I have your name?

Figure 20.1 MCQ example for routine formulas recognition. 314

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Your classmate and you came to see your professor to discuss a class project. One more of your classmates (Alan) should be in this meeting too. Professor: Is Alan coming soon? Your classmate: He just texted us that his car broke down. What does your classmate probably mean? a) Alan cannot make it to the meeting. b) Alan will be there in a moment. c) Alan’s car is old and needs expensive repairs. d) Alan is not a very good driver.

Figure 20.2 MCQ example for implicature interpretation.

is challenging especially when creating valid distractor options (Liu, 2006; Yamashita, 1996). In MCQs, valid distractors mean that they sound plausible so they can distinguish among different levels of language competence accurately. However, distractors for pragmatics are not obviously incorrect for everyone because they are determined based on the degree of appropriateness. Depending on test-takers’ own culture-specific pragmatic norms, some test-takers, despite their established levels of pragmatic competence, may consider a distractor as a correct answer. Therefore, the reliability for MCQs tends to be relatively low, for example, .45 in Yamashita (1996) and .60 in Yoshitake (1997). Nonetheless, an increasing body of recent research reports a satisfactory level of reliability of MCQs (e.g., Garcia, 2004; Liu, 2006, 2007; Taguchi, 2009; Timpe-Laughlin & Choi, 2017). Carefully constructed MCQs in Liu (2007) showed a high reliability of .90. Liu developed MCQs using various methods, such as piloting the instrument to both English native speakers and L2 learners, and analyzed verbal protocol data from test-takers. In order to develop plausible distractors, Liu considered the culture-specific norms by generating plausible distractors from participants of the similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Liu’s research illustrates that it is possible to develop sound distractor options in MCQs. In addition to the multi-methods employed in Liu (2007), a corpus-based approach to developing MCQs is illustrated in Taguchi (2009). Taguchi developed MCQs to measure EFL learners’ listening ability to comprehend implicatures. Instead of using artificially created implicatures, Taguchi analyzed two corpora that represent two registers (family–friends interactions and service encounter interactions) in order to develop valid situations for more and less conventional implicatures, reporting .92 for the full test (.83 for less conventional implicatures and .84 for more conventional implicatures). In a recent study, Timpe-Laughlin and Choi (2017) collected validation evidence for the webbased American English Sociopragmatic Comprehension Test (AESCT). AESCT consists of 54 multiple-choice items testing receptive L2 pragmatic ability. The sub-parts of the test include (a) speech acts (i.e., offers and requests), (b) routine formulas, and (c) culture-dependent lexical differences (e.g., cultural references and figures of speech). When administered to 97 L1 German students studying TESOL/Applied Linguistics, the test showed an overall reliability of .85, .41 for speech acts, and .77 for the other two sections. Overall, the authors concluded that AESCT is a valid test that can be applied for and formative assessment purposes in university-level applied linguistics classes. 315

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For construct validity of MCQs, it is important to mention that even if MCQs are reliable measures, types of pragmatic competence measured via MCQs are limited to learners’ receptive pragmatic skills, namely offline pragmatic knowledge. Therefore, such assessment test type does not provide enough validity evidence to make sound inferences about students’ abilities to produce pragmatically appropriate discourse (Roever et al., 2014).

Performance-Based Pragmatic Assessment Tasks Commonly used performance-based pragmatic assessment tasks include role plays and role enactments. Unlike role plays where interlocutors can be assigned to social roles, role enactments involve acting in the participant’s real-life role (see McDonough, 1981, as cited in Archer, Aijmer, & Wichmann, 2012). For example, in a role play, a student can take on a role of a sales clerk, but in a role enactment, a student can only play a student (real-life role). In addition, there are two types of role plays: (a) closed role plays where a respondent produces only one turn; and (b) open role plays where participants can engage in extended interaction without predetermined interactional outcomes over multiple turns (Kasper & Dahl, 1991) (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). Having reviewed various DCT variations above, it can be seen that closed role plays and one-turn oral DCTs (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, Nickels, & Rose, 2008) are the same. Due to this similarity, the validity of using closed role plays for assessing authentic pragmatic performances has been questioned because they do not reflect real-life extended interaction (Kasper & Rose, 2002). The advantage of open role plays is that they can include various discourse contexts, which, in turn, allows test-takers to utilize various sequential organizations, negotiate meaning, express politeness, and choose various strategies (Kasper & Dahl, 1991; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). In addition, a task-based approach to assessing L2 pragmatic performances is a growing area of attention. Advantages of the task-based approach include that researchers can develop assessment tasks with specific communicative goals based on an investigation of what pragmatic situations are meaningful in a specific context. For example, Youn (2018a) identified meaningful language-use situations in an EAP context that require learners’ pragmatic competence based on a comprehensive needs analysis. Example pragmatic tasks included writing a request email to a professor or a cover letter to apply for a job. Based on these situations, Youn developed scenarios that L2 English learners acted in role plays. There are several constraints that jeopardize validity and reliability when assessing pragmatic performances: (a) the need to develop valid rating criteria, (b) rater variability effects on testtakers’ scores, (c) the possibility of the interlocutor effect, and (d) high cost and lack of practicality. Performances elicited from role plays or other pragmatic tasks (e.g., simulations) are more complex than DCT-elicited responses, requiring more detailed descriptions in rating criteria to ensure validity and reliability. Rating criteria can be devised either a priori by a group of experts in language testing (e.g., Hudson et al., 1995; Ishihara, 2009; Sasaki, 1998) or using a data-driven approach based on qualitative analysis of performance data (e.g., Chen & Liu, 2016; Grabowski, 2009; Youn, 2015). In the latter approach, researchers focus on analyzing performances elicited from assessment tasks in the construction process of the criteria to better represent the context of performance. Rater variability is another problem that complicates the validity of performancebased pragmatic assessment. For example, even though the raters in Youn’s (2015) study utilized rating criteria consistently, they differed in their degrees of severity, possibly due to some differences in their perception of the importance of the rubric criteria. For example, one rater was consistently more lenient while another rater was consistently more severe. A similar conclusion was made by Taguchi (2011) who stated that ‘… native speaker raters do not form a unitary category. They can vary widely in their perceptions and interpretations of appropriateness, politeness, and formality in pragmatic performance …’ (p. 468). Last, interlocutors (e.g., another test-taker, roleplay interlocutors) involved in completing pragmatic performance assessments can be the source 316

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of score variability, jeopardizing the validity of score interpretation of an individual test-taker’s performance.

Web-Based Pragmatic Tests While performance-based pragmatic assessments can contribute to construct representation, such method is resource intensive, and, therefore, practicality is a limitation. Such constraints eventually weaken the validity in terms of utilization of test instruments. These issues are addressed in web-based pragmatic tests (e.g., Itomitsu, 2009; Roever, 2005, 2006; Roever et al., 2014). Focusing on pragmalinguistics aspect, Roever (2005, 2006) developed a three-section web-based test incorporating 12 multiple-choice implicature items, 12 multiple-choice routine formulas items, and 12 written DCT items with rejoinders testing speech acts. The web-based tests were administered to 335 ESL and EFL students. Roever reported a high reliability of .91 for a full set of tests, with .80 for implicature items, .71 for routine formulas, and .89 for speech acts. Focusing on the sociopragmatic aspect, Roever et al. (2014) developed and validated a webbased test battery following Kane’s (2006) argument-based approach to validity. This test was developed specifically for pedagogical purposes with items covering everyday interactions among friends, strangers, co-workers, students, and clients. Going beyond learners’ pragmatic knowledge of the conventions of language use (i.e., pragmalinguistics), Roever et al. explicitly focused on the sociopragmatic dimension by assessing learners’ knowledge of social norms in discourse and language use across various social contexts. After being administered to 485 participants (368 ESL, 67 EFL, and 50 native English speakers), the test showed the overall reliability of .81 with six underperforming items deleted. The test battery included 33 items in four sections: 1 Pragmatic appropriateness judging tasks on a five-point Likert scale: Students rated the degree of politeness of two-turn conversations from Very impolite/very harsh to Far too polite/soft. 2 Dichotomous appropriateness judgments with correction: Students judged the appropriateness of the second turn of two-turn conversations and provided corrections in case they considered the turn inappropriate. 3 Extended written DCTs with rejoinders on a 0-3 scale: Students reconstructed many-turn conversations by filling in some gaps. 4 Dichotomous dialogue choice tasks with a written justification: Students read two conversations, chose the more successful one, and provided a written explanation. While the web-based test may not be suitable for measuring the performance dimension of pragmatic competence, Roever et al. illustrated that the web-based test is proven to be reliable and can measure the diverse types of sociopragmatic knowledge. Further, the web-based pragmatic test allows easy test administration and accessibility for stakeholders, providing the validity evidence for strengthening the utilization of the test. Taken together, the web-based test assessing pragmatic competence can balance between ensuring broad dimensions of the construct being measured and maintaining practicality (Roever, 2014).

Conclusion and Future Directions This chapter discussed the prior and current conceptualization of L2 pragmatic competence as an assessment construct under various theoretical frameworks, which serve as a basis for construct definition in L2 pragmatics. In order to ensure the careful process of operationalizing pragmatic competence, we then surveyed various pragmatic assessment test types focusing on research 317

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issues that impact validity and reliability. We also emphasized the importance of considering various sources that threaten validity and reliability during the process of defining and operationalizing pragmatic competence. In closing this chapter, we suggest future directions that L2 pragmatic assessment research and practice need to give more attention to. First, one of the challenges in L2 pragmatic assessment is to determine the degree of appropriateness in pragmatic performance considering varied pragmatic norms specific to contexts and cultures. Pragmatics is inseparable from sociocultural practices, personal preferences, and values, which, in turn, have greater impact on assessment. For assessment purposes, it is inevitable to determine the degree of appropriateness and award scores to a varying level of pragmatic performance accordingly. To this end, benchmarking varied dimensions of pragmatics against native speakers’ pragmatic norms is particularly controversial considering variation found in native speakers’ pragmatic norms (e.g., Taguchi, 2011) and current debates in English as lingua franca and World Englishes (for a review, see Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Thus, establishing pragmatic norms against native speakers will not be a solution to consider variation in pragmatic norms for assessment purposes. In order to address this challenge, qualitative analyses of domain-specific language use situations in institutional discourse, such as teacher–student interactions and service encounter interactions, can inform us of expected pragmatic norms established by competent social members of given discourse. In other words, pragmatic norms in certain institutional discourse can be relatively free from greater variation in pragmatic norms. For example, in the CA literature, it is well known that institutional discourse that involves specific goal orientations display institution-relevant identities, recurrent interactional organizations, and specific lexical choice (Heritage, 2005). Therefore, one of the future research directions includes assessing pragmatic competence in particular institutional discourse and how recurrent features can be used as an empirical basis of expected pragmatic norms in given contexts. Second, the construct definition in L2 pragmatics can be broadened into other underexplored dimensions of pragmatic competence, such as the role of gesture, prosody, and strategic competence. At issue is the extent to which we can and should measure the ability to use gesture, to control prosody, and to utilize strategic competence. For assessment purposes, the elicitation of these resources has been restricted in order to control sources of unreliable scoring. For example, raters may award scores differently depending on their own personal preferences for the use of gesture during spoken interaction when they score video-recorded pragmatic performances, which can result in disagreement among raters (i.e., low inter-rater reliability). For this reason, often, researchers rely on audio-recorded pragmatic performances for scoring. Nonetheless, in low-stake assessment contexts, learners’ abilities to utilize gesture and varied types of strategic competence can be examined and considered for validity evidence. Finally, intended uses of pragmatic assessment should vary ranging from classroom-based assessment to a K-12 assessment context. Except for a few notable examples, such as Ishihara (2009), explicit attention to improving classroom assessment practices with a focus on L2 pragmatic competence has been limited. In the context of K-12, the lack of empirical research on the link between key pragmatic competence critical in ensuring learners’ academic success and TESOL standards used for large-scale assessment is noted (Bailey & Huang, 2011). Further attention on wider learner populations with varied intended uses of assessments will advance the research practices in L2 pragmatic assessment.

Further Reading Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. This book links the pragmatic research with pedagogy by describing teaching and learning pragmatics. It covers the topics including, but not limited to, writing a curriculum and lesson plans, adapting textbooks 318

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for teaching pragmatics, and incorporating technology into pragmatics instruction. The unique aspect of the book is the description of classroom-based assessment practices for testing pragmatic knowledge. Two chapters provide hands-on strategies for constructing and implementing pragmatic assessment that facilitate learners’ pragmatic development. Some examples are given for assessments of pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, and metapragmatic abilities. Kasper, G., & Ross, S. (Eds.). (2013). Assessing second language pragmatics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. This edited volume covers approaches to assessing pragmatic interaction and pragmatic competence in oral proficiency interviews. The studies on validation of pragmatic assessments include a multiple-choice test of implicature; a video-based test of receptive knowledge of pragmatic formulas and communicative intentions; a pragmatic competence test utilizing written DCTs, language lab DCTs, and role plays; formative assessments of learners’ pragmalinguistic knowledge through written dialogic interactions with teachers; a speaking role-play test measuring grammatical and pragmatic knowledge; and a test of pragmatics using DCTs and an oral production tasks. The studies in the second part of the book analyze oral proficiency interview data through conversation analysis to arrive at what evidence of pragmatic ability can be collected. Roever, C., Fraser, C., & Elder, C. (2014). Testing ESL sociopragmatics. Development and validation of a web-based test battery. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. The authors provide a brief description of pragmatics as a many-faceted construct and an overview of research on testing pragmatics from 1976. The book focuses on the description of the development and validation of a web-based test battery for testing ESL sociopragmatics for pedagogical purposes. The test battery includes four sections: pragmatic appropriateness judging tasks on a five-point Likert scale, appropriateness judgments with correction, extended DCTs, and dialogue choice tasks with a justification. The unique aspect of the book is its thorough description of the development, piloting, and validation processes following Kane’s (2006) argument-based approach to validity.

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21 Instructional Material Development in L2 Pragmatics Donna Tatsuki

Introduction Although it has been clear for many years that second language (L2) learners benefit from the teaching of pragmatics (Kasper, 1997; Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Bardovi-Harlig & Mahan-Taylor, 2003; Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; Kasper & Rose, 1999; Taguchi, 2015a; see also Chapter 19 in this volume), textbook writers have been slow to fill this need. Studies have shown that textbooks and teacher manuals rarely include information on pragmatics (Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004; Grant & Starks, 2001; Hatoss, 2004; Meihami & Khanlarzadeh, 2015; Wong, 2002) and generally fail to offer supplementary materials (Ji, 2007; Vellenga, 2004). Furthermore, faulty sources of pragmatic information in textbooks may lead to pedagogically induced errors (Tatsuki, 2005a, 2016a; Wong, 2002). Supplementary materials for teaching pragmatics have been produced to rectify the lack of pragmatics information or materials in textbooks (Bardovi-Harlig & Mahan-Taylor, 2003; Ishihara, 2007; Houck & Tatsuki, 2011; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010; Martinez-Flor & Usó-Juan, 2010; Ronald, Rinnert, Fordyce, & Knight, 2012; Tatsuki, 2005b; Tatsuki & Fujimoto, 2016; Tatsuki & Houck, 2010). However, many gaps remain in those supplementary materials, partly because only a few pragmatic targets have received attention from materials writers (Tatsuki, 2016b). As a result, teachers might not be able to rely on pre-existing materials and therefore face the prospect of making their own. This chapter offers concrete principles and guidelines for L2 pragmatics instructional materials development that teachers can directly use in their own practice. The chapter presents several concrete examples and tips, and discusses those tips and principles according to different learning contexts (e.g., formal classrooms, study abroad programs, and technology-enhanced settings). The chapter begins by problematizing the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of materials development while providing a fair survey of the existing practice.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts in Materials Development Materials development as a field is concerned with specific principles and procedures to design, create, implement, and evaluate materials produced for language teaching. Materials development also refers to adaptations of or supplements to existing materials for the purpose of improving their use for a particular learner group or learning context. 322

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Why Do We Need Materials Development? According to Savova (2009), textbooks are ‘quickly evolving into multimedia and multimodal packages that tend to blur the line between mass and individually produced materials, between authors and users, and between real and virtual classrooms’ (p. 7). Teachers are increasingly expected to be important players in the process of materials development and adaptation, rather than simply being textbook users. For instance, many new course book packages offer ‘integrated resources’ (McGrath, 2013, p. 6), which allow teachers to make selection decisions, as well as to customize texts and tests according to their needs. According to Howard and Major (2004), materials development by teachers has four advantages: (1) contextualization—creating a better fit between the context and the materials, (2) individual needs—addressing the diversity among learners and their needs, (3) personalization—giving materials a personal touch that can increase learner engagement and appreciation, and (4) timeliness—creating materials that respond to local and global events, increasing the relevance of the lesson. Although teachers are expected to be creative, teacher-training programs generally lack consistency regarding the contents and objectives for effectively preparing teachers to meet the materials development/adaptation challenge (Gonzáles Moncada, 2006; McGrath, 2013). For these reasons, teacher-friendly ‘how-to’ books and articles are timely additions to the current literature (e.g., Budden, 2008; McDonough, Shaw, & Masuhara, 2013; Mishan & Timmis, 2015; Tomlinson, 2010).

What Are the Areas for Materials Development? Course Books Course books remain the most widely used resources for language teaching despite complaints about their lack of relevance and versatility (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018). Course books refer to teaching materials produced for the global market to be sold throughout the world (primarily in the U.K. or U.S.A.), as well as government-approved, locally distributed textbooks. Course books are usually written with a specific learner proficiency level in mind and aim to provide a complete suite of language input, explanations, and exercises to be used. Even though no course book can reasonably be expected to serve every context well and therefore should be supplemented, very often course book users just settle for using the material offered as is. It is heartening to note that, since the 1980s, teachers have been increasingly included in the development processes of general-use course books, although the trend is seen at the local rather than global level. Tomlinson and Masuhara (2018) note that ‘only a few of these projects have been written up and published’ (p. 17). Example projects include: a secondary school course book series in Romania (Popovici & Bolitho, 2003); a Hong Kong–based extensive reading project for young learners (Arnold, 2010); and a text-driven, discovery learning course for EAP students (Al-Busaidi & Tindle, 2010). However, in general, the opportunity to participate in the design and development of a textbook or comprehensive course materials rarely comes to the teachers who use them. Instead, teachers face the prospect of supplementing or adapting existing materials after the fact.

Supplements and Adaptations to Course Books The reality is that good teachers consistently modify and supplement textbooks to ensure the best learning experience for their students (Tomlinson, 2015, 2017; Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018). Indeed, Ritchie (2009) contends that ‘textbooks are typically used as resources rather than scripts for lessons, with teachers selecting some part, but also omitting, modifying, and supplementing textbook activities and the texts and tasks found in the book’ (p. 73). Such a stance puts great responsibility on teachers to critically evaluate textbooks in relation to their students’ needs, then to identify and rectify any gaps perceived. 323

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How Should Materials Development Be Done? This section will summarize two steps involved in materials development: (1) identify the material development target; and (2) plan the components.

Step 1: Identify the Materials Development Target No matter whether the plan is to create a course book or to supplement an existing textbook, it is important to consider who the learners are and what their pragmatic needs are in their context. This means doing (or consulting) research about the learners’ communicative needs and identifying target pragmatic features (e.g., speech acts) by collecting samples of authentic data. Then, the learners’ current ability should be assessed in order to diagnose their pragmatics learning needs.

Step 2: Plan the Learning Components/Phases Once it has been determined what the learners need to learn, it is time to combine the needs analysis with a principled approach to materials development based on the application of theories of language acquisition, principles of teaching, up-to-date knowledge of how target language is actually used, and conclusions drawn from careful observation and evaluation of materials in use (Tomlinson, 2010). Specifically, since language acquisition is dependent on exposure to input (van Patten & Williams, 2007), the richer, the more diverse, and the more meaningful the input is, the better the learning outcome becomes (Maley, 2011; Tomlinson, 2013). Tomlinson and Masuhara (2018) recommend using a ‘text-driven, task-based approach’ (p. 211) by using authentic texts (written or spoken) within a six-step discovery-learning framework: (1) a schema/knowledge activation activity before reading, viewing, or listening to the chosen authentic text; (2) a first encounter with the text, paying attention to the text’s intended effects; (3) a personal response activity that helps learners make a personal connection to the text; (4) the first production task—guided production—where learners attempt to recreate or imitate the original text’s effects; (5) guided analysis and comparison of the text and their own attempted recreation of the text’s effects to enhance the noticing of the target pragmatic feature(s); and (6) the second production task—guided practice—in which learners apply what they discovered in the previous step. These six steps can be followed up with more input exposure outside the classroom so learners ‘might notice the target pragmatic feature in use’ (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 212). One can also understand Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (2018) six-step approach in terms of Harmer’s (1998, 2010) ‘Engage—Study—Activate’ cycle. Harmer (2010) states that ‘[b]elieving that students need exposure, motivation and opportunities for language use, and acknowledging that different students may respond more or less well to different stimuli, it suggests that most teaching sequences need to have certain characteristics or elements’ (p. 51). Starting with Harmer’s basic Engage→Study→Activate sequence, it is possible to incorporate Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (2018) six-step approach (see Figure 21.1) to illustrate how the ideas overlap. The numbers in the circles refer to the steps in Tomlinson and Masuhara’s framework. This hybrid model will be used later to show the pedagogical phases and moves in an example lesson. It should also be noted that that other sequence orders are possible. Bardovi-Harlig and Mossman (2017) point out that the input/text ‘should reflect the language that is used by the speech community’ (p. 251) or the ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Speech community involves a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language (Yule, 2006), while a community of practice involves a group of people who share a common interest and a desire to learn from and contribute to the community with their variety of experiences (Lave & Wenger, 1991). To ensure that the input/texts given to learners reflect the practices of the speech community, the teacher can 324

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ACTIVATE

ENGAGE

(opportunities for production)

(learner motivation)

1

3

4

2

6

5

STUDY

(exposure to ‘text’)

Figure 21.1 Tomlinson & Masuhara’s (2018) six-step approach in Harmer’s (2010) cycle.

explore corpora or other sources of language data collected from the target speech community (e.g., video/audio recordings of naturalistic conversations or official documents and records). In addition to arranging authentic input/text, the teacher needs to help learners engage in processing input at both a cognitive and an affective level, providing opportunities to focus on form as well as on meaning, and above all, giving many chances to use the language for real-life communication (Tomlinson, 2017).

The Current State of Pragmatics Materials Development The previous section presented principles and guidelines for materials development in general. This section will link those principles and guidelines with materials development for pragmatics instruction.

Pragmatics-focused Textbooks The textbook Heart to Heart: Overcoming Barriers in Cross-Cultural Communication (Yoshida, Kamiya, Kondo, & Tokiwa, 2000) is a rare course book designed to teach pragmatics in a systematic manner. The textbook was developed through locally enacted empirical research on pragmatics with a clear focus on the target language users. Specifically, the textbook aims to teach cross-cultural pragmatics to Japanese EFL learners who are preparing for a study abroad program in the U.S.A. Each chapter aims at raising learners’ awareness about misunderstandings arising from different speech act strategies between Japanese and Americans. Each chapter involves five phases: feeling, doing, thinking, understanding, and using, along with review units that reinforce learned knowledge and skills. The assumption of the textbook writers is that, by raising awareness of their own L1 pragmatic knowledge that may be transferable to L2 and through the explicit teaching of appropriate linguistic forms in contexts, we can prepare learners to become successful communicators while abroad. Several studies adopted materials from this textbook to examine the effectiveness of corrective feedback in raising pragmatic awareness of speech acts (i.e., refusals) (Chinokul & Nipaspong, 2010). Consider the chapter focusing on refusals as an example (see Kondo, 2004 for other descriptions). This chapter follows the six steps in Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (T&M) (2018) framework mentioned earlier, combined with Harmer’s (2010) Engage→Study→Activate cycle as illustrated in Figure 21.1. In the warm-up ‘listening’ phase, learners listen to two dialogues containing a refusal, which can activate their awareness of different refusal strategies (T&M Step 3) and 325

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their pre-existing knowledge about the refusal speech act (T&M Step 2: Engage→Study). In the ‘doing’ phase, learners consider another refusal situation and role play the situation based on their own current knowledge (T&M Step 1 & 4: Engage→Activate). In the ‘thinking’ phase, learners are given a speech-act strategy classification chart, which helps them analyze their own speech-act strategies and those given in the warm up listening dialogues (T&M Step 5: Study). This phase is followed by the ‘understanding’ phase where the learners look at data on refusal strategies used by native English speakers, native Japanese speakers, and Japanese learners of English (T&M Step 5: Study). The unit closes with the ‘using’ phase’ in which learners produce role-play dialogues for new refusal situations (T&M Step 6: Activate). Unfortunately, this textbook is out of print. However, the model and design could be adapted to a wide range of current educational contexts. Some global course book developers are taking the need for authentic input to heart by involving people with expertise in pragmatics and conversation analysis in textbook writing projects. One such example is a project called Chasing Time English, which includes ‘episodic narrative shows for adults and young adults across a range of language proficiency levels’ (http​s://c​hasin​ gtime​engli​sh.co​m/en/​about​). Central to this multimedia textbook project is the use of TV series called Fortune. In order to make the TV scripts accessible to L2 English learners of different proficiency levels, each episode was filmed twice using advanced and intermediate-level language (Atak, 2017). In addition, rather than being constrained by a predetermined syllabus (beyond the script modifications made to stay within advanced or intermediate English levels), the speech acts and other pragmatic topics are dealt with as they arise naturally in the script. Another good example of a pragmatics-focused course book is Workplace Talk in Action (Riddiford & Newton, 2010; see also Chapter 27 in this volume). As the title suggests, this textbook is designed for communication training in a business or workplace setting and includes authentic dialogues adapted from a corpus of workplace interactions in New Zealand. After an opening chapter on small talk, the six remaining chapters focus on speech acts (i.e., requests, refusals, suggestions, disagreements, complaints, and apologies), followed by several pages of communication tips and role-play activities. The chapter focusing on requesting/giving instructions starts off by having learners think about the context of asking for a day off from work, which activates their knowledge and interest. The learners are then invited to predict what such an interaction might sound like by preparing a role play. This is followed by activities that involve comparing and analyzing their predicted conversations with the authentic conversation included in the unit, and then the learners are finally guided toward a free practice. Of special interest is an evaluation activity where the learners rate the politeness, directness, and effectiveness of the authentic conversation. Such an evaluation activity is important because, as the authors note, ‘effective communication involves achieving your purpose efficiently while also maintaining good relationships’ (Riddiford & Newton, 2010, p. 22).

Textbook Adaptations and Supplements in Pragmatics Teaching As mentioned previously, the dearth of pragmatically authentic textbooks indicates that teachers need to adapt or supplement existing textbooks. Ishihara and Cohen (2010) suggest that the starting point for teachers is to collect data on pragmatic behaviors. The data can include authentic or elicited data from expert users, which can be used as instructional models, as well as elicited or observation data from L2 learners, which can be used to diagnose their instructional needs. Such data can be collected from various sources including teachers’ experience and introspection; audio/video recordings of naturalistic conversations; systematic field observations; and data collected through an instrument such as a discourse completion task and role play. Bardovi-Harlig (2017) also recommends that teachers collect authentic examples of appropriate and inappropriate pragmatic behaviors and make the effort to create a shared repository of 326

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those examples. The data can come from teachers’ own interactions in communicative environments or from explorations of online corpora such as MICASE (Simpson, Briggs, Ovens, & Swales, 2002). Bardovi-Harlig (2017) also suggests that textbooks ‘can be used as a starting point for classroom activities’ (p. 238) so teachers can exploit things that textbooks typically lack, such as adequate conversational openings and closings. Above all, she recommends discovery learning—teachers and learners working together to examine pragmatic behaviors and culminating a report about them, which can then be stored in a shared repository mentioned earlier. When learners compare their own pragmatic behaviors to those of authentic data, they can develop a predisposition to monitor their own behaviors, and at the same time, they can take responsibility for their own learning outside of the classroom setting (Cohen, 2005; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010). Using pragmatic routines as an example, Bardovi-Harlig and Mossman (2017) illustrate the process of using corpora to develop teaching materials (see also Chapter 4 in this volume). A summary of the process they outline is as follows: (1) identify the pragmatic target (e.g., specific routine expressions); (2) select authentic examples/excerpts from corpora; (3) prepare activities that promote noticing of the target expressions and use, as well as their alternate expressions; and (4) create activities to encourage learners’ production of the target expressions. The third and fourth steps overlap to some degree with the recommendations made by Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (2018) six-step discovery-learning framework mentioned earlier. In order to fully exploit the discovery-learning framework, it is important to keep in mind general findings about the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. In her review of 58 instructional studies in L2 pragmatics published since the 1990s, Taguchi (2015b) shared the following observations: ‘instruction is more effective than non-instruction’; ‘structurally simple, concrete, and salient pragmatic targets are learned most easily than complex and abstract targets’; and ‘explicit instruction is generally more effective than implicit’ instruction with the proviso that it is coupled with production opportunities (p. 35–36). Furthermore, she found that, in the case of implicit learning, simple exposure to input is not sufficient for pragmatics learning; learners must notice form-function mappings in input, and the noticing phase needs to be followed with a controlled practice of the mappings, which, after plenty of practice in meaningful contexts, will eventually develop into a skilled use of the mappings. These observations can be considered when developing materials.

Guidelines for Pragmatics Materials Development Building on the existing literature on pragmatics teaching, this section offers several concrete examples and guidelines for materials development for teachers. Guidelines are offered for creating teaching materials as well as for supplementing or adapting existing materials in various instructional contexts such as formal classroom settings, study abroad programs, and technologyenhanced environments.

Materials for a Formal Classroom: Adapting and Supplementing Teachers in the formal classroom are likely to supplement an existing course by re-purposing textbook materials to include a pragmatic element or to replace an apparently stilted dialogue with authentic input. Before running out to gather data, however, teachers should consult empirical findings from previous research. One website, for example, (http://www.pragmaterials.org) has links to research findings on a range of speech acts, conversation sequences, and other pragmatic topics. In addition, as Bardovi-Harlig (2017) suggests, teachers can become ethnographers, taking notes and compiling their observations and sharing them. If access to naturally occurring data is hard to come by, teachers can explore free corpora available on the Internet. The following section illustrates one of my own materials development experiences. 327

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SummonsAnswer Sequence RecognitionIdentification Sequence Greeting Sequence

How-are-you Sequence

01

R:

Hello

02

C:

Hello, Jim?

03

R:

Yeah

04

C:

It’s Bonnie.

05

R:

Hi

06

C:

Hi, How are you?

07

R:

Fine, How are you?

08

C:

Oh, okay I guess

09

R:

Oh, okay

10

C:

Figure 21.2 Opening sequences of a canonical telephone call (adapted from Schegloff, 1986, p. 115).

Although mobile phones are familiar to most learners and are widely available, textbooks still depict landline telephone conversations. Furthermore, many learners report difficulty in dealing with telephone calls in English (Wong & Waring, 2010). However, upon reading the telephone dialogues in government-approved textbooks, my intuition as a teacher told me that the dialogues did not ‘ring true,’ yet it was not clear what exactly was wrong. A short Internet search came up with an article by Wong (2002), which showed that landline telephone dialogues in textbooks rarely contain a complete Summons-Answer sequence and virtually none indicate that the phone rings at the start of the call. Figure 21.2 (adapted from Schegloff, 1986, p. 115) shows how the opening sequences of a telephone call are co-constructed between the caller and the recipient. The lack of phone ring in the textbook dialogue causes confusion as to who the caller and the recipient of the call are. Furthermore, there is no phone ring in the script, so the first utterance by the recipient of the call (i.e., ‘Hello’) is also missing. The initial ‘Hello’ provides a voice sample to the caller. If the caller is a friend, family member, or someone familiar, the recipient will recognize them and perhaps even mention their name. On the other hand, if the caller is a stranger, they would rightly ask to speak to the person they are calling and the recipient would be right to ask who is calling. Even for mobile phones, a call from a stranger would normally trigger the landline protocol for unrecognizable voices (Arminen & Leinonen, 2006). Therefore, the lack of a proper SummonsAnswer sequence in the textbook dialogue ‘led to strange/stilted conversations between friends and family members who unrealistically failed to recognize each other’s voices’ (Tatsuki, 2016a, p. 16). These problems can be illustrated using a sample textbook dialogue (Excerpt 1).

Excerpt 1 1  2  3  4 

Mrs. Baker: Nick: Mrs. Baker: Nick:

Hello? Is this Nick? Yes, Mom? Yes. How are things at home? Fine. [conversation continues]

Columbus 21, 1 (Togo, 2003, p. 84)

The initial problem is that the caller (Mrs. Baker) has spoken first, apparently before Nick has had a chance to say ‘Hello’ in response to the ringing phone, thereby giving a voice sample by

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which Mrs. Baker could recognize her son. The second problem is that Nick apparently does not recognize his own mother’s voice. According to Schegloff (2002), this instance ‘can be especially serious if—as in this case—the persons are close, and can expect to be recognized by each other, indeed are entitled to be so recognized’ (p. 262). These problems point to the needs for developing materials for teaching appropriate telephone conversation sequences. Following Harmer’s (1998) Engage→Study→Activate sequence combined with Tomlinson and Masuhara’s (2018) six-step approach (Figure 21.1), the following activities were developed. In the ‘Engage’ phase, as my students were all mobile phone users and were familiar with telephone calls in Japanese, they were asked to discuss the following: In this telephone dialogue, Mrs. Baker and Nick are using the landline (house) phone. How might this call change if they were using keitai (mobile phones)? The students suggested new versions of the phone conversation in which Nick looked at the caller ID when the phone rang and answered ‘Hai’ in Japanese or in English ‘Hi Mom’ or even just ‘What.’ For the ‘Study’ phase, the image of a canonical telephone conversation (see Figure 21.2) was used as the basis of a short explicit lesson to familiarize the students with the names of the four sequences: Summons-Answer (S-A), Recognition-Identification (R-I), Greeting (G), and How-are-you (HAY)). The students answered questions about the relationship between the caller and recipient (close friends or family) and how they would know who was calling (e.g., familiar voice). Then, they were instructed to imagine what would happen if they received a call from a stranger and asked to discuss which sequence would be affected (e.g. Recognition-Identification). Then, the students were given some film script excerpts that contained canonical telephone call openings (see http://www.pragmaterials.org for links to film script databases) and asked to write down opening sequences (S-A, R-I, G, HAY) in a data grid, and then label the speaker as a recipient (R) or a caller (C) (see Figure 21.3). The students worked together to decide which turns should be included in each sequence. Then, we watched the short film excerpts and took turns reading aloud the scripts. After that the students looked at the original textbook dialogue again and rewrote the dialogue. Excerpt 2 is one example of a revised version (compare this with Excerpt 1).

Draw brackets to show Film: When a stranger calls where each sequence (S-A, R- Turn Speaker (C/R) Utterance I, G, HAY) begins and ends. 0

Nancy (R) Hello? 1 Jill (C) Nancy? 2 Nancy (R) Hello Jill? How’s 3 it going? Jill (C) All right. 4 Nancy (R) 5 Film:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 21.3 Example data grids for a telephone conversation.

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Excerpt 2 0  1  2  3  4  5 

Nick: Hello? Mrs. Baker: Hello, Nick? Nick: Hi Mom! Mrs. Baker:  Hi. How are things at home? Nick: Fine. [conversation continues]

A follow-up lesson introduced openings that included pre-emptive self-identification sequences (e.g., a recipient saying ‘Smith residence’ or ‘Daniel speaking’) and switchboard request sequences (e.g., C: May I please speak to Maika? R: One moment please).

Materials for a Formal Classroom: Creating an Entire Course Although the use of isolated films scenes to illustrate a specific pragmatic target is beneficial, an ambitious teacher might decide to use an entire play or film as the basis for creating an entire course to teach pragmatics. To exploit the film, novel, or play, it is important to let the texts themselves suggest the focus of study—a sequence, structure, and context for the pragmatic tasks and activities—as the work unfolds. In order to exemplify this idea of letting the texts suggest the teaching focus, the following section offers an example from the book Motivating Movies: Study Guides for Action and Comedy Films (Tatsuki, 2000). The film The Graduate (by Charles Webb) was chosen as the source text to develop pragmatics-focused teaching materials (see Tomlinson, 1994, for a pragmatics-based lesson based on a scene from this film). Since film scripts are created as an aesthetic product for the purpose of entertainment, some researchers caution against the use of examples from film or television because ‘characters often say and do things that normal people wouldn’t dream of’ (Ryan, 2018, p. 29). Yet, the juxtaposition of such unusual behavior with the generally banal behavior of authentic dialogue can offer a deeply engaging learning experience. In this example, the pragmatic focus is a speech event of checking in a hotel, and the structure of turn-taking involved in the event. Figure 21.4 (a space-reduced version of a handout) illustrates a pre-viewing activity used to activate learners’ current knowledge about a conversation between a guest and a front-desk clerk. In the activity, the learners generate the kinds of questions and answers a Front Clerk (FC) and a Guest (G) might say during a check-in sequence. Then, they consider the levels of politeness that they predict each speaker to use. In pairs, the learners use the questions and answers they generated to create a dialogue following the description of conversational moves in the handout and then they perform the dialogue. The pair-work negotiation process gets them to consider differences in social status of the speakers in a service encounter situation (Félix-Brasdefer, 2015) and the turn-taking sequences. Besides providing learners an opportunity to explore and reconfirm the dialogic structure of hotel check-in procedures, the ultimate benefit of this activity is that the learners are better able to appreciate the comedic effect in the film scene. The main character, Benjamin Braddock, displays an embarrassing level of inexperience and cluelessness about the hotel check-in procedure when he interacts with the front clerk. Despite being a competent speaker of English, many of the routine questions posed to him by the front clerk appear to take him by surprise and it is humorous to watch as he fumbles to respond. To reiterate, when deciding to work with a whole film or television episode for materials development, it is important to let the text itself provide the language or pragmatic focus. In this way the richness of the contexts encapsulated in each film’s cinematic world is best exploited. 330

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Topics/Conversational Moves ·

Opening/Greeting

·

Request room/Confirm reservation

·

Specify room type and number of occupants

·

Length of stay

·

Help with luggage

·

Special needs (e.g. wake up call, room service, laundry)

·

Sign the register book; fill in registration card

·

Pay

·

Closing/Farewell

Dialogue

Figure 21.4 Brainstorming a hotel check-in sequence.

Materials for Study Abroad Programs and Technology-Enhanced Environments Shively (2010) illustrates how strategy instruction including both face-to-face and computermediated-communication (CMC) can be central to a successful study abroad experience (see also Chapter 23 in this volume). Following the 6Rs model (Martinez-Flor & Usó-Juan, 2006), Shively presents six phases that learners can go through to maximize their study abroad experience for pragmatics learning: (1) research L1 pragmatic data, (2) reflect on the L1 data, (3) receive instruction on L2 pragmatic feature, (4) reason about and identify social/situational factors, (5) rehearse by putting knowledge into practice, and (6) revise their knowledge based on feedback on their performance. Before departure, learners are encouraged to contact people in the host country (through email and chat exchanges) in order to build confidence for their upcoming sojourn. They can also use the Internet to search for social networks and interest groups in the host country so they can establish a community before starting the study abroad trip. Once they are abroad, learners can continue to be ‘learners-as-ethnographers or learners-as-researchers’ (Shively, 2010, p. 120). They can engage in conversations with their host families and local community members so they can gather authentic language data and consult about cultural questions. Upon returning from study abroad, learners can stay connected with the local community via social networks. Goertler (2015) describes another program, which integrates strategy-training instruction with technology to enhance learners’ study abroad experience. In this study, before departure, learners of L2 German participated in online communities related to the places they were going to stay. This pre-departure ‘telecollaboration’ not only enabled learners gain target language contact, but also helped them to ease their transition to the target community by getting to know people in advance. During study abroad, the learners were expected to complete a number of analysis tasks and reflective blogs to increase their capacity to notice cultural differences. Also, the learners were encouraged to use CMC tools (email, texting) while abroad since those tools can reduce stress coming from face-to-face communication. After their return, the learners participated in a virtual exchange with students in their study abroad destination, which enabled them to stay 331

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connected with the host country and continue their language learning. While access to and use of Internet-based communication tools are undoubtedly helpful, there are also potential downsides or abuses of digital connections since ‘students who retain close ties with their home cultures beyond the initial transition abroad may fail to ever engage fully enough in the target culture to lose their own cultural referents’ (Mikal & Grace, 2012, p. 302). Therefore, program coordinators might be wise to consider a media pledge for study abroad programs (Huesca, 2013) because, as Godwin-Jones (2016) posits, ‘technology can play a positive role, particularly if students are provided with appropriate guidance and support’ (p. 1). Another example of a technology-enhanced tool with potential for pragmatics materials development is the MURCO multimedia sub-corpus of the Russian National Corpus (2003–2018). This sub-corpus involves 183 films totaling 1,601,095 words, with search capabilities that are of pragmatics interest. One can customize a search according to social variables (e.g., gender, age, regional dialect). In addition, it is possible to search for speech acts (from 150 different varieties), which are organized in 13 features (e.g., gestures). The film excerpts for each speech act are short (15–30 seconds), but they serve as useful resources for teachers who wish to use authentic excerpts of speech acts from films.

Conclusion and Future Directions This chapter presented key concepts and examples of current practices in pragmatics materials development. Increasingly, teachers are expected to do materials development, whether developing for a full course or supplementing assigned textbooks. Such high expectations ‘constitute a powerful argument for a sustained focus on materials evaluation and design within both preservice and in-service teacher education programs’ (McGrath, 2013, p. 82). However, the educational needs with regard to materials evaluation and design differ for teachers in training and for teachers already in practice. Future research should address those different needs. Pre-service and beginning teachers tend to be more textbook/materials dependent due to their overall lack of teaching experience, so their training should focus on textbook/materials evaluation coupled with practice in making adaptations. The materials evaluation should take place via two processes: materials analysis and context analysis (McGrath, 2013). In the materials analysis, teachers can follow the suggestion of Littlejohn (2011) and consider the following questions: What is there?; What is required of the users/learners?; What is implied, and does it meet the required learning goals and objectives? The context analysis is related to goals or objectives, taking the form of questions like: What is missing?; What more is required to meet the goals and objectives? The materials evaluation will then set the stage for proposing adaptations or supplementing with external materials (see Rosenkjar, 2009, for an excellent model of this process). Adaptation procedures may include decisions to omit, add, replace, or change aspects of the materials such as language, procedures, contexts, and content (McGrath, 2013). Unlike pre-service teachers, in-service teachers who have experience in teaching are more likely to have the capacity to develop materials to either supplement or replace the assigned textbook if deemed necessary. Therefore, assuming that they have grounding in the materials evaluation and adaptation processes described previously, in-service teachers can focus on the design process known as supplementation, defined as ‘an attempt to bridge the gap between a course book and an official syllabus (or statement of aims), or a course book and the demands of a public examination and students’ needs’ (McGrath, 2002, p. 80). As illustrated in the telephone openings example in this chapter, the supplementation process includes researching the pragmatic features in question and then searching for empirically grounded or authentic materials. Teachers are encouraged, therefore, ‘to be critical consumers who would use their discretion to supplement materials in order to secure authentic opportunities for exposure and use, as well as for pragmatic noticing’ (Ishihara & Paller, 2017, p. 99). Furthermore, since such endeavors take 332

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time, it is crucial for teachers, teacher educators, and pragmatics researchers to share resources informally as recommended by Bardovi-Harlig (2017). Such sharing effort is seen in managed websites like Pragmaterials (http://www.pragmaterials.org) and Pragmatics Wiki (http://wlpragmatics.pbworks.com). Further developments are to be seen in these websites. Technology and the Internet offer both the tools and resources to ease the challenge of developing instructional materials for pragmatics and thus should be explored further in the future. Digital technologies offer a range of tools that can improve the efficiency of data collection and enhance the delivery of lessons and language input. Technology can also provide a context for interactions in designed Multiuser Virtual Environments (MUVEs). Examples of MUVEs include Sykes’ (2013) Croquelandia, designed to teach apologies and requests in Spanish and Holden and Sykes’ (2013) place-based mobile game called Mentira, which explores efficacy of feedback for pragmatics learning (see also Chapter 25 in this volume). Other researchers have used social networks to create a context for authentic interaction, as seen in Gonzales (2013) who used Livemocha for language exchanges in Spanish. Sustained contexts for social interactions afforded by these programs are important for pragmatics learning because, as Taguchi (2018) noted, pragmatic knowledge is not stable or pre-determined during interaction; speakers collaboratively accomplish a communicative act in interaction. While technology will have an increasing role in providing environments in which learners can develop their interactional competence, extended role plays or simulations also offer promising face-to-face contexts for social interactions and situated practice. However, such materials (with pragmatics in mind) are still underdeveloped and thus should be explored more in the future. Simulations provide an ideal authentic interactive environment for learners to develop their interactional competence because ‘it is the environment that is simulated … but the behavior is real’ (Jones, 1995, p. 7). For example, Model United Nations simulations can develop students’ communication, negotiation, and critical thinking skills because students are placed in a situation ‘where they need to make defensible decisions and often have to convince others to work with them’ (Asal & Blake, 2006, p. 2). Simulations employ multiple iterations of Harmer’s Engage→Study→Activate cycle throughout three distinct phases: (1) preparation/research/ rehearsal, (2) simulation/interaction, and (3) debriefing/guided reflections about the communication during the simulation. All three phases present opportunities for the development of pragmatic knowledge and interactional competence (Tatsuki, 2017). In conclusion, prospective materials developers are encouraged to follow their intuitions regarding the need to adapt, supplement, or replace parts of texts/lessons, and to consider the value of creating an entire course that fits the contextualized needs of their own learners. The units should contain components such as awareness-building, a focus on conversational structure, and opportunities to communicate—first in a format of guided practice and then a free communication in the target community. By following the guiding principles and suggestions offered in this chapter, hopefully many more people will contribute to the growing supply of innovative materials for teaching pragmatics.

Further Reading Houck, N. & Tatsuki, D. (2011). Pragmatics: Teaching natural conversations. Alexandria: TESOL. Tatsuki, D. & Houck, N. (2010). Pragmatics: Teaching speech acts. Alexandria: TESOL These two books are recommended for teachers and materials developers who seek well-planned lessons and innovative activities on a variety of pragmatic topics. In each chapter, the pragmatic focus and context of use is established followed by a sequence of activities and tasks that move from awareness-raising to identification/recognition, and moves from controlled/guided practice to free interactions. The materials were all field-tested. The authors include suggestions for variations and caveats to look out for in a final reflection section. 333

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Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2018). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. This volume gives teachers and materials writers a solid understanding of the theory and practice that result in the production of good-quality language-learning materials. Starting with an exhaustive review of literature, the volume covers every aspect of the materials development process including evaluation, adaptation, and the publishing process. All chapters, including one on pragmatics, offer valuable insights for language acquisition and the development of skills. Wong, J., & Waring, H. (2010). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/ EFL teachers. New York: Routledge. This book is an excellent introduction to Conversation Analysis (CA) for teachers. The book is organized in three sections: (1) a rationale for including CA in communicative language teaching along with a model of interactional practices, (2) a teacher-friendly introduction to CA that encourages teachers to consider the pedagogical implications of each component of their interactional model, and (3) a collection of CA informed oral activities for awareness-raising and practice.

References Al-Busaidi, S., & Tindle, K. (2010). Evaluating the impact of in-house materials on language learning. In B. Tomlinson & H. Masuhara (Eds.), Research for materials development in language learning: Evidence for best practice (pp. 137–149). London: Continuum. Arminen, I., & Leinonen, M. (2006). Mobile phone call openings: Tailoring answers to personalized summonses. Discourse Studies, 8(3), 339–368. Arnold, W. (2010). A longitude study of the effects of a graded reading scheme for young learners in Hong Kong. In B. Tomlinson & H. Masuhara (Eds.), Research for materials development in language learning: Evidence for best practice (pp. 37–49). London: Continuum. Asal, V., & Blake, E. L. (2006). Creating simulations for political science education. Political Science Education, 2(1), 1–18. Atak, P. (2017). NZ filmmakers produce unique drama series for English learners. The Pie News [online]. Retrieved March 2, 2018, from https​://th​epien​ews.c​om/ne​ws/fo​rtune​-favo​urs-t​he-br​ave-i​n-new​-elt-​tv-se​ ries-​not-r​eady/​ Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2001). Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics? In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 13–32). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2017). Acquisition of L2 Pragmatics. In S. Loewen & M. Sato (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of instructed second language acquisition (pp. 147–162). New York: Routledge. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Mahan-Taylor, R. (2003). Introduction. In K. Bardovi-Harlig & R. Mahan-Taylor (Eds.). Teaching pragmatics. Retrieved on May 2, 2017, from http:​//ame​rican​engli​sh.st​ate.g​ov/fi​les/a​e/ res​ource​_file​s/int​ro.pd​f Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Mossman, S. (2017). Corpus-based materials development for teaching and learning pragmatic routines. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), SLA research and materials development for language learning (pp. 250–267). New York: Routledge. Boxer, D., & Pickering, L. (1995). Problems in the presentation of speech acts in ELT materials: The case of complaints. ELT Journal, 49, 44–57. Budden, J. (2008). Adapting materials for differ age groups. Teaching English [on line]. Retrieved on February 4, 2018, from https​://ww​w.tea​ching​engli​sh.or​g.uk/​artic​le/ad​aptin​g-mat​erial​s-dif​feren​t-age​ -grou​ps Chinokul, S., & Nipaspong, P. (2010). The role of prompts and explicit feedback in raising EFL learners’ pragmatic awareness. University of Sydney Papers in TESOL, 5, 101–146. Cohen, A. D. (2005). Strategies for learning and performing L2 speech acts. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2, 275–301. Crandall, E., & Basturkmen, H. (2004). Evaluating pragmatics-focused materials. ELT Journal, 58, 38–49. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Godwin-Jones, R. (2016). Integrating Technology into Study Abroad. Language Learning & Technology 20, 1–20. Retrieved on March 19, 2018, from http:​//llt​.msu.​edu/i​ssues​/febr​uary2​016/e​mergi​ng.pd​f Goertler, S. (2015). Study abroad and technology: Friend or enemy? [blog post] The FLTMAG. Retrieved on January 10, 2018, from http:​//flt​mag.c​om/st​udy-a​broad​-and-​techn​ology​/ 334

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Mishan, F., & Timmis, I. (2015). Materials development for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Popovici, R., & Bolitho, R. (2003). Personal and professional development through writing: The Romanian textbook project. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.). Developing materials for language teaching (pp. 505–517). London: Continuum. Riddiford, N., & Newton, J. (2010). Workplace talk in action: An ESOL resource. Wellington: Wellington School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. Ritchie, G. (2009). Beyond the book: Using teacher-learner co-constructed texts to supplement ESOL textbooks. In L. Savova (Ed.), Using textbooks effectively (pp. 73–83). Alexandria: TESOL. Ronald, J., Rinnert, C., Fordyce, K., & Knight, T. (2012) (Eds.). Pragtivities: Bringing pragmatics into second language classrooms. Tokyo: JALT. Rosenkjar, P. (2009). Adapting a Japanese high school textbook to teach reading microskills communicatively. In L. Savova (Ed.), Using textbooks effectively (pp. 63–72). Alexandria: TESOL. Ryan, J. (2018). Designing lessons based on video narratives. Modern English Teacher, 27, 29–30. Russian National Corpus. (2003–2018). DA-MURCO sub-corpus. Retrieved on March 3, 2018, from http:​// www​.rusc​orpor​a.ru/​searc​h-mur​co.ht​ml Savova, L. (2009). Textbook use as part of the ESOL classroom ecosystem: Teaching the students, not the book. In L. Savova (Ed.), Using textbooks effectively (pp. 1–8). Alexandria: TESOL. Schegloff, E. (1986). The routine as achievement, Human Studies, 9, 111–151. Schegloff, E. (2002). Reflections on research on telephone conversations. In K. Luke & T. Pavlidou (Eds.), Telephone calls (pp. 249–281). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Shively, R. (2010). From the virtual world to the real world: A model of pragmatics instruction for study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 43, 105–137. Simpson, R. C., Briggs, S. L., Ovens, J., & Swales, J. M. (2002). The Michigan corpus of academic spoken English. Ann Arbor, MI: The Regents of the University of Michigan. Sykes, J. M. (2013). Multi-user virtual environments: Learner apologies in Spanish. In N. Taguchi & J. M. Sykes (Eds.), Technology and interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 71–100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Taguchi, N. (2015a). Contextually speaking: A survey of pragmatics learning abroad, in class and online. System, 48, 3–20. Taguchi, N. (2015b). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Taguchi, N. (2018). Contexts and pragmatics learning: Problems and opportunities of the study abroad research. Language Teaching, 51, 124–137. Tatsuki, D. (2000). Motivating movies: Study guides for action and comedy films. Nishinomiya, Japan: Kwansei Gakuin University Coop Printing Service. Tatsuki, D. (2005a). Telephone call behavior in films and language textbooks. Kobe Gaidai Ronsou, 56(2), 59–82. Tatsuki, D. (2005b). Pragmatics in language learning, theory, and practice. Tokyo: JALT. Tatsuki, D. (2016a). Telephone calls in MEXT approved high school textbooks. Kobe Gaidai Ronsou, 66(2), 13–37. Tatsuki, D. (2016b). Pedagogical gaps in pragmatics teaching materials. In D. Tatsuki & D. Fujimoto (Eds.), Back to basics: Filling the gaps in pragmatics teaching materials (pp. 4–15). Tokyo: JALT. Tatsuki, D. (2017). ELF in model united nations simulations: When east meets west. Lingue Linguaggi, 24, 73–86. Retrieved on March 31, 2018, from http:​//sib​a-ese​.unis​alent​o.it/​index​.php/​lingu​eling​uaggi​/ arti​cle/v​iew/1​8568 Tatsuki D., & Fujimoto, D. (2016). (Eds.). Back to basics: Filling the gaps in pragmatics teaching materials. Tokyo: JALT. Tatsuki, D., & Houck, N. (2010). Pragmatics: Teaching speech acts. Alexandria: TESOL. Togo, K. (2003). Columbus 21, 1. Tokyo: Mitsumura Tosho. Tomlinson, B. (1994). Pragmatic awareness activities. Language Awareness, 3, 119–129. Tomlinson, B. (2010). Principles for effective materials development. In N. Harwood (Ed.), English language teaching materials: Theory and practice (pp. 81–109). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tomlinson, B. (2013). Looking out for English. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 4, 253–261. Tomlinson, B. (2015). Challenging teachers to use their course book creatively. In A. Maley & N. Peachy (Eds.), Creativity in the language classroom (pp. 24–28). London: British Council. Tomlinson, B. (2017). SLA research and materials development for language learning. New York: Routledge. Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2018). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. van Patten, B., & Williams, J. (2007). Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction. New York: Routledge. 336

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22 Task-Based Language Teaching and L2 Pragmatics Marta González-Lloret

Introduction Pragmatic competence is recognized as an essential element in communicative competence (Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Canale & Swain, 1980), and thus learning the pragmatics of a second or any additional language (L2) is a critical part of language learning. A long tradition of research demonstrates that pragmatics is essential to establish and maintain communication and rapport, as well as to avoid negative judgment and even stereotypical opinions about a community of speakers. When L2 learners engage in interaction with a competent speaker of the target language, language errors are usually attributed to a lack of their linguistic competence. However, when the errors are of a pragmatic nature (e.g., inappropriate register, lack of hedging, breaking of the turn-taking system), they are not attributed to a lack of linguistics competence, but rather to personality traits. As Thomas (1983) points out, L2 pragmatic errors are attributed to ‘apparent impoliteness or unfriendliness, not to any linguistic deficiency, but to boorishness or ill-will’ (p. 97). Despite the important role that pragmatic competence plays in communication and social rapport, most approaches to language teaching do not incorporate pragmatic instruction in a systematic and adequate manner. Most L2 curriculums ignore the teaching of pragmatics altogether or reduce it to a few bits of simplistic, often stereotypical, cultural and linguistic information (e.g., when to use tú or usted in Spanish to conjugate verbs accordingly, how to exchange a business card in Japan, or the difference between can you and could you in English). Several researchers have demonstrated that textbooks rarely include pragmatic information on register, politeness, illocutionary force, or speech acts and their contextual information (Barron, 2016; Inawati, 2016; Limberg, 2016; Ren & Han, 2016). The situation is aggravated by the fact that for several decades, scholars in L2 pragmatics have been advocating for the benefits of instruction in pragmatics learning (e.g., Kasper 1997), with a plethora of studies dedicated to finding out what can/needs to be taught in pragmatics, and what are the best ways to teach pragmatics inside and outside the language classroom (for reviews, see Alcón-Soler & Martínez-Flor, 2008; González-Lloret, 2019; Taguchi, 2011, 2013, 2015). Although results regarding effective teaching methods are not totally conclusive, most research suggests that explicit instruction is more effective than implicit instruction (for a review, see Taguchi, 2015; see also Chapter 19 in this volume), although there is some counterevidence (e.g., Li, 2012). As for instructional targets, most research has focused on speech acts and routine 338

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formulae (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman & Vellenga, 2015), as well as other pragmalinguistic forms such as mitigation (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2008; Nguyen, 2013) and address terms (e.g., Belz & Kinginger, 2002; van Compernolle, 2010). Recently, the field has begun moving toward a discursive view of pragmatics (Kasper, 2006) with a line of studies investigating interactional practices of conversation such as small talk (e.g., Barron & Black, 2015; Yates & Major, 2015) and sequential organization (e.g., Barraja-Rohan, 2011) (see Chapter 2 in this volume). This chapter takes an interactional approach to teaching pragmatics that views meaning and action as constituted through social interaction (Kasper, 2006). I will present how pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge, as well as using that knowledge in interaction, can be taught under the framework of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT).

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts Bringing pragmatics to the classroom is not an easy mission. L2 classrooms are limited in their range of social contexts for pragmatics practice. Because of its institutionalized nature, classroom discourse creates a context of unequal power relationships between teachers and students, generating a limited number of interactional situations for students. Students and teachers’ rights and obligations are clearly set and define the types of interactions available. As a result, certain speech acts and discourse practices almost never occur in language classrooms. For example, students do not have a chance to reject requests from the teacher; the speech act of offering is not common in the class; and insulting is usually nonexistent. Even when these speech acts do occur, social factors of familiarity and power that frame the speech acts are fixed. Hence, it is important to bring a variety of contexts, situations, and power dynamics to the classroom that reflect authentic out-of-the-class environments, so students can practice different interactional situations with different interlocutors for a variety of purposes. It is important to note that, although authentic examples of native-speaker interactions have been used widely in L2 pragmatic instruction, achieving native-like competence is not necessarily the goal of the instruction. Rather the goal is to equip students with knowledge and linguistic tools so they can interact appropriately in a specific speech community. We also need to keep in mind that L2 learners may not want to fully adopt the pragmatic rules of the L2 because of their own experiences, social position, beliefs, and views of themselves and the target community (Siegal, 1996; see also Chapter 11 in this volume). Furthermore, members of the target community may appreciate certain differences in L2 learners’ pragmatics as indicators of their roles as outside members of that community (Kasper, 1997). Therefore, it is important to understand how, when, and with whom learners may use the L2, as well as their perceptions and views on the sociopragmatic norms of the target language. A lesson or curriculum informed by TBLT is particularly useful for this purpose because it involves a needs analysis that helps identify learners’ needs, together with information about the tasks, the language used to accomplish the tasks, and technology and other artifacts mediating the task. Although different versions of TBLT define tasks and a TBLT curriculum differently (see Ellis, 2003; Long, 2015, for comprehensive discussions), in this chapter, TBLT is presented as a programmatic methodology in which tasks serve as building blocks of the curriculum. Developing materials or a curriculum implies conducting a needs analysis, selecting and sequencing tasks, developing materials, teaching, assessing students’ learning outcomes, and evaluating the materials/program (Long, 1985, 2015; Norris, 2009). Following Long’s (1985, 2015) model of TBLT, tasks are understood as real-life activities that people do every day. In order to help students perform authentic tasks, a curriculum composed of task-types and pedagogic tasks is developed, which includes tasks that mirror authentic and real-world activities (van den Branden, 2006). Target tasks are grouped into task-types that involve abstractions from similar target tasks with a generalizable use. For example, from target tasks such as ‘purchasing a phone,’ ‘purchasing a 339

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tablet,’ ‘purchasing clothes,’ and ‘purchasing shoes,’ we can extract the target task-type ‘purchasing goods in a store,’ since these interactions have many common elements. Based on this generic task type, pedagogic tasks are developed and sequenced to scaffold the student to perform the target task. These pedagogic tasks can be implemented in a variety of ways (e.g., in individual activities, in pairs, in groups, input-based/output-based, guided performance, audio/video-based, oral, or written). These pedagogic tasks are goal-oriented and focus on meaning rather than form. The pedagogical approach preferred in TBLT is Focus-on-Form (i.e., the provision of feedback targeted to specific language forms while learners are engaged in a meaning-focused communicative activity), in which feedback is provided at any time during the pedagogic task as long as it is necessary, relevant, and useful for the completion of the task (see González-Lloret, 2016a, for a detailed explanation of the process as well as examples). The idea of ‘doing’ something with the language rather than ‘knowing about’ the language is rooted in experiential learning (Dewey, 1938/1997), and it is one of the main principles of TBLT. TBLT’s main concern is how tasks, and more comprehensively a task‐based curriculum, can promote language acquisition. The goal of TBLT is to promote not only communicative competence but also language acquisition in three dimensions of language use—fluency, accuracy, and complexity. In this chapter, I argue that the TBLT model needs a fourth dimension, pragmatic appropriateness, that is, appropriate use of sociopragmatic knowledge and pragmalinguistic resources to accomplish a task. From an interactional perspective, pragmatic appropriateness is conceptualized as fluid and dynamic, co-constructed among participants, requiring ‘evaluations of an orientation to what is being said and how it is being said from moment to moment within a given communicative interaction’ (van Compernolle, 2014, p. 40). This is not an easy goal to achieve for L2 learners, but it is an essential aspect of an interaction that needs to be addressed in language teaching.

Survey of Empirical Findings on Tasks and L2 Pragmatics Tasks in L2 Pragmatic Research Research in L2 pragmatics has been getting closer to the field of TBLT because L2 pragmatics researchers have started to incorporate tasks that are recognized as such by the TBLT community. Those tasks are goal-oriented (with a purpose other than learning a grammar item) and meaning-based (rather than grammar-based), and engage L2 learners in doing something with the language with a real and authentic application outside of the classroom. For example, Louw, Derwing, and Abbott (2010) and Cunningham (2016) used interview tasks with real-life interlocutors (Canadian recruiters and German-speaking professionals in Germany) to explore L2 learners’ development of questions and answers. Similarly, in a workplace context, Kim and Lee (2017) used emails as tasks to examine the use of politeness expressions. A number of L2 pragmatic studies have employed technology-mediated tasks to promote the learning of pragmatic features, including address forms (e.g., Belz & Kinginger, 2002; GonzálezLloret, 2008; van Compernolle, 2010), formal professional register (e.g., Cunningham & Vyatkina, 2012), requests (e.g., Cunningham 2016), and expression of emotion (e.g., GonzálezLloret, 2016b). Text and video-based computer-mediated communication (CMC), virtual environments, simulations, and games provide spaces where learners can engage in real-life tasks that are not possible in traditional classrooms (see also Chapters 24 and 25 in this volume). These tasks have learners interact with speakers of the target language, with avatars in a simulated virtual world, or with animated game characters to accomplish a task. For example, researchers at Utrecht University investigated how telecollaborative tasks using Second Life (e.g., renting an apartment with a roommate) help promote intercultural and interactional competence in L2 Spanish (e.g., Canto, de Graff, & Jauregi, 2014). Similarly, Sykes (2009, 2013, 2014) 340

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investigated L2 Spanish students’ learning of two speech acts (requests and apologies) in a virtual environment while interacting with computer-generated characters in tasks that simulate real-life situations (e.g., meeting with a professor or requesting a book). These tasks were developed specifically to engage students in producing requests and apologies in a variety of contexts. Another example illustrating how tasks can be incorporated into new technologies is Holden and Sykes’s (2012) mobile game Mentira, which was designed as a mystery-solving game involving several sub-tasks. L2 Spanish learners collaboratively solved a mystery situated in a neighborhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although pragmatics was not the sole focus of the game, the game was designed in such a way that in-game characters responded differently depending on the learners’ choice of pragmatic strategies (e.g., direct or indirect way of speaking). Most recently, Sydorenko, Daurio and Thorne (2018) found interesting potential in spoken dialogue systems (SDS) to engage L2 English learners in a request-making task with animated characters (e.g., asking a professor for a recommendation letter). Findings showed an improvement in learners’ speech act strategies (decreased use of inappropriate strategies and increased use of a variety of strategies) after engaging with animated characters in the task. Results from these studies confirm that tasks are an optimal tool for the implementation (and the study) of L2 pragmatic development in both face-to-face and technology-mediated contexts. Tasks can expose learners to a variety of contexts (e.g., with power asymmetry, unfamiliar speakers, and different levels of imposition) and to cultural beliefs that are not easily available in a classroom setting (Canto et al., 2014; Kim & Lee, 2017). Research findings also suggest that understanding pragmatic development through tasks requires qualitative analysis of data and attention to discourse sequences (Cunningham, 2016). In addition, it is clear from these studies that pragmatics learning is possible if there is enough authentic interaction and feedback for ‘learning moments’ to occur, for which careful design of the tasks and the environments is essential. Finally, the use of tasks within these technology-mediated environments can be highly motivating for learners who find them realistic and useful because the tasks allow them to do things that they cannot do in the classroom (Canto et al., 2014; Sydorenko et al., 2018).

TBLT Research Focusing on L2 Pragmatics Within the field of TBLT, some of the most productive lines of work include: determining task features that promote learning (e.g., type, mode, planning conditions); defining task complexity for the purpose of sequencing tasks to maximize learning; developing and evaluating taskbased materials; assessing learning outcomes using tasks; understanding the role of the teacher in TBLT; assessing the impact of learner factors on task performance (e.g., L2 proficiency); and implementing TBLT in different contexts (e.g., foreign vs. second-language environment, technology-mediated contexts, and workplaces). Recently, L2 pragmatics has gained attention within the field of TBLT as demonstrated by the recent volume by Taguchi and Kim (2018) on task-based perspectives to pragmatics teaching and assessment. In the following, I will review L2 pragmatic studies in three areas of TBLT research: task modality, task design, and task complexity.

Task Modality TBLT’s research agenda on task modality focuses mainly on the differences between oral and written tasks and how these tasks promote L2 learning (e.g., Adams 2006; Kormos & Trebits, 2012). Very few studies have integrated L2 pragmatics in this research agenda. Fukuya and Martínez-Flor (2008) compared two task modalities: oral (a phone message) and written (an email) in the production of head acts and hedges in the speech act of suggestion in L2 English under explicit and implicit instruction. The explicit instruction led to significant gains in learners’ 341

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knowledge in the oral task, but this was not the case in the written task. The authors explained these contrasting findings based on different degrees of attention and monitoring required under different modalities (Skehan, 1998). In contrast, Reagan and Payant’s (2018) study found no modality effect. They compared the effect of an oral and written story completion task in learning requests in L2 Spanish, but found no difference in learning outcomes between the two conditions. Given the paucity of available findings, it is clear that this area is in need of more research.

Task Design TBLT studies focusing on task design have investigated what features and characteristics make a task most effective for L2 learning. We know that learners do not respond to task structure in the same way that native speakers do (Foster & Tavakoli, 2009), and therefore it is important to explore the effects that different features of the task design may have on learning. So far, there are only a few studies of this area in L2 pragmatics, and these studies have focused on a variety of task design aspects. Looking at task structure, Neary-Sundquist (2013) investigated pragmatic markers (as a subset of formulaic language) in four different tasks that varied in their level of structure, ranging from very structured (e.g., leaving a telephone message) to less structured tasks (e.g., narrating an experience). The results showed no relationship between the use of pragmatic markers and task structure for the higher proficiency L2 learners and native speakers, but the task structure did show an effect for lower proficiency learners who used fewer pragmatic markers when performing more structured tasks. As a feature of task design, several studies have looked at differences between collaborative and individual tasks. Taguchi and Kim (2016) compared these two task conditions among EFL students learning English requests. The task involved completing a drama script based on a scenario involving request-making. One group of learners collaboratively constructed a drama script in pairs, while the other group constructed a script individually via think-aloud. The collaborative task condition led to a greater amount of discussion about pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features of request-making than the individual task condition. The collaborative group achieved greater gains in the production of request head acts after the task, although the gains were not maintained at the delayed post-test. In another study, Gablasova, Brezina, Mcenery, and Boyd (2017) compared the use of epistemic stance markers in a monological task (semi-formal presentation) and three interactional tasks (a discussion of a topic, a conversation with questions led by the learner, and a conversation on general topics). L2 English learners produced more epistemic markers in the more interactive tasks. These findings were expected since epistemic markers were used to manage the discourse and relationships among participants in an interactive task. However, not all the interactive tasks generated the same amount of epistemic markers, and there was significant individual variation in the learners’ stance-taking patterns. These studies suggest that interactive tasks are effective for eliciting targeted pragmatic features and promoting learning of them. However, similar interactive tasks sometimes produced different results, suggesting that the collaborative nature of a task may not be the sole predictor of learning outcomes or immediate post-task production of targeted pragmatic features. This area also needs more research in the future.

Task Complexity The investigation of task complexity is probably the most fruitful agenda in TBLT research. Most existing studies have followed two well-known TBLT frameworks of task complexity: Robinson’s (2005, 2011) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attention Capacity (or Trade-Off) Hypothesis. Skehan’s model states that our attention resources are limited, and 342

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when we engage in tasks that are more difficult and require more cognitive resources, less attention is paid to the language. Because of limited attention resources, it is not possible to focus on both meaning and form. As a result, when the complexity of a task increases, the accuracy and the fluency of L2 production decreases. Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis, on the other hand, states that increasing the cognitive complexity of a task will lead to more accurate and complex (although less fluent) L2 production, more interaction, more noticing of forms and uptake of corrective feedback, and deeper processing and longer retention of learned forms. Robinson claims that a task can be operationalized as more complex or less complex according to two dimensions: resource-directing and resource-dispersing. Resource-directing variables (e.g., having more or fewer elements in a task, requiring spatial, causal, or intentional reasoning) affect the cognitive demand of the task, while resource-dispersing variables (e.g., having planning time, being a single versus multi-step task, having or not having prior knowledge) affect task performance. Increasing complexity along the resource-directing dimensions promotes attention to form-function mappings and facilitates L2 development, while increasing complexity on the resource-dispersing dimensions promotes automatization. Although these two theories have sparked a vivid research agenda within TBLT, only recently has research on task complexity been expanded to L2 pragmatics. Using Robinson’s (2001) framework, Kim and Taguchi (2015) operationalized task complexity based on the degree of reasoning required for task completion (+/- reasoning). The authors compared a simple task (creating a drama script involving request-making according to pictures with detailed information about the events and the characters) and a complex task that required more reasoning (creating the same drama script without much information about the events and the characters). Although there was no significant difference in learning gains of request-making expressions between the two task conditions, the complex group was able to maintain the gains in the delayed post-test. Analyses of during-task interaction data revealed that the complex task promoted learners’ negotiation of pragmatics elements, mostly on sociopragmatic factors (i.e., contextual elements of the task scenario rather than the request forms). According to the authors, these findings were due to the task design: The task complexity was manipulated at the level of contextual factors and not at the level of forms. In other words, what learners needed to negotiate was the contextual factors but not the request forms taught in the pre-task lesson. In another study, Gilabert and Barón (2013) analyzed requests and suggestions produced by EFL learners in problem-solving tasks that differed in their level of complexity. The complex version of the task had more elements and steps required to complete the task, whereas the simple version had fewer elements and steps. The authors hypothesized that a greater number of suggestion and request strategies would occur in the complex task because it requires learners to think about more alternatives. The results partially confirmed the hypothesis. The learners produced more suggestion and request strategies in the complex task, but not in a greater variety. More recently, Gilabert and Barón (2018) used an email writing task at four levels of complexity (+/- frequency of input, +/- familiarity with interlocutor, +/- intentional, +/- causal reasoning, +/- dependency of steps, +/- number of elements, and +/- dual task). These tasks were designed to examine the impact of the sequencing of the tasks by comparing two conditions—simpleto-complex condition and randomized condition. Results revealed no task sequencing effects: There was no difference between the two conditions on learners’ task outcomes (quality of emails produced). No effects could be due to the fact that the four tasks did not differ much in task complexity. When teachers were asked to rate the complexity of each task, their rating differed only between the simple task and other three complex tasks, but no difference was found across the three complex tasks. Findings in these studies suggest the difficulty of applying existing task complexity frameworks to the study of L2 pragmatic production and development. In light of the findings, it is important to 343

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keep in mind that production of pragmatic features requires ‘the knowledge of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics in unison with the processing capacity to articulate the knowledge in production’ (Taguchi, 2010, p. 347). Hence, measuring production or development in pragmatics may not be as straight forward as other aspects of language. As Kim and Taguchi (2015) state, ‘task complexity may best be operationalized as a combination of both cognitive and social demands’ (p. 659), suggesting that some adjustments to existing frameworks of task complexity are necessary. Given the limited amount of existing findings, it is clear that the agenda for task-based L2 pragmatics research is wide open. More investigation is needed in terms of how different characteristics of a task (e.g., type, mode, and complexity) can assist learners’ pragmatics learning differently. We also need to investigate whether certain pragmatic features are task specific (e.g., learned better in collaboration or individually, or in a written or spoken task). In addition, we need to address what roles, if any, L2 proficiency plays on task-based pragmatic performance (e.g., Taguchi, Kaufer, Gómez-Laich, & Zhao, 2016). It seems that the field needs an expanded research agenda to address the complexities of studying pragmatics learning through tasks. The next section presents an agenda in TBLT that may help address such a need.

Expanding Research Agenda on Tasks and L2 Pragmatics Although much still needs to be investigated in terms of how tasks and L2 pragmatics interact, in this section, I will focus on two agendas for L2 pragmatics and TBLT: (1) expanding the framework of task complexity, and (2) expanding the definition of task.

Expanding the Framework of Task Complexity As mentioned above, the most recent line of research on task-based pragmatics learning examined how task complexity affects L2 pragmatic development. The investigation of task complexity is also one of the most productive areas of research in TBLT. To reiterate, task complexity refers to the characteristics of a task that affect the cognitive demands on learners when performing the task and implementations of those task characteristics. González-Lloret and Ortega (2018) suggest that the existing frameworks on task demands and task complexity (Skehan, 1998; Robinson, 2001, 2011) can be expanded to include factors that are directly related to interactional pragmatics, such as the number of participants involved in a task and their power relationships and familiarity, the context of interaction, and the medium of interacton. Robinson’s (2001, 2011) model addresses task complexity (affected by cognitive factors like planning and reasoning) and task difficulty (affected by the cognitive abilities of the learner such as proficiency or aptitude); at the same time, the model addresses task conditions resulting from the interactional demands of the task (e.g., number of participants; direction of the interaction; and participants’ characteristics such as gender, status, and expertise). These task condition factors clearly involve pragmatics and interactional considerations. Expanding on Robinson’s framework, González-Lloret and Ortega (2018) propose three types of sociopragmatic-interactional variables that can influence task complexity. Those variables are arranged along a scale: 1 Interactional variables. These culture- and situation-specific variables include number of participants, flow of interaction, and amount of contribution and negotiation. These variables shape various aspects of sequential organization of the interaction (Schegloff, 2007), including the turn-taking system (allocation of turns, appropriation, simultaneous production, repair, etc.), topic initiation, direction and change, as well as language organized for the production of preferred or dispreferred turns. In addition, Cooperative Principles (Lakoff, 1973), such as avoiding imposition or attending to the other’s feelings, may also affect 344

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the complexity of a task. For example, a task requiring the speaker to impose herself will be interactionally more difficult to accomplish and may even result in avoidance. Finally, within the interactional variables, González-Lloret and Ortega (2018) suggest that, based on Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) Relevance Theory, the relevance of the information produced in a task can affect the complexity of a task, since a task requiring the speaker to produce maximally relevant information may require less processing on the part of the listener, and therefore be less interactively complex. 2 Participant variables. These variables are very similar to those in Robinson’s model (gender, familiarity, shared content and cultural knowledge, status and role, proficiency). They are also culturally and situationally specific. 3 Mediating artifacts. It is also essential to consider any artifacts that may mediate the interaction as a complexity variable. Human communication is almost always mediated by artifacts. For example, the exchange of a business card has an impact on how a greeting is performed with normative elements that do not exist if the business card is not exchanged.

Expanding the Definition of Task An expanded agenda on task-based pragmatics learning should also include a definition of task that accounts for conversational tasks. When we consider tasks to be ‘the hundred and one things people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in between’ (Long, 1985, p. 89) or ‘the real-world communicative uses to which learners will put the L2 beyond the classroom—the things they will do in and through the L2’ (Long, 2016, p. 6, italics in original), conversation as a form of human connection (albeit not necessarily goal-oriented) fits perfectly within the definitions of a task. Considering conversation to be a task expands the scope of tasks in L2 pragmatics, which coincides with a larger research agenda in L2 interactional pragmatics (e.g., speech act sequences, cross-cultural interaction, turn taking, topic management, and stance). Let’s consider small talk as an example of how interactional pragmatics can be incorporated within a task-based curriculum that situates everyday conversation as an important task. As recent studies suggest, small talk plays a fundamental role in interactional pragmatics, either in faceto-face encounters (e.g., Yates & Mayor, 2015) or in technology-mediated contexts (e.g. Dooly & Tudini, 2016). Therefore, interactional features of small talk should be considered within possible tasks for a certain population. A recent study by Yates and Major (2015) found that one of the pragmatic needs of immigrants to Australia is fitting in within the new community (see also Chapter 27 in this volume). Hence, immigrants need to acquire pragmatic skills of engaging in small talk so that they appear friendly and understanding. Within a TBLT framework, these pragmatic skills should be incorporated either as tasks themselves or as part of larger tasks, and pedagogic tasks focusing on those skills should be developed. The following section delineates the steps for developing such pedagogic tasks. It presents different phases that incorporate pragmatics within a task of ‘ordering a meal.’

Implementations of L2 Pragmatic Tasks As mentioned before, this chapter follows the TBLT framework proposed by Long (2015) and Norris (2009) which includes six phases: (1) a needs analysis; (2) task selection and sequencing; (3) materials and instruction development; (4) teaching; (5) student assessment; and (6) program evaluation. Using this framework, this section illustrates how actual materials can be created for a sample task, ‘ordering a meal.’ Adding L2 pragmatics to a traditional task such as ‘ordering a meal’ implies expanding on existing frameworks. Table 22.1 shows the steps proposed by Long (2015) and Norris (2009) with added pragmatic elements. 345

Marta González-Lloret Table 22.1  Addition of L2 pragmatic elements to a TBLT framework TBLT framework proposed by Long (2015) and Norris (2009) Step 1: Identification of task and task features (needs analysis) •• Identification of target language (topics, structures, lexis) •• Identification of technology if task is technology-mediated* Step 2: Selection of relevant tasks from those identified

Additions of pragmatics elements

•• More encompassing definition of ‘task’ •• Learners’ views of their roles in the L2 community •• Identification of pragmalinguistic features (e.g., speech act strategies, formulas) •• Identification of macro and micro (interactional) features involved in task (e.g., settings, interlocutors’ relationships, shared background knowledge and history, age, gender, turn-taking conventions, non-verbal norms)

Step 3: Development of materials and instruction •• Pedagogic language tasks •• Pedagogic pragmatic tasks (e.g., awareness •• Pedagogic technology tasks* raising, Focus-on-Form on pragmalinguistics, comprehension, guided production, and free production of pragmatic functions) Step 4: Sequencing of materials •• Consider language complexity •• Consider task complexity •• Consider complexity of technology*

•• Consider pragmatic complexity coming from sociopragmatic-interactional variables (e.g., turntaking system) as part of task sequencing (GonzálezLloret & Ortega, 2018; see the previous section)

Step 5: Student assessment Performance-based assessment considering: •• Task completion •• Appropriateness of language use according to •• Language use (fluency, accuracy, complexity) cultural, social, contextual, and interactional norms •• Technology use* Step 6: Program/ unit evaluation Note: * Added by González-Lloret and Ortega (2014).

Steps 1 and 2: Needs Analysis and Selection of Tasks The identification of tasks and task features is the first step in this framework. Moving beyond the target language necessary to complete the task to incorporating pragmatics would include finding pragmatic features that render the task appropriate for the context and the interaction. These can range from macro features such as social norms and conventions, to micro features such as who the participants are and their backgrounds, histories, and familiarity with one another. The micro features also include interactional features such as how the turns are allocated, the length of conversation sequences within the task, who takes and assigns turns, who manages the topic, and what stances participants take. Identifying these features (with possible variations that learners may encounter) will help clarify the task as well as the linguistic and interactional resources needed to perform the task. It will also provide information and examples for the development of pedagogic materials.

Step 3: Materials and Instruction Development To be able to accomplish the task ‘ordering a meal’ appropriately, we want to expose learners to different contexts, interlocutors, and interactional patterns. Learners can observe interactions 346

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between speakers of the L2 in ordering situations and identify pragmatic features that they can adapt in their own interactions. Using authentic examples of interaction, we can develop pedagogic tasks that involve ordering a meal in a few common contexts (e.g., a restaurant, a food truck, street vendor, and school cafeteria), and within these contexts we can focus on the interactional sequences that commonly happen (i.e., greetings, requests, questions and answers, thanking, paying, and leave-takings). These interactional sequences can be expanded at higher-proficiency levels by introducing more complex sequences such as negotiations, suggestions, rejections, and complains, which may also vary according to sociopragmatic principles (e.g., age of the waiter in relation to the learner, familiarity with the setting, social status, and gender). Pedagogic tasks can start with the interactional sequence that is most likely to occur in the task (e.g., a greeting). First, pedagogic tasks can maximize input to familiarize students with the L2 pragmatic norms (e.g., pragmalinguistic forms and non-verbal behavior). For example, students can watch videos of greetings in restaurants and think about where they are taking place, what the participants’ relationship is, and why they are behaving in particular ways. Then, the tasks can focus on the pragmalinguistic forms involved in the conversation (e.g., specific formulas used, speech act strategies, and non-verbal behavior), as well as interactive practices (e.g., who greets, who responds, and how long the greeting is). The input-based pedagogic tasks can be written or spoken, and the tasks can be performed individually or in pairs/groups. The response format of the tasks can be checklists, multiple choice answers, ordering the dialogue, or creating dialogues with variation (e.g., time of the day, number of interlocutors, participants’ age and country of origin). We can then move to guided output activities and then eventually to free output activities (e.g., writing greeting sequences, correcting inappropriate greetings, and responding to different greeting types). Once students master greetings, we can then move to the next interactional sequence (e.g., ordering). Individual and group-level feedback should be part of the entire process. Focus-on-Form (FonF) is the preferred form of feedback in this TBLT framework. FonF should be provided during the process while students are engaged in negotiating meaning. FonF should focus not only on linguistic features but also target sociopragmatic information and pragmalinguistic forms. This is essential so students have a clear understanding about the norms and behaviors during the task, how the relationship of themselves to the other and to the context affect the interaction, and what pragmalinguistic choices are preferable to accomplish the task.

Step 4: Sequencing When sequencing pedagogic tasks, we need to consider the complexity and demands of each task. González-Lloret and Ortega’s (2018) framework (see the previous section) can be helpful for determining the task sequence.

Step 5: Student Assessment In regard to student evaluation, performance-based assessment (i.e., the performance of the actual task in an authentic context) is the most congruent form of assessment in the TBLT framework. In order to understand whether learners are able to perform the task and how well they can perform it, we need to assess not just task completion, but also the language used in the task. In TBLT, fluency, accuracy, and complexity of language are typical assessment criteria, but drawing on a pragmatics perspective, it is essential to add appropriateness. For this, van Compernolle’s (2014) perspective on pragmatic appropriateness may be useful. Learners are considered to have performed the task in a pragmatically appropriate way if (1) the language used was interpretable by the interlocutor(s) or audience according to the discourse situation; and (2) if the language used was effective ‘in reflecting and (re)shaping activity types, social relationships and/or social 347

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identities’ (van Compernolle, 2014, p. 41). This performance-based task assessment is better implemented through the use of rubrics developed in collaboration between test experts and practitioners (González-Lloret & Nielson, 2015). Finally, it is important to point out that there may be situations when learners want to maintain their identity as foreigners, not assimilating to the target culture, and decide not to follow the target pragmatic norms or pragmalinguistic conventions (e.g., Isihara & Tarone, 2009). Although target pragmatic conventions are certainly an advantage, the needs analysis should include enough flexibility to account for learner agency and subjectivity (see also Chapter 11 in this volume).

Conclusion and Future Directions As illustrated throughout this chapter, the collaboration between TBLT and L2 pragmatics scholars can open exciting future venues for research and practice that could benefit both fields (see Taguchi & Kim, 2018, for a review). By incorporating pragmatics, the field of TBLT will gain an understanding of how sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic features are essential if we expect learners to be not just linguistically competent but also interactively appropriate in the L2. In addition, by incorporating pragmatics into TBLT, research can help expand existing theoretical frameworks in TBLT (i.e., task complexity). The field of L2 pragmatics, on the other hand, will benefit methodologically and pedagogically by adapting sound frameworks established in TBLT. Existing research reviewed in this chapter suggests that tasks are fruitful vehicles for promoting pragmatics learning, but we need more research that explores what types of tasks are most beneficial and how we can sequence them to facilitate pragmatics learning. We know that the task modality (i.e., spoken and written) is important and that L2 proficiency plays a role in L2 pragmatics learning, but future research needs to focus on whether certain L2 pragmatic features are task specific and what pragmatic features can be learned effectively through task in what modality. Future research should merge principles and frameworks of pragmatics that best fit principles of TBLT. For example, in the field of L2 pragmatics, the context of an interaction (e.g., participants, setting, shared knowledge, and history) is essential for determining the sociopragmatic norms as well as pragmalinguistic choices in a specific interaction. The close connection between context and language use fits seamlessly with the TBLT principle of using tasks that are as authentic as possible. When designing a task, we need to understand who the interlocutors are and what their relationship is, and in what setting the task takes place. These are also considerations in L2 pragmatics. Based on the existing research reviewed here, it is clear that traditional tools for the study of L2 pragmatics such as discourse completion tests are not useful in capturing the interactivity involved in real-world tasks (see also Chapter 13 in this volume). On the other hand, tools used in traditional TBLT research (e.g., pre- and post-tests measuring gains on fluency and accuracy) may not account for the complexity of measuring pragmatic competence, which involves the combination of pragmalinguistic knowledge, sociopragmatic knowledge, and interaction abilities. As Taguchi and Roever (2017) acknowledge, ‘understanding how pragmatics testing relates to real-world performance and how this relationship can be strengthened should be at the heart of future research on testing L2 pragmatics’ (p. 240). Although a full TBLT curriculum may not be feasible in all contexts, L2 learners can certainly benefit from materials developed from a solid needs analysis—identifying tasks that learners need to perform in a real-world setting and pragmatic components involved in those tasks. Although the literature surveyed in this chapter has proposed a variety of tasks for pragmatics teaching, we need more concrete examples of pedagogic tasks that can be sequenced to form an 348

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instructional unit (and a syllabus). This chapter illustrated how pragmatics can be incorporated into a task-based unit by showing sample pedagogic tasks. As the area of L2 pragmatics in TBLT keeps growing, it would be useful to have an online space that serves as repository of pedagogic tasks targeting L2 pragmatics. Such a repository can be made easily available to practitioners so they can select tasks that serve their students’ needs. Hopefully, readers of this chapter feel inspired to start such endeavor.

Further Reading Taguchi, N., & Kim, Y. (Eds.). (2018). Task-based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. This edited volume is the first attempt to connect the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics and TaskBased Language Teaching in a systematized manner. Chapters in this volume include empirical studies in a variety of topics such as Korean honorifics through collaborative tasks, the interaction of pragmatic tasks and motivation, task modality and pragmatic development, etc., in a variety of context (i.e. study abroad, classroom, technology-mediated), as well as conceptual papers that establish links between pragmatics and TBLT and offer theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications of teaching and assessing pragmatics within a TBLT framework. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. This is the most recent overview of the field of L2 pragmatics. The authors make clear connections with the fields of SLA, interactional studies, cross-cultural pragmatics, ethnomethodology, technology-enhanced learning, assessment, lingua franca studies, and more. The book includes current topics and the references are a mix between seminal work and forefront research. It covers all the topics that are traditionally viewed under interlanguage pragmatics and combine traditional studies with new and innovative issues in interlanguage pragmatics, such as the pragmatics of lingua franca, the pragmatics of heritage speakers, assessment of pragmatics, etc. all within a view of pragmatics as interactional, social, and contextually constructed. The book reflects a shift on the focus of interlanguage pragmatics from the study of cognitive factors associated with comprehension and production of pragmatic features, to a more dynamic view of pragmatics in which the context, the interaction, and the learner as an agent are of key relevance.

References Adams, R. (2006). L2 Tasks and Orientation to Form. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 152, 7–34. https​://do​i.org​/10.2​143/I​TL.15​2.0.2​01786​1 Alcón-Soler, E. & Martínez-Flor, A. (Eds.). (2008). Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bachman, L., & Palmer, A. (1996). Language testing in practice: Designing and developing useful language tests. New York: Oxford University Press. Bardovi-Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. E. (2015). The effect of instruction on pragmatic routines in academic discussion. Language Teaching Research, 19, 324–350. Barraja-Rohan, A.-M. (2011). Using conversation analysis in the second language classroom to teach interactional competence. Language Teaching Research, 15, 479–507. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168811412878 Barron, A. (2016). Developing pragmatic competence using EFL textbooks: Focus on requests. Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), 7, 2172–2179. Barron, A., & Black, E. (2015). Constructing small talk in learner-native speaker voice-based telecollaboration: A focus on topic management and backchanneling. System, 48, 112–128. https​://do​ i.org​/10.1​016/j​.syst​em.20​14.09​.009 Belz, J., & Kinginger, C. (2002). The cross-linguistic development of address form use in telecollaborative language learning: Two case studies. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 59, 189–214. Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical aspects of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, 1–47. Canto, S., de Graff, R., & Jauregui, K. (2014). Collaborative tasks for negotiation of intercultural meaning in virtual worlds and video-web communication. In M. González-Lloret & L. Ortega (Eds.), Technologymediated TBLT: researching technology and tasks (pp. 183–212). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 349

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Cunningham, J. (2016). Request modification in synchronous computer-mediated communication: The role of focused instruction. Modern Language Journal, 100, 484–507. Cunningham, J., & Vyatkina, N. (2012). Telecollaboration for professional purposes: Towards developing a formal register in the foreign language classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 68, 422–450. Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York: MacMillan/Collier. Dooly, M., & Tudini, V. (2016). “Now we are teachers”: The role of small talk in student language teachers’ telecollaborative task development. Journal of Pragmatics, 102, 38–53. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​016/j​.prag​ ma.20​16.06​.008 Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. New York: Oxford University Press. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Teaching pragmatics in the classroom: Instruction of mitigation in Spanish as a foreign language. Hispania, 91, 479–494. Foster, P., & Tavakoli, P. (2009). Native speakers and task performance: Comparing effects on complexity, fluency, and lexical diversity. Language Learning, 59, 866–896. Fukuya, Y., & Martínez-Flor, A. (2008). The interactive effects of pragmatic-eliciting tasks and pragmatic instruction. Foreign Language Annals, 41, 478–500. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​111/j​.1944​-9720​.2008​.tb03​ 308.x​ Gablasova, D., Brezina, V., Mcenery, T., & Boyd, E. (2017). Epistemic stance in spoken L2 English: The effect of task and speaker style. Applied Linguistics, 38, 613–637. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amv055 Gilabert, R., & Barón, J. (2013). The impact of increasing task complexity on L2 pragmatic moves. In K. McDonough & A. Mackey (Eds.), Second language interaction in diverse educational contexts (pp. 45–70). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gilabert, R., & Barón, J. (2018). Independently measuring cognitive complexity for task sequencing and interlanguage pragmatics development. In N. Taguchi & Y. Kim (Eds.), Task-Based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics (pp. 159–190). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. González-Lloret, M. (2008). Computer-mediated Learning of L2 Pragmatics. In E. A. Soler & A. MartinezFlor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 114–132). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. González-Lloret, M. (2016a). A practical guide to integrating technology into task-based language teaching. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. González-Lloret, M. (2016b). The construction of emotion in multilingual computer-mediated interaction. In M. T. Prior & G. Kasper (Eds.), Emotion in multilingual interaction (pp. 291–313). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. González-Lloret, M. (In press). Pragmatic development in L2: An overview. In K. P. Schneider & E. Ifantidou (Eds.), Handbook of developmental and clinical Pragmatics. Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. González-Lloret, M., & Nielson, K. B. (2015). Evaluating TBLT: The case of a task-based Spanish program. Language Teaching Research, 19, 525–549. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168814541745 González-Lloret, M., & Ortega, L. (2018). Pragmatics, tasks, and technology: A synergy. In N. Taguchi & Y. Kim (Eds.), Task-Based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics (pp. 191–216). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Holden, C., & Sykes, J. M. (2012). Mentira: Prototyping language-based locative gameplay. In S. Dikkers, J. Martin, & B. Coulter (Eds.), Mobile media learning: Amazing uses of mobile devices for teaching and learning (pp. 111–131). Pittsburg, PA: ETC Press. Inawati, I. (2016). The pragmatics of greetings reflected in the textbooks for teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesia. Ahmad Dahlan Journal of English Studies (ADJES), 3(2), 1–10. Ishihara, N. & Tarone, E. (2009). Subjectivity and pragmatic choice in L2 Japanese: Emulating and resisting pragmatic norms. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), Pragmatic competence in Japanese as a second language (pp. 101–128). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kasper, G. (1997). Can pragmatic competence be taught? (NetWork #6) [HTML document]. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center. Retrieved on November 14, 2018, from http:​//www​.nflr​c.haw​aii.e​du/Ne​tWork​s/NW0​6/ Kasper, G. (2006). Speech acts in interaction: Towards discursive pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, J. C. Felix-Brasdefer & A. S. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning (Vol. 11, pp. 281–314). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kim, S. H., & Lee, H. (2017). Politeness in power-asymmetrical e-mail requests of Korean and American corporate employees. Intercultural Pragmatics, 14, 207–238 https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2017-0010 Kim, Y., & Taguchi, N. (2015). Promoting task-based pragmatics instruction in EFL classroom context: The role of task complexity. Modern Language Journal, 99, 656–677.

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Kormos, J., & Trebits, A. (2012). The role of task complexity, modality and aptitude in narrative task performance. Language Learning, 62, 439–472. Lakoff, R. T. (1973). The logic of politeness; or minding your p’s and q’s. In C. Corum, C. T. Smith-Stark, & A. Weiser (Eds.), 9th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (pp. 292–305). Chicago Linguistic Society. Li, Q. (2012). Effects of instruction on adolescent beginners’ acquisition of request modification. TESOL Quarterly, 46, 30–55. Limberg, H. (2016). Teaching how to apologize: EFL textbooks and pragmatic input. Language Teaching Research, 20, 700–718. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168815590695 Long, M. H. (1985). A role for instruction in second language acquisition: Task-based language teaching. In K. Hyltenstam & M. Pienemann (Eds.), Modeling and assessing second language acquisition (pp. 77–99). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Long, M. (2015). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Long, M. H. (2016). In defense of tasks and TBLT: Nonissues and real issues. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 36, 5–33. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​017/S​02671​90515​00005​7 Louw, K., Derwing, T. M., & Abbott, M. (2010). Teaching pragmatics to L2 learners for the workplace: The job interview. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66, 739–758. Neary-Sundquist, C. (2013). Task type effects on pragmatic marker use by learners at varying proficiency levels. L2 Journal, 5, 1–21. Nguyen, T. T. M. (2013). Instructional effects on the acquisition of modifiers in constructive criticisms by EFL learners. Language Awareness, 22, 76–94. Norris, J. M. (2009). Task-based teaching and testing. In M. H. Long & C. J. Doughty (Eds.), The handbook of language teaching (pp. 578–594). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Reagan, D., & Payant, C. (2018). Task modality effects on Spanish learners’ interlanguage pragmatic development. In N. Taguchi & Y. Kim (Eds.), Task-Based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics (pp. 113–136). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ren, W., & Han, Z. (2016). The representation of pragmatic knowledge in recent ELT textbooks. ELT Journal, 70, 424–434. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccw010 Robinson, P. (2001). Task complexity, cognition and second language syllabus design: A triadic framework for examining task influences on SLA. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 287–318). New York: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, P. (2005). Cognitive complexity and task sequencing: studies in a componential framework for second language task design. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 43, 1–32. Robinson, P. (2011). Second language task complexity, the Cognition Hypothesis, language learning, and performance. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Researching task complexity: Task demands, task-based language learning and performance (pp. 3–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. Siegal, M. (1996). The role of learner subjectivity in second language linguistic competency: Western women learning Japanese. Applied Linguistics, 17, 356–382. Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. New York: Oxford University Press. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Sydorenko, T., Daurio, P., & Thorne, S. (2018). Refining pragmatically-appropriate oral communication via computer-simulated conversations. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31, 157–180. https​://do​i.org​ /10.1​080/0​95882​21.20​17.13​94326​ Sykes, J. M. (2009). Learner requests in Spanish: Examining the potential of multiuser virtual environments for L2 pragmatic acquisition. In L. Lomicka & G. Lord (Eds.), The second generation: Online collaboration and social networking in CALL (pp. 199–234). San Marcos, TX: Texas State University. Sykes, J. (2013). Multiuser virtual environments. In N. Taguchi & J. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 71–100). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sykes, J. M. (2014). TBLT and synthetic immersive environments: What can in-game task restarts tell us about design and implementation? In M. González-Lloret & L. Ortega (Eds.), Technology-mediated TBLT: researching technology and tasks (pp. 149–182). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taguchi, N. (2010). Longitudinal studies in interlanguage pragmatics. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics vol.7: Pragmatics across languages and cultures (pp. 333–361). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Taguchi, N. (2011). Teaching pragmatics: Trends and issues. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 289–310. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​017/S​02671​90511​00001​8

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Taguchi, N. (2013). Teaching pragmatics. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Retrieved on February 6, 2018, from http:​//doi​.wile​y.com​/10.1​ 002/9​78140​51984​31.wb​eal11​72 Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Taguchi, N., & Kim, Y. (2016). Collaborative dialogue in learning pragmatics: pragmatic-related episodes as an opportunity for learning request-making. Applied Linguistics, 37, 416–437. https://doi.org/10.1093/ applin/amu039 Taguchi, N., & Kim, Y. (2018). Task-based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics: An overview. In N. Taguchi & Y. Kim (Eds.), Task-Based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics (pp. 1–26). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taguchi, N., Kaufer, D., Gómez-Laich, M. P., & Zhao, H. (2016). A corpus linguistics analysis of on line peer commentary. In K. Bardovi-Harlic & J. C. Félix-Brasdefer (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning (Vol. 14, pp. 357–370). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91–112. van Compernolle, R. A. (2010). Towards a sociolinguistically responsive pedagogy: Teaching secondperson address forms in French. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66, 445–463. van Compernolle, R. A. (2014). Sociocultural theory and L2 instructional pragmatics. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. van den Branden, K. (2006). Introduction: Task-based language education in a nutshell. In K. Van den Branden (Ed.), Task-based language education: From theory to practice (pp. 1–16). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Yates, L., & Major, G. (2015). “Quick-chatting”, “smart dogs”, and how to “say without saying”: Small talk and pragmatic learning in the community. System, 48, 141–152. https​://do​i.org​/10.1​016/j​.syst​em.20​ 14.09​.011

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Contextual and Individual Considerations

23 L2 Pragmatic Development in Study Abroad Settings Carmen Pérez Vidal and Rachel L. Shively

Introduction Second language (L2) learners, language instructors, and educational policy makers alike have long viewed a sojourn abroad in an L2-speaking country as an important means to gain L2 proficiency. The unique affordance of study abroad (SA), compared to the foreign language classroom, is that students have the opportunity to use their L2 outside the classroom in a wide range of activities such as conversing with their host family over dinner, obtaining products or information in service encounters, and chatting with a stranger on the bus. As expected, many SA students do develop their L2 skills as a result of a sojourn in an L2-speaking country. However, decades of research on L2 learning in SA indicate that there are considerable individual differences in L2 gains following a period spent abroad: Some students make considerable progress, while others see only modest or even no gains in their L2. This variation can be traced to a variety of factors such as quantity and quality of contact with the L2, length of stay, living situation, density of L2-speaking social networks, and individual characteristics (e.g., proficiency, motivation, gender, age, identity, dispositions). Furthermore, the L2 learning outcomes of a stay abroad are not consistent across all areas of skill or competence: The greatest benefits of SA tend to be observed in oral fluency, acquisition of vocabulary and formulaic expressions, sociolinguistic competence, and—of particular interest here—pragmatic competence (for reviews, see Kinginger, 2009; Pérez Vidal, 2014; Ren, 2015). A growing body of research has examined development of L2 pragmatic competence in SA settings. Pragmatic competence has been defined as ‘the ability to communicate your intended message with all its nuances in any socio-cultural context and to interpret the message of your interlocutor as it was intended’ (Fraser, 2010, p. 15) (see also Chapter 1 in this volume). While any linguistic feature as it is used in its physical and social context can be studied from a pragmatics perspective (Mey, 1993), research in pragmatics typically encompasses speech acts, politeness expressions, conversational implicature, presupposition, indexical expressions, and conversational structure (Levinson, 1983). However, not all these areas are represented equally in SA research in pragmatics. The vast majority of existing studies have examined isolated speech acts, particularly requests, but also apologies, compliments, greetings, leave-taking, refusals, and thanking. Other aspects of pragmatic competence that have received attention include politeness expressions, conversational implicature, address terms, humor, style, routines, and the use of interactional resources such as listener responses, assessments, and epistemic expressions. 355

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In examining pragmatic development in SA, quantitative studies have investigated factors such as intensity of contact, length of stay, and proficiency as independent variables affecting gains in pragmatics abroad, while qualitative studies have described the characteristics of social interaction, negotiation of identities, and socialization regarding pragmatic norms. This existing literature indicates that studying abroad can be an effective way for L2 learners to improve their pragmatic competence. Participation in everyday activities that are mediated by the L2 offers learners the chance to observe and practice contextually appropriate use of language, experience the real-life consequences of language behavior, and be exposed to pragmatic variation in different settings. Participation in social interaction can be a catalyst for developing both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic appropriateness, the former of which refers to the ability to link specific linguistic expressions (e.g., verb tenses, lexical items) with their functions and meanings, and the latter to knowing in what situations and with whom specific forms, strategies, and speech acts are expected (Thomas, 1983). What research suggests, however, is that when SA students are left to their own devices, the pace of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development can be slow. Naturalistic acquisition of pragmatics in SA may proceed slowly for a variety of reasons. Students may not be exposed to some pragmatic features, either because those features are infrequent in the input or because students do not actually have extensive contact with the L2 while abroad; students may not notice pragmatic differences through L2 exposure alone; and expert speakers of the L2 may not provide corrective feedback to L2 learners on pragmatic issues. Some pragmatic features are also more complex than others, such that the rate of development may be slower for certain pragmatic targets. In addition, SA students do not always make more progress than their counterparts who stay home and study the L2. Consequently, a small but growing number of studies have investigated the benefits of incorporating pragmatics into the instruction that students receive prior to or during their stay abroad, as a means to support learners and maximize learning in SA. This chapter offers an overview of studies focusing on L2 pragmatic development in SA. We begin with a discussion of theoretical underpinnings and key concepts related to SA and L2 pragmatics. We then survey the existing literature on both uninstructed and instructed pragmatic development in the SA setting and provide critical insights. Finally, we suggest avenues for future research and further readings on the topic.

Background and Theoretical Underpinnings Trends in Study Abroad (SA) Research Across the globe, approximately 4.5 million university students opt to study outside their home country (Institute of International Education, 2015). The term ‘study abroad’ implies pursuing formal coursework in another country, while broader terms like ‘residence abroad’ encompass other options such as work placements and internships. SA represents a specific type of international migration, being voluntary and temporary, and typically has a fixed and limited duration, such as one academic year or semester, or, in some cases, short periods of two to eight weeks. Although the existing research on L2 learning in SA has mostly focused on a fairly small number of host countries (e.g., France, Japan, Russia, Spain, U.K, U.S.A) and target languages (e.g., English, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish), and is overrepresented by U.S-based students, studying an L2 abroad is a worldwide phenomenon that is represented by a variety of sending and receiving countries. Some tendencies at the national and supranational level can be observed, such as the fact that European students tend to go abroad with higher levels of L2 proficiency than their U.S. counterparts (DeKeyser, 2014), since the European Regional Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS+) program, in force since 1987, has required higher education institutions to guarantee a minimal language proficiency for SA students. 356

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Each student’s experience abroad varies considerably for a multitude of reasons, such as program design, housing, individual differences, local engagement, and social networks. In terms of program type, studying abroad can involve direct enrollment in a foreign university, in which international students take classes with local students, or it can consist of sheltered classes designed exclusively for foreign students. The curriculum may differ at each SA site as well. For example, some programs offer primarily classroom-based instruction, whereas others emphasize a service-learning component (e.g., Martinsen, Baker Smemoe, Dewey, & Johnson, 2010). In some programs, students complete work placements or internships in addition to or instead of coursework. In terms of living situation, SA students may live with a local host family or reside in student dormitories or apartments. These programmatic variables can affect not only with whom students come into contact while abroad, but also the circumstances of L2 contact and the linguistic features to which students are exposed (e.g., informal vs. formal registers, classroom discourse vs. everyday conversation). These variables can also affect the breadth and composition of social networks that students develop, and the nature of the relationships that students may form with local people. Students’ SA experiences are also shaped by their own goals, motivation, attitudes, intercultural competence, initial L2 proficiency, age, among other individual characteristics, by the extent to which they engage in the L2 with local people, and by local people’s reception of them (e.g., Kinginger, 2009). Further, new technologies that keep students connected with friends and family back home and the greater ease with which students can develop social networks with other international students compared with local people can also limit their exposure to the L2 (e.g., Coleman, 2013; Mitchell, McManus, & Tracy-Ventura, 2015). All these factors, in turn, have the potential to influence L2 pragmatics learning outcomes following SA.

Approaches to Research on L2 Pragmatics in SA SA research reflects the diversity of views in the field of applied linguistics more broadly and, hence, has been approached from different perspectives regarding how SA is conceptualized, which theories inform L2 learning, and what framework is applied to understanding pragmatics. In the first case, Taguchi (2016, p. 7) argued that SA research could be classified into three groups based on their ‘treatment of context’: (1) SA as a categorical variable, (2) SA as exposure to input, and (3) SA as a site for situated pragmatic practice. The first and second categories tend to involve quantitative or mixed-methods studies, while the third category is typically represented by qualitative studies. In those studies that conceive of SA as a categorical variable, researchers group L2 learners into those who have studied the L2 abroad and those who have only studied the L2 in their home country. The binary category of SA versus at home (AH) is then treated as an independent variable in the measurement of learners’ pragmatic abilities at a single moment in time or their pragmatic development over time (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer & Hasler-Barker, 2015; Matsumura, 2001; Ren, 2015; Taguchi, 2008a). In other studies, length of residence (LOR) is used as a variable in a similar way, but in this case, learners are grouped according to different periods of time spent in an L2-speaking country (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011; Bouton, 1999; Félix-Brasdefer, 2004; Xu, Case, & Wang, 2009). Studies in this group can indicate broadly whether a stay abroad or a particular amount of time spent abroad is beneficial for pragmatics learning, but by design, they do not reveal what aspects of the SA experience may have contributed to that learning. The second category of studies in Taguchi’s (2016) framework includes those that view the context as exposure to L2 input. Research in this area focuses on the relationship between the quantity/intensity of L2 interaction during SA and pragmatic development (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011; Matsumura, 2003; Taguchi, 2008b), with the fundamental question being: Does more L2 contact lead to greater gains in pragmatics? Language contact in SA is usually measured indirectly through self-report questionnaires, in which participants report the number of hours 357

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per week that they were exposed to the L2 (e.g., talking to friends, watching TV). Although this method produces easily quantifiable data, Fernández and Tapia (2016) highlight the limitations of self-report data, compared with observation data, for adequately capturing L2 engagement abroad. In a similar approach, some studies have examined whether social networks can be linked to language gains (e.g., Dewey, Bown, & Eggett, 2012; Mitchell et al., 2015), although this method has not yet been applied to L2 pragmatics. The goal of Taguchi’s (2016) third group of studies is to closely examine the features of social interactions in which students engage during SA, providing a window into the communicative resources to which learners are exposed in different settings and the opportunities for learning pragmatics that arise through participation in L2-mediated everyday activities. Studies in this group have shown that, in some cases, SA students have opportunities to adopt new linguistic and cultural practices through interaction with expert speakers (e.g., Cook, 2008; DuFon, 1999; Shively, 2011); that students can support each other in their learning of pragmatics (e.g., Hassall, 2015a); and that students’ relationships with expert speakers can influence learning (e.g., Shively, 2013). Research has also revealed cases in which the pragmatic input that students receive during SA is not ideal because it diverges from L2 norms, as in the case of foreigner talk (e.g., Iino, 2006) or teacher talk in everyday conversation (Wilkinson, 2002). In addition to differences in how researchers conceptualize context in SA, a variety of theories in SLA and pragmatics have been applied to SA research. Cognitive-psychological theories view the learning of L2 pragmatics as involving intra-individual cognitive processes such as control of processing, noticing, input, proficiency, and memory (see Chapter 8 in this volume). Schmidt’s (1993) noticing hypothesis, for example, posits that in order for input in the environment to become intake and be incorporated into learners’ interlanguage, learners must notice or pay attention to pragmatic features in the input. A common method employed to understand learners’ cognitive processes is verbal report, in which learners complete a pragmatics-related task and either concurrently or retrospectively describe what features they attend to, how they plan their utterances, and what aspects present difficulties, among other issues (e.g., Ren, 2015; Chapter 13 in this volume). Socially oriented learning theories, which focus on inter-individual learning processes, have also been applied to make sense of pragmatic development during SA. Vygotskian sociocultural theory focuses on a cultural-historical approach to the development of higher mental functions, highlighting the role of mediation as students engage in activities with others (e.g., Kinginger, 2008; Chapter 10 in this volume). Interactional competence (Chapter 7 in this volume) is a framework employed by some authors (e.g., Dings, 2014; Ishida, 2010) to understand the development of interactional resources such as turn taking, topic management, and alignment activity as they engage in talk that is co-constructed with others. Also emphasizing the importance of social interaction in learning, language socialization theory posits that as novices enter into new communicative situations, they rely on more knowledgeable persons to achieve competence in the linguistic and cultural practices of the community (e.g., Cook, 2008; Kinginger, 2015; Ochs & Schieffelin, 2014; Shively, 2011; see Chapter 9 in this volume). In this framework, novices develop their abilities to use the L2 effectively and appropriately as a result of observation and participation in everyday activities with members of the L2-speaking community and, in some cases, by means of explicit guidance by experts. Most socialization occurs implicitly through ‘routine participation in semiotically mediated practices’ (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2014, p. 12), but novices may also be socialized explicitly, when experts engage in practices such as positively evaluating novices’ appropriate use of language, providing a model of expected behavior, or pointing out when a linguistic expression or performance of a speech act is considered pragmatically inappropriate in the target culture. Although knowledge is assumed to be asymmetrical in the expert–novice relationship, this theory emphasizes that language socialization is not unidirectional and that the novice is not a passive recipient; that is, 358

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novices may also influence the behavior of experts and have agency to adopt, reject, or modify the norms of the L2-speaking community. Apart from L2 learning theories, research on L2 pragmatic development in SA is also informed by theoretical orientations in pragmatics. Explicitly or implicitly, much work has been based on speech act theory (Searle, 1969), an outcome of which is a preponderance of studies that examine a single speech act in isolation. Recent calls for a shift to analyzing speech acts in interaction (e.g., Kasper, 2006) represent a movement away from speech-act theory by some authors and an increase in studies that espouse discourse and conversation analytic methods (see Chapter 2 in this volume). Going hand in hand with speech act theory, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory is the most widely used framework for analyzing (im)polite speech act performance by L2 learners in SA. However, again, as some researchers have shifted away from looking at speech acts in isolation and started to focus on the larger discourse context of communicative acts, other more discourse-oriented theories of (im)politeness (e.g., Spencer-Oatey, 2005) have begun to appear in research on pragmatics in SA (e.g., Shively, 2008). Finally, a smattering of other theories in pragmatics have also been employed to frame how specific objects of inquiry in pragmatics can be understood and analyzed, for example, humor theory (e.g., Shively, 2013), Gricean pragmatics (Bouton, 1999), and Relevance Theory (e.g., Taguchi, 2008a). In sum, this brief overview of theoretical frameworks, approaches to context, and characteristics of SA lays the conceptual groundwork for the discussion about research that has been done concerning pragmatic development in SA—the focus of the following section.

Survey of Recent Empirical Findings and Critical Insights Most research on L2 pragmatic development in SA has indicated that even a fairly short period in an L2-speaking country can result in an increase in L2 pragmatic competence; although those pragmatic shifts are sometimes small, development may not follow a linear trajectory, and learners often do not achieve native-like pragmatic ability. This section discusses the existing literature, looking first at developments in receptive and productive skills in uninstructed SA settings, then examining the role of pragmatics instruction in SA, and finally considering factors that influence the outcomes of SA.

Uninstructed Pragmatic Development in SA Overall, findings regarding uninstructed pragmatics indicate that development can occur from the early period of SA and continue throughout the program but, at the same time, naturalistic learning proceeds slowly and SA students often do not acquire native-speaker (NS) norms by the end of the SA period. In the existing literature, both receptive and productive pragmatic abilities have been examined, with studies of the former being considerably fewer in number than the latter. A similar imbalance exists concerning methods, as elicited data (e.g., questionnaires, role plays) are employed more frequently than authentic data. Speech acts predominate as the target pragmatic feature, but research has also focused on other aspects such as conversational implicature and speech style.

SA research on Receptive Pragmatic Skills Studies that examined pragmatic perception and comprehension in SA suggest that learners can enhance their receptive skills in various areas of pragmatics, including perception of speech act appropriateness and comprehension of indirect meaning. Gains in receptive skills have been observed for leave-taking formulas and address forms in French (Kinginger, 2008), conversational implicatures in English (Bouton, 1999), strategies in giving advice in English (Matsumura, 2001, 359

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2003), appropriateness of requests in English (Vilar Beltrán, 2014), and recognition of pragmatic routines (Alcón Soler & Sánchez Hernández, 2017; Osuka, 2014). Schauer (2006, 2009) examined perception of appropriateness in apologies, refusals, requests, and suggestions in English, finding that, after nine months abroad, German learners of English approached native-like awareness by detecting more infelicities in these speech acts and judging them more severely than pre-SA. Increased awareness regarding appropriate speech-act behavior has also been shown to occur with refusals in English (Ren, 2015) and with requests in Spanish (Czerwionka & Cuza, 2017a; Rodríguez, 2001). Speed in comprehending indirect meaning in refusals and opinions in L2 English has also evidenced increases after SA (Taguchi, 2008a, 2008b). Some aspects of pragmatic awareness may develop more slowly, as several studies attest. In Taguchi’s studies, comprehension accuracy increased for indirect refusals, but not for indirect opinions, while in Bouton’s research, accurate interpretation of indirect criticism and irony developed at a slower rate than other types of implicatures.

SA research on Productive Pragmatic Skills Although requests are the most frequently targeted speech act in this group of studies, other speech acts such as apologies, compliments, greetings, and refusals, and other areas of pragmatics including speech style, politeness expressions, interactional resources, and humor have also been investigated. Looking first at research on speech acts, researchers have discovered changes over time in (in)direct strategies, internal and external mitigation, formulas, semantic strategies, and deictic orientation in L2 learners’ speech acts. In the case of requests, various authors (e.g., Barron, 2003; Bataller, 2010; Han, 2005; Schauer, 2007; Vilar Beltrán, 2014; Woodfield, 2012) observed gains, to a greater or less extent, in learners’ appropriate use of request mitigation following SA, as well as gains in target-like indirect expressions (Cole & Anderson, 2001). Although Barron (2003) reported that some pragmatic features (e.g., lexical and phrasal downgrading in refusals) were acquired late in the year abroad, studies by Czerwionka and Cuza (2017a, 2017b) indicate that even very short periods abroad can result in target-like developments with certain aspects of pragmatics, such as an appropriate shift from speaker- to hearer-oriented verbs in L2 Spanish requests. Taguchi’s (2011) study on L2 English requests, nonetheless, highlights the possibility that some gains made in SA may not be maintained after returning home. Development of refusals in SA has also been examined by various authors, the earliest of which were Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1993). Their research was based on naturalistic data in advising sessions in a U.S. university and showed that, over a short period of a semester, L2 English speakers increased their ability to appropriately produce a refusal, but made less progress with pragmalinguistic forms in those refusals. Barron (2003, 2007) also reported gains in German refusals after a year abroad (e.g., an increase in target-like upgrading in initial refusals), but observed that not all changes moved toward NS norms (e.g., an increase in a non-target-like routine formula). In another study, Félix-Brasdefer (2004) found that negotiation and mitigation in Spanish refusals was associated with greater LOR and that L2 speakers achieved targetlike refusals after 30 months abroad. In contrast, after a SA program of eight weeks, students remained largely non-target-like with regard to their use of direct and indirect refusals in Spanish, although some minor shifts were evidenced (Félix-Brasdefer, 2013). Recent work by Ren (2013, 2015) on refusals in L2 English points to greater use of refusal strategies and an expansion of learners’ productive range of strategies after SA. Other speech acts such as apologies (Kondo, 1997; Warga & Schölmberger, 2007), compliments and compliment responses (Félix-Brasdefer & Hasler-Barker, 2015; Fukasawa, 2012; Hoffman-Hicks, 1999; Shimizu, 2009), gratitude (Cheng, 2005; De Pablos Ortega, 2008), greetings (DuFon, 1999; Hoffman-Hicks, 1999), and offers (Barron, 2003) have also been examined. Warga and Schölmberger (2007), for example, found that German-speaking learners of French 360

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increased their pragmatic competence in apologies in certain ways (e.g., decreasing use of justifications), but maintained pragmatically inappropriate strategies like frequent use of apology expressions. In a study on greeting, leave-taking, and complimenting in French, Hoffman-Hicks (1999) reported that learners of French from the U.S. made few gains and remained largely nonnative-like following SA. Turning from speech acts to other areas of pragmatic production, Iwasaki (2008) documented overuse of the informal speech style by L2 learners of Japanese post-SA, but also found that the students had gained competence in making choices about style. In Cordella’s (1996) analysis of disagreement in L2 Spanish, participants who had studied abroad were more similar to NSs in their use of a confrontational style characterized by challenge questions, interruptions, and face-threatening acts. Regan (1995) and Regan, Howard, and Lemée (2009) compared naturalistic French acquisition in the immersion and SA settings, reporting that categorical aspects of language (e.g., morphological forms, verb tenses, sophisticated vocabulary) can be learned in the classroom, but that SA, where naturalistic contact with the community is possible, is needed to acquire variable aspects of language, such as informal style. L2 learners’ interactional competence (IC) may be enhanced by SA. Dings (2014) and Shively (2015, 2016) both analyzed conversations in Spanish and found SA students to shift over time in their use of speaker and listener assessments, increasing frequency of use and developing lexical and syntactic complexity. SA students in several studies (Ishida, 2010; Masuda, 2011; Shively, 2015) acquired new linguistic resources to show acknowledgement and agreement, while those in Dings’ (2014) and Fujii’s (2001) studies developed their ability to project an interlocutor’s turn and respond appropriately. Finally, Taguchi (2014) showed statistically significant development of IC by L2 Japanese learners, as evidenced by their use of incomplete sentences, a common and appropriate resource in Japanese conversations. Address forms, conventional expressions, and humor are three other areas represented in the SA literature. Concerning address forms, the positive impact of SA is revealed in DuFon’s (1999) and Hassall’s (2015a, 2015b) research with L2 Indonesian learners in which some students, including lower-proficiency learners, developed in their ability to appropriately index social relationships by selecting specific address forms. Nonetheless, some students ultimately overgeneralized a single form, due to lack of knowledge. In addition, the use of conventional expressions in English has been shown to increase during SA in several studies (Alcón Soler & Sánchez Hernández, 2017; Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011), a finding that Bardovi-Harlig and Bastos linked to greater contact with the L2. Taguchi, Xiao, and Li (2016) also found that the amount of L2 contact was associated with learners’ increased abilities, in this case, to produce speech acts. However, those authors observed that access to L2 contact was mediated by participants’ intercultural competence. Finally, with regard to humor, Bell, Skalicky, and Salsbury (2014), Kinginger (2015), and Shively (2013) all described how SA students acquired new humor practices through participation in interactions with local people in SA.

Instructed Pragmatics in SA There is a paucity of research on pragmatics instruction in SA, both in terms of the outcomes of pedagogical interventions for research purposes and understanding what pragmatics instruction SA students might receive as part of the local curriculum. More broadly, relatively little attention has been paid to the nature of formal L2 instruction in SA (e.g., Isabelli-García, Bown, Plews, & Dewey, 2018), with researchers overwhelmingly focusing on naturalistic out-of-class learning in SA. However, more specifically, the lack of research on pragmatics instruction in SA may also reflect the fact that pragmatics is often not emphasized in the foreign language curriculum compared to other aspects of L2 development. Certainly, there are challenges to teaching pragmatics, 361

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including limited theoretical support for curriculum development, insufficient authentic input in teaching materials, and a dearth of reference books and resources for pragmatics (BardoviHarlig, 2017; Sykes, 2013). At the same time, instruction in pragmatics has the potential to be beneficial to SA learners. For example, as previously discussed, there are some aspects of pragmatics that can be difficult to learn or that are slow to be acquired through exposure alone. Hence, a handful of studies have considered what role pragmatics instruction can play in supporting SA students in their L2 pragmatic development. Two previous studies have examined the development of receptive skills in instructed SA students. Bouton (1999) designed a pedagogical intervention to target interpretation of the most difficult conversational implicatures in English. Six hours of instruction greatly accelerated learning of implicatures, putting instructed learners on par with uninstructed learners who had spent over a year in the host country. Henery (2015), in turn, reported that SA students developed their awareness of various aspects of style in French (e.g., address terms, colloquial expressions, phonological reductions) and gained understanding about how style indexes identity as a result of pragmatics instruction. In terms of productive skills, Cohen and Shively (2007) reported on a pedagogical intervention involving a pre-departure orientation and a workbook that students completed while abroad, both of which included activities designed to raise awareness about pragmatics in general and about requests and apologies specifically. Although participants increased their native-like production of requests and apologies in Spanish in small ways, as measured by a production questionnaire, no statistically significant effect was found for the intervention overall. Some of the same materials were also employed in Shively (2010, 2011) and SA students specifically mentioned the instruction as a means by which they learned appropriate forms for requesting in Spanish. Similarly, Halenko and Jones (2011) found a positive effect for their pragmatics instruction, a six-hour intervention concerning requests in L2 English. A control group of uninstructed SA students did not make similar improvements through naturalistic acquisition alone, leading the authors to conclude that simply being abroad was not enough to positively influence learners’ request development. However, delayed post-test results (six weeks after the instruction) indicated that the instructional effect was not retained. In contrast, gains in direction-giving and meal-ordering practices in L2 Spanish were maintained one year after SA in Morris’s (2017) study, which involved task-based instruction, computer-mediated practice, and communicative practice in the community. Following 32 hours of pragmatics instruction during a SA experience in China, Winke and Teng (2010) also observed improvements in various speech acts in L2 Chinese, particularly with regard to formulaic expressions in speech acts. Finally, in a rare study focusing on writing rather than oral skills, Alcón-Soler (2015) analyzed development in L2 English requests made in authentic emails by instructed and uninstructed SA students. Although both groups increased their ability to mitigate email requests following SA, the instructed group outperformed the uninstructed group. In sum, even though the immersion environment of SA provides opportunities for authentic interaction outside the classroom, the aforementioned studies suggest that SA students who receive instruction in pragmatics can often achieve greater gains than their uninstructed counterparts. The studies cited in this review also provide valuable information for how to incorporate pragmatics into the instruction that students receive prior to and during SA. Pragmatics instruction can be delivered effectively in a variety of ways, such as by providing students with self-access materials on the Web (e.g., Cohen & Shively, 2007), offering tutoring sessions (e.g., Henery, 2015; Winke & Teng, 2010), and integrating pragmatics into face-to-face courses (e.g., AlcónSoler, 2015). Further, Shively (2010) offers an integrated model for teaching pragmatics prior to, during, and following SA. In the pre-departure phase of this model, instructors are advised to raise students’ awareness about pragmatic issues (e.g., how a request is realized in the target language), familiarize them with some pragmatic norms in the host culture, and guide them 362

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in becoming self-directed data-gatherers in pragmatics. Once students are abroad, they can be encouraged to notice, reflect on, analyze, and then practice using pragmatic features in out-ofclass interactions, through guidance and feedback from an expert speaker. Finally, the post-SA component of Shively’s model involves assisting former SA students in continuing to develop and put into practice the pragmatics skills acquired abroad.

Comparisons Between SA and AH Groups on Pragmatic Competence In addition to examining the development of specific pragmatic features in instructed and uninstructed settings abroad, researchers have also investigated whether studying abroad yields greater gains than studying in one’s home country. Existing studies have yielded conflicting results, confirming that ‘living in a L2 community is no panacea for pragmatic development’ (Taguchi, 2008a, p. 427). Studies demonstrating that SA yields greater progress than AH include Felix-Brasdefer (2004), Felix-Brasdefer & Hasler-Barker (2015), and Mojica-Díaz (1992) concerning Spanish refusals, compliments, and address terms, respectively. Likewise, De Pablos Ortega (2008) concluded that knowledge of sociopragmatics obtained during SA is necessary to reach native-like ability in expressing gratitude in Spanish. Concerning pragmatic infelicities in speech acts, Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) and Schauer (2006) observed enhanced awareness by SA compared to AH students. Ren (2013, 2015) also discovered somewhat greater gains in both perception and production of appropriate refusals in English by SA students over their AH counterparts. In contrast, some studies have found no advantage for SA or have painted a more nuanced picture that considers not only context of learning but also the pragmatic feature targeted. Rodríguez (2001) discovered no difference in gains between SA and AH students, suggesting that both settings could foster awareness in Spanish requests. Welch (2009) compared SA students in Mexico with an AH immersion group with regard to perception and production of Spanish past tense as a mitigation device, showing that immersion students became somewhat more target-like than SA students. Finally, in Taguchi (2008b), SA students increased their speed in comprehending indirect refusals and opinions, but not their accuracy, whereas the situation was reversed for AH learners. Taguchi argued that opportunities for communicative practice abroad may have helped SA learners automatize processing which, in turn, increased their comprehension speed.

Factors Influencing Learning Outcomes in SA Pragmatics Pragmatics is at the crossroads between the cognitive and the social, and both display enormous variability in results in SA environments. Factors that may account for such variability have been grouped into three areas: (1) the macro-level input and interaction features of SA, (2) micro-level learner differences, and (3) program design features (Pérez-Vidal, 2014). A consideration of such factors helps debunk myths about progress abroad and SA effects. To begin, input and interaction in the L2 while abroad are unique in quantity and quality; that is, exposure may occur with greater intensity and may have a variety of characteristics. BardoviHarlig and Bastos (2011) revealed a significant correlation between intensity of interaction—as measured through self-reported interactive and non-interactive out-of-class L2 contact—and recognition of conventional expressions. Both Matsumura (2003) and Taguchi et al. (2016) also indicated that social contact influenced gains in advice-giving and use of routines in speech acts. Fukasawa’s (2012) study suggests that the amount of L2 contact that the learner sought out varied during SA and that problems experienced with pragmatics represented rich points for developing pragmatic competence (e.g., Kinginger, 2008). Regarding the nature or quality of interaction, observation and participation has been regarded as a necessary condition for pragmatic development (e.g., Barron, 2003; DuFon, 1999; 363

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Regan et al., 2009). Yet, the input that SA learners receive is not always ideal for acquisition of pragmatics. First, learners may not have opportunities to observe the types of pragmatic features they need to acquire, for example, because their interactions are asymmetric or because the target feature occurs with low frequency (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1993, 1996; Hassall, 2013). There are also cases in which native speakers (NSs) do not provide input reflecting NS pragmatic norms with learners, using instead foreigner talk or teacher talk (e.g., Iino, 2006; Marriott, 1995; Wilkinson, 2002). A further difficulty reported in the literature is that NSs do not tend to provide corrective feedback about pragmatics (e.g., Hassall, 2013; Shively, 2011). The ways students are positioned in the local culture can also enhance or detract from the input received (e.g., Hassall, 2015b; Kinginger, 2009). On the other hand, discussing pragmatics issues with other L2 learners and observation of peers talking to NSs can positively affect pragmatic development (Hassall, 2015a). Micro-level learner characteristics such as identity, dispositions, histories, goals, and motivation are other key factors that can influence learning outcomes in SA, resulting in considerable individual variation. Aspects of students’ identities such as their age, gender, race, religion, along with SA students’ own stances, histories, intercultural competence, and dispositions may influence the extent to which learners seek out interactional opportunities, build social networks with local people, as well as the way that they are received by members of the host country (e.g., DuFon, 1999; Hassall, 2015b). In particular, gender has been found to condition access to language-learning opportunities, with some female students perceiving discrimination in various ways (e.g., Kinginger, 2009; Regan et. al., 2009). Learner subjectivity can also impact pragmatic development, for example, if SA students consciously resist adopting L2 pragmatic norms because those behaviors conflict with values from their first culture (e.g., Barron, 2003; DuFon, 1999; Siegal, 1994). Program design features such as LOR, living arrangements, and curricular issues are also crucial variables. In the case of LOR, findings in L2 pragmatics are mixed. While studies by Bouton (1999), Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998), Xu et al. (2009), Félix-Brasdefer (2004), and Schauer (2004) all showed a relationship between LOR and pragmatic development abroad—namely, the longer the stay, the more gains—Vilar Beltrán (2014), Han (2005), and Cheng (2005) found no such relationship. Along the same lines, short stays of six to eight weeks can produce positive outcomes (e.g., Czerwionka & Cuza, 2017a; Félix-Brasdefer & Hasler-Barker, 2015). This latter trend is perhaps explained by Taguchi’s (2008b) finding that learners reported more contact hours earlier in SA. Other aspects of program design, such as living situation, have produced mixed results in the larger SA literature, with no clear advantage for homestays over other SA living arrangements (Kinginger, 2009). The extent to which LOR and L2 proficiency contribute to the development of pragmatic competence is a topic that has generated discussion in the field. Some studies have isolated either LOR or proficiency (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2004; Taguchi, 2013), while others have considered both variables in the same study (e.g., Xu et al., 2009). Xu et al., for example, found that both LOR and proficiency contributed to L2 pragmatic development in the awareness of pragmatic infelicities, while Niezgoda and Roever (2001) concluded that proficiency had a stronger effect than LOR. Another dimension of the issue is onset proficiency of SA students. Although findings from the larger SA literature tend to indicate that students get the most out of SA by going abroad at higher proficiency levels (e.g., DeKeyser, 2007), perhaps due to processing constraints at lower levels of proficiency, various authors have shown that lower-proficiency learners can make impressive gains in pragmatics during SA (e.g., DuFon, 1999; Hassall, 2015b; Marriott, 1995), particularly when the target pragmatic features are ‘formally simple, frequent in input, and high in perceptual salience’ (Hassall, 2015b, p. 57). Finally, macro- and micro-level program design domain features interact in a complex interplay, as has been shown in this review. Quantity and quality of input available is dependent upon 364

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the extent to which and the way in which learners engage in cultural practices and participate in local social networks. This factor is, in turn, related to how learners present themselves and are perceived by locals as potential interlocutors, which reflects their micro-level individual qualities. Program design features, in turn, condition the amount and quality of input and interaction accessible to learners, which is related to factors such as whether learners go abroad in the company of others from their home university, rather than on their own, and whether they live in dormitories or with host families.

Conclusion and Future Directions Much of what is currently known about L2 pragmatic development comes from research in SA settings and, indeed, as this review has shown, this area of inquiry has produced rich results. The literature reveals that students can increase their pragmatic competence in a variety of ways by spending a period of time in an L2-speaking country, but that the outcomes of SA are the result of a complex web of factors involving the nature of the pragmatic feature in question, input and interaction, and individual learner characteristics. Most existing research has examined naturalistic pragmatic development while abroad, although the handful of studies that considered pragmatics instruction abroad point to positive results for providing support to SA students in their learning of pragmatics. Although suggestions for how to enhance learning abroad abound (e.g., Kinginger, 2011; Shively, 2010), more studies are needed to determine how pragmatics can effectively be taught before and during SA. In relation to teaching pragmatics in SA, research should also examine current practices, as well as the beliefs, fears, and impediments that students and instructors face in SA. In addition to the need for more research on instructional pragmatics for SA, we suggest that researchers continue to expand the current database in terms of (1) object of inquiry, (2) data collection methods, (3) variables analyzed, and (4) type of residence abroad. In the first case, a considerable proportion of existing studies have focused on the production of a relatively narrow range of isolated speech acts. More developmental research is needed regarding the production of pragmatic features other than speech acts (e.g., turn taking, alignment practices, evaluation, humor, pragmatic routines) and the production of speech acts in their interactional context. Given the relative paucity of studies that have focused on the development of receptive skills, future research would also do well to focus on topics such as the perception of socio-pragmatic appropriateness in interaction, dialectal variation, and the comprehension of non-literal meaning. Development of learners’ metapragmatic awareness during SA is another promising avenue that, to date, has received scant attention. To address these areas, a variety of data collection methods are needed. Written or oral production, perception, and comprehension questionnaires have long been employed in L2 pragmatics and continue to be a practical means to collect large data sets. However, there have been calls in the literature to move away from the use of written production questionnaires as means to measure oral language, since this format is an indirect measure of speech and, hence, suffers from relatively lower validity than other instruments. If the goal is to assess use of oral language (i.e., rather than one’s perception of what one would say), production questionnaires that elicit an oral response or, alternatively, role plays, are more valid means to collect production data. Further, given that pragmatics focuses on language use in context, researchers should continue to collect data in natural settings whenever possible. Although more studies are needed that examine the use of pragmatic features in authentic face-to-face interactions in a variety of settings (e.g., everyday conversation, workplace interactions, service encounters), one innovative context for examining naturally occurring pragmatics data are the interactions that occur online in social media and chat applications such as Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, and WhatsApp. Researchers can analyze how SA students use language in these computer-mediated contexts. 365

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Future studies should continue to examine a variety of variables that can impact the learning of pragmatics in SA, using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches. More research is needed to link L2 pragmatic development in SA with factors such as onset proficiency, length of stay, quantity and quality of exposure to the L2, motivation, identity, living situation, age, intercultural competence, affective dispositions, and learner agency (e.g., choosing to adopt or reject perceived L2 norms). Other variables that have only recently been studied in the larger SA literature—but not specifically with relation to pragmatics—are social networks and specific types of emotions. With regard to the former, several recent studies (e.g., Dewey et al., 2012; McManus, Mitchell, & Tracy-Ventura, 2014) have investigated the nature of L2 social networks that students develop during SA and the relationship with the development of skills such as accuracy and complexity of language. One instrument that has been employed to document students’ social networks is the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire (Dewey et al., 2012), which asks students to indicate the number of contacts, the closeness of their relationships, the frequency of interaction, and the types of groups to which they belong. This and other similar instruments (e.g., Gautier & Chevrot, 2015) can be employed to gather data about social networks, which can then be linked to the learning of pragmatics in SA. A second innovative variable that future studies can consider applying to pragmatics relates to the systematic measurement of levels of stress (in association with situational anxiety) while abroad, as measured by (hair or saliva) cortisol levels, and their association with linguistic gains or lack thereof, as done by Dewey, Belnap, and Steffen (2018). These authors took as a starting point the binary distinction of stress as a debilitating or enhancing mindset, with the former being the accepted norm. In their study, cortisol levels were used as a clinical measure of stress during SA and, in turn, they linked that measure to lower exam performance, grammatical development, and fluency. Dewey et al. further advocated for a mixed-methods approach to measuring stress, including both biodata and self-reports on stress. Again, methods such as these can be employed to examine the possible effects of stress on the development of pragmatic competence. Considering that pragmatic failure or the possibility of pragmatic failure may have social consequences and, thus, be particularly stressful to learners, the relationship between stress and pragmatic behavior may be a fruitful area of inquiry. A final direction for future research is to expand our research focus from primarily study abroad to the broader category of residence abroad. By doing so, researchers can examine and compare other situations in which L2 learners develop their pragmatic competence during a relatively short-term stay abroad. These other contexts include internships, work placements (e.g., being an au pair), service learning, and volunteering (see also Chapter 27 in this volume). Given that each of these types of residence may lead L2 learners to interact with different speakers, in different settings, and for different purposes than SA students, we can hypothesize that the learning of pragmatics in these contexts of residence abroad may differ from that of SA. Hence, another focus for future research is to compare pragmatic development in two or more of these types of residence abroad. Finally, comparisons can also be made between study abroad, other types of residence abroad, and opportunities for naturalistic learning in domestic settings, such as foreign language housing (e.g., Martinsen et al., 2010). These and other avenues for future research will provide a broader and clearer picture of the development of L2 pragmatic competence taking place in a variety of contexts.

Further Reading DuFon, M., & Churchill, E. (2006). Language learners in study abroad contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters This edited volume offers various perspectives on L2 learning in a study-abroad context, including studies related to pragmatics, language socialization, social interaction, and individual variation. Chapters cover a 366

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range of contexts, theoretical approaches, and methodological choices (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods). Kinginger, C. (2009). Language learning and study abroad: A critical reading of research. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Although now some years old, Kinginger’s monograph is still the only existing volume to provide a comprehensive overview and critical discussion of the literature on language learning in a study abroad setting. The study abroad literature is vast, but Kinginger offers an accessible introduction to key issues in this area of inquiry. Pérez Vidal, C. (2014). Language acquisition in study abroad and formal instruction contexts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. This more recent edited volume discusses a large-scale, longitudinal research project concerning language learning in a study abroad setting and, in doing so, touches upon important issues and trends in the field. Those issues include the role of individual differences (e.g., attitudes, motivation, beliefs, and intercultural awareness), length of stay, and areas of language knowledge and skills (e.g., phonology, grammar, and discourse) in L2 development while abroad.

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Hoffman-Hicks, S. D. (1999). The longitudinal development of French foreign language pragmatic competence: Evidence from study abroad participants. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington. Iino, M. (2006). Norms of interaction in a Japanese homestay setting: Toward a two-way flow of linguistic and cultural resources. In M. A. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 151–173). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Institute of International Education. (2015). Open Doors report on international educational exchange. New York: Institute of International Education. Retrieved on November 1, 2017, from http://www.iie. org/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2015/2015-11-16-Open-Doors-Data#. WMSieRLyvR0 Isabelli-Garcia, C., Bown, J., Plews, J. L., & Dewey, D. P. (2018). Language learning and study abroad. Language Teaching, 51, 439–484. Ishida, M. (2010). Development of interactional competence in L2 Japanese during study abroad: The use of modal expressions in recipient actions (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, Honolulu. Iwasaki, N. (2008). Style shifts among Japanese learners before and after study abroad in Japan: Becoming active social agents in Japanese. Applied Linguistics, 31, 45–71. Kasper, G. (2006). Speech acts in interaction: towards discursive pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, J. C. Félix-Brasdefer & A. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning (Vol. 11, pp. 281–314). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Kinginger, C. (2008). Language learning in study abroad: Case studies of Americans in France. The Modern Language Journal Monograph Series, 92. Kinginger, C. (2009). Language learning and study abroad: A critical reading of research. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kinginger, C. (2011). Enhancing language learning in study abroad. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 58–73. Kinginger, C. (2015). Language socialization in the homestay: American high school students in China. In R. Mitchell, N. Tracy-Ventura & K. McManus (Eds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad (pp. 53–74). Amsterdam: EuroSLA. Kondo, S. (1997). The development of pragmatic competence by Japanese learners of English: Longitudinal study on interlanguage apologies. Sophia Linguistica, 41, 265–284. Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Marriott, H. (1995). The acquisition of politeness patterns by exchange students in Japan. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (pp. 197–224). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Martinsen, R., Baker Smemoe, W., Dewey, D., & Johnson, C. (2010). Exploring diverse settings for language acquisition and use: Comparing study abroad, service learning abroad, and foreign language housing. Applied Language Learning, 20, 45–69. Masuda, K. (2011). Acquiring interactional competence in a study abroad context: Japanese language learners’ use of the interactional particle ne. The Modern Language Journal, 95, 519–540. Matsumura, S. (2001). Learning the rules for offering advice: A quantitative approach to second language socialization. Language Learning, 51, 635–679. Matsumura, S. (2003). Modelling the relationships among interlanguage pragmatic development, L2 proficiency, and exposure to L2. Applied Linguistics, 24, 465–491. Mey, J. (1993). Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. McManus, K., Mitchell, R., & Tracy-Ventura, N. (2014). Understanding insertion and integration in a study abroad context: The case of English-speaking sojourners in France. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 19, 97–116. Mitchell, R., McManus, K., & Tracy-Ventura, N. (2015). Placement type and language learning during residence abroad. In R. Mitchell, N. Tracy-Ventura & K. McManus (Eds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad. EUROSLA Monograph Series 4. (pp. 115-138). Amsterdam: The European Second Language Association. Mojica-Díaz, C. (1992). The use of address pronouns in Bogotá: A comparative study of two stages of acquisition by nonnative speakers (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, IL. Morris, K. (2017). Learning by doing: The affordances of task-based pragmatics instruction for beginning L2 Spanish learners studying abroad (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Univeresity of California, Davis. Niezgoda, K., & Roever, C. (2001). Pragmatic and grammatical awareness: A function of learning environment? In K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 63–79). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 369

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Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. (2014). The theory of language socialisation. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 1–21). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Osuka, N. (2014). Development of pragmatic routines by Japanese learners in a study abroad context. In I. Kecskes & S. Assimakopoulos (Eds.), Current issues in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 275-296). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pérez Vidal, C. (2014). Language acquisition in study abroad and formal instruction contexts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Regan, V. (1995). The acquisition of sociolinguistic native speech norms: Effects of a year abroad on second language learners of French. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (pp. 197-224). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Regan, V., Howard, M., & Lemée, I. (2009). The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ren, W. (2013). The effect of study abroad on the pragmatic development of the internal modification of refusals. Pragmatics, 23, 715-741. Ren, W. (2015). L2 pragmatic development in study abroad contexts. Berlin: Peter Lang. Rodríguez, S. (2001). The perception of requests in Spanish by instructed learners of Spanish in the secondand foreign-language contexts: A longitudinal study of acquisition patterns (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Schauer, G. A. (2004). May you speak louder maybe? Interlanguage pragmatic development in requests. EUROSLA Yearbook, 4, 253-272. Schauer, G. A. (2006). Pragmatic awareness in ESL and EFL contexts: Contrast and development. Language Learning, 56, 269-318. Schauer, G. A. (2007). Finding the right words in the study abroad context: The development of German learners’ use of external modifiers in English. Intercultural Pragmatics, 4, 193–220. Schauer, G. A. (2009). Interlanguage pragmatic development: The study abroad context. London: Continuum. Schmidt, R. (1993). Consciousness, Learning and Interlanguage Pragmatics. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 21–42). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shimizu, T. (2009). Influence of learning environment on L2 pragmatic realization: A comparison between JSL and JFL learners’ compliment responses. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), Pragmatic competence (pp. 167–198). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Shively, R. (2008). Politeness and social interaction in study abroad: Service encounters in L2 Spanish (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN. Shively, R. L. (2010). From the virtual world to the real world: A model of pragmatics instruction for study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 43, 105–137. Shively, R. L. (2011). L2 pragmatic development in study abroad: A longitudinal study of Spanish service encounters. .  Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1818–1835. Shively, R. L. (2013). Learning to be funny in Spanish during study abroad: L2 humor development. The Modern Language Journal, 97, 930–946. Shively, R. L. (2015). Developing interactional competence during study abroad: Listener responses in L2 Spanish. System, 48, 86–98. Shively, R. L. (2016). Development of assessments in L2 Spanish in study abroad. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 3, 157–170. Siegal, M. (1994). Looking east: Learning Japanese as a second language and the interaction of race, gender, and social context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2005). (Im)politeness, face and perceptions of rapport: Unpackaging their bases and interrelationships. Journal of Politeness Research, 1, 95–119. Sykes, J. M. (2013). Multiuser virtual environments: Learner apologies in Spanish. In N. Taguchi & J. M. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 71–100). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taguchi, N. (2008a). The role of learning environment in the development of pragmatic comprehension: A comparison of gains between EFL and ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 423–452. Taguchi, N. (2008b). Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning, 58, 33–71. Taguchi, N. (2011). Do proficiency and study-abroad experience affect speech act production? Analysis of appropriateness, accuracy, and fluency. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 49, 265–293. 370

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24 L2 Pragmatics Learning in Computer-Mediated Communication D. Joseph Cunningham

Introduction Pragmatic knowledge entails the ability to connect an utterance and a meaning in a variety of social contexts. Increasingly, these contexts involve digitally mediated spaces where communication takes place by means of Internet-based technologies. For language learners, the rise of such technologies may increase access to a wider range of discourses, providing both opportunities and potential pitfalls for developing second language (L2) pragmatic knowledge. This chapter systematically reviews research of L2 pragmatics in the context of computermediated communication (CMC). It begins with a discussion of previous research regarding second-language acquisition (SLA) and CMC, and then turns to a detailed consideration of various pragmatic functions that have been researched in digitally mediated contexts. Based on this analysis, the chapter draws conclusions regarding the current state of research and pedagogy in CMC and pragmatics learning, providing specific recommendations for future investigation.

CMC and SLA CMC can be understood as ‘person-to-person communication that takes place via a range of computer-supported transmission technologies that enable both synchronous real-time and asynchronous interaction across different modalities’ (Sauro, 2013, p. 1). As the use of CMC has become more integrated into language instruction over the past two decades, much research has examined its implications for SLA. This research has, in turn, been subject to multiple syntheses and meta-analyses (e.g., Lin, 2015; Lin, Huang, & Liou, 2013; Sauro, 2011; Ziegler, 2016) that draw broader conclusions regarding the efficacy of CMC in L2 teaching and learning. Sauro’s (2011) synthesis focused on four different aspects of communicative competence in research of synchronous CMC (SCMC). Of the 97 studies examined, 48 focused on grammatical competence, 33 focused on strategic competences, 22 focused on sociocultural competence, and 11 focused on discourse competence.1 While the studies looked at a range of topics, such as language socialization or participant roles in discussion, only a smaller subset directly addressed the link between participation in CMC and linguistic development. Lin et al. (2013) on the other hand, used a quantitative approach to determine the effect size of 10 experimental or quasiexperimental studies that associate second-language development with participation in SCMC. 372

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They found a small, but positive effect (m = .33, with confidence interval of .18 to .49), especially as pertains to longer-term participation in SCMC (i.e., over one week). In her meta-analysis of CMC and SLA, Lin (2015) investigated not only the overall effect size of CMC used for instructional purposes, but also moderating variables, including specific language skills and group size. She finds an overall medium-sized effect for CMC and SLA (Hedge’s g = .41 for fixed-effects models and .44 for random-effects models), noting that the largest effect sizes were found in studies of writing and pragmatics. This latter finding should be treated with caution, however, as only one study of L2 pragmatics met the inclusion criteria for her study. Most recently, Ziegler (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of 14 studies in order to compare the overall effectiveness of interaction in SCMC and face-to-face contexts. Broadly speaking, there was no significant difference found between interactional contexts, with both seen as beneficial, suggesting that the mode of interaction was less important than the interaction itself. Analysis of moderating variables revealed some group differences, with SCMC interaction promoting more effectively the acquisition of productive language skills (e.g., speaking), while face-to-face interaction promoted receptive language skills (e.g., listening). From a cognitive-interactionist perspective, Ziegler (2016) explains that this difference may be attributed to the fact that CMC allowed for additional processing time, thereby enabling learners to attend to particular language forms, while face-to-face interaction, with its attendant visual and gestural cues, provided learners complementary input sources to assist in the processing of spoken language. While the above studies have confirmed the relationship between L2 development and CMC generally, there continues to be a dearth of experimental and quasi-experimental research linking participation in these environments with L2 pragmatic development (Taguchi, 2015). Although the goal of the present chapter is not to draw this causal connection, it is hoped that the following review of literature on CMC and L2 pragmatics will pave the way for future synthesis and metaanalysis of L2 pragmatic development in CMC.

Survey of the Literature on CMC and L2 Pragmatics Existing literature on CMC and L2 pragmatics has focused on specific pragmalinguistic forms in relation to their communicative functions and contexts of use (e.g., pronominal address forms, sentence particles), speech acts (e.g., requests, refusals), and discourse-level phenomena (e.g., conversational openings and closings, communication management). In the following section, I offer an in-depth review of empirical findings related to these focal areas in order to draw conclusions regarding the current state of research, and, ultimately, to identify areas requiring further investigation.

Address Forms and CMC The enactment and development of L2 pragmatic competence in a computer-mediated environment has often been studied in relation to the production of pronominal address forms (i.e., French tu/vous, German du/Sie, Spanish tú/usted, etc.2). In formal learning environments, pronouns of address are traditionally taught at the beginning of the language-learning curriculum, where learners are given guidelines that cover simplistic rules, such as using T with family, friends, and pets, and using V with people who are older or in a position of authority. Although these explanations can heighten awareness regarding the sociopragmatic conventions of T/V use, they do ‘little to prepare students for the dynamic, and ultimately personal, choices speakers … make when using these pronouns’ (van Compernolle, Williams, & McCourt, 2011, p. 68). Recognizing that CMC provides an environment in which language learners can make such dynamic and personal choices—and perhaps learn from incorrect choices—researchers have taken great interest in how such forms are negotiated and enacted in CMC. 373

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Early studies that examined the role of CMC in relation to addressivity were conducted in the context of a multiyear project connecting L2 learners of German and French in the U.S.A. with L2 learners of English in Germany and France (Belz & Kinginger 2002, 2003; Kinginger, 2000). Belz and Kinginger (2002) examined two cases, one L2 French learner (pseudonym Jennifer) and one L2 German learner (pseudonym Joe), who showed development in their choice of address forms as a result of participating in CMC. In the case of Jennifer, who exchanged 10 emails with her French partner, the study documented a gradual shift from free variation between T and V to more consistent usage of T, albeit with some inconsistencies still present in her production. In the case of Joe, who corresponded both via email and text chat with his German partner (pseudonym Gabi) there is strong evidence of abrupt pragmatic development that can be linked to CMC. Like Jennifer, Joe displayed little initial control over the selection of the appropriate pronoun of address. During the fifth week of the telecollaboration, as Joe and Gabi were engaged in a flirtatious text chat, Joe produced a V-form, which was seen as particularly inappropriate by Gabi, given the playful tone of the previous interaction. Gabi implored Joe to use T with her (‘BITTE nenne mich DU’/‘PLEASE call me YOU (T)’). After this ‘critical incident with respect to socialization into appropriate T/V use’ (Belz & Kinginger, 2002, p. 205), Joe did not produce any other V-forms during subsequent interactions with Gabi. In explaining their findings, the researchers pointed to the effect of the particular medium of communication: While Jennifer received explicit peer correction via asynchronous email correspondence, Joe was corrected during synchronous text chat, when potential threats to his social face were more salient to him. In another study, Belz and Kinginger (2003) documented the use of T/V in a group of 11 L2 German learners. In this study, the researchers explicitly linked the presence of L1 peer assistance via CMC to pragmatic development. Following peer assistance, five learners displayed abrupt development (i.e., an immediate cessation of V usage), five learners displayed gradual development (i.e., an overall decrease of V usage), while only one learner continued to show persistent variation (i.e., an overall increase in V usage). In order to confirm and expand upon these findings, González-Lloret (2008) investigated addressivity in Spanish, focusing on the case of Vero, a second-year Spanish learner in the U.S.A. who was partnered with a classmate and an age-similar L1 Spanish-speaking peer in Spain. Through microanalysis of text-chat data, the researcher documented multiple repair sequences initiated by the L1 speaker, including explanations regarding the pragmalinguistic norms of Spanish pronoun use. Over several weeks, despite the presence of occasional backsliding, Vero displayed a gradual shift toward more target-like production of T. van Compernolle et al. (2011) adopted a corpus-driven variationist approach to analyze 1,182 instances of T/V in learner-learner text chat in L2 French. The data showed that each learner alternated between T and V at least some of the time and that the pronouns were ‘used indiscriminately as a lexical equivalent of English you’ (van Compernolle et al., 2011, p. 77). Each T/V token was also coded for the learner’s instructional level (i.e., beginner, intermediate, advanced), the number of participants in the chat, and the morphosyntactic environment (i.e., question tags, interrogative structures, imperative forms, etc.). Unexpectedly, the intermediate students produced the highest degree of appropriate T/V forms (70.8%), followed by the advanced group (66.4%), and then the beginners (61.9%). These findings indicate that even students with more advanced grammatical knowledge may still lack pragmatic competence in address forms. Regarding the number of participants in the chat, the findings showed a general tendency to overuse V when addressing a singular interlocutor, coupled with some use of T for plural address. Finally, in terms of morphosyntactic environment, the vast majority of T/V tokens were found in either interrogative structures (64.3%) or in sentence tags (27.7%). The fact that this distribution does not reflect the range of linguistic behavior found in native speakers’ chat discourse may be due to the nature of the chat tasks, which directed students to discuss various topics according to pre-determined guiding questions. 374

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Given the predominant focus on European languages in research of addressivity, the work of Kim and Brown (2014) is of special interest for its focus on Korean address terms. Unlike the binary T/V system, Korean utilizes both pronouns and nominal forms (e.g., kinship terms), which further interact with morphological honorifics to index interpersonal relationships. As such, the Korean language is ‘title and kinship oriented’ as opposed to ‘name and pronoun oriented’ (Kim & Brown, p. 267). The study profiled four L2 Korean learners (two novice-level and two intermediate-level), who interacted regularly with various L1 Korean speakers using different CMC tools (i.e., email, Facebook, Skype, Twitter). Analyzing a total of 110 conversations generated between the four learners and 31 different Korean interlocutors, the researchers investigated three areas: (1) the use of address terms in naturalistic CMC; (2) the ways in which pragmatic development in CMC differ from the classroom environment; and (3) how CMC environments help shape learner identity. The findings showed that three of the four learners were able to display interactional patterns more preferred in naturalistic settings, namely a shift away from the classroom-typical ssi address form and a move toward kinship terms. The learners’ experiences were also complicated by the varying reactions of L1 Korean speakers to their claimed identities as L2 Korean speakers: While some interlocutors were accepting of address conventions that deviated from typical hierarchies, other interlocutors rejected such usage. This finding led the researchers to conclude that appropriateness in naturally occurring CMC is ‘fluid rather than fixed’ (p. 278), a fact that language instruction should account for. At this point it is worth considering what studies of addressivity in CMC demonstrate more broadly. We have seen that L2 learners who participate in CMC display uneven ability to discriminate between T/V forms (Belz & Kinginger, 2002, 2003; González-Lloret, 2008; van Compernolle et al., 2011); however, research has also shown that repeated CMC interactions coupled with peer assistance can afford learners an opportunity to develop their knowledge of the sociopragmatic functions of the pronominal address system (Belz & Kinginger, 2002, 2003; González-Lloret, 2008). Whereas T is generally seen as the more appropriate choice in these studies, as Kim and Brown (2014) point out, CMC conducted in institutional contexts (as opposed to naturalistic settings), may actually limit the pragmatic choices available to L2 language users. To conclude, studies of addressivity in CMC are well represented in the literature, but there has been a shift from empirical judgments of ‘target-like’ production to an understanding that the choice of address form is negotiated in the micro-context of each interaction, and that judgments of appropriateness must be tied to the enactment of a learner’s situated identity.

Sentence Particles and CMC Several studies have looked at the acquisition of sentence particles in a computer-mediated environment. We begin with German modal particles (MPs), which are ‘important markers of interpersonal meaning because they index the speaker’s attitude toward particular propositions or interlocutors’ (Vyatkina & Belz, 2006, p. 316). MPs represent a particular challenge for L2 learners of German due to the fact that they are not usually an explicit instructional focus and that they are more characteristic of casual speech that is not typically found in the classroom. Belz and Vytakina (2005) and Vytakina and Belz (2006) used a contrastive learner corpus as part of an instructional intervention to help L2 learners understand the sociopragmatic function of German MPs.3 The research showed that mere exposure to MPs through CMC with L1 German speakers was not sufficient to trigger MP production in the learner group: Whereas learners produced only 2.5% of total MPs prior to receiving instruction, over half of the total MPs (54.6%) came from the learner group after instruction. This instruction included focusing learners’ attention on the form and meaning of MPs in chat transcripts/emails and examining chat transcripts/emails for felicitous or infelicitous use of MPs. The research also revealed that, as learners were exposed to more explicit forms of instruction, their MP production increased in range and accuracy. 375

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These findings are echoed in Kakegawa (2009), a partial replication of Belz and Vyatkina (2005). In this case, the researcher focused on the acquisition of Japanese sentence final particles (SFPs) in a group of L2 Japanese learners who engaged in an email correspondence for 12 weeks with L1 Japanese speakers and participated in two instructional sessions on Japanese SFPs. Although the frequency of SFPs increased following the first instructional session, so did the error rate. Following the second instructional session, learners continued producing a greater frequency of SFPs, but with a higher degree of accuracy than before. This horseshoe-shaped development is likely due to the fact that the first instructional session raised learners’ awareness of SFPs, which spurred them to experiment in their subsequent emails, resulting in inaccurate usage. When these errors were explained to the students in the second instructional session, the fine-tuning of the instruction helped to increase the learners’ subsequent accuracy. Also focusing on email data, Nakane, Kinoshita Thompson, and Tokumaru (2014) examined the enactment of politeness between L2 Japanese learners and L1 facilitators/tutors by analyzing the use of SFPs, polite vs. plain clause final forms, and honorifics. Over the course of the exchange, student– facilitator pairs used a range of SFPs, clause final forms, and honorifics to establish, in some cases, greater rapport and solidarity, but in other cases, to affirm a more hierarchical relationship. This latter finding can be attributed to the explicit introduction of honorifics as a focal pragmatic feature, leading some learners ‘to ‘try out’ newly introduced sociolinguistic and grammatical features inappropriately’ (Nakane et al., 2014, p. 75). Studies related to the acquisition of sentence particles reveal important insights regarding pragmatic development and CMC. Although these small particles index an outsized share of pragmatic information, they are not particularly salient to learners, a fact that can be ameliorated through explicit instruction (Belz & Vyatkina, 2005; Kakegawa, 2009; Nakane et al., 2014; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006). At the same time, this very instruction may lead to infelicitous experimentation with pragmatic forms (Nakane et al., 2014), which must be further mitigated through fine-tuning of instructional materials and delivery (Belz & Vyatkina, 2005; Kakegawa, 2009; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006).

Speech Acts and CMC Speech acts involve utterances that have a performative function (e.g., promising, apologizing, complimenting), which may be realized through a variety of syntactic structures (see Chapter 2 in this volume). Reflecting L2 pragmatics research generally, there has been a sustained effort to investigate the production of speech acts in CMC. The bulk of research investigating speech acts in CMC has focused on requesting, often in relation to the classic Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), which classified requests in different languages according to the main request-making strategy (i.e., head act), lexical and syntactic modification to the request head act, and request perspective (i.e., listener-oriented vs. speaker-oriented) (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989). Studies have examined requesting in both SCMC and asynchronous CMC (ACMC), looking at L2 development in requests as well as comparisons of L1 and L2 requests. Beginning with research of requests in ACMC, Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig (1996) evaluated requestive emails sent by L1 and L2 English users in light of whether faculty recipients judged them to result in positive or negative affect. It was found that positive emails were characterized by the sender’s acknowledgement of imposition, whereas negative emails overemphasized the recipient’s obligation to reply. In comparing L1 and L2 requests, the researchers noted that L2 speakers more often cited personal time needs than L1 speakers, who more often acknowledged the imposition of their request. With reference to CCSARP, Chen (2001) investigated email requests of American and Taiwanese graduate students. In terms of request strategy, she found that both groups preferred query preparatory strategies (e.g., can/could you) and want statements (e.g., I want/I would like) when formulating requests, but the two groups 376

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differed in their use of internal modification devices, with L1 English speakers using a greater frequency and range. Taking a similar approach, Biesenbach-Lucas (2007) compared email requests to faculty members sent by L1 and L2 English graduate students, looking at the influence of request imposition (i.e., low vs. medium vs. high). For L1 speakers, the data showed that low-imposition scenarios (e.g., requesting an appointment) elicited the same number of indirect and direct requests. In contrast, for medium-imposition requests (e.g., requesting feedback on an assignment), there was a preference for using direct requests, and only for high-imposition requests (e.g., asking for an extension on an assignment), did L1 speakers use a majority of indirect requests. The results for the L2 groups were similar to the L1 group, except for the medium-imposition requests, where they favored indirect request strategies. As to the use of syntactic modification devices, the groups performed similarly except for low-imposition requests, where the L1 group used syntactic modifiers in 85.5% of cases, whereas the L2 group only used them in 59.2% of cases. Overall, the two groups displayed an awareness of different levels of imposition and formulated their requests differently according to the situation; however, the study also pointed out that L2 requesters may not have the same range of pragmalinguistic structures at their disposal as L1 users. In addition to comparative research, the field has also investigated longitudinal development of email requests. Chen’s (2006) case study of a Taiwanese learner of English finds that, over a period of two and a half years, the learner shifted from using primarily ‘want’ statements, to more often using query preparatory strategies. The learner also expanded her ability to use lexical and syntactic modifications to mitigate her requests. Looking at group-level development, AlcónSoler (2015) examined the effect of instruction on explicit knowledge of request mitigation and the extent to which this knowledge influenced the email requests of L2 Spanish learners studying abroad in Spain. In this quasi-experimental study, 30 of the learners received explicit pragmatic instruction, while 30 learners did not. Both groups had opportunities to produce email requests, and emails were collected at four different times during the study abroad year. Results showed that learners who received explicit pragmatic instruction compared their knowledge with what happened in actual email communication, resulting in a general pattern of decreasing request mitigation that corresponded more closely to the L1 community of practice. In order to shed light on the effect of instructional approach in CMC-based requests, Eslami, Mirzaei, and Dini (2015) used a quasi-experimental design to examine asynchronous interactions between L2 learners of English and their L1 telecollaborative tutors. Quantitative analysis revealed that while both experimental groups (i.e., explicit and implicit instruction of requests) outperformed the non-instructed group, the explicit group performed the best on the post-test discourse completion task and email task. Qualitative analysis further showed an increase in the use of indirect requests and request mitigation over time in both experimental groups. These findings are consistent with Eslami and Liu (2013), who compared three groups of learners: one receiving explicit instruction via CMC, one receiving explicit instruction face-to-face, and one receiving no instruction. Not surprisingly, the groups receiving explicit instruction performed better on the post-test than the uninstructed group; however, when comparing the instructional environments, both the CMC and the face-to-face groups performed equally well. Eslami et al. (2015) and Eslami and Liu’s (2013) studies are valuable in that they are rare examples of quasi-experimental research that employed a rigorous quantitative analysis. At the same time, however, the research design only allowed for conclusions about the effect of instruction and not about the interactional environment. In other words, while we see evidence for the efficacy of instruction, the specific influence of the CMC environment on the development of pragmatic knowledge remains unclear. Turning to L2 request production in SCMC, the field has benefitted from the work of Cunningham and Vyatkina (2012) and Cunningham (2016, 2017a, 2017b), which collectively examined audiovisual interaction (i.e., web conferencing) between learners of German for the professions and L1 German professionals. Microgenetic analysis of eight hours of oral production 377

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data showed that L2 learners can benefit from focused instruction, in terms of their ability both to use the subjunctive voice and modal verbs to formulate appropriate requests, such as asking for information or requesting technical assistance (Cunningham & Vyatkina, 2012), and to produce more elaborate external modification strategies prior to requesting (Cunningham, 2016). The latter study also revealed learner agency in CMC, noting that ‘certain learners appropriated the instructional focus on internal modification of the request head act and applied it to their production of external modifiers’ (Cunningham, 2016, p. 501). Cunningham (2017a) utilized modified elements of the CCSARP framework to compare L1 and L2 request production in synchronous CMC. Findings indicated that both L1 and L2 German speakers preferred direct requests, which often served to build rapport between speakers. In terms of internal modification of the request head act, L1 speakers used significantly more devices than the L2 group. Finally, due to the predominantly oral nature of the CMC, both groups used elaborate external modification devices to manage their online interaction. While not as abundant as research on requesting, several studies have investigated other speech acts. Sykes (2005) examined the effects of explicit instruction on L2 Spanish learners’ refusals. Using a pre-/post-test design, the study compared three communication environments for refusals: (1) oral SCMC, (2) written SCMC, and (3) face-to-face communication. Participants in each group role played refusals in both formal and informal situations. All groups more closely approximated native speaker patterns in formal situation refusals than they did in informal situation refusals. Regarding request strategies, all groups showed preference for direct refusals or ‘grounders’ (i.e., providing a reason why the refusal is necessary) in both informal and formal situations. In terms of differences, the face-to-face group used more supporting moves, while the written SCMC group outperformed the other two groups regarding the variety and complexity of refusal strategies. Sykes (2005) explains this outcome in relation to the CMC medium: ‘Without the tools oral communication often provides (e.g., intonation, body language, etc.), the [written SCMC] group had to be more explicit in their communication’ (p. 420). Also focusing on refusals, Takamiya and Ishihara (2013) investigated sociopragmatic awareness of this speech act through analysis of blogging data. The study presented the case of a college-level L2 Japanese learner in the U.S.A. (pseudonym Jane) who received explicit instruction in Japanese speech acts prior to interacting with L1 Japanese college students asynchronously via blogs. In addition to completing blog entries on the speech acts, participants also completed discourse completion tests (DCTs) in response to scenarios eliciting particular speech acts. Jane’s blog entries demonstrated a developmental arc in relation to her acceptance of white lies as an appropriate face-saving device when refusing in Japanese culture. In particular, the researchers noted the combination of ‘pragmatically rich input’ (i.e., examination of DCTs completed by L1 users) with ‘classroom-based explicit instruction’ facilitated the development of the learner’s pragmatic awareness (Takamiya & Ishihara, 2013, p. 208). Similarly, Morollón Martí and Fernández (2016) investigated sociopragmatic awareness of speech acts that arose naturally in the context of video-based SCMC interactions between Danish learners of L2 Spanish and L1 Spanish speakers in Spain. Five speech acts were analyzed in the data: greetings, compliments, offers, invitations, and leave takings. Findings showed that verbal exchanges in SCMC prompted discussion of various Spanish speech acts during in-class reflection sessions conducted in the learners’ L1. Ongoing mediation of the learners’ sociopragmatic awareness through the L1 thus allowed them to recognize and respond more appropriately to a range of speech acts encountered during subsequent SCMC sessions in the L2. Summing up, research of speech acts in CMC has yielded central insights regarding the development of L2 pragmatic knowledge. Not only does CMC provide an environment to perform speech acts that are less typical in classroom discourse, multiple studies confirm that instruction can boost learners’ ability to perform these speech acts in a computer-mediated interactional environment. Pragmalinguistic gains have been documented in relation to request modification 378

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in Spanish (Alcón-Soler, 2015), English (Chen, 2006; Eslami et al., 2015; Eslami & Liu, 2013) and German (Cunningham, 2016; Cunningham & Vyatkina, 2012), while sociopragmatic gains have been documented in relation to Japanese refusals (Takamiya & Ishihara, 2013) and Spanish offers (Morollón Martí & Fernández, 2016). The current review has additionally demonstrated that request directness and request modification represent the most frequent investigative variables regarding speech act performance in CMC to date. Related to these phenomena—but as yet unexamined—is the role of request perspective in CMC. In the context of face-to-face communication, Economidou-Kogetsidis (2012) found that L2 English learners produced a significantly higher number of hearer-oriented oriented requests and a significantly lower number of speaker-oriented requests than L1 speakers. Moreover, it was seen that the L2 learners’ use of the speaker perspective was associated with more direct request strategies (i.e., ‘need’ and ‘want’ statements), whereas L1 speaker-oriented requests were more often conventionally indirect (i.e., ‘can’ and ‘could’ interrogatives). Opening up a similar line of research in CMC environments would not only yield more insight into the ways in which requests are performed in such contexts, but would also enable further meaningful comparison between the performance of speech acts in CMC and face-to-face communication. Finally, it is recommended that future research of speech-act performance in CMC continue to incorporate foci in addition to the popular speech act of request, while also broadening the range of target languages to be investigated.

Discourse and CMC Increasingly, researchers are focused on the computer-mediated development and enactment of L2 pragmatic competence at the discourse level. This interest is explained in part by the increasing prevalence of synchronous communication tools in both institutional and non-institutional settings, but also by the more general turn in L2 pragmatics research toward investigation of discourse-level pragmatic acts (Taguchi & Roever, 2017, p. 113; see also Chapter 7 in this volume). Existing studies in this area can be loosely grouped into three categories, based on their objects of examination: (1) conversational openings and closings; (2) management of communication; and (3) facework and politeness. Conversational openings and closings have been a common analytical focus in SCMC, where such discourse practices may differ between learners’ L1 and L2. Looking at a peer–peer, multiuser text chat environment, Abrams (2008) investigated sociopragmatic competence related to opening and closing sequences among 78 second-semester German learners. In addition to documenting multiple instances of such sequences, the researcher found that learners were able to perform ‘diverse discourse patterns well beyond the classroom initiation-response-feedback formula’ (Abrams, 2008, p. 15). The CMC environment is thus seen as a ‘safe’ context for practicing and performing multiple discursive pragmatic functions in the L2. While some of those functions were successfully transferred from the L1, others emerged only after several weeks of participation in peer-peer chat (Abrams, 2013). In another study, Gonzales (2013) provided an in-depth qualitative analysis of one L2 Spanish learner’s conversational closings. This learner participated in repeated text chats with various L1 interlocutors on the social networking site Livemocha. Despite the learner’s strict rejection of cultivating membership in the Livemocha community and avowed dislike of the activity, he nonetheless showed a ‘marked change over time in his rapport orientation and use of rapport management strategies’ (Gonzales, 2013, p. 117). Given this finding, the author argued that ‘affinity spaces’—as opposed to group membership—can lead to L2 pragmatic development in computer-mediated discourse. Research on opening and closing sequences has also been conducted in ACMC. Bou-Franch (2011) examined a corpus of 240 Spanish emails, approximately half of which were sent between faculty members and the other half sent between faculty members and students. She found great 379

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variability in the emails examined, citing ‘multiple technological, social and interactional influences that simultaneously play a role in shaping the structure and style of email discourse practices’ (p. 1783). Despite this heterogeneity, opening and closing sequences were found to be nearly universal, reflecting a high degree of sociability between email writers and readers. That is to say, irrespective of whether emails were sent up, down, or across the institutional hierarchy, email writers tended to prioritize the interpersonal dimension of communication over the transactional. This orientation toward ‘people first, business second’ (Bou-Franch, 2001, p. 1783) was also seen in Eslami (2013), who compared the email openings and closings of L1 English speakers with those of L2 English speakers from Iran, with specific reference to the politeness strategies employed by these two groups. The L1 group favored a politeness style that emphasized solidarity, whereas the L2 group emphasized deference by engaging in longer opening and closing sequences characterized by a wider variety of moves and strategies (e.g., greeting, selfidentifying, apologizing, thanking, and bidding farewell). Overlapping with the study of conversational openings and closings in CMC is research pertaining to discourse management. A number of pragmatic functions and strategies contribute to effective discourse management. As relates to computer-mediated environments, this ability becomes crucial in that certain direct paralinguistic cues may be lacking and conversation often depends on participants’ explicit discourse management. Cunningham (2017b) showed how the formulation of pragmatically appropriate requests during multi-person, synchronous videoconferencing was partially dependent upon effective discourse management. Requests of L2 German learners were judged to be more appropriate when the learners positioned themselves as ‘cooperative interactants’ (p. 56) within a larger discussion, whereas less appropriate requests were often characterized by lack of clarity regarding the intended interlocutor and/or inability to negotiate the intended meaning of an utterance. In another study, Sardegna and Molle (2010) examined interactions that occurred during a two-hour videoconference, in which L2 English learners in Japan received explicit instruction in English backchannel signals and reactive expressions from L1 English speakers so they could better manage discourse. While the learners were able to improve their production of the focal pragmatic features over the short term, the researchers also cautioned that instruction via videoconferencing is not without its shortcomings; namely, students may have trouble communicating spontaneously with strangers. Also looking at the use of backchannel signals (in addition to topic management), Barron and Black (2015) examined how these pragmatic functions are realized in the context of synchronous video-based interaction in L2 English. The study contrasted the differential success of two profiled learners. One learner displayed high levels of pragmatic ability through active topic shifting and varied use of backchannel signals. The other learner, however, left the work of topic development to her L1 interlocutor through a lack of topic shifting and very limited use of backchannels. The difference in the two learners’ performance was attributed to the relative degree of familiarity with the CMC platform itself. The authors thus called for more use of video-based CMC in foreign language classrooms ‘to increase interaction … in order to facilitate the development of L2 pragmatic competence’ (p. 124). In contrast to the above studies in which discourse management was performed through explicit linguistic means, Vandergriff (2013) investigated the unique affordances that text-based interaction can provide for realizing pragmatic intent. She focused on so-called ‘CMC cues’ (i.e., emoticons, non-standard orthography, and lexical substitution) produced by advanced L2 German learners who text chatted with one another in order to resolve a fictitious, but morally ambiguous situation. Microanalysis of the chat data revealed that understanding the meaning of CMC cues was only possible in the micro-context of the interaction (e.g., understanding whether multiple exclamation points indicated enthusiasm, aggravated disagreement, or humor). The author concluded that, despite the relative low frequency of CMC cues in the data, the cues were 380

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able ‘to carry some of the load of relational work’ (Vandergriff, 2013, p. 10), even if not as subtle or far-ranging as prosodic cues in face-to-face communication.

Face and Politeness in CMC According to Brown and Levinson (1987), social face and politeness are central to the study of pragmatics. Although much of the research previously addressed in this chapter has considered these issues peripherally, only a few studies have directly investigated politeness and facework in CMC. Using a conversational analytic (CA) perspective, Tsai and Kinginger (2015) examined a corpus of 21 chat transcripts in which L2 English learners gave each other advice in the context of peer review. As advice-giving is considered a potentially face-threatening act, the researchers were interested to know how participants managed the asymmetrical power roles associated with this activity. They found that both advice givers and receivers oriented to their institutional roles, with receivers initiating advice-seeking requests and advice-givers responding to these requests with context-appropriate evaluations. Recognizing the need to balance criticism with maintenance of social solidarity, advice-givers engaged in various complimenting strategies to mitigate the potential face threat to their interlocutors. In contrast to Tsai and Kinginger’s (2015) study in which maintenance of harmonious relationships influenced the interactional strategies of participants, Jenks (2012) observed an opposite strategy in synchronous CMC among speakers of English as a lingua franca: ‘doing being reprehensive’ (p. 394). Also utilizing a CA perspective, the researcher examined transcripts of audio-based multiuser chat rooms (‘Skypecasts’). He found that, while certain chat participants did not draw explicit focus to potential trouble areas in the conversation (i.e., the ‘let it pass’ principle; see Firth, 1996), many others used laughter, humor, and ridicule to point out perceived linguistic infelicities, even when such trouble spots did not inhibit communication or were, in fact, error free. Moreover, the data showed that ‘doing being reprehensive’ occurred most often at the first available turn transition, suggesting that ‘being mutually supportive is not necessarily at the forefront of [participants’] interactional agendas’ (Jenks, 2012, p. 401). Given the limited and contradictory findings regarding L2 facework and politeness in CMC, this area is ripe for further exploration.

Implications and Future Directions This chapter has surveyed existing empirical findings in the areas of CMC and L2 pragmatic development. The research shows that participation in CMC—ideally, supported through instruction—can lead to enhanced knowledge of address forms, sentence final particles, requests and refusals, opening and closing sequences, and backchannel signals. In other areas, such as facework and politeness, the findings are less clear, necessitating additional investigation. Having reviewed key studies, it is now possible to explore various implications that arise for both research and teaching.

Implications for Research The research to date has provided key insights regarding a range of pragmatic foci in relation to participation in CMC. However, important work remains to be done. First and foremost, ethnographic profiles and individual case studies continue to predominate the field, despite calls for more research with an experimental or quasi-experimental design (Taguchi, 2015). This research gap is also reflected in the fact that Lin (2015) was able to include only one study of L2 pragmatic development in her meta-analysis of SLA and CMC. In the current chapter, only a few studies (Eslami et al., 2015; Eslami & Liu, 2013; Sykes, 2005) used such a quantitative, experimental design, and in the case of Eslami et al. (2015) and Eslami and Liu (2013), the research was only able to confirm 381

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an effect of instruction in learning L2 English, not of the computer-mediated environment itself. Hence, it would be particularly desirable to see future studies that include a control group, enabling further empirical confirmation of the many positive indications observed regarding the relationship between participation in CMC and L2 pragmatic development. Lest the pendulum swing too far towards a purely quantitative research paradigm, it is important to remain cognizant of the benefits that qualitative research offers. The inclusion of observations or interviews can profitably complement quantitative findings by identifying specific features of the CMC environment and explaining how these features can contribute to L2 pragmatic development. A second recommendation for future research in L2 pragmatics and CMC regards the nature of pragmatic knowledge under investigation. While studies of pragmatic production in computer-mediated environments have proliferated, studies of pragmatic comprehension are less well represented. In this regard, it would be of interest to investigate how indirect meaning is communicated in CMC environments. As Taguchi, Gomez-Laich, and Arrufat-Marqués (2016) demonstrated, visual information (e.g., facial expression) was found to be one of the inferencing strategies used by L2 learners of Spanish to comprehend indirect meaning. Since not all CMC environments offer this affordance equally, then it bears looking at which strategies are in fact used to convey and comprehend indirect meaning. Additionally, as previous research has confirmed (e.g., Taguchi, 2008, 2011), the learning environment can make a difference in learners’ ability to comprehend certain indirect meanings. To wit, students who participated in study abroad showed increased ability to comprehend non-conventional implicatures and routine expressions, (Taguchi, 2011), as well as increased comprehension speed in comparison to a non-study abroad group (Taguchi, 2008) (see Chapter 3 in this volume). In order to assess the effect of CMC participation in comprehension of indirect meanings, it would be interesting to conduct similar research comparing equivalent groups across different learning environments. In this regard, telecollaboration may provide a useful context for assessing the development of pragmatic comprehension, given the prolonged and repeated communication that takes place among participants in such exchanges. On a final note, as we have seen throughout this chapter, the research of L2 pragmatics is often aligned with specific teaching foci. In other words, because L2 pragmatics research often investigates the role of instruction in pragmatics learning, and relevant data are frequently collected from intact groupings (i.e., language classes), instructional goals may influence a given research agenda and vice versa. Here we may recall Morollón Martí and Fernández (2016), who sought to develop sociopragmatic awareness among L2 Spanish learners by focusing on speech acts that arose during CMC with L1 Spanish exchange partners. Those speech acts that occurred frequently became the focus of in-class mediation sessions (i.e., pedagogy), but also a subject of empirical investigation in and of themselves. If we acknowledge the reflexivity of research and teaching while seeking to advance the study of L2 pragmatics as it relates to CMC, it becomes necessary to consider pragmatics instruction from a curricular perspective. L2 pragmatics instruction should form an integral component of a multi-semester curriculum, including ongoing opportunities to practice and enhance pragmatic knowledge through CMC. Not only will our learners benefit, but it will then also be possible to generate the large data sets that are necessary for experimental and quasi-experimental investigation of L2 pragmatic development in computer-mediated contexts.

Implications for Teaching As reviews on the teachability of pragmatics (e.g., Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Taguchi, 2015; Chapter 19 in this volume) have pointed out, not only can L2 pragmatic knowledge be taught, but explicit instructional approaches seem to be particularly advantageous. The current review supports this conclusion in a number of ways. No less than 14 studies published since 2005 (i.e., Alcón-Soler, 2015; Belz & Vyatkina, 2005; Cunningham, 2016; Cunningham & Vyatkina, 2012; Eslami et al., 382

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2015; Eslami & Liu, 2013; González-Lloret, 2008; Kakegawa, 2009; Morollón Martí & Fernández, 2016; Nakane et al., 2014; Sardegna & Molle, 2010; Sykes, 2005; Takamiya & Ishihara, 2013; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006) confirm the utility of instruction as pertains to L2 pragmatic knowledge and participation in CMC. However, we must be careful in distinguishing the nature and purpose of CMC for pragmatics instruction in these studies. In the case of telecollaborative exchange, where language and intercultural learning are grounded in the interactions that take place with the exchange partner, the computer-mediated nature of such interactions allows teacher-researchers to capture them as data and develop appropriate pragmatics instructional materials based on the data. Previous efforts in this area include the development of searchable corpora, which enabled learners to compare frequency and patterns of use in L1 and L2 production (Belz & Vyatkina, 2005; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006) or the use of judgment tests that stimulated learner awareness of differences between L1 and L2 pragmalinguistic forms (Cunningham, 2016). Similarly, studies like Morollón Martí and Fernández (2016) and Takamiya and Ishihara (2013) demonstrated how in-class mediation of video or blogging data led to enhanced L2 sociopragmatic knowledge. In contrast to pedagogical arrangements where CMC interaction becomes an instructional focus ipso facto, other studies have investigated the direct instruction of pragmatics via CMC (Eslami et al., 2015; Elsami & Liu, 2013; Sardegna & Molle, 2010). Such arrangements are seen to be effective in promoting L2 pragmatic knowledge, but the degree to which the computermediated nature of these interactions contributes directly to instructional effectiveness remains less clear. Thus, we need studies that disambiguate the specific affordances of CMC for pragmatics instruction from the effect of pragmatics instruction itself, so as to take maximum advantage of the online instructional medium.

Looking forward This chapter has focused on the intersection of CMC and L2 pragmatics, chiefly with an emphasis on direct communication between L2 learners and L1 partners of a particular language. What has largely been missing is a consideration of the ‘multiplicity of language contact zones’ (Thorne, Sauro, & Smith, 2015, p. 215) present online today and what this fact means for the development of L2 pragmatic knowledge. In particular, participation in multilingual online communities with their own norms of behavior constitutes an area in need of further investigation. Such research will certainly require novel approaches to collect and analyze CMC data, but the potential benefits to the study of ‘multilingual pragmatics’ could be substantial. Looking ahead, it seems inevitable that CMC will continue to impact the way people interact with one another, as well as the way languages are taught and learned. This fact raises a host of questions regarding the future research agenda for developmental pragmatics. Most broadly, how does the idea of pragmatic competence need to be refined when applied to a computer-mediated environment? What knowledge, skills, and abilities must L2 learners develop in order to participate effectively in CMC and perform necessary pragmatic functions in such contexts? How does this knowledge differ from traditional notions of pragmatic competence? Given the rapid pace of technological development and the new communication possibilities that will no doubt arise in the coming decades, empirical findings related to the above questions will be central to expanding current models of pragmatic competence.

Notes 1 Some studies had multiple foci, meaning that the total number of foci (N = 112) exceeds the total number of studies (K = 98). 2 This chapter will use the generic notations ‘T’ to indicate the informal pronoun and ‘V’ to indicate the formal pronoun. 3 For more on the role of corpora and L2 pragmatics, see Chapter 16 in this volume. 383

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Further Reading Belz, J. A. (2007). The role of computer mediation in the instruction and development of L2 pragmatic competence. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27, 45–75. This review article details the first decade of research pertaining to the development of L2 pragmatic competence and participation in CMC. In addition to covering the design of instructional materials and opportunities for the performance and practice of L2 pragmatic competence, the article also addresses the relative lack of data documenting the development of L2 pragmatic competence over time. Special attention is given to the role of learner corpora in L2 pragmatics research and teaching. Chapelle, C., & Sauro, S. (Eds.) (2017). The handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. With 30 chapters written by leading scholars in the field, this comprehensive handbook offers a valuable overview of the current state of technology-assisted language learning. Acknowledging that technology is central to the way in which most learners approach a second or foreign language, contributors discuss not only its role in developing specific language skills, but also how technology is driving innovation in language pedagogy more broadly. The volume also considers how technology can facilitate research, teacher education, and the design of meaningful assessments. Taguchi, N., & Sykes, J. (Eds.). (2013). Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bringing together work on teaching and research in digitally-mediated contexts, this edited volume addresses the role of technology in studying, instructing, and assessing L2 pragmatics. The first part of the volume highlights various approaches to the research of L2 pragmatics, including processing of conversational implicature and analyzing features of pragmatics language use in longitudinal learner corpora. In the second half of the book, various pedagogical approaches to L2 pragmatic development are considered, such as place-based mobile gaming, blogging, and automated analysis of learner texts.

References Abrams, Z. (2008). Sociopragmatic features of learner-to-learner computer-mediated communication. CALICO Journal, 26(1), 1–27. Abrams, Z. (2013). Say whay?! L2 sociopragmatic competence in CMC: Skill transfer and development. CALICO Journal, 30(3), 423–445. Alcón-Soler, E. (2015). Instruction and pragmatic change during study abroad email communication. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 9(1), 34–45. Barron, A., & Black, E. (2015). Constructing small talk in learner-native speaker voice-based telecollaboration: A focus on topic management and backchanneling. System, 48, 112–128. Belz, J. A., & Kinginger, C. (2002). The cross-linguistic development of address form use in telecollaborative language learning: Two case studies. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 59(2), 189–214. Belz, J. A., & Kinginger, C. (2003). Discourse options and the development of pragmatic competence by classroom learners of German: The case of address forms. Language Learning, 53(4), 591–647. Belz, J. A., & Vyatkina, N. (2005). Learner corpus analysis and the development of L2 pragmatic competence in networked intercultural language study: The case of German modal particles. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 62(1), 17–48. Biesenbach-Lucas, S. (2007). Students writing emails to faculty: An examination of e-politeness among native and non-native speakers of English. Language Learning & Technology, 11(2), 59–81. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). The CCSARP coding manual. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 273–294). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Bou-Franch, P. (2011). Openings and closings in Spanish email conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1722–1785. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chen, C.-F. E. (2001). Making e-mail requests to professors: Taiwanese vs. American students. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics, St. Louis. Chen, C.-F. E. (2006). The development of e-mail literacy: From writing to peers to writing to authority figures. Language Learning & Technology, 10(2), 35–55. 384

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Cunningham, D. J. (2016). Request modification in synchronous computer-mediated communication: The role of focused instruction. The Modern Language Journal, 100(2), 484–507. Cunningham, D. J. (2017a). Methodological innovation for the study of request production in telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 21(1), 76–99. Cunningham, D. J. (2017b). Second language pragmatic appropriateness in telecollaboration: The influence of discourse management and grammaticality. System, 64, 46–57. Cunningham, D. J., & Vyatkina, N. (2012). Telecollaboration for professional purposes: Towards developing a formal register in the foreign language classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 68(4), 422–450. Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2012). Modifying oral requests in a foreign language: The case of Cypriot Greek learners of English. In M. Economidou-Kogetsidis & H. Woodfield (Eds.), Interlanguage request modification (pp. 163–201). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Eslami, Z. R. (2013). Online communication and students’ pragmatic choices in English. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 9(1), 71–92. Eslami, Z. R., & Liu, C. N. (2013). Learning pragmatics through computer-mediated communication in Taiwan. Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 1(1), 52–73. Eslami, Z. R., Mirzaei, A., & Dini, S. (2015). The role of asynchronous computer mediated communication in the instruction and development of EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. System, 48, 99–111. Firth, A. (1996). The discursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 237–259. Gonzales, A. (2013). Development of politeness strategies in participatory online environments. In N. Taguchi & J. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 101–120). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. González-Lloret, M. (2008). Computer-mediated learning of L2 pragmatics. In E. Alcón Soler & A. Martínez-Flor (Eds.), Investigating pragmatics in foreign language learning, teaching and testing (pp. 114–134). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hartford, B. S., & Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1996). ‘At your earliest convenience’: A study of written student requests to faculty. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning, monograph series (Vol. 7, pp. 55–69). Urbana Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, Division of English as an International Language Jenks, C. J. (2012 ). Doing being reprehensive: Some interactional features of English as a lingua franca in a chat room. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 386–405. Jeon, E. & Kaya, T. (2006). Effects of L2 instruction on interlanguage pragmatic development: A metaanalysis. In J. Norris & L. Ortega (eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (pp. 165–211). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Kakegawa, T. (2009). Development of the use of Japanese sentence final particles through email correspondence. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), Pragmatic competence (pp. 301–334). New York/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kim, E. Y. A., & Brown, L. (2014). Negotiating pragmatic competence in computer mediated communication: The case of Korean address terms. CALICO Journal, 31(3), 264–284. Kinginger, C. (2000). Learning the pragmatics of solidarity in the networked foreign language classroom. In J. K. Hall & L. S. Verplaetse (Eds.), Second and foreign language learning through classroom interaction (pp. 23–46). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lin, H. (2015). A meta-synthesis of empirical research on the effectiveness of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in SLA. Language Learning & Technology, 19(2), 85–117. Lin, W.-C., Huang, H.-T., & Liou, H.-C. (2013). The effects of text-based SCMC on SLA: A meta analysis. Language Learning & Technology, 17(2), 123–142. Morollón Martí, N., & Fernández, S. S. (2016). Telecollaboration and sociopragmatic awareness in the foreign language classroom. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 10(1), 34–48. Nakane, I., Kinoshita Thomson, C., & Tokumaru, S. (2014). Negotiation of power and solidarity in email: The case of students learning Japanese as a foreign language and their facilitators. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 24(1), 60–80. Sardegna, V., & Molle, D. (2010). Videoconferencing with strangers: Teaching Japanese EFL students verbal backchannel signals and reactive expressions. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(2), 279–310. Sauro, S. (2011). SCMC for SLA: A research synthesis. CALICO Journal, 28(2), 369–391. Sauro, S. (2013). Computer-mediated communication and second language development. In C. Chapelle (Ed.), Encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp. 1–5). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Sykes, J. (2005). Synchronous CMC and pragmatic development: Effects of oral and written chat. CALICO Journal, 22(3), 399–431. Taguchi, N. (2008). Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning, 58(1), 33–71. 385

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Taguchi, N. (2011). Do proficiency and study-abroad experience affect speech act production? Analysis of appropriateness, accuracy, and fluency. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 49(4), 265–293. Taguchi, N. (2015). “Contextually” speaking: A survey of pragmatic learning abroad, in class, and online. System, 48, 3–20. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taguchi, N., Gomez-Laich, M. P., & Arrufat-Marqués, M.-J. (2016). Comprehension of indirect meaning in Spanish as a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 49(4), 677–698. Takamiya, Y., & Ishihara, N. (2013). Blogging: Crosscultural interaction for pragmatic development. In N. Taguchi & J. Sykes (Eds.), Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 185–214). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Thorne, S. L., Sauro, S., & Smith, B. (2015). Technologies, identities, and expressive activity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 215–233. Tsai, M.-H., & Kinginger, C. (2015). Giving and receiving advice in computer-mediated peer response activities. CALICO Journal, 32(1), 82–112. van Compernolle, R. A., Williams, L., & McCourt, C. (2011). A corpus-driven study of second-person pronoun variation in L2 French synchronous computer-mediated communication. Intercultural Pragmatics, 8(1), 67–91. Vandergriff, I. (2013). Emotive communication online: A contextual analysis of computer-mediated communication (CMC) cues. Journal of Pragmatics, 51, 1–12. Vyatkina, N., & Belz, J. A. (2006). A learner corpus-driven intervention for the development of L2 pragamtic competence. In K. Bardovi-Harlig, J. C. Félix-Brasdefer, & A. S. Omar (Eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning (Vol. 11, pp. 315–357). University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, National Foreign Language Center. Ziegler, N. (2016). Synchronous computer-mediated communication and interaction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 38(3), 553–586.

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25 Pragmatics Learning in Digital Games and Virtual Environments Julie M. Sykes and Sébastien Dubreil

Introduction As human beings engage in interaction, they work together to co-construct meaning in relevant, complex, and dynamic ways. While general patterns of communication can be isolated for research and instructional purposes, the reality is that variability is at the heart of communication, making the teaching and learning of pragmatics (i.e., the expression and interpretation of one’s intended meaning in a social context) a challenging endeavor. The inherently variable nature of pragmatic behaviors makes digital games and virtual environments a particularly suitable environment for teaching and learning second language (L2) pragmatics. Digital games and virtual environments offer L2 learners a space in which they can engage in contextualized participatory practice designed to meet their individual needs while simultaneously offering just-in-time feedback. Furthermore, learners can simulate a range of participant roles in diverse social situations while engaging in goaloriented tasks. Learners can also practice a variety of pragmatic strategies in interaction, adapting their strategies to situations and modifying strategies for a different game outcome. This chapter explores the ways in which digital games and virtual environments are especially suited to the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. We begin by synthesizing notable characteristics of game-based learning, illustrating how these characteristics are compatible with the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. This theoretical discussion is followed by a synthesis of the current literature and suggestions for future research.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts The Teaching and Learning of L2 Pragmatics Pragmatics is a study of various ways (i.e., linguistic and nonlinguistic) in which meaning is communicated and interpreted in interaction. Pragmatics also addresses the sociocultural factors (individual and collective) that influence how we communicate and interpret meaning (Crystal, 1997; LoCastro, 2003; Yule, 1996). The teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics is complex, at best, and, in most cases, is relatively absent from the language classroom. The immense variation in pragmatic behaviors (dialect, social, and individual) makes it difficult to create a learning space that is both productive and dynamic for pragmatics learning (Kasper & Rose, 2002; Ishihara & Cohen, 2014; LoCastro, 2012, Taguchi, 2012). While the teaching and learning of pragmatics in L2 classroom contexts has been investigated from a variety of perspectives (see 387

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Chapter 26 in this volume), ideal models for the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics remain elusive (Taguchi, 2015). However, as can be seen in the section that follows, digital games and virtual affordances offer a unique learning space adept at handling the dynamic nature of language while also providing a scaled learning environment for the users themselves (see also Sykes, 2009, 2016).

Digital games and virtual environments Digital games and virtual environments have long been lauded as valuable contexts for language learning (Hubbard, 1991; Phillips, 1987), with the last ten years yielding a significant body of research around their use in, and out of, brick-and-mortar classrooms (see, for example, Cornillie, Thorne, & Desmet, 2012; Peterson, 2013; Reinders, 2012; Sykes & Reinhardt, 2012; Thomas, 2011). The teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics is included in much of this research. In this section, we explore key research from this area, highlighting fundamental characteristics of digital games and virtual environments that make them useful sites for the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. Before continuing, it is critical to note that there are a seemingly infinite number of types of digital games (e.g., role play, casual, adventure, first-person shooter) with an equally differing number of types of virtual worlds (see, Reinhardt & Sykes, 2012, for a detailed explanation of each type). Since an exploration of each game genre individually is beyond the scope of this chapter, one should consider the information presented here as a synthesis of possibilities, recognizing that there may be exceptions to each depending on the type of digital game or virtual environment in which one is interested in. As the field continues to grow, one can reasonably expect that the literature moves toward more detailed descriptions of individual game types, providing more fine-grained analyses of their affordances and potentials, in particular regarding L2 pragmatics learning. In this chapter we draw on Schell’s (2008) definition of a game as ‘a problem solving activity approached with a playful attitude’ (p. 37). In digital games, players enter the game willfully, follow (or flout) a set of established rules, and work within the constraints of those rules to complete goals and resolve conflict. Players are interactive, engaging with the game system itself as well as with other players, potentially outside of their immediate space. Virtual worlds are also digital systems in which players willfully engage with, but are typically guided by fewer, if any, established goals or required tasks within the system. Rules in virtual environments are established less by the system designers; rules are generated more by the users themselves as they engage with the virtual environment.

Characteristics of Digital Games and Virtual Environments As we consider the immense variability within digital games and virtual environments, a parallel between a good game design and a good L2 teaching practice emerges. Games involve a number of unique characteristics that can promote L2 learning. Drawing on the literature in game design and SLA, Sykes and Reinhardt (2012) highlight five areas in which digital games can enhance L2 teaching and learning. In the following, we discuss those five areas that are also relevant to pragmatics learning: goal orientation, interaction, feedback, context, and motivation.

Goal Orientation Goal orientation, or better described as a dynamic behavior of goal orientating, is a continuous, dynamic, negotiated interaction with the game in which the player completes a series of goals to, eventually, achieve the object of the game (i.e., what one has to do to win the game). During this 388

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process, the player constantly reassesses abilities, risks, challenges, and rewards while deciding which immediate goals will ultimately lead them to the overall outcome they desire (Sykes & Reinhardt, 2012, p. 20). Goal orienting is fundamentally player-driven, as opposed to instructordriven, as well as partially emergent and partially predetermined by the game design. Goal orientating is critical for pragmatics learning, where attention to individual choice and preference is key to meaningful outcomes. Within digital games, as well as within virtual environments with game-like behaviors, learners are able to maneuver the system to complete their own goals and engage with the content in a way that is most useful for them. Game designers can set a predetermined goal (e.g., apologizing to your professor for arriving late), but learners can choose how they want to achieve the goal. They can also witness the impact, or perlocutionary effect, of their pragmatic choice. For example, in the game Croquelandia (Sykes, 2010), players (in this case L2 Spanish learners) navigated a 3D, visually rendered environment in which they encountered several non-playing characters (NPCs) with which they had to carry out a number of pragmatic tasks such as apologizing to a friend (for being late) or a vendor (for breaking a vase), or making a request (e.g., borrowing a car). The game environment afforded players the ability to exhibit distinct gameplay styles and autonomy in their interactions with the quest activities. Another example is Tactical Language and Strategies Systems, where learners of languages critical to the armed forces (e.g., Arabic, Pashto, French, Chinese, Dari) are engaged in domain-specific language use and culture training to develop the wide variety of skills they need to accomplish specific tasks while deployed in the field. These tasks range from remembering to remove one’s sunglasses when interacting with someone, to being able to identify and develop relationships with tribal or village leaders or conducting business with a potential partner, to organizing humanitarian missions in hostile territory. In this case, the inherently dynamic nature of digital games and virtual environments also makes them highly useful for assessment purposes because players need to participate in a real-life communicative scenario in a contextualized social interaction (see the final section of this chapter for more details).

Interaction L2 interactions should occur with (i.e., interacting with game mechanics), through (i.e., interacting with peers playing the game), and around (i.e., participating in associated discourse communities) games. Interacting with game mechanics includes a wide range of activities ranging from moving from one spot to another in a game, responding to a prompt from the game, producing language using elements contained in the game architecture, or selecting tasks to complete. Interaction through the game encompasses the interactions the users themselves have while engaging with the game environments. For example, this might include interacting with peers for the purpose of collaborative action (e.g., organizing for a raid in World of Warcraft or strategizing how to save one another while playing multiplayer versions of Super Mario Brothers). Interactions around games refers to the attendant discourse communities (e.g., to offer help on how to beat a level or form hypotheses as to what is happening in a game world). The feature of interaction embedded in a game allows players to demonstrate pragmatic behaviors at numerous levels as they engage in interaction. It also allows them to make a variety of choices about how, with what, and with whom they interact. When designed well, interaction with the game facilitates overcoming the incorrect notion that there is only one standard model of pragmatic behavior for any given language and situation, allowing variability to be part of each individual player’s learning experience. Indeed, evidence exists that interaction through the game via massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft and Rust can facilitate L2 pragmatic development in Spanish (Soares, 2010) and English (Kirby, 2017), multilingual interaction (Thorne, 2008), and willingness to communicate (Reinders & Wattana, 2012). In addition, 389

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participation in guilds in MMORPGs presents the opportunity for an authentic social interaction and collaborative work that can promote socialization into appropriate pragmatic behaviors (Bryant, 2006). Finally, as learners engage in attendant discourse communities around the game, they can further develop L2 pragmatic abilities such as mitigating disagreement, expressing strategy, asking questions, and debating (Thorne, Black, & Sykes, 2009). An analysis of World of Warcraft discussion forum (Steinkuehler, 2008; Steinkuehler & Chmiel, 2006) has shown that players can demonstrate sound scientific discourse, system thinking, model-based reasoning, and theory building.

Feedback Perhaps one of the most useful characteristics of digital games for overcoming barriers to pragmatics teaching in a classroom setting is the existence of immediate, individualized feedback. Digital game feedback mechanisms can deliver individualized, real-time, scaffolded feedback as needed throughout the gameplay experience. Three core concepts frame feedback in games. First, the notion of fail states, or the intentional use of failure, can teach the users how to build the skills they need to proceed in the game. Take, for example, the simple task of learning to collect items. At first, one or two enemies might be protecting what you need. You learn to maneuver them by failing at your first few attempt to escape. As you get better, more and more enemies can be added. Second, the notion of discernibility allows the player to know where he or she is at all times. This might include a progress bar or coins they have collected, but whatever the measurements of success or failure, they are dynamic and immediately available to the player. Finally, feedback is both positive (e.g., getting something or leveling up) or negative (e.g., dying or having something taken). Both work together to provide the optimal play experience. Each of these three concepts are realized utilizing a number of play mechanics, such as (1) leveling (a player moves up in level as they get better), (2) points (points are added or taken away based on immediate behavior), (3) asset building (the player collects something), (4) skill building (the player gains skills through practice), (5) tips and hints (tips and hints are given based on how well a player is doing, (6) real-time progress bars (short-term progress bars which demonstrate to the player how they are doing at a specific moment), (7) sound effects (noises indicate success or failure as the behavior happens, and (8) active/inactive elements (elements in the game become active or inactive based on a players skill level) (Sykes & Reinhardt, 2012, p. 61). The dynamic and multifaceted feedback system of digital games makes it possible for a language teacher to ‘give feedback’ to a large group of learners simultaneously, offering just the resources they need to be successful. This stands in stark contrast to the necessary generalized feedback that pervades in language classes with large numbers of students.

Context Designed and emergent personal narratives serve to situate gameplay and contextualize language learning in a meaningful way. Designed narratives are the worlds created by the game designers themselves. It might be a neighborhood, a restaurant, or even a mystical land with flying dragons. These serve to add context to the gameplay and situate the behavior, adding emotion to the game space through storytelling, often, but not always, visual. Engagement with this designed narrative, when done well, adds emotion to the play experience. This means that learners can feel the impact of their pragmatic success and failure as they move through the environment. Furthermore, as players develop an in-game identity, they also construct a personal narrative and create their own context, for example, a determination of characters they like or do not like. This immersive experience allows them to explore and, more importantly, internalize the impact of their pragmatic behavior in the target language. Examples of this context are plethoric, ranging from a context to discuss social and educational issues as a result of participation in The Sims 390

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(Gee, 2017), to a study abroad environment in a Spanish-speaking (Croquelandia) or Chinesespeaking (Zon) world, and back again to a historical context in which learners must solve a murder based on exploration of a real neighborhood and fictional environment (Mentira). No matter what context is being explored, the ability to create an emotional connection to the pragmatic situation presented allows learners to situate their action within an authentic context and examine the mutual impact of their pragmatic decisions on that context.

Motivation Goal-orienting, interaction, feedback, and context function simultaneously create a motivating learning experience that is just at the right level for the player, or what Gee (2004) calls pleasantly frustrating. That is to say, there is enough challenge for the player to want to keep playing with just enough resources and information to make that play experience possible, encourage perseverance, and foster replayability (i.e., voluntary, frequent exposure to the game content). Additionally, good games are scaffolded in such a manner that they teach players how to play through the feedback mechanism and by lowering the consequences of failure (for example, see McGonigal, 2011; Ryan & Deci, 2000). This scaffolding can be affective (e.g., granting rewards, teaching persistence—Dweck, 2006), cognitive (e.g., orienting to scientific reasoning—Zimmerman, 2014), or metacognitive (e.g., helping the player assume a new learner identity or cultivate new forms of engagement with a new kind of learning—Gee, 2005). These features may encourage risk-taking, meaning that through each iteration in the game, a player may make different pragmatic choices and experience first-hand the consequences of his or her choices. As they become more expert players, users can reach a flow state, which makes playing rewarding and increases motivation to play and sense of control (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). This can have a positive effect on players’ taste for self-directed and participatory learning (Gauvain, 2001; O’Loughlin, 1992). Research has shown that games that incorporate the motivational tools for interactivity yield increased knowledge of the subject matter (Butler, Forsyth, Halpern, Graesser, & Millis, 2011; Halpern, Millis, Graesser, Butler, Forsyth, & Cai, 2012).

Recent Empirical Findings and Critical Insights Current work in the area of L2 pragmatics, digital games, and virtual environments is limited, especially as compared to many of the topics explored in this volume. It remains primarily theoretical in nature, with scholars pointing to the many potential benefits of their design and implementation summarized in the previous section (see Sykes & Reinhardt, 2012; Taguchi & Sykes, 2013; Thorne, 2008; Thorne et al., 2009; Wehner, Gump, & Downey, 2011). The initial empirical work that does exist focuses on two areas: (1) the design, implementation, and evaluation of teaching interventions that use digital games and virtual environments, and (2) the changing pragmatic landscape that is emerging as a result of interaction in digital games and virtual environments. In the following, we will present recent empirical findings in these two areas. As is often the case with emerging research areas, findings sometimes indicate more questions than answers, creating the conditions for a wide variety of empirical investigations.

Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Teaching Interventions for L2 Pragmatics At the time of this writing, the investigation of digital games and virtual environments for the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics remains limited. The most empirical support offers insight into the ways in which the design of digital environments, be it games or more open-ended 391

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virtual spaces, make use of potential affordances for the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. Research entails the investigation of digital tools created with the specific intention of teaching and learning L2 pragmatics (e.g., Croquelandia, Mentira) and the investigation of pragmatics learning within environments created for the commercial market (World of Warcraft, Second Life). Findings offer unique insights into the design of games and virtual worlds themselves, as well as the tasks and interventions that are made possible by their existence. From the design perspective, the majority of the work has been done in the genres of multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) and place-based, augmented reality games, with a handful of studies examining L2 pragmatics within digital games made for the commercial market. While each line of work adds insight into ways in which a more comprehensive digital game could be designed, a digital game intervention, in the classic sense, has not yet been built or empirically tested at this time. As a result, much remains to be learned in this area. What we do know more about is the type of L2 pragmatic content that is best suited to digital games and virtual environments. We have insight into the usefulness, or lack thereof, of specific design features (e.g., quest restarts and feedback mechanisms) that are most relevant to improved learning outcomes. To investigate a variety of game design constructs and learning outcomes, Sykes (2009, 2010, 2013, 2014) presents a series of studies that evaluate the effectiveness of Croquelandia, the first MUVE built with the explicit intention of teaching and learning L2 pragmatics in Spanish, more specifically, for learning to make requests and apologize in a variety of home, social, and school contexts. The player starts the simulation with a notification that he or she has won a trip abroad to a Spanish-speaking country. Players are then placed in their room at the host family’s house. While making their way through the house scenarios, players learn that they need to go to the plaza to shop and also to the university to talk to their professor, all while successfully navigating a series of request and apology interactions at varying levels of social distance, severity, and power. Each scenario requires appropriately navigating the target language functions, with the ultimate success or failure dependent on the realization of appropriate pragmatic behaviors toward the individual simulated characters in the space. The data set from this study was comprised of 120 hours of in-game behavior data that allowed the researcher to follow each player’s trajectory through the virtual space and 30 hours of interview data from 53 advanced learners of Spanish who were all enrolled in a third-year Spanish language and culture course. Findings suggest that MUVEs are especially effective in developing metapragmatic awareness, interpretation skills, and learners’ ability to analyze pragmatic behavior, but do not necessarily lead to increased learning of semantic formulae used to make a request or apologize (i.e., pragmalinguistic features). For example, as reported by Sykes (2009), learners demonstrated minimal improvement from pre- to post-test when measuring their ability to produce new semantic formulae (e.g., hearer-oriented strategies such as Me trae . . . and Me presta . . . in Spanish requests), yet interview data indicates noticeable growth in their ability to interpret and explain the pragmatic nuances that were directly tied to the requesting behavior in the MUVE (e.g., the need to pay attention to request orientation or the need to be more direct when requesting something from a friend). Findings also suggest that pragmatic contents are learned better in MUVEs when they are salient in nature. Compared with requests, the learning of apologies demonstrated slightly more improvement in the area of the production (as assessed with a discourse completion test), with similar results in the areas of metapragmatic awareness and interpretation skills (Sykes, 2013). Sykes offered the extremely salient nature of the apologies scenarios as a possible design rationale for the better learning outcomes of apologies, which learners also commented on frequently throughout the interview data. As future MUVE tasks and environments are built, additional evidence around content variability (e.g., saliency, learnability) will be fundamental to successful design, implementation, and outcomes. 392

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As more and more digital games are implemented and the more game-like specific features become, the more readily the role of digital game-based learning can be understood. As an increasingly large number of specific features are analyzed, researchers and designers alike will be better equipped to make evidence-driven design decisions. In the case of Croquelandia, data indicate four distinct gameplay patterns that emerged from the design of the experience, with the majority of learners playing the game as an assignment to be completed and not perceiving it as a game-based experience (Sykes, 2010). This pattern minimizes the impact of the game behavior on learning, likely reducing its effects. As future environments are created, it becomes of fundamental importance to design these learning environments like game designers do in order to make best use of the benefits of game-based learning. This is particularly visible in the case of ‘quest restart’ patterns, i.e., ‘the capability which allows players during in-game tasks to voluntarily reset the task upon feedback’ (Sykes, 2014, p. 165). In the case of Croquelandia, the quest restart pattern mirrored that of a task revision, which determined whether or not a learner needed to engage with the task further. If unsuccessful, the player received a red checkmark, indicating that they needed to restart the quest to be successful. As a result, the quest restart did not appear as a means of automatic, dynamic feedback where fail states were employed as a learning tool. The intention was to use quest restart patterns to allow learners to try again, but the learners only started over in instances of full failure and not in cases of desired experimentation. Future game designs must take this into account to ensure as much interaction and experimentation with the virtual scenarios as possible (Sykes, 2014). Continuing the use of game-like immersive environments for L2 pragmatic instruction, Taguchi, Li, and Tang (2017) report the findings of recent work utilizing digital simulations to teach the production and comprehension of formulaic sequences in Chinese. Pre-/post-/delayed post-test data from 30 learners of L2 Chinese at varying proficiency levels indicated overall effectiveness of the digital simulation. On both the immediate post-test and delayed post-test two weeks later, learners of Chinese demonstrated a gain in both production and comprehension of 28 formulaic sequences in Chinese. This study is further evidence toward the effective use of digital simulations for the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. Place-based, augmented-reality mobile games have served as a site to investigate L2 pragmatic development in local communities. Mentira (mentira.org) is an augmented-reality game for the teaching and learning of pragmatic behaviors in Spanish (Holden & Sykes, 2011). Drawing on lessons from the design and implementation of Croquelandia, Mentira was created to teach metapragmatic analysis through salient variation and pragmalinguistic structures that appear as both appropriate and inappropriate, depending on the interlocutor. As such, the project sought to move beyond production outcomes that had been created previously. In Mentira, students learning Spanish are tasked with clearing their family name after a prominent family member has been implicated in a murder. They must investigate the neighborhood and talk with members of their own and other families to get clues as to who might have committed the crime. Success in the game is based on players’ ability to get the clues they need, only possible through pragmatically appropriate language. For example, in the Gurulé family, direct requests are much preferred to mitigated request. Therefore, if the learner utilizes a direct request-making expression they get additional clues. Whereas, if they mitigate too heavily, the non-player character indicates that they do not have time and may only give one clue. Preliminary results indicated a strong emphasis on place as a means for engaging learners in pragmatic analysis and reflection (Sykes & Holden, 2011). Learners demonstrate the ability to perceive the pragmatic distinctions between the families and were willing to help each other figure out which semantic formulae to use to get the best clues. Results also demonstrated the necessity for pragmatic feedback that extends throughout the place-based experience, including game feedback, environmental feedback, peer-to-peer feedback, and expert-learner feedback (Holden & Sykes, 2013). 393

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Finally, a handful of researchers have begun to investigate L2 pragmatic development within commercial game spaces. Results show that participation in digital games, specifically massively multiplayer online games, has a positive effect on language socialization and can facilitate L2 pragmatic development in English and Spanish (in terms of learning basic functions such as greetings and requests) (Kirby, 2017; Soares, 2010), group collaboration (Bryant, 2006), multilingual interaction (Thorne, 2008), and willingness to communicate (Reinders & Wattana, 2012). While results are not generalizable beyond this small body of work, most of which is comprised of case studies with small sample sizes, these studies represent an initial indication that commercial game spaces are likely candidates for the meaningful learning of L2 pragmatics. As reported by both Kirby (2017) and Soares (2010), player-to-player interactions produce the contexts in which L2 pragmatic acquisition can, and does, occur, albeit in limited contexts. Kirby offers a case study in which observations of three players of Rust (one non-native and two native speakers of English) indicate instances of solidarity building and language socialization as the newcomer learns the discourse needed to be part of the community. Soares (2010) confirms similar patterns and extends participant observations in case studies of two L2 learners of Spanish in World of Warcraft. Her findings also indicate that interactions in massively multiplayer online games are valuable sites for the acquisition of L2 pragmatic skills needed for basic pragmatic functions (i.e., greetings, leave-takings, requests for help), in-game pragmatic needs (i.e., invitations and negotiations), and high stakes pragmatic behaviors (i.e., consolations, refusals, and gendered interactions). As noted here, each study represents a very small sample size; however, promising results indicate that continued exploration is both warranted and necessary. Regardless of the approach one takes, when designing a digital game and virtual environment or utilizing a commercial game, results are promising in light of the complex L2 pragmatic skills needed as part of any L2 repertoire. As more data emerge related to design, implementation, in-class evaluation, and out-of-class play, the field will undoubtedly witness a variety of burgeoning opportunities for L2 pragmatic development that can be made possible through technological innovation.

The Changing Pragmatic Landscape In addition to an increased understanding of digital games for learning purposes, the impact of interactions occurring in digital games and virtual environments on human communication cannot be underestimated. In recent years, digital technologies have expanded the possibilities for human interactions in ways never before imaginable. This ever-evolving landscape, which necessitates language expertise for participation, further complexifies the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics both in and out of the classroom. This is supported by Thorne, Sauro, and Smith (2015), who note that ‘the Internet has qualitatively transformed everyday communication… [and] constitutes a multiplicity of language contact zones that is unprecedented in human history’ (p. 215). Now, more than ever before, considerations around L2 pragmatics require an understanding of pragmatic behaviors occurring in the digital world that surrounds us. The traditional comparison of offline and online discourse is an inaccurate means of categorizing language with, in some cases, digital communication superseding that of the face-to-face space. Empirical work examining the pragmatic behaviors of digital spaces is consistently emerging. For example, explicit attention to pragmatic behavior in internet forums and affinity spaces (Gonzales, 2013; Jenkins, 2006; Thorne & Ivković, 2015) affords the opportunity for multilingual engagement. In a year-long micro-analytic study, Gonzales (2013) demonstrates the impact of synchronous computer-mediated communication on learners’ rapport orientation as demonstrated by the movement toward the unmarked pattern of extended leave-takings in Spanish. Relatedly, Blattner and Fiori (2009, 2011) report a positive impact on sociopragmatic elements of language and multiliteracy of 13 intermediate learners of Spanish as a result of their participation in an organized group in the social network, Facebook. More descriptive in nature, work in this 394

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area also uses evidence from digital discourse to describe the pragmatic behaviors of language in digital contexts such as the additional of relevance through activation and inference in hashtags used in Twitter (Scott, 2015), identity presentation in online profiles and emails (Yus, 2010), and multilingual social affordances in a multilingual interaction among strangers on YouTube (Thorne & Ivković, 2015). More recent is work related to games and virtual environments that describes pragmatic behavior in immersive spaces. Topics include ways in which language functions, such as compliments (Cirillo, 2012) and leave-takings (Pojanapunya & Jaroenkitboworn, 2011) that occur in the virtual world of Second Life. In terms of compliments, compliments in Second Life were compared with face-to-face compliment responses, with the compliments in the virtual world yielding a stronger tendency for interlocutors to accept a compliment. The virtual space also affords the opportunity for attention to face in leave-takings as evidenced by an analysis of 39 leavetaking sequences in which the interlocutors opted for closing sequences (including pre-closing moves) as opposed to abrupt closings (Pojanapunya & Jaroenkitboworn, 2011). Finally, a study of intersubjectivity, as operationalized via response cries (i.e., exclamatory utterance in response to a game action, such as ‘Wait. Don’t do that’), indicates influence on face-to-face interactional patterns (i.e., through and around games) between parents and children while engaged in gameplay in digital games (Aarosond & Aronsson, 2009). As more information becomes available about how and when these practices occur in online communities, the understanding, and explicit instruction, of L2 pragmatic behaviors in digital games and virtual environments will prove to be of fundamental importance. Attention to these emerging behaviors as part of one’s language-learning experience will undoubtedly create a more comprehensive and complex repertoire of abilities in the target language.

Conclusion and Future Directions Looking toward the future necessitates an expanded research agenda in four areas: (1) the design of digital games and virtual worlds to better understand how to best leverage their affordances to achieve the best learning outcomes; (2) the understanding of L2 pragmatic development in commercial games, including ways to leverage commercial game spaces for L2 pragmatic development; (3) an increased understanding of pragmatic behavior in digital games and virtual environments; and (4) the use of digital games and virtual environments for assessing L2 pragmatic competence. It is critical to design digital games and virtual worlds in a way that they best leverage the affordances (i.e., goal-orientation, individualized feedback, opportunities for interaction, contextualized language use) to achieve the best learning outcomes. Digital games and virtual environments offer a noteworthy innovation especially suited to overcoming many existing obstacles to pragmatic instruction (e.g., limited availability for authentic contexts for practice, difficulty in providing timely feedback). Important lessons about what to do and what not to do when creating virtual experiences targeted at the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics have already been uncovered. Based on these initial findings, targeted and systematic empirical research is the next step toward assessing optimal learning outcomes. As researchers and educators become more adept at the implementation of digital games, research-based environments and tasks are fundamental to their success for learning L2 pragmatics both in and out of the classroom. As can be seen in the previous section, empirical research on the use of commercial digital games for L2 pragmatic development is limited. While the specific linguistic content of some commercial game spaces might be less than ideal, transfer of L2 pragmatic skills around analysis and awareness of L2 pragmatic behaviors is promising. A large-scale study of L2 pragmatics learning in a new digital game space would undoubtedly reveal significant insight into how, where, and why certain pragmatic skills are especially relevant and meaningful to learners as they 395

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play commercial games. Furthermore, systematic understanding of opportunities for pragmatic practice will allow for the creation of instructional interventions that can take advantage of the language socialization practices already happening both in games and other online discursive communities (e.g., fan fiction, discussion forums, microblogging), increasing the relevance of the language learned and helping to facilitate additional depth and breadth of L2 pragmatic development in digital games on the commercial market. With technological innovation occurring at a rapid pace, pragmatic behaviors will also continue to evolve. The advent of artificial intelligence personalities such as Siri and Alexa has drastically changed the discursive landscape, as has the Twitter landscape in response to the current political climate in the U.S.A. From the barrage of tweets coming out of the White House to the #MeToo movement, users of online platforms are devising new ways to leverage the affordances of the technology to design new forms of interactions and the accompanying pragmatics used to function within them. Smart speakers have made users aware of the way in which they use language. They have also made users aware that adding a participant in the conversation displaces or at least reorganizes the linguistic landscape in noticeable ways, especially when said speakers start laughing at odd times. As these digital landscapes and the pragmatic behaviors occurring in them continue to evolve, the need for additional empirical investigation is critical so that we become increasingly equipped to expand our own pragmatic repertoires, as well as the repertoires of our students. Finally, an era of increased accountability and a strong emphasis on high-stakes testing has fueled the development and expansion of proficiency assessments around the world. As L2 pragmatic instruction is more systematically integrated in world language curricula, assessment measures must also align with expectations. Despite the critical need for L2 pragmatic competence in multilingual interactions, a notable gap exists with regard to the measurement of pragmatic abilities. Complexities, including language variety, individual preferences, and difficulty in assessment, contribute to this void. Previous research shows that pragmatic competence is especially difficult to measure due to learner subjectivity, lack of theoretical support, and immense variation in dialect, sociolect, and idiolect (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Félix-Brasdefer, 2007; Roever, 2013; Roever, Fraser, & Elder, 2014; see also Chapters 20 and 29 in this volume). Digital games and virtual environments offer a unique tool to expand the availability of L2 pragmatic assessment and thus should be the target of significant attention in the future. The use of digital assessment measures allows for an individualized experience validated across learners, examines a set of macro-level skills to interface with other linguistic abilities, and provides a context adept at considering language variation. Initial designs for a virtual environment to assess L2 pragmatic abilities is underway as a collaboration with the Center for Applied Second Language Studies and the Assessment and Evaluation Resource Center (http​s://c​asls.​uoreg​on.ed​u/cla​ssroo​m-res​ource​s/ int​ercul​tural​-simu​latio​n). Drawing on analysis of 54 models of L2 pragmatic ability and intercultural competence, the assessment model of L2 pragmatic competence that accounts for pragmatic knowledge, analysis skills, learner subjectivity, and awareness has been implemented to design a simulation-based assessment of L2 pragmatic competence. Pilot scenarios engage learners in interaction with peers (i.e., to refuse an invitation to a party), interaction with superiors (i.e., to successfully navigate an advising session), and service encounters (i.e., to buy groceries in the store). Simulation data, combined with retrospective protocols, are combined to yield a learner profile that evaluated all four dimensions of pragmatic ability. While just in its initial pilot stages, such a project offers immense potential for future research endeavors. Regardless of the approach one takes, digital games and virtual environments offer a myriad of possibilities for the teaching, learning, and assessing of L2 pragmatics. As research-based insights become increasingly available, we will be able to better understand how to make use of the affordances offered by digital games and virtual environments for the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics, and we can expect to see possibilities for classroom implementation and curricular integration of L2 pragmatics that, at the present moment, is untapped. 396

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Further Reading Sykes, J. (2016). Technologies for teaching and learning intercultural competence and interlanguage pragmatics. In S. Sauro & C. Chapelle (Eds.), Handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning (pp. 119–133). New York: Wiley. This chapter expands the notion of the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics in light of emerging digital technologies. The contribution begins with a discussion of L2 pragmatics within the larger scope of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and Transnational Languaculture. This discussion is then followed by an exploration of how various technological innovations contribute to the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics, including a discussion of digital games, hashtags, social networks, and online social communities. Suggestions for future research are included. Thorne, S. L., & Ivković, D. (2015). Multilingual Eurovision meets plurilingual YouTube: Linguascaping discursive ontologies. In D. Koike & C. Blyth (Eds.), Dialogue in multilingual, multimodal, and multicompetent communities (pp. 167–192). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. This article explores the complexity and heterogeneous use of language in online social media communities, in this case, YouTube. The authors explore the plurilingual nature of commentary around the YouTube comments associated with a very popular European talent show. The analysis demonstrates the ways in which digitally mediated interaction is shaping the landscape, and redefining pragmatic behaviors of the space.

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26 Pragmatics in a Language Classroom Yumiko Tateyama

Introduction Pragmatics learning entails understanding form–function–context mappings of target pragmatic features. The difficulty of pragmatics learning lies in its complexity. Because form–function–context mappings are not always straightforward or salient, pragmatics learning poses a special challenge to students learning a second language. Additionally, pragmatic competence encompasses a wide range of knowledge including ‘how to interpret and perform speech acts, conversational management, discourse organization, turn taking, implicature, negotiation, pragmatic routines, and sociolinguistic aspects of language use such as choice of address terms’ (Bardovi-Harlig, 2015, p. 135) (see also Chapter 1 in this volume). Providing effective instruction can facilitate students’ learning of the target pragmatics. However, as Kasper (1997) has noted, arranging learning opportunities in a way that promotes the development of L2 pragmatic competence has been a challenge for both researchers and practitioners alike for the past two decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, studies on second language (L2) pragmatics focused primarily on L2 speakers’ use of target pragmatic features, often by direct comparison with that of L1 speakers. This comparison was used to elucidate learner infelicities. Following an early call for studies examining the development of L2 pragmatic competence (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996), and a call for considering the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction (Kasper, 1997), the number of classroom-based studies on pragmatics learning has greatly increased. These studies are roughly divided into two types: observational and interventional. Observational studies look at teachers’ and students’ use of pragmatic resources in the classroom. For example, studies that examine classroom discourse from a language socialization perspective (Ochs, 1996; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) consider teachers’ instructional practices that are intended to socialize students to the social and pragmatic norms of the target language community (see Duff, 2012; Duff & Talmy, 2011, for a review). Interventional studies, on the other hand, examine efficacy of pragmatics instruction by comparing instructed and non-instructed learner groups, as well as groups that received different types of instruction such as explicit and implicit instruction (see Rose, 2005; Jeon & Kaya, 2006, Taguchi, 2015 for a review; see also Chapter 19 in this volume). The first half of this chapter reviews observational studies. It presents a review of studies that examine classroom interaction from a language socialization perspective. The focus is on teacher socialization of students to target pragmatic features. The process of socialization is dynamic and not always linear and may involve resistance to target pragmatics norms or resistance to the 400

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teacher’s instructional practices. These issues are addressed in the chapter, followed by a review of studies on incidental pragmatics learning. Incidental pragmatics learning in the classroom refers to incidental learning that occurs when students are exposed to input of the target pragmatics and receive opportunities for output (Taguchi, 2015). Over the past two decades, Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis (Schmidt, 1993) has been widely accepted. However, there has been little application of the noticing hypothesis in the research on incidental pragmatics learning. This issue is addressed in the section on incidental pragmatics learning. The second half of the chapter deals with issues related to textbook representation of target pragmatics features and instructional practices. Textbook dialogues have been criticized (e.g., Diepenbroek & Derwing, 2013) because they do not reflect naturally occurring conversations that might occur outside the classroom. Along with such criticism, the chapter also looks at some innovative instructional approaches used in studies conducted in L2 classrooms. While there is a general consensus that the formal classroom does not provide an optimal environment for learning pragmatics (Taguchi, 2015), the chapter explores the possibility of classroom-based pragmatics learning and proposes direction for future research.

Classroom-based Pragmatics Learning IRF Sequence My discussion of pragmatics learning and socialization into the targeted pragmatic norms in the classroom begins with consideration of how student–teacher interactions are organized. Studies that examine classroom discourse have characterized a basic student–teacher interaction as the well-known three-part sequence, i.e., initiation-response-feedback or IRF (Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Because it is the teacher who normally initiates a question and provides feedback or evaluation, this instructional sequence has been criticized for restricting student opportunities to participate in the learning process (e.g., Hall & Walsh, 2002; Waring, 2008). However, for novice learners, when viewed from a language socialization perspective, this predictable classroom structure of three-part routines ‘provides a framework whereby learners can practice and gain reinforcement in listening to and participating in classroom dialogue’ (Kanagy 1999, p. 1469). In fact, when learners engage in peer conversations after having become familiar with this three-part sequence, they take a more active role in performing the third position that is normally occupied by the teacher (e.g., Ohta, 1999; 2001). As Kanagy notes, routines like IRF serve as an important mechanism for L2 acquisition and socialization (see also Burdelski & Cook, 2012).

Language Socialization and Pragmatics Learning in a Classroom According to Ochs (1996), language socialization is ‘the process whereby children and other novices are socialized through language, part of such socialization being a socialization to use language meaningfully, appropriately, and effectively’ (p. 408). Participation in recurring situated activities that reflect cultural orientations and practices in a given society mediates the development of the novice’s competence to interact with the members of the community and their knowledge of the values, practices, identities, ideologies, and stances of that community (Duff & Talmy, 2011; see also Chapter 9 in this volume). The L2 socialization process is dynamic in that the novice does not always reproduce or maintain the given practices or identities; rather, the novice may challenge or resist them. Further, while novices are being socialized by the more proficient members of the community, these proficient members are also socialized by novices into their expert roles and learn about specific needs of the novices (see Young & Miller, 2004, for example). Thus, language socialization is a bidirectional (or multidirectional) dynamic process 401

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constantly negotiated among the members of the community (Duff & Talmy, 2011; Ishihara & Takamiya, 2014). Studies that investigated how teachers socialize students into the target language norms and practices include Burdelski (2010), Byon (2006), Duff (1995), Kanagy (1999), Ohta (1994, 1999, 2001), and Willett (1995). In her study of a college-level Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) class, Ohta (1994) found that the use of Japanese affective particles ne and yo was more prevalent among teachers who viewed themselves as providers of opportunities for students to interact in Japanese. Because these affective or interactional particles, especially the particle ne, are difficult to acquire for adult learners of Japanese (Yoshimi, 1999), teachers’ use of this particle provides a valuable opportunity for learners to observe how these particles are used. In her longitudinal study, Ohta (1999) demonstrated how JFL learners are socialized into the appropriate use of ne-marked assessments through teacher guidance and scaffolding. Particularly notable was the development of the focal participant’s use of a variety of expressions with ne to show affect toward an interlocutor. As peripheral participants in a teacher-fronted class, learners typically have limited opportunities to use the ne-marked assessment expression in the IRF sequence. However, participant observation and scaffolding can create opportunities for learners to understand the assessment expression and then use the expression during peer interactions (Ohta, 2001). Kanagy (1999) examined how kindergarten children in a Japanese immersion program in the United States were socialized into classroom interactional routines (i.e., greeting, attendance and personal introduction). Burdelski (2010) looked at how daycare teachers in Japan socialized children (both L1 and L2 speakers of Japanese) into politeness routines. Both Kanagy’s and Burdelski’s studies highlighted the teacher guidance and scaffolding that assisted children in their development of interactional competence. It is clear from these studies that the teacher plays a crucial role in the socialization of students into the target language and cultural norms, as well as in their development of interactional competence. At the same time, we also need to recognize the role that peers play in the socialization process. Burdelski’s study reported an instance where an L2 Japanese-speaking child was being socialized into a politeness routine through the mediation of the teacher and an older L1 Japanese-speaking child. The help provided by the older peer clearly facilitated and complemented the teacher’s efforts. This study is valuable because research on peer language socialization (Goodwin & Kyratzis, 2012) is generally under-represented in the literature. Studies that examine the socialization process of the same participant for an extended period of time (e.g., over a year) are limited. Cekaite’s (2007) study is a rare example. Cekaite provided a detailed account of how a Kurdish child acquired interactional competence to participate in multiparty classroom talk during her first year in a Swedish immersion classroom. The child went through different periods, starting as a silent child whose participation was mostly limited to routine classroom activities to a noisy, loud child and then finally a skillful student who was able to self-select in teacher-led multiparty conversational activities. Cekaite’s study shows that the socialization process is not linear and that learners negotiate their own identities during that process (Willett, 1995; see also Chapter 7 in this volume).

Resistance to Pragmatics Norms by L2 Learners in a Classroom Student resistance to classroom practices is documented in Kidd’s (2016) study, which examined identity construction as revealed through the pragmatics of face among Japanese learners of English during interactions with their L1 English-speaking teacher in a Japanese classroom. In addition to detailed analysis of classroom interactions from a multimodal perspective, Kidd also incorporated retrospective interviews with teacher and students in order to gain insight into the teacher’s classroom teaching practices and beliefs, as well as student perceptions of the teacher’s verbal and nonverbal behavior in given contexts. The study revealed incongruences in what was 402

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considered conventional language use and behavior by the teacher and the students. For example, when the students were having difficulty answering questions, they did not always positively perceive the teacher’s use of Japanese as assistance nor did they appreciate or understand the teacher’s less tolerant attitude toward students’ silence. Different socio-cultural conventions and expectations affected teacher and student perceptions of silence, resulting in different pragmatic interpretations (see also Morita, 2004). While the socialization process itself is not the main focus of Kidd’s study, multiple data sources used in the study provide us with insights into what actually takes place in the L2 classroom. The study shows that both teacher and students are active agents in a highly contextualized or situated learning process (cf. Watson-Gegeo, 2004). This type of learner subjectivity involving ‘learners’ own subjective categories including attitudes, perceptions of situations, and affective disposition’ (Bardovi-Harlig, 2017, p. 229) has been studied in terms of learners’ intended adoption of or resistance to perceived L2 norms (Ishihara & Tarone, 2009; Siegal, 1996; see also Chapter 11 in this volume).

Incidental Pragmatics Learning Ortega (2009) defines incidental learning as ‘learning without intention, while doing something else’ (p. 94). Ortega states that incidental learning is indeed possible in L2 and gives the example of vocabulary learning while doing pleasure reading. However, she does acknowledge the possibility that this might be accompanied by some deliberate (although momentary) turning of attention to the input. Some studies have examined incidental language learning in L2 content courses where the primary focus of instruction was the subject matter, rather than the language itself. Rodgers (2015), for example, investigated the development of L2 proficiency among students enrolled in upper-level literacy/culture courses (French and Spanish) at a university in the United States. Rogers reported positive evidence of incidental language learning over the course of a semester, but it was mostly limited to writing, with little evidence in speaking. The improvement in writing was attributed to the availability of instructor feedback. The possibility of incidental pragmatics learning in the classroom is intriguing. However, studies that have systematically investigated how students incidentally learn pragmatic features are rare. Some observational studies suggest that rich target pragmatic input in class can contribute to pragmatic development. For example, Ohta (1999, 2001) showed that during teacher fronted instruction, students were exposed to teacher input of ne-marked assessments such as ii desu ne ‘that’s nice, isn’t it?’ in the third position of the IRF sequence (see also the previous section). Being able to understand the ne-marked expression through participant observation promoted students’ own use of the expression during peer interactions. In addition to rich input, teacher scaffolding also contributed to the students’ use of pragmatic features. Taguchi (2012) examined Japanese college-level EFL students’ implicature comprehension and speech-act production over the course of one academic year. Based on the analysis of multiple data sources (e.g., pragmatic tests, interviews, class observations), Taguchi noted that frequent jokes and sarcasm produced by the teacher in the classroom might have contributed to the students’ development of implicature comprehension. Both Ohta and Taguchi’s studies point to the fact that recurring practice in the classroom can produce positive effects on students’ pragmatics learning, perhaps allowing students to notice the target pragmatic features (Schmidt, 1993). Compared to skill-based L2 classrooms, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classes provide more exposure to and practice of various speech acts that occur naturally while learning the subject matter (Taguchi, 2018). Students use L2 to request information (DaltonPuffer & Nikula, 2006), to negotiate misunderstandings and disagreements (Nikula, 2008), and to display epistemic positions (Kääntä, 2014). While opportunities for incidental pragmatics learning may be enhanced in CLIL classes, it should be noted that the communicative intentions of L2 teachers and students are embedded in a complex framework of institutional, curriculum, 403

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and task demands (Nizegorodcew, 2007). Dalton-Puffer and Nikula’s (2006) study of teacher and students’ directives in Finnish and Austrian content classrooms provides some insights. The authors reported that directives that demanded information were normally performed directly by both teachers and students. These findings were attributed to the educational context where such demands appeared to be fully licensed. Both students and teachers have the right and obligation to ask for and provide information in the given context. In contrast, performing directives for action requires more interpersonal work (e.g., asking for a student’s ID number). Evidence for this is found in signs of redressive action such as politeness markers that are used to mitigate the requestive force. Another issue that is particularly relevant to CLIL classes is the question of norms. Nikula (2008) notes that although participants in her study did not use the same strategies that L1 speakers would use, they were able to successfully participate in interactions while attending to interpersonal relationships. Nikula’s argument for interactional accomplishment as pragmatic success (see also Bardovi-Harlig, 2005; Firth & Wagner, 1997) aligns with what interactants have to accomplish in a lingua franca setting – communicating effectively and competently with L2 speakers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As relatively proficient L2 speakers of the target language, students enrolled in CLIL classes have an opportunity to engage in various speech acts and other pragmatic language use, including subject-specific language use (Nikula, 2012). While this type of environment appears to be conducive for incidental pragmatics learning, studies also show that students tend to adopt a very informal style of speaking instead of conforming to a more formal academic discourse (Nikula, 2007; see also Dalton-Puffer, 2011). Future research might explore the norms that students in CLIL classes draw on, along with the pragmatic features that students may or may not learn incidentally in a classroom (see also the last section in this chapter).

Textbooks and Instructional Practices Pragmatics in L2 Textbooks Of all the possible language learning materials, textbooks are considered to be the backbone of second and foreign language teaching (Diepenbroek & Derwing, 2013). Textbooks provide key information about the target language, often serving as the main source of input for learners (Nuzzo, 2015). Yet, it has been noted that, compared to grammar and lexicon, textbook treatment of pragmatic features is not very systematic (Bardovi-Harligh, 2017; Yoshimi, 2009) (see also Chapter 21 in this volume). While existing textbooks include various pragmatic features as instructional units, they remain inadequate in terms of the scope and quality of targeted pragmatic features (Diepenbroek & Derwing, 2013; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010). In particular, textbooks may not adequately cover the information of pragmalinguistics (linguistic resources) and sociopragmatics (sociocultural conventions) that is necessary to perform target pragmatics. Additionally, existing studies show that textbook representations of pragmatic features are different from those found in naturally occurring conversations. These features include conversational closings (Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford, Mehan-Taylor, Morgan, & Reynolds, 1991), greetings (Kakiuchi, 2005) and speech acts such as complaining (Boxer & Pickering, 1995) and requesting (Usó-Juan, 2008). Bardovi-Harlig et al. (1991) surveyed conversational closings appearing in 20 ESL textbooks and found that many of the closings did not include complete closing sequences: The pre-closing and closing moves were often missing. These findings were supported by Horiguchi (1997), who looked at conversational opening and closing in L2 Japanese textbooks. Boxer and Pickering (1995) examined the speech act of complaint in seven EFL textbooks and found that only direct complaints were represented in textbook dialogues, despite the fact that indirect complaints would be more common in natural conversations. Gilmore (2004) focused on 404

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conversations at service encounters and noted that textbook dialogues are considerably different from naturally occurring conversations in terms of conversational features such as turn taking, repair, and backchanneling. While these studies deal mainly with ESL and EFL textbooks, similar findings are also reported for other target languages. Nuzzo (2015) compared the speech acts of complimenting and inviting in Italian films with those in L2 Italian textbooks and found that compliments were hardly represented in the textbooks she examined. Jones and Ono (2005) compared dialogues in college-level Japanese L2 textbooks with naturally occurring conversations. While Jones and Ono acknowledge textbook writers’ efforts in incorporating authentic conversational features into dialogues, they argue that textbook dialogues still generally fail to accurately reflect naturally occurring conversations, in some cases making the textbook dialogues difficult to understand and reproduce. In particular, Jones and Ono point out inadequacies in the presentation of dialogues at the discourse level (see also Félix-Brasdefer, 2006; Hughes & McCarthy, 1998). The discrepancy between textbook representation of pragmatic features and that of naturally occurring conversation can be attributed to the fact that when textbook writers are preparing texts they tend to rely on their own intuitions rather than empirical data (Cohen & Ishihara 2013; Ishihara & Cohen 2010; Gilmore 2007). Jones and Ono (2005) argue that findings from discourse studies can be incorporated into textbooks. They also suggest that information on target-language discourse features can be included in the pedagogical training for future teachers so that teachers can be better prepared to alter and supplement textbook materials. However, how to teach pragmatics in the classroom remains an issue for many teachers. Some recent books and instructional materials have been developed to address this issue (e.g., Houck & Tatsuki, 2011; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010; Tatsuki & Houck, 2010). In the next section, I discuss how pragmatics instruction can be implemented in the L2 classroom as a way of increasing opportunities for pragmatics learning.

Instructional Practices in a Classroom Studies on the instructional effects of pragmatics learning have increased over the last few decades, in particular since Kasper and Schmidt’s (1996) call for developmental studies of L2 pragmatic competence. Although some studies have investigated learners’ pragmatic development over the course of a semester (e.g., House, 1996), the majority of studies examine instructional effects during a fairly short period of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks. These studies typically address whether or not instruction is helpful at all in comparison to non-instruction. They also examine which instructional method is more effective, for example, explicit or implicit instruction (for a review, see Kasper & Rose, 2002; Rose 2005; Taguchi 2011, 2015; Takahashi, 2010). In the following section, I review some studies that have examined the effectiveness of instruction implemented in the classroom during the course of a semester or longer time period. This is followed by a review of studies that have applied a conversation analytic approach to classroom instruction where the goal of instruction was to improve students’ interactional competence.

Longitudinal Classroom-based Studies As mentioned above, previous studies have shown that textbook dialogues generally do not reflect the features of naturally occurring conversation. Therefore, it would be a worthwhile endeavor to compare efficacy of instruction that incorporates input similar to naturally occurring conversation with instruction based on existing textbook input. Gilmore (2011) conducted a longitudinal study (ten months) to examine the potential of authentic materials for use in the development of communicative competence among Japanese learners of English. Four college-level intact EFL classes in Japan were divided into two groups: a control group that received only textbook input and an experimental group that received predominantly authentic input. The authentic input was 405

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made available through the use of films, documentaries, TV series, and Web-based sources. The study utilized several measures to assess instructional effects, including oral interviews and role plays. Results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the nonverbal component (e.g., gestures, eye contact) and the interactional competence component of the oral interview. Gilmore attributed these gains to the experimental condition’s explicit focus on conversational strategies such as turn taking, reactive tokens, and discourse markers, as well as focused training on nonverbal aspects of communication. Taguchi (2015) has claimed that input exposure alone is not sufficient for pragmatics learning, and Gilmore’s findings lend support to this claim. In this regard, the use of authentic input combined with instructional procedures of awareness raising, explicit information, and focused practice may be a promising approach to the teaching of pragmatics. More recently, Galante and Thomson (2017) have demonstrated the effectiveness of drama-based English language instruction (as compared with a traditional EFL instruction) for Brazilian EFL learners’ oral fluency and comprehensibility. While this study did not address pragmatics, it would certainly merit further investigation in order to determine if such an instructional approach might promote learners’ pragmatic development. In another study, Iwai (2013) focused on the use of the Japanese discourse marker n desu in the classroom setting. This discourse marker plays a crucial role in developing a Japanese talk, specifically in creating a friendly conversational tone. Iwai’s semester-long study targeted beginning-level learners of Japanese and demonstrated a clear advantage for the instructed group over the control group in the ability to engage in small talk. This finding appears to be a direct result of Iwai’s instructional design. The discourse marker n desu was part of a pragmatics-focused course curriculum; it was not the ad hoc instructional treatment that is often observed in interventional pragmatics studies. A post-test small talk between the learners and their native speaker interlocutor showed that only those who went through the pragmatics-focused course instruction used n desu in their talk. None of the participants enrolled in the control group, which followed a more traditional grammar-based curriculum, did so. Taguchi (2018) notes that very few studies have focused on small talk as a pragmatic target (but see Liddicoat & Crozet, 2001). This is in spite of the fact that small talk plays a crucial role in workplace and other communicative settings in developing rapport among coworkers or new acquaintances. The discourse marker n desu is therefore recognized as critical in Japanese small talk. The textbook used in Iwai’s study systematically incorporated small talk and other pragmatic features along with relevant linguistic forms and sociopragmatic information. All of this essentially assisted the development of interactional skills in the experimental group. Although Iwai’s study is notable, Bardovi-Harlig (2017) notes that in general a lack of a pragmatics-focused curriculum is an ongoing problem in instructed pragmatics. More textbooks that follow the systematic approach as seen in Iwai’s study may be a solution to this problem.

Classroom Instruction Based on Conversation Analysis Given the current focus on the discursive approach to pragmatics (Kasper, 2006), which views interactional accomplishment as pragmatic success, it is not surprising that interest in the development of interactional competence (Young, 2011) has gained increasing attention (see Chapter 7 in this volume). Because utterances are a joint accomplishment, this interactional competence perspective considers meaning to be co-constructed among participants involved in interaction (Kasper & Ross, 2013). This differs from traditional models of communicative competence (e.g., Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Canale & Swain, 1980), which consider L2 proficiency as primarily reflecting each speaker’s individual ability. Using the frameworks of Conversational Analysis (CA), Barraja-Rohan (2011), FélixBrasdefer (2006), Filipi and Barraja-Rohan (2015), and Mullan (2015) provide pedagogical 406

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models to help develop student interactional competence. CA’s analytic tools are useful in teaching the negotiation of speech acts realized across multiple turns (see also Chapter 2 and Chapter 15 in this volume). Drawing on naturally occurring conversation, features such as appropriate opening and closing, response tokens, and repair practices are also taught (see also Wong & Waring, 2010). For example, using CA, Filipi and Barraja-Rohan (2015) first identified specific problematic areas that students encounter during their interaction in L2 (e.g., pre-closing before leave-taking). Once identified, the authors proposed a pedagogical model teaching the target interactional feature. The model begins with awareness-raising tasks and moves to a focused practice, conversation in front of the class (and feedback), and finally actual interaction outside of the classroom. During this process students are exposed to naturally occurring conversations. Students also discuss CA concepts (e.g., turn taking) and engage in cross-cultural discussion about L1 and L2 in order to develop sociopragmatic awareness. Metacognitive reflection and the interactions that support learning are also part of the process. While basic knowledge of CA would be necessary in order for teachers to implement a pedagogical model like this, incorporating such procedures for instructional materials might be a promising endeavor. In order to proceed with such an endeavor, researcher–practitioner collaboration is useful (Ellis, 2010). Researchers who are familiar with CA could assist teachers with the incorporation of CA procedures and findings into classroom practice. Future research could also examine the effectiveness of the materials developed through such a cooperative process.

Conclusion and Future Directions This chapter presented an overview of the issues related to pragmatics learning and teaching in the L2 classroom. In order to explore new opportunities for pragmatics learning, studies that examined classroom interaction from a language socialization perspective were reviewed, followed by a discussion of incidental pragmatics learning. The second half of the chapter focused on textbook representation of target pragmatics features and instructional practices. In addition to longitudinal L2 pragmatics studies carried out in existing L2 classrooms, instructional models based on the CA framework were also presented. Pragmatics learning entails the knowledge of form–function–context mappings of target pragmatic features, along with the ability to use this knowledge in real-time interaction. However, this knowledge acquisition and classroom implementation is a complex process. Although the classroom is an excellent venue where the teacher can socialize students into pragmatics-related language use, students may resist target pragmatic norms or teacher-directed instructional practices. Rather than simply delivering prescriptive rules, pragmatics teaching should be viewed as a process of having students engage in mediated observation and reflection in an attempt to raise awareness of the complexities of language and culture (Mori, 2009). Using materials drawn from naturally occurring conversations is useful because these materials help students learn not only target pragmalinguistic forms but also accompanying sociopragmatic information through awareness-raising and metapragmatic discussions. The use of authentic materials also helps develop the interactional competence needed to successfully interact with speakers of the target language. Inviting proficient target language speakers to the classroom on a regular basis (if possible) would also enhance opportunities for pragmatics learning. Hoshi’s (2017) study confirmed the effectiveness of pragmatics-focused instruction combined with communicative practice with L1 speakers of Japanese. The L1 speakers who regularly visited her college-level Japanese class were clearly a helpful factor in the acquisition of Japanese interactional particles. Tateyama and Kasper (2008) documented interesting examples of classroom requests. For example, when a teacher interacted with a classroom visitor a wide range of interactional sequences, linguistic resources, and speech styles were made available. These features were not available in teacher 407

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requests addressed to students because they were typically direct and narrow in range, reflecting the asymmetrical role relationship between teachers and students in institutional settings (Bannink, 2002; Byon, 2006; Falsgraf & Majors, 1995). Thus, class visits by target language speakers can expand the discourse options available in a classroom. If class visits are difficult to arrange, interactions between learners and L1 speakers via an online platform can be an alternative option (e.g., Kakegawa, 2009) (see also Chapter 24 in this volume). Both synchronous (e.g., video conferences) and asynchronous (e.g., email, blog) communication can be arranged. For example, Ishihara and Takamiya (2014) documented the pragmatic development of three American learners of Japanese as they blogged with Japanese learners of English in Japan. While these types of communication need not be scheduled during usual class meeting times, video conferencing where multiple participants join discussions normally needs to be scheduled during class time (as long as time zones are taken into consideration when arranging international class video conferences). Future research might explore the effect of L1 speaker involvement on existing models of classroom instruction with regard to the development of student pragmatic competence. Of particular interest is interactional competence such as turn taking and sequencing, as well as nonverbal aspects of interaction. Face-to-face interactions (both in person and online) would be particularly helpful in the development of these interactional competences. Lastly, CLIL classes provide students with ample opportunities for exposure to and use of speech acts and other pragmatic features as they interact with the teacher and peers in the target language while learning subject matters. These types of instructional environments seem to be particularly conducive to incidental pragmatics learning. Previous studies have shown that pragmatic features such as the ne-marked assessments in Japanese (Ohta, 1999; 2001) and jokes and sarcasm in implicature comprehension (Taguchi, 2012) can be learned incidentally in class. Future research might also explore the extent to which students incidentally learn pragmatics in CLIL classes. For example, through classroom observation, a researcher might first identify pragmatic features that occur in selected CLIL classes. A longitudinal observation (e.g., one semester) would be ideal in order to capture a variety of pragmatic features occurring in the classes. Based on the observed pragmatic features, the researcher could develop pre/post-tests on those features, which would include both written (e.g., discourse completion) and oral (e.g., role plays, interviews). Once a test instrument was developed, the researcher could run the study when the same course is offered again. As seen in Rogers’s (2015) study, incorporating questionnaires related to students’ goals and their perceived development, as well as instructor interviews and class observations throughout the study period would provide additional valuable data. Findings obtained from a study like this could provide insights about which pragmatic features can be learned fairly easily through exposure and interaction in the classroom and which features require additional focused instruction. Further, a close analysis of classroom conversations (if recorded data were available) might be able to provide a clue to the norms that students draw on in their interactions with their peers and teacher in a classroom.

Further Reading Burdelski, M., & Cook, H. M. (2012). Formulaic language in language socialization. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 173–188. This article provides an overview of research on the roles of formulaic language in language socialization. Formulaic language, defined as lexical chunks often used in verbal routines or interactional routines, plays a crucial role in the socialization process as a powerful means and end of socialization. Novices acquire language and sociocultural knowledge as they participate in routines with proficient and knowledgeable members of their community. The article reviews studies conducted in first, second, and heritage language environments where child and adult novices are socialized. Directions for future research on formulaic language in language socialization are suggested. 408

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Diepenbroek, L., & Derwing, T. (2013). To what extent do popular ESL textbooks incorporate oral fluency and pragmatics development? TESL Canada Journal, 30, Special Issue, 7, 1–20. This article provides a review of 12 popular ESL integrated skills textbook series (48 individual textbooks) in terms of their pragmatic and fluency content. While the study was conducted in the Canadian context, the textbooks reviewed have been widely used outside Canada as well. For pragmatic content, coding categories were developed to cover features such as speech acts and conversation strategies. While a number of features were identified, the analysis shows considerable inconsistency both within and across series in their inclusion of pragmatic content in terms of scope, quality, and quantity. Even when pragmatic features were present, lack of variations or contextualization was identified as problematic. To ensure a more authentic representation of pragmatic features, the authors recommend using textbooks based on corpus data.

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27 Pragmatics Learning in the Workplace Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

Pragmatics and the Workplace When joining a new workplace, we are essentially entering a new holistic language-use environment that requires us to learn the rules and norms underlying communication in that particular professional context. Not only do we have to learn and apply the professional, technical jargon, but also the norms of industry—and institutional-specific interaction, including how to address people, what is expected in terms of formality, and what is acceptable with regard to being informal relative to coworkers in a number of different positions and levels of familiarity. There are situations that require quite structured, formal talk such as meetings and service encounters, as well as more informal, oral office communication that includes ad-hoc, spontaneous talk such as small talk or making arrangements. Hence, in a new work environment we encounter a multitude of communicative situations and contexts of interaction that feature an even broader range of social, personal, and contextual factors—all of which mediate the specific communicative customs of the given workplace. While every newcomer to a workplace undergoes this type of linguistic ‘workplace socialization’ (italics in the original; Mak & Chui, 2013, p. 118), this process holds a particular dual challenge for second and/or foreign language (L2) learners. Developing proficiency in a target language (TL) and in particular the ability to interact smoothly in a number of different workplace situations is oftentimes a priority for L2 learners in general and new migrants in particular who ‘wish not only to contribute to the workforce in their new country, but also to have their professional skills and expertise acknowledged and respected’ (Holmes & Riddiford, 2011, p. 376). Thus, workers who have a different linguistic and cultural background than the dominant group in a workplace are faced with (a) socializing into a new work environment and (b) mastering appropriate target language use within the new workplace in order to effectively and successfully engage in what is known as ‘institutional talk’1 (for a detailed discussion see e.g., Koester, 2006).

What Constitutes Institutional Talk? Institutional talk occurs in a variety of contexts between multitudes of interlocutors whose conversations revolve around an even broader range of topics. In her description of workplace or

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institutional talk, Gunnarsson (2009) highlights the breadth and diversity of communicative interaction in workplace settings, emphasizing that: [p]rofessional discourse can occur in different types of communicative events involving different constellations of participants: single person communicative events (individual writing and reading), two-person events (face to face interaction, written dialogues: letter exchange, e-mails, chat) and group events (small group meetings, written group correspondence, collaborative writing, collaborative presentations, discussions, large group meetings, debates). It includes both communicative events in which all participants are in the same room as well as communication at a distance, via telephone, internet, video, mail, etc. (p. 7) Thus, workplace talk occurs in a wide range of white- and blue-collar work environments that are as different as a service encounter at a grocery store, an international business meeting between representatives from different companies, or dealing with a customer complaint in a call center. Despite the broad variety of communicative interaction subsumed under the umbrella term ‘institutional talk,’ Drew and Heritage (1992) identified key criteria of workplace discourse. First and foremost, they noted that interactions are deemed institutional whenever the participants’ professional identities are made relevant to the activities taking place. Moreover, they identified three fundamental dimensions of workplace talk that distinguish it from everyday conversations, which is usually considered ‘the neutral benchmark for comparison’ (Timpe-Laughlin, Wain, & Schmidgall, 2015, p. 22). They maintained that workplace interaction is (a) goal-oriented, (b) set within particular constraints, and (c) embedded in specific inferential frameworks and procedures. With regard to goal-orientation, they argued that workplace talk always features ‘an orientation by at least one of the participants to some core goal, task or identity … conventionally associated with the institution’ (Drew & Heritage, 1992, p. 22). The second distinguishing factor concerns particular constraints on allowable contributions. Norms and conventions in a given workplace constitute an inferential frame that determines what is regarded as appropriate and/ or inappropriate in a specific workplace setting or situation. Finally, the third criterion refers to the power difference between interlocutors, which determines certain conversational rights and obligations such as initiating or ending a conversation. Oftentimes asymmetrical roles such as in doctor–patient or teacher–student interactions tend to be predetermined, yet at the same time they are ‘discursive’ insofar as they are also negotiated in the interaction (Koester, 2006; Roberts & Sarangi, 1999). Along these lines Holmes and Stubbe (2015) noted that ‘[e]very interaction at work involves an individual in the performance of their professional status and authority relative to others, and equally the dynamic nature of any interaction entails constant negotiation of social distance or solidarity’ (p. 164). Hence, workplace interaction is highly contextualized and can be characterized as being goal-oriented, situated, and domain-specific (Gunnarsson, 2009)—criteria that also feature prominently in L2 pragmatics research.

Workplace Pragmatics Pragmatic competence has been identified as a crucial, yet particularly complex aspect of communicative language ability in the workplace—specifically for L2 speakers (Dahm & Yates, 2013; Holmes & Riddiford, 2011; Riddiford & Joe, 2010; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). In order to (a) accurately interpret and appropriately express meaning in interaction based on socio-cultural norms and expectations (sociopragmatics) and to (b) understand and employ the linguistic resources of a given language to convey meaning in order to achieve a certain goal (pragmalinguistics), L2 learners have to acquire the knowledge and linguistic means necessary to use the TL appropriately relative to a broad range of different communicative encounters. That is, they 414

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have to take into account the communicative situation, including contextual levels of familiarity, power, face, and solidarity needs as well as different types of knowledge of TL norms (e.g., situational, cultural, and institutional) and then skillfully tailor what they say accordingly. A particular type of TL norms that has been highlighted as pertaining to ‘workplace pragmatics’ involves scripts or genres of interaction (Tarone, 2005). In pursuit of common goals, members of a discourse community such as a certain workplace tend to use language in directional, patterned, and purpose-oriented ways to communicate with one another. Deviating from expected scripts may result in serious consequences, as shown by Gibbs (2002, 2005) and Tarone (2005). Gibbs had examined a specific type of housekeeping calls (so called ‘Call-Ins’) in a hotel in which a housekeeper (H) calls a worker in the room service section (R) to request the removal of items such as trays, refrigerators, and roll-away beds. The following two excerpts feature callins made by an L2 speaker who is a novice to the workplace (H2) and a more seasoned, expert worker (H1) (see Tarone, 2005, p. 166f.): 1 Expert caller a. Ring. b. R: Hello. c. H1: Pick up in room 936, refrigerator. d. R: 936. e. H1: Yep. (Hangs up) 2 Novice caller a. Ring. b. R: Hello. Convention Services. c. H2: This is J. I’m (.8) [housekeeping] d. R:  [how can] How can I help you? e. H2: I am housekeeping. f. R: To call housekeeping you need to dial 52. g. H2: Housekeeping. Pick up. h. R: Please dial 52. i. H2: Pick up. Room 1717. j. R: I will call housekeeping to come help you. (Hangs up) Gibbs had called the convention service desk immediately following this interaction to find out why the clerk had not responded properly to the housekeeping request. The clerk at the service desk responded slightly confused that he had not had any calls from housekeeping all morning. Tarone (2005) noted that the novice L2 speaker was unaware of the language-use conventions underlying this particular type of call. By introducing himself, the learner uses the structure of a social phone call which led the receptionist to mistake him for a guest. Tarone (2005) argued that this encounter showcases a pragmatic failure that resulted in a complete communication breakdown with the novice L2 speaker failing to achieve his communicative goal. In addition to complete communication breakdowns such as in the example taken from Tarone (2005), pragmatic failure—unlike grammatical mistakes—has been shown to result in negative impressions about the speaker. For instance, pragmatic infelicities are oftentimes unconsciously judged as indicators of character or lack of general competence (Clyne, 1994; Dahm & Yates, 2013; Holmes, 2000). Clyne (1994) describes the suspicion and discomposure of a Vietnamese woman after her supervisor tried to engage her in small talk during a work meeting. In her experience, such personal talk was completely inappropriate in work-related contexts. Similarly, Holmes (2000) investigated employer perceptions, and noted that ‘a very young Asian woman was regarded as rude because she did not look directly at people or respond verbally to greetings’ 415

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(p. 126). Furthermore, Dahm and Yates (2013) highlighted that medical professionals ‘could fail to discuss what they believe to be taboo topics such as mental health (sociopragmatic failure), or they could be perceived as being unfriendly or too direct and therefore rude (pragmalinguistic failure)’ (p. 24). Thus, pragmatic infelicities are often unconsciously judged as indicators of a deceitful, rude, or crude character or may otherwise create negative impressions which—especially in high-stakes business contexts—may have unintended, serious consequences. To summarize, the workplace constitutes a particular type of language-use environment. Institutional talk is shaped by specific language use rules, norms, and conventions that newcomers to the workplace need to learn. How to use language effectively and appropriately within the constraints of the workplace is crucial for employees to not only complete task-related aspects of their job, but also to fit in smoothly and maintain a good working relationship with colleagues. However, as Clyne (1994) noted, discourse and pragmatic-level errors are more often responsible for communication breakdowns than phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic errors. In other words, mastering pragmatics in a TL appears to be particularly challenging for many L2 speakers with potential high-stakes consequences in case of pragmatic failure. In order to inform the teaching and learning of pragmatic skills needed for successful workplace communication, a small but growing body of research has investigated L2 pragmatic learning and acquisition in the workplace.

Theories and Conceptualizations of L2 Pragmatics Learning in and for the Workplace The workplace constitutes a specific context that—from a linguistic perspective—is located at the intersection of language socialization and language for specific purposes (Tarone, 2005; Timpe-Laughlin et al., 2015). Accordingly, research on L2 pragmatic learning and development in workplace contexts has drawn upon conceptual frameworks from second language acquisition (SLA) and pedagogy. From an SLA perspective and more particularly, an L2 pragmatic development viewpoint, two ontological paradigms—the cognitive and social—have been primarily referenced in the workplace-related literature. Cognitive-oriented theories tend to focus on how information is processed inside the human mind. Comparable to a computer that processes, stores, and retrieves information, cognitivelyoriented theories tend to focus on ‘how interaction and the cognitive processes afforded through particular interactional arrangements contribute to learners’ [L2] acquisition’ (Kasper, 2001, p. 516). The two theories within this paradigm that have been referenced most often in L2 pragmatic acquisition research are Schmidt’s (1993, 1995) ‘Noticing Hypothesis’ and Bialystok’s (1993) ‘two-dimensional model’ (for a detailed review and discussion see Timpe-Laughlin, 2016; see also Chapter 8 in this volume). Based on observations made in the context of longitudinal case studies in which he documented the L2 development of different learners, Schmidt’s (1993, 1995) Noticing Hypothesis maintains that learners cannot learn a specific linguistic phenomenon unless they notice it first. While they do not have to understand it, they have to notice and attend to it. Thus, noticing constitutes the essential starting point for acquisition which is different from understanding insofar as the latter ‘implies the recognition of some general principle, rule, or pattern’ (Schmidt, 1995, p. 29). Several studies in the area of L2 pragmatics learning in the workplace have provided evidence for a relationship between noticing and a subsequent increase in L2 pragmatic awareness (e.g., Holmes & Riddiford, 2011; Polat, 2011). Bialystok’s (1993) two-dimensional model aims to explain the internal, cognitive processes and mechanisms that are responsible for language learning beyond the point of noticing. Based on observations of children’s L1 acquisition, she argues that new information first needs to be acquired. Comparable to Schmidt’s concept of understanding, this first step of acquisition 416

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maintains that first learners have to develop a certain level of awareness and/or explicit knowledge before they can use the given phenomenon in real-time communication. More specifically, Bialystok distinguishes between two components—analyzed representation and control of processing—which develop and mature with experience over time. ‘Analyzed representation’ refers to the mental representation of a specific domain of knowledge, while ‘control of processing’ constitutes the ‘process of controlling attention to relevant and appropriate information and integrating those forms in real time’ (Bialystok, 1993, p. 48). In short, L2 learners are gradually progressing from a more immediate to an increasingly complex, controllable, multifunctional repertoire of linguistic representation that they can use appropriately in a range of different communicative situations. Within the cognitivist-interactionist perspective, the two aspects of acquiring new knowledge representations and gaining an increasing amount of control over appropriate deployment are facilitated by means of exposing learners to the TL. Thus, learners need to be exposed to the interaction in the workplace in order to be able to notice pragmatic phenomena that may be different from their L1 and deploy them in interaction in order to gradually refine the knowledge representations in their cognitive systems. Additionally, they need to deploy the new knowledge in order to hone automaticity in their L2 pragmatic performance. While cognitivist theories regard learning as an intrapersonal process, socially-oriented approaches such as language socialization (Ochs, 1996; Ochs & Schieffelin, 2012) view L2 learning in general and L2 pragmatics learning in particular as an interpersonal phenomenon that is highly dependent on social interaction (see also Chapter 9 in this volume). Knowledge and the ability to perform appropriate form-function-context mappings are generated in the socially situated interaction between an expert (a more advanced speaker of the TL) and a novice (L2 learner) within a given community of practice (Wenger, 1998). The novice member acquires the linguistic patterns and conventions and thus gradually becomes a competent interlocutor and member of the speech community, shaping in turn the discourse practices of the given community (for a detailed and contrastive discussion of ‘communities of practice’ versus ‘discourse communities’ see Koester, 2010)2. According to the socially oriented paradigm, the workplace constitutes a site of linguistic socialization in which novices gradually become experts at various levels of discourse, including corporate/institutional discourses, professional discourses, and social discourses (Roberts, 2010; Roberts & Sarangi, 1999). In addition to SLA theories, most research in the learning of workplace pragmatics is also anchored in the field of language for specific purposes (Holmes & Riddiford, 2011; Riddiford & Holmes, 2015; Tarone, 2005). Newton and Kusmierczyk (2011), for instance, observed that ‘much teaching for the workplace occurs within or in close alliance with workplaces’ (p. 74)—in what has come to be called language for specific purpose (LSP) courses (e.g., Chinese for business, Japanese for doctors, English for aviation). Trace, Hudson, and Brown (2015) describe LSP as a form of TL instruction ‘in which the methodology, the content, the objectives, the materials, the teaching, and the assessment practices all stem from specific, target language uses based on an identified set of specialized needs’ (p. 2). Thus, LSP courses are much narrower in focus than general L2 instruction given that instruction includes linguistic and content knowledge that is specific to a particular workplace context (Trace et al., 2015). Pragmatics constitutes the ability to decode and encode social meaning, which has been identified as a core aspect of LSP and its subfield English for Specific Purposes (Tarone, 2005). The process of inferring and producing meaning is fundamental to communication and particularly strong between members of the same speech community who share common experiences and practices. LSP or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction thus needs to focus on how members of a specific discourse community use language (or genres) in order to ‘communicate with one another in their pursuit of common professional or work-related goals’ (Tarone, 2005, p. 157). It needs to focus on teaching L2 learners how to—in their given discourse community— produce word utterances appropriately and effectively relative to the communicative 417

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context and the interlocutor(s). Thus, ESP is firmly rooted in pragmatic principles of communication (Tarone, 2005). Based on the cognitive-interactionist and sociocultural theories as well as empirical findings from research investigating pragmatic learning in the workplace, the Wellington group proposed a ‘Cyclical Model of the Learning Process’ (Holmes & Riddiford, 2011; Holmes & Stubbe, 2015). The model outlines a cyclical learning process that aims to develop L2 learners’ observational and analytical skills in order to ultimately empower them to identify for themselves appropriate ways of communicating and interacting in their respective work environment and/or communities of practice. Accordingly, the learning process begins with the learner’s exposure to input, followed by noticing of a certain pragmatic phenomenon and comparing it to their L1 background, thus reflecting upon the given feature (the cognitively oriented perspective). Then the learner deploys the phenomenon in real-life interaction—both in the classroom and ideally also in their workplace contexts—while also receiving feedback from interlocutors, which aids the potential improvement of the performance (the socially oriented perspective) (see Figure 27.1). Throughout the process, which involves LSP instruction and real-life workplace communication, individuals are being equipped with the skills to observe the communication in their workplace setting and then identify aspects they would like to focus on with regard to either practicing them or altering them. Hence, it constitutes a context-sensitive, reflexive approach to L2 pragmatics learning based on an individual’s observation, reflection, and evaluation of the communicative culture in their workplace. The Wellington model merges the different ontological perspectives (cognitively and sociallyoriented), presenting L2 pragmatics learning in the workplace as a cognitive and social process that can be supported through focused LSP/ESP instruction. Similarly, research that focuses on the investigation of L2 pragmatics learning in workplace contexts has drawn upon cognitive and socio-cultural theories as well as ESP research in the pursuit of identifying how L2 pragmatics learning happens in workplace settings and how it can best be supported.

Input

Noticing (cognitive)

Comparing (cognitive)

Further reflecting (cognitive)

Reflecting (cognitive)

Output improved performance

Interacting (social-interactional)

Feedback (social-interactional)

Figure 27.1 Cyclical model of the learning process (Janet Holmes and Nicky Riddiford, From classroom to workplace: tracking socio-pragmatic development, ELT Journal, October 2011, Volume 65/4, page 384, by permission of Oxford University Press). 418

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L2 Pragmatics Learning and the Workplace: What Do We Know? Studies that have focused on pragmatic phenomena in institutional discourse have begun to emerge only recently as relational talk became increasingly viewed as a crucial feature of workplace interaction. While most of the earlier studies that investigated institutional discourse focused on the linguistic structures and task-orientation, research on relational dimensions, and in particular pragmatic elements, only emerged over the past two decades (Koester, 2006). Pragmatic features that have been examined in workplace interaction include directives in workplace discourse (Saito & Cook, 2017), small talk (Coupland, 2000; Holmes, 2000, 2005), humor (Attardo, 2017), negotiation (Gunnarsson, 2009), politeness (Holmes & Stubbe, 2015), rapport building (Campbell & Roberts, 2007), and the impact of gender (Holmes & Schnurr, 2006). Although these studies have to different degrees contributed to our general understanding of the relational dimension of language use in workplace settings, very few have been conducted with an explicit focus on L2 pragmatic learning and development. Only a very small number of studies have investigated how L2 learners acquire —either on the job or in preparation for a specific position—the pragmatic means to communicate appropriately and effectively in a new workplace. The few studies that have examined L2 pragmatic development in the workplace, have predominantly focused on the following pragmatic phenomena: requests, small talk, and discourse markers.

Requests In Australia, a research team affiliated with the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) investigated the linguistic and settlement experiences of immigrants with low English language proficiencies (Wigglesworth & Yates, 2007; Yates, 2010; Yates & Springall, 2010). Requests constituted a specific focus of their work. Wigglesworth and Yates (2007) compared how L1 English speakers and L2 English speakers in Australia performed a request to leave work early at a busy time. They used role-play scenarios to elicit the learners’ performances. Focusing in particular on the mitigation of the requests, the goals in their study were threefold: They aimed at (a) identifying prominent sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic elements in L1 speakers’ utterances, (b) identifying which of these elements posed challenges for the L2 speakers, and (c) using the findings to inform L2 instruction in order to better prepare L2 learners for pragmatic challenges in the workplace. All role-plays were transcribed and the requests were coded for directness level, syntactic mitigation, lexical mitigation, and propositional mitigation. They found that, compared to L2 learners, L1 speakers ‘asserted solidarity rather than acknowledged hierarchy’ in their request behavior (Wigglesworth & Yates, 2007, p. 793). L1 speakers used down toners, hedges, and other pragmatic devices to appear rather informal and build rapport with their interlocutors. Moreover, they used a broad range of syntactic and lexical devices to soften the impact of the request. In contrast, L2 speakers did not use hedges although they knew the linguistic forms—a finding that Wigglesworth and Yates (2007) interpreted as a lack of familiarity with the forms’ mitigating functions. In a later study that investigated in further detail the request behavior of Dinkas, a particular group of Sudanese immigrants to Australia, Yates (2010) suggested that explicit instruction of how requests and mitigating devices are used should be implemented into ESL classes (e.g., via modeling or teaching of chunks) in order to better prepare migrants for pragmatic challenges in the TL workplace. Similar to the work conducted in the context of the AMEP, the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project3 (WLWP) based at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand also placed a particular focus on the acquisition of L2 request behavior. In 1996, researchers in the context of the WLWP —one of the most comprehensive projects investigating pragmatics learning in the workplace—began to track the linguistic development of a group of skilled migrants 419

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in New Zealand who enrolled in a workplace communication class before entering the workforce in different professional environments (Holmes et al., 2009; Riddiford, 2007; Riddiford & Holmes, 2015). Riddiford and Joe (2010) conducted a longitudinal study in which they examined the development of request behavior in 11 ESL learners, following them through a five-week preparatory instruction and a six-week workplace placement internship. The instruction was specifically aimed at raising the learners’ pragmatic awareness through the use of recordings that featured authentic workplace conversations. In addition to the data collected in the ESP classroom, they also analyzed recordings that featured L2 learners’ in their respective workplaces, focusing in particular on request scenarios that involved a status difference between interlocutors. While L2 learners showed no difference in request behavior relative to different interlocutors before the preparation class, they showed a significantly increased awareness of different request realization strategies (such as modifiers and mitigators) after exposure to classroom instruction. Moreover, Riddiford and Joe (2010) observed that the learners also employed this broader range of requests in their real-life workplace interactions. To showcase this increase, Riddiford and Joe (2010) particularly highlighted the case of Helena, an immigrant to New Zealand from Hong Kong, who showed a steady increase in sociopragmatic awareness (see also Holmes & Riddiford, 2011). Helena also increased her repertoire of request realization strategies. Before the instruction, she used a fairly direct request strategy (‘I got a message from CEO who needs someone to work late tonight to help prepare a report. Would you like to stay?’). Halfway through the class, the directness had given way to a more indirect, internally modified request strategy with the opener ‘I wonder if you could.’ After her course, she also used grounders and explanatory information to preface her conventionally indirect request (‘I understand it is late notice as I’ve just been told by CEO. If you have plans tonight, could you think of anyone who can come up to help?’). Helena explained her rather direct requests in the pre-instruction role play arguing that ‘I think in the first one I use the way I did in Hong Kong. The boss always got the power to push the secretary to finish the work. But after the internship … I know that … the boss still have to respect the staff’s office hour—so I have to ask’ (Riddiford & Joe, 2010, p. 203). Based on their findings, Riddiford and Joe (2010) concluded that it was possible to teach sociopragmatic knowledge for the workplace. Moreover, they identified three conditions conducive to developing L2 learners’ sociopragmatic competence: (1) explicit L2 pragmatic instruction in an LSP/ESP classroom accompanying the respective workplace, (2) teaching materials that contained authentic workplace interactions, ideally featuring the target pragmatic phenomenon, and (3) time to allow learners to develop an awareness for the importance of contextual variables underlying each communicative encounter (imposition of a request, relative social and power distance between interlocutors, etc.). In contrast to the primarily quantitative intervention studies, Li’s (2000) case study of Ming, a 29-year old, female, newly arrived immigrant to the U.S.A., includes an emic perspective that provides insights into an immigrant’s L2 request acquisition over time. Li (2000) canvassed Ming’s ‘language socialization journey’ (p. 65), drawing upon Ming’s account of her sociolinguistic interactions in both China and the U.S.A., interviews she conducted with Ming’s interlocutors, recordings of her own interactions with Ming, and her personal reflections on Ming’s developing request behavior. Li noted that at first Ming used a very indirect discourse style in order to make a request. She employed ‘extended small talk’ (p. 70) with excessive hinting in conversations in order to get the interlocutor to offer (a polite act) instead of her making the request (face-threatening act). Thus, Ming employed indirectness throughout an entire conversation, not only at the request level. This communicative style left many of her English-speaking interlocutors confused as they were not sure if Ming was making a request or offered information. Very motivated to learn what Ming called ‘the ‘American Way’ of conducting discourse in the workplace’ (p. 65), she gradually learned to be more direct and effective in her request realizations. Through observations and coaching from a coworker, Ming 420

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started to develop more direct, TL request behavior over the course of the 18-month study. She noted that ‘[i]f you are not directly, they’ll think maybe they guess wrong, misunderstand. So I think in America, in America, best way is directly, truthful, and things a little bit sweet, so it won’t be so complicated’ (Li, 2000, p. 75). Overall, Li’s (2000) study shows the linguistic socialization process that is influenced by her socialization in China, which determined at least originally Ming’s request behavior in English. Li (2000) concludes her study by highlighting the need for ESL instructors to have a deep understanding of the relationship between language, culture, and identity so they can raise awareness of particular pragmatic phenomena in their L2 learners.

Small Talk In addition to requests, researchers have identified small talk as a crucial form of relational talk in English-speaking workplaces that has proven challenging for L2 learners (Dahm & Yates, 2013; Holmes, 2005; Mak & Chui, 2013; Yates & Major, 2015). Yates and Major (2015) conducted a longitudinal study in which they investigated how, in their early years of settlement in Australia, beginner and low-intermediate level ESL speakers became aware of and used pragmatic skills in communicative interactions in the workplace. Over several years, they conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 learners between 25 and 34 years of age in order to explore the immigrants’ understanding of different L2 pragmatic skills and phenomena. Pragmatic issues identified by the learners included the importance of small talk and how to participate in it, informality and indirectness in communication, and how to appear sociable. In particular, L2 learners identified ‘the role of humor and small talk as important social lubricants’ (p. 1). However, they also highlighted them as a particularly challenging aspect of TL communication. For example, Mika, an immigrant from Japan who worked in retail, commented as follows on what he called ‘quick chatting’: That’s a difficult one and then people are really hurry and they’re blah, blah, blah, see ya, or something. It’s—that was—it’s pretty, pretty hard one, the quick chatting … and also sometimes like ah, you know, um, so making funny or sarcastic or whatever. (Yates & Major, 2015, p. 144) In addition to challenges, Yates and Major (2015) also reported strategies L2 learners employed to cope with small talk, including smiling, listening carefully, and observing how their interlocutors approached small talk situations, and—if needed—asking friends and family to explain particular aspects of small talk. Thus, L2 learners engaged in small-talk interaction but also sought more sociopragmatic knowledge about this type of discourse. Focusing on L2 learners in the medical profession, Dahm and Yates (2013) also identified experience and interaction as necessary means to develop the ability to engage successfully in small talk. They analyzed a total of 14 role play performances by three L2 speakers and four L1 speakers of English to investigate the challenges L2 speaking medical professionals encounter in interpersonal patient-centered communication. They found that L1 speakers trained in Australia used small talk to achieve a range of professional and interpersonal goals, including building rapport and expressing empathy. Thus, small talk functioned as a way for doctors to appear professional, yet approachable in their communication with patients. In comparison, only one L2 speaker who had some local experience in a medical practice in Australia made an attempt at small talk. Dahm and Yates (2013) concluded that a lack of opportunity to learn pragmatic norms resulted in a corresponding lack of TL sociopragmatic knowledge about the function of small talk in Australian medical settings, which in turn resulted in the L2 speakers being less successful in making their communication style patient-centered. 421

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Discourse Markers Polat (2011) documented the use of three discourse markers (well, you know, like) in a developmental learner corpus produced by Alex, an L1 speaker of Turkish who had immigrated to the U.S.A. Alex worked in a grocery store and had never received any formal English instruction. Over the course of one year, Polat found great variation in Alex’s usage of the pragmatic markers. He used you know very frequently at the beginning of the year, but his usage decreased consistently over 12 months until it reached ‘a very native-like frequency’ (Polat, 2011, p. 3753). Alex hardly used like in the beginning of the year, but used this marker very frequently toward the middle of the year and less toward the end. Polat (2011) never observed Alex use well throughout the entire year, commenting that ‘[a]lthough Alex uses well frequently as an adverb, he does not appear to have recognized it as a discourse marker’ (p. 3753; italics in the original), which suggests that Alex was unaware of the function of some of the pragmatic markers. Polat (2011) concluded that, if learners do not receive at least some instruction, learners may pick up the pragmatic function of some discourse markers but not others. Moreover, learners may use pragmatic markers indiscriminately across different functions, or they may not use them with all functions or in the same contexts as L1 speakers.

Trends and Themes in L2 Pragmatics Research in the Workplace Although the number of studies that have focused on L2 pragmatics learning in the context of the workplace is very small, certain recurring, underlying themes can nevertheless be noticed, providing insights into how L2 learners deal with pragmatic challenges in professional settings. First and foremost, research focusing on L2 pragmatics learning in the workplace has primarily been motivated by migration. Many researchers have investigated from either an ethnographic or a language socialization perspective how migrant workers acquire TL pragmatic norms. Riddiford and Holmes (2015), for instance, followed Salvadore, a Filipino migrant, entering the workforce in New Zealand. Polat (2011) documented how Alex, a Turkish immigrant to the U.S.A., acquired pragmatic markers, while Li (2000) traced the experiences of Ming, a Chinese immigrant to the U.S.A. as she transitioned from an LSP job preparation class into her new job. Thus, most pragmatics-oriented studies have been conducted in local English-speaking contexts that have a history of immigration such as Australia (e.g., Wigglesworth & Yates, 2007), New Zealand (e.g., Riddiford, 2007), and the U.S.A. (Li, 2000; Polat, 2011). Secondl pragmatics learning in and for the workplace primarily refers to how L2 speakers conform to the linguistic norms of a given TL speech community (Tarone, 2005). The need of acquiring knowledge about the pragmatic norms in the new workplace has been identified as particularly challenging for L2 speakers who may not only struggle with the TL, but who also lack functional and sociopragmatic knowledge as well as awareness for the TL discourse context (e.g., Polat, 2011; Wigglesworth & Yates, 2007). Given that local community norms vary considerably from one workplace to another, researchers have used different empirically based approaches to establish norms or benchmarks for comparison. Polat (2011), for example, used an L1 speaker corpus to compare her participant’s use of discourse markers with those from the target speech community. Wigglesworth and Yates (2007) asked L1 speakers from the same professional domain to carry out the same role plays they had conducted with L2 learners in order to document pragmatic phenomena that seemed particularly challenging for L2 speakers. In addition to identifying particular sociopragmatic challenges, several studies have revealed strategies and conditions that facilitated the acquisition of pragmatic norms among L2 learners, aiding them in gradually approaching TL norms. Exposure, interaction, experience, and explicit instruction were identified by several studies as the primary catalysts for learning how to accurately decode and encode pragmatic meaning in workplace interactions (e.g., Holmes & Stubbe, 2015; Yates & Major, 2015). 422

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However, while studies that focused on L2 learners in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.A. have primarily relied on an L1 speaker norm for comparison, it should be noted that ‘TL norm’ is not equivalent with ‘native speaker norm.’ Especially in contexts where English is used as a lingua franca (ELF), target language norms tend to look quite different. ELF pragmatics research, for example, has shown that ELF communication is characterized by a large amount of mutual cooperation, negotiation, and accommodation strategies deployed by interlocutors to signal, avoid, and/or minimize miscommunication or non-understanding (e.g., Firth, 1996; Pitzl, 2005). That is to say, ELF speakers ‘engage in a joint effort to monitor understanding at every stage of communication’ (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011, p. 293), while drawing upon resources such as code-switching and creative usage of idiomatic expressions to manage the delicate balance between intelligibility and cultural identity (e.g., Pitzl, 2009). Although studies that have investigated business ELF (BELF) pragmatics have highlighted characteristics of these speech communities (e.g., Pullin Stark, 2009, 2010), there are—to my knowledge—no studies yet that have focused on the acquisition of BELF and how BELF users learn to maneuver pragmatic challenges in lingua franca workplace environments.

Pedagogical Implications: Supporting L2 Pragmatics Learning for the Workplace The needs of L2 learners in different workplaces have informed discussions and recommendations for how to increase pragmatic awareness in general and sociopragmatic knowledge in particular among L2 speakers. In order to make TL pragmatic phenomena explicit through observation and analysis, researchers have particularly emphasized the need to use authentic discourse samples collected from a range of workplaces (Campbell & Roberts, 2007; Koester, 2002; Yates & Major, 2015). For instance, investigating speech-act realizations in a 34,000-word corpus of workplace discourse, Koester (2002) found direct speech with the use of performative verbs (e.g., ‘I advise you to…’), which seems to prevail in many textbooks, to be uncommon in spoken interaction in the workplace. Moreover, she observed that giving advice or other directives comprises much more than just conveying illocutionary force, involving certain adjacency pairs, discourse patterns, and sequences within a conversation. Hence, it is not only crucial to use authentic discourse samples, but also to draw learners’ attention to ‘whole stretches of discourse’ (p. 177) in order to raise an awareness for discourse frames. However, an important point raised by Yates and Major (2015) concerns the applicability of the authentic discourse samples that are being used in LSP instruction. Although authentic samples in general have considerable merit in teaching pragmatics, instructors need to make sure that the samples are directly applicable to the target professional context. That is, in an ideal world, data used in the LSP classroom would be collected from the learner’s actual workplace. However, getting access to and being allowed to record real-life workplace communication for research purposes may at times be rather challenging due to issues such as confidentiality. Given the shortage of learning tools that focus on TL pragmatics in different workplace settings (Koester, 2002, 2006), researchers and practitioners have authored a number of L2 pragmatics learning tools, incorporating authentic discourse samples. In a book on teaching materials designed to aid migrants to New Zealand in preparing for the linguistic challenges in a new workplace, Riddiford and Newton (2010) focused on face-threatening speech acts such as requests, refusals, apologies, disagreements, and complaints. They included transcribed and recorded samples of naturalistic and authentic interactions from a range of different workplace settings. Similarly, Yates and Springall (2010) authored a workbook chapter for the AMEP in Australia. The chapter includes an overview and a list of pragmalinguistic realizations that learners can use to make requests as well as awareness-raising activities that promote pragmatic learning through noticing and reflection. In addition to the more traditional textbook approaches, Timpe-Laughlin 423

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and her team at Educational Testing Service have developed the prototype of a computer-based learning tool—Words at Work—that is intended to help adult English language learners increase their awareness of English pragmatics for white-collar workplaces in the U.S.A. Currently used for research purposes, the learning tool is organized around real-life professional scenarios including a job hunt, an interview, the first day on the new job, and the establishment of a regular job routine. Embedded in this scenario structure are nine learning modules, each of which focuses on a specific pragmatic phenomenon that is important for successful communication in the workplace, such as implicatures, speech acts (e.g., requests, suggestions), and small talk. The tasks and activities completed by the user are immersive and interactive, incorporating extensive audiovisual content to enhance contextualization. To summarize, despite the limited number of studies that have investigated pragmatics learning for and in the workplace, the research has provided some first insights into how L2 learners can be supported in acquiring pragmatic phenomena in the TL. Therefore, a number of pedagogical interventions have been proposed that primarily focus on awareness raising via explicit instruction, observation, reflection, and practice in order to ultimately empower L2 learners, equipping them with the analytical skills necessary to evaluate pragmatic phenomena in interaction themselves.

Conclusion and Future Directions The value of research that investigates interactions in the workplace is that it makes apparent discourse structures and pragmatic phenomena that oftentimes go unnoticed in every day workplace interactions. Moreover, it assists in raising awareness among both L1 and L2 speakers by offering insights into language use that may help speakers understand and accommodate differences in workplace communication, which in turn may positively impact the workplace environment. Although several analyses of workplace discourse have shown that effective and appropriate language use in relational and transactional communication is crucial in workplace contexts, research conducted in the area is still very limited. Hence, the field is in desperate need of further research to explore the multidimensionality of L2 pragmatic learning in and for the workplace. Given that pragmatic competence is at the heart of workplace communication, future L2 pragmatics acquisition research could go in a number of different directions to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how L2 learners acquire and learn TL pragmatics in the workplace. First, the field would benefit from more ethnographic research across a range of professions and workplaces. Li (2000) is one of the very few studies that include an emic perspective, providing insights into immigrants’ L2 pragmatic acquisition over time. Additional ethnographic research might help to provide a more comprehensive picture of L2 learners’ needs as well as the variables involved in the acquisition process. Along these lines, research could also place a particular focus on the role of social identity within the L2 pragmatics acquisition process. Since pragmatics is located at the intersection of the cognitive and the social (Timpe-Laughlin, 2016), Hassall (2015) argued that L2 pragmatics acquisition is tied to ‘L2 identity formation’ (p. 35). Hence, future research can address the extent to which L2 pragmatics acquisition is impacted by (a) a learner’s level of comfort with their (social) roles in the workplace and (b) an individual’s wish to become a fully integrated member of the TL speech community. Second, existing research has focused on a rather small number of pragmatic phenomena (e.g., requests, small talk). Hence, future research would need to focus on additional pragmatic features, tracing in more detail sociocultural knowledge and functional aspects, in order to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the multidimensional L2 pragmatic learning process in the workplace. For example, understanding in more detail how interlocutors use scripts, build rapport, and successfully maneuver face-threatening acts like disagreements, refusals, and complaints in different job-related contexts would provide a more complete understanding of 424

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pragmatic features that prevail in workplace communication. Moreover, these phenomena and the associated learning processes would need to be documented across different blue-collar and white-collar workplaces. Future studies may also want to obtain larger sample sizes in order to allow for broader generalizations of the findings. Third, all studies thus far have focused on English as the TL. Although there are pragmatic differences between the English varieties spoken in workplaces in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.A., future research should expand the focus by also investigating other varieties of English as well as other languages. While the currently available research stems from countries with a strong history of immigration, more recent ‘global flows of people’ (Roberts, 2010, p. 211) such as the stream of refugees immigrating into European countries will create further linguistically and culturally diverse workplaces in which newcomers may struggle to acquire the pragmatics of German, French, or Dutch. Similarly, a growing number of companies located in non-Englishspeaking environments have adopted English as the language of the workplace. Such lingua franca interaction and the pragmatics negotiated in workplace communication are most likely very idiosyncratic, and may thus provide a different set of challenges for newcomers. Fourth, researchers have identified technological transformations that have impacted language use in the workplace (Duff, 2008; Myles, 2009; Newton & Kusmierczyk, 2011; Robert, 2010). Technological advances have been found to impact the use of language, in particular broadening communicative demands to include a range of settings (e.g., face-to-face, telephone, email, video, or chat) with distinct language use expectations (Myles, 2009). Hence, future L2 pragmatics research may also take into account communication via different mediating technologies and their potential to foster L2 pragmatics learning in workplace contexts. Finally, very little research has been conducted in terms of assessing the pragmatic abilities and/or development of L2 learners in new workplaces. While Lockwood (2013) provides an overview of LSP assessments, no mention is made of pragmatics. A potential reason for the lack of pragmatic features in large-scale tests of, for instance, English proficiency might be that the communicative goals of the workplace are much more specific than those assessed on standardized tests (Newton & Kusmierczyk, 2011). Moreover, more foundational research is needed in terms of how L2 pragmatics develops in workplace contexts before appropriate, potentially workplace-specific assessments can be developed. Turning to the teaching of workplace pragmatics, researchers and practitioners may need to collaborate to advance L2 pragmatics pedagogy, including the development of more learning materials, the establishment of further corpora of workplace communication, and a stronger focus on evidence-based L2 pragmatics instruction. Although research has shown that sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities are difficult to acquire without explicit, formal instruction, pragmatics is still underrepresented or completely missing from several L2 curricula, syllabi, and learning materials. Moreover, in the few existing learning products, discrepancies between learning materials and actual business discourse (Cheng & Warren, 2005, 2006; Koester, 2010) have frequently been identified. Cheng and Warren (2005, 2006) studied agreeing and disagreeing as well as opine markers in the business-related sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English. They found a discrepancy between the discourse of the corpus and language taught in EFL textbooks. Only four of the top-ten opine markers that Cheng and Warren (2006) had identified in the corpus were actually listed in the textbook. Additionally, the strategies identified in the corpus were more indirect than the ones referenced in the learning material. A reason for this discrepancy could be the challenge for material developers to obtain authentic speech samples—a limitation that we also see in different studies (see Chapter 21 in this volume). Some researchers noted that they were unable to obtain real workplace speech samples and thus resorted to using role plays conducted by L1 speakers from distinct speech communities (e.g., Yates & Major, 2015). However, researchers have highlighted the need for a stronger connection between research in workplace 425

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discourse and training materials, parallel to what is already in place in English for academic purposes (e.g., Koester, 2010). Thus, future researchers and practitioners may need to collaborate to establish further corpora for different workplaces in different cultural settings. In turn, these corpora and other findings from the analysis of real-world discourse could inform the development of curricula, syllabi, and teaching materials that feature a strong focus on L2 pragmatics in workplace settings.

Notes 1 Institutional talk typically refers to spoken interaction, while professional discourse is used to refer to written communication in workplace settings (Koester, 2006). However, in the context of this paper, I will use the terms—workplace talk, institutional talk, workplace discourse, and professional discourse— interchangeably to refer to any type of communicative workplace interaction. 2 Although ‘communities of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and ‘discourse communities’ (Swales, 1990) originated in two different research traditions, the concepts are fairly similar (see Koester, 2010) and will thus be used synonymously in the context of this chapter. 3 https://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/centres-and-institutes/language-in-the-workplace

Further Reading Incelli, E. (2013). Managing discourse in intercultural business email interactions: a case study of a British and Italian business transaction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 34(6), 515–532. This paper reports on an aspect that has not been included in this chapter: written computer-mediated workplace communication. Incelli (2013) collected emails exchanged over the course of ten months between a British and an Italian company. Based on the data, she documented strategies that both L1 and L2 writers used when carrying out written Business English as a Lingua Franca interaction. This study adopts an intercultural perspective, specifically addressing aspects of accommodation, formality and informality, relational language, and instances of miscommunication. Vine, B. (Ed.). (2018). The Routledge handbook of language in the workplace. New York: Routledge. This edited volume surveys the linguistic research on language in the workplace. It canvasses theoretical and methodological approaches and offers research insights into different workplace settings. Although not explicitly focused on L2 pragmatics, it nevertheless includes chapters on key areas of pragmatics such as ‘Directives in Workplace Discourse’ (Saito & Cook) as well as Language ‘Learning On-the-Job’ (Yates) written by leaders in the field of L2 pragmatics research.

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28 Individual Learner Considerations in SLA and L2 Pragmatics Satomi Takahashi

Introduction The issue of individual variations in second language acquisition (SLA) has been one of the central concerns of SLA research. Researchers pursuing this issue have extensively explored the factors that differentiate learners in their second-language (L2) learning within the framework of ‘individual difference’ (ID) research (see Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015, for overviews). In the 1990s, we witnessed an abrupt increase in empirical findings on learner characteristics that constrain L2 learning, triggered partly by stepwise paradigm shifts in L2 motivation research (e.g., Crookes & Schmidt, 1991; Dörnyei, 1990; for overviews, see Dörnyei, 2001; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). In this period, there was also insightful research into aptitude and working memory (e.g., Robinson, 1997, 2002). It should be noted that the majority of these ID studies were psychometric in nature, adopting a cross-sectional linear-model design that treats ID factors as discrete independent variables (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). These studies focused on the general tendencies in individual variations instead of the specific variations observed within and among individuals. This psychometric tradition of ‘variable-centered analysis’ (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008b, p. 202) has been a mainstream practice for clarifying structural relationships between ID variables and their effects on L2 learning (e.g., Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei, Csizér, & Németh, 2006). With the introduction of a complexity theory approach to SLA in the twenty-first century, applied linguistics research has taken what we call a ‘dynamic turn.’ In particular, complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) has been applied to various aspects of L2 learning (de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006; LarsenFreeman & Cameron, 2008a, 2008b; Ortega & Han, 2017). Unlike the variable-centered approach, the CDST approach rejects the idea of isolated components of a system as the units of analysis and argues for analyzing the system as a whole. In this view, intra- and inter-individual variations are the result of constant interactions between an individual learner’s various attributes and contexts; further, such variations change over time as those attributes and contexts do. Therefore, research within this framework is implemented through a longitudinal design, and developmental data from specific individuals are analyzed qualitatively and holistically. With the advent of CDST, the scope of ID research has expanded, and its goal has been reformulated to focus more on each individual rather than a group (Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011; Ushioda, 2001, 2009). 429

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In the area of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), however, the importance of ID research was not recognized until the mid-1990s when Kasper and Schmidt (1996) called for the investigation of the influence of ID factors, especially motivation, on the acquisition of pragmatic competence. In light of the multifaceted nature of pragmatics, Kasper and Rose (2002) further emphasized the necessity to examine various aspects of learner characteristics in L2 pragmatics. In response to their recommendation, efforts were made to undertake ID studies within the framework of discrete variable-centered quantitative research. These studies examined the effects of aptitude (e.g., Li, 2017), motivation (e.g., Takahashi, 2005), proficiency (e.g., Roever, Wang, & Brophy, 2014), intercultural competence (e.g., Taguchi, Xiao, & Li, 2016), personality (e.g., Taguchi, 2014), subjectivity/identity (e.g., Kim, 2014), gender (e.g., Roever et al., 2014), and bilingualism/multilingualism (e.g., Alcón-Soler, 2012) on L2 pragmatic competence. In a more recent attempt to explore the developmental aspects of L2 pragmatics, Taguchi (2011b, 2012, 2015b) adopted a holistic qualitative approach to investigate a learner’s individual variability as the reflection of his/her ‘pragmatics learning,’ demonstrating the high applicability of CDST to L2 pragmatics (see also Taguchi, 2010, 2015a). However, it should be noted that explicit application of CDST to L2 pragmatics learning and development is still limited in the ILP literature. On the whole, we must admit that, compared to mainstream SLA research, there has not been substantial systematic empirical investigation into the effects of individual learner characteristics on learning pragmatics in ILP, let alone exploration of the pertinent theoretical frameworks for such empirical endeavors. This chapter aims to critically evaluate ILP findings on the influence of individual learner characteristics by contrasting the discrete quantitative approach with the holistic qualitative approach. A comparison will be made with mainstream SLA research, particularly with respect to the applicability of CDST as a promising theoretical framework for L2 research. Based on this appraisal, an effort will be made to suggest future directions for research on individual considerations in pragmatics learning.

Theoretical Underpinnings Reconceptualizing ‘Individual Differences’ In his seminal book on IDs in SLA, Dörnyei (2005) extensively discussed several major ID variables, including personality, aptitude, motivation, learning styles, language learning strategies, anxiety, willingness to communicate, and learner beliefs. Ten years later, Dörnyei and Ryan (2015) revisited the same theme. They asserted that the ID concept presented in the 2005 book represents the ‘classic’ perspective and suggested that a new paradigm with a more robust theoretical background be established in ID research. In the classic paradigm, IDs are defined as ‘dimensions of enduring personal characteristics that are assumed to apply to everybody and on which people differ by degree’ (Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015, p. 3). One of the crucial characteristics of this conception is the ‘stability’ of systematic deviations from normative behavior (Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). Dörnyei and Ryan (2015) referred to three additional assumptions of the classic ID paradigm: IDs are distinctly definable constructs; IDs are monolithic; and IDs are learner-internal, independent from external contextual resources. However, based on insights from recent L2 motivation research from process-oriented and socio-dynamic perspectives (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011), Dörnyei and Ryan argue that these four assumptions should be reconsidered, as they do not reflect the reality of IDs. Specifically, in view of situational and temporal variations observed in real language learning settings, the idea of ‘stable, trait-like IDs’ is not amenable (Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). Individual learners are constrained by contextual resources. Various aspects 430

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of social situations change over time, affecting the learner characteristics observed in particular situations. This interdependence and interaction between learner characteristics and situational/ temporal variations thus inevitably reject the view of IDs as stable and context-independent constructs. Furthermore, research on motivation and aptitude has revealed that ID variables are multicomponent and that a number of ID components interact dynamically with each other (Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015). IDs, therefore, are neither distinctly definable nor monolithic in nature. Based on these observations, Dörnyei and Ryan (2015) concluded that the four assumptions of the classic ID paradigm do not provide an ecologically valid base for investigating learner characteristics (see also Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). The reconceptualization of IDs has also been attempted from a different angle. The goal of classic ID research was to identify influential and quantifiable ID variables and trace cause–effect relationships between these variables, which would enable us to predict statistically probable learning outcomes (Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). Such linear, reductionist models, however, tend to generalize the characteristics of certain learning behaviors. Those models only provide information about generalized learner types (e.g., learners with intrinsic or extrinsic motivation) and not about the characteristics of a unique individual, which have complex, nonlinear, and unpredictable relations with internal and external resources (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). In her ‘person-in-context relational view of motivation,’ Ushioda (2009) proposed that research should address the complex individuality of real people, rather than abstract language learners or learner characteristics. In this view, IDs ought to be reconceptualized as any characteristics of a real individual that differ from those of another individual, which are essentially constrained by various situational and temporal factors (Ushioda, 2001, 2009).

Language Development from a Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective Currently, the CDST approach provides the theoretical basis for SLA researchers to account for various ‘complex’ and ‘dynamic’ L2 learning phenomena. A growing number of empirical studies in SLA have tried to verify the theoretical claims of CDST or to explain the phenomena observed in their data from the CDST perspective. CDST is characterized by several theoretical claims, which are extensively and comprehensively discussed in Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008a, 2008b) (see also de Bot, 2008; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006; Jessner, 2008; LarsenFreeman, 2007, 2012; van Geert, 2008). The following two paragraphs will present these claims, primarily based on the existing literature on this paradigm. CDST’s crucial claim is that the system should be analyzed as a whole. In this view, the components of a complex system are interdependent and interact with each other. Furthermore, as the system is open to external environments, the system’s components also interact with external resources. The system should therefore be understood in terms of these interactions between its internally and externally interconnected components, particularly emphasizing the role of context. It is further argued that, contra reductionism, an order that is more complex than the sum of its parts emerges from such an interaction. Finally, this emergence of new behavior patterns is the result of the system’s self-organization (i.e., a sudden change by its internal organizing force), which is evident from the flux and variability visible in the system. Variability and stability are important notions in CDST insofar as it is their interplay that shows ‘qualitative change’ in the system, namely, development or learning. As long as the system is stable, changes do not occur; this condition is technically described as the system being in the attractor state. When the system begins to display variation, or ‘noise,’ certain changes are expected in the system. Such changes may emerge continuously or abruptly; the latter case is called ‘phase shift’ or ‘phase transition,’ which leads the system to reorganize itself into a new, higher-level state. In this view, therefore, ‘noise’ or ‘deviation’ plays an important role in accounting for development. More importantly, CDST emphasizes ‘change over time’ in any complex system, 431

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with the development emerging in the system being nonlinear. This indicates that, as a nonlinear model, CDST is characterized by unpredictability because, unlike linear models, it does not aim to clarify cause–effect relationships. Different systems can also be interconnected, with changes in one system leading to changes in another, a phenomenon known as ‘co-adaptation.’ The theoretical arguments delineated above clearly indicate that CDST is a relational approach. A learner’s language resources are available ‘depending on the real-time interaction between person and context-specific properties’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2012, p. 230). In this process, the learner’s language resources manifest a great deal of variability, indicating his/her language development (intra-individual variations) and differentiating his/her developmental pattern from that of other learners (inter-individual variations). Methodologically, then, CDST calls for longitudinal data collected from specific individuals and a holistic qualitative analysis. To summarize the theoretical background, it is obvious that the tenets of CDST could provide robust support for the arguments of the new ID research paradigm, with ‘context’ and ‘time’ being keywords. In fact, more recent ID research in mainstream SLA has been undertaken within the CDST framework; this is particularly evident in L2 motivation research (see Dörnyei, MacIntyre, & Henry, 2015). A growing proportion of ID research has adopted a longitudinal design, collecting data from specific individuals, followed by a holistic qualitative analysis. Focusing on individual learners enables researchers to investigate the ‘intra-individual variations’ that intricately interact with ‘inter-individual variations’ (which are what is traditionally meant by the term ‘individual differences’). It is only through this approach that we can grasp the complete picture of IDs in L2 learning.

Survey and Appraisal of Current Research Findings Individual Learner Considerations in Mainstream SLA As noted in the previous section, IDs have long been investigated in mainstream SLA within the framework of the classic ID paradigm, using reductionist variable-centered quantitative analysis. The current trend in ID research conducted from the CDST perspective, however, favors individual-level holistic qualitative analysis. This section will survey some empirical findings for these distinct paradigms in mainstream SLA. Their designs and findings will form the basis for appraising those in ID research in ILP later in this chapter. In what follows, I will describe several noteworthy studies that show the impact of IDs on L2 learning outcomes. I will focus on aptitude and motivation (and additional cognitive/affective variables for multiple-factor research) since they are the major ID variables that have been extensively investigated, thus shaping the history of ID research in SLA (Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015). Among discrete variable-centered studies in the psychometric tradition, Robinson (1997, 2002) made noteworthy attempts to establish a link between aptitude and learning conditions (i.e., aptitude-treatment interaction). Based on the notion of ‘aptitude complexes,’ Robinson conceptualized language-learning aptitude as comprising multiple lower-level cognitive abilities (e.g., attention, phonological working memory) and hypothesized that these abilities are jointly operative in L2 learning situations. In his 1997 study, for example, Robinson set up four learning conditions for L2 English: implicit, incidental, rule-search, and instructed. The effects of aptitude were found in all conditions except the incidental condition; aptitude scores were closely related to awareness of grammatical rules as a result of being able to verbalize the rules (see Robinson, 2002, for different findings in the incidental condition). Robinson demonstrated that aptitude is a dynamic construct, with a combined set of cognitive abilities intricately interrelated with contextual resources, namely, learning conditions. This observed dynamicity of aptitude has since inspired many other SLA researchers (e.g., Tagarelli, Ruiz, Vega, & Rebuschat, 2016; Yalçın & Spada, 2016). 432

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In the area of L2 motivation, structural equation modeling (SEM) has been employed to identify cause–effect relationships between focal variables. For example, using a longitudinal design, Dörnyei and his associates (Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei et al., 2006; see also Dörnyei & Csizér, 2002) investigated more than 13,000 Hungarian language learners to explore the causal relationships between seven independent variables (e.g., integrativeness, attitudes toward L2 speakers, instrumentality), with ‘intended effort’ and ‘language choice’ as the criterion measures. The most notable finding was that the variable of ‘integrativeness’ (i.e., interest in social interaction with members of the L2 community) directly accounted for the criterion variables while also mediating the effects of all other attitudinal/motivational variables. These studies by Dörnyei and his associates are noteworthy in two respects. First, they successfully incorporated a robust linear model into their longitudinal design, revealing that students’ interest in learning foreign languages decreased over long periods of time. Second, their findings suggested a reinterpretation of ‘integrativeness,’ leading to a new theoretical framework called the ‘L2 Motivational Self System’ (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009). In this new model, ‘integrativeness’ is closely related or equivalent to the ‘ideal L2 self,’ the central notion of the model (see also Ryan, 2009). Therefore, Dörnyei’s variable-centered quantitative studies have provided a base for theory construction in recent L2 motivation research. To account for the temporal dimension of L2 learning motivation, Ushioda (1998, 2001) advocated a longitudinal qualitative approach, going against the psychometric tradition. Her two stages of individual interviews (in a 15/16-month interval period) with Irish learners of French revealed that many were motivated to learn their L2 because of their positive learning history, while goal orientation was a motivating force for others. However, these patterns of learners’ motivational thinking could change or reverse with time. These studies thus paved the way for the investigation of dynamic motivational changes within an individual’s learning process, which fits well into the CDST framework. As mentioned earlier, in an effort to apply CDST, a growing number of longitudinal studies with a holistic qualitative design have been undertaken in mainstream SLA, though many of them are, in fact, conducted using a mixed-methods approach. Among them is ‘motivational dynamics’ research, which has provided strong evidence of continuous changes in motivation, as predicted by CDST (see Dörnyei et al., 2015). Such studies aimed to examine whether learners’ motivation changes over time and how this relates to L2 development. For example, MacIntyre and Serroul (2015) pinpointed the relationships between changes in learners’ motivation and their reactions to tasks, identifying four types of patterns in these relationships. Within the framework of the L2 Motivational Self System, Nitta and Baba (2015) showed the ‘evolution’ of ideal L2 selves, which interacted with improvement in writing fluency. Also focusing on the L2 Motivational Self System, Thompson (2017) proposed the concept of the ‘anti-ought-to self’ (going against social norms), as opposed to the ‘ought-to self,’ and qualitatively analyzed the relationships between these two selves as manifested in two advanced L2 learners. The two types of selves were found to fluctuate throughout the learners’ language learning experiences, with synergistic relationships confirmed between them. Temporal changes in IDs have also been investigated by several other researchers who focused on multiple ID factors. Serafini (2017), for example, targeted a larger number of cognitive and motivational subsystems, including working memory, attitude, anxiety, ideal L2 self, and ought-to L2 self, showing that the influence of these ID factors varied depending on L2 proficiency. In a study-abroad context, Cigliana (2016) investigated the effects of pre-program proficiency, attitude, and motivation on L2 development. The results revealed that learners’ initial positive attitudes and motivation became negative as a result of unrealistic expectations about studying abroad being confronted with reality, as shown in the interview data (see also Piniel & Csizér, 2015). Rather than focusing on the dynamicity of particular ID variables and their interactions, recent SLA research has also endeavored to account for nonlinear characteristics in L2 development 433

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from the CDST perspective (e.g., Baba & Nitta, 2014; Larson-Freeman, 2006; Lenzing, 2015). Among such studies, Baba and Nitta (2014) confirmed task motivation as a possible factor closely associated with nonlinear changes in L2 writing. Specifically, by focusing on phase transition (i.e., drastic qualitative change), they traced the development of the L2 writing fluency of two Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The researchers used a repeated timed writing task given once a week throughout the school year. Four criteria for phase transition were established, and the change points were objectively identified using a computer program and were statistically determined. Quantitative analysis revealed that the two learners, in their unique developmental paths, experienced at least one phase transition in their writing fluency. Importantly, the interview data indicated that the learners’ positive motivational attitudes toward task repetition were among the factors involved in phase transition. In other words, the learners regarded the task as important, and their strong determination to write a better composition within the time limit was likely to be related to phase transition. In the next section, I will survey ID research in ILP, first focusing on studies undertaken within the framework of the variable-centered quantitative approach, followed by those conducted within the framework of the holistic qualitative approach. Then, I will compare the research outcomes of ILP with those of mainstream SLA, aiming to appraise or problematize ID research in ILP both methodologically and theoretically.

Individual Learner Considerations in ILP Applying a Variable-centered Quantitative Approach in Pragmatics Learning Kasper and Schmidt (1996) argued that the issue of IDs in L2 pragmatic development had rarely been addressed, which contrasts sharply with the stance toward ID research in mainstream SLA. To remedy this, efforts have since been made to implement ID research in ILP within the framework of the discrete variable-centered approach common in mainstream SLA. In this research tradition, various ID variables have been targeted: aptitude (e.g., Li, 2017), motivation (e.g., Takahashi, 2005, 2015), proficiency (e.g., Bella, 2012; Matsumura, 2003; Roever et  al., 2014; Taguchi, 2011a; Xu, Case, & Wang, 2009), intercultural competence (e.g., Taguchi et al., 2016), personality (e.g., Taguchi, 2014), subjectivity/identity (e.g., Kim, 2014), gender (e.g., Geluykens & Kraft, 2007; Kuriščák, 2006; Roever et al., 2014), and bilingualism/multilingualism (e.g., Alcón-Soler, 2012; Roever et al., 2014) (see Taguchi & Roever, 2017, for an overview). Moreover, since pragmatics conceptually involves numerous factors, more recent research has simultaneously investigated multiple ID variables (e.g., Kuriščák, 2006; Roever et al., 2014). Here, in parallel with the above survey of mainstream SLA, I will first focus on variable-centered quantitative research dealing with aptitude and motivation—the two major ID variables in L2 research. Furthermore, I will review multiple-factor ID research in ILP since it is expected to provide clear implications for complexity in pragmatics learning. Following Robinson’s (1997, 2002) aptitude-treatment interaction research, Li (2017) investigated whether and how learners’ foreign-language aptitudes affect gains in request-making performance in L2 Chinese as a result of two types of explicit instruction—input- and outputbased. Fifty American learners of Chinese were assigned to these two instructional or learning conditions (and the control group), completing the designated computer programs. Pragmatic gains were assessed with listening judgment and oral production tests in immediate and delayed posttests. Learners’ aptitudes were measured by the Modern Language Aptitude Test (for rote memory and grammatical sensitivity; Carroll & Sapon 1959) and a reading span test (for working memory for text; Daneman & Carpenter, 1980; Rodríguez, 2008). The correlation analyses of aptitude scores and pragmatic gains revealed that aptitudes were differentially operative in the two learning conditions for performance speed, but not for performance accuracy. Specifically, 434

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learners with a larger working-memory capacity benefited from input-based instruction for the speedy judgment of request forms; learners with higher grammatical sensitivity (or language analytic ability) achieved larger gains in production speech rates through output-based instruction. However, accuracy in pragmatic performance was not associated with any of the three aptitude components. Focusing on motivation and proficiency, Takahashi (2005) also followed Robinson’s (1997, 2002) call to investigate the interaction between ID variables and specific learning processes (see also Chapter 8 in this volume). Takahashi examined the extent to which the two ID variables accounted for differences in pragmalinguistic awareness. The target forms were English bi-clausal request forms (e.g., ‘I was wondering if you could VP’). These forms were not in the pragmalinguistic repertoire of Japanese EFL learners because many of the learners used mono-clausal forms such as ‘Could/Would you VP?’ The bi-clausal forms were presented to 80 Japanese EFL learners, along with other pragmalinguistic features, through a form-search implicit instruction. Participants were asked to analyze request-making role-play data containing the target bi-clausal forms and identify native-like expressions in the data. Successful identification of the target forms was then converted into pragmalinguistic awareness scores. Correlation analysis showed that intrinsic motivation (assessed by questionnaire) was significantly associated with awareness of the bi-clausal forms, while L2 proficiency was not. Takahashi (2012, 2013) further addressed the role of IDs in L2 pragmatics, exploring the causal relationships between motivation, listening proficiency, and awareness of bi-clausal request forms (Takahashi, 2012) and the learning of those forms (Takahashi, 2013) in an implicit instructional condition. For this purpose, SEM was applied to data from 104 Japanese EFL learners for each target variable. To assess pragmalinguistic awareness, learners were asked to engage in video dictation tasks. They watched request-making role plays performed by native English speakers who used the target bi-clausal forms, and they wrote down any expressions they found interesting in the role plays. Takahashi’s (2012) SEM results showed that learners with higher communication-oriented motivation demonstrated higher listening proficiency, which directly accounted for their pragmalinguistic awareness. Furthermore, pragmalinguistic awareness was predicted by learners’ class-oriented motivation (i.e., desires to improve one’s English skills through classroom activities). Takahashi (2013) assessed learners’ mastery of the target bi-clausal request forms using oral discourse completion tests (oral DCTs) before and after the pragmalinguistic awareness session. In this study, however, awareness of the target bi-clausal forms in the role-play input did not lead to learning of the forms. Takahashi (2015) further investigated the effects of ‘learner profiles’ on pragmalinguistic awareness and learning. Applying cluster analysis to the motivation and proficiency data collected in her 2012 and 2013 studies, she identified three learner groups with respect to the combination of these two ID variables. While these learner profiles were found to affect awareness of the target bi-clausal request forms, they did not account for learning the forms as assessed by oral DCT (similar to the findings of the previous two studies). In addition, two types of qualitative analysis were performed: one for awareness (via journal entries of participants’ awareness of target forms) and the other for learning (via follow-up questionnaires on participants’ DCT responses). These qualitative analyses revealed individual-level differences in targets of attention. Learners with high listening proficiency and high communication-oriented motivation were more likely to attend to the target request forms and request-making sequences, along with the other (non-request) linguistic features in the pragmatic input (the awareness journal). The follow-up questionnaire data indicated that a lack of listening and grammatical abilities seemed to have prevented learners from deeply processing the input, leading to a failure to learn the target forms. Some ILP studies have examined the impacts of IDs in pragmatics learning by strictly following the psychometric tradition, but with more complexity in research design. Among them 435

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is Kuriščák (2006), who simultaneously explored the effects of multiple situational and learner variables on the production and perception of requests and complaints. The situational variables included gender, familiarity, and status of the native-speaking interlocutor; the target learner variables were proficiency, personality (extroversion, neuroticism, and social desirability), motivation, study-abroad experience, activities in L2, demographic traits, and knowledge of an additional language. Kuriščák assumed that these variables are hierarchically nested, arguing for investigating their relative contributions to L2 speech-act recognition and production. Data were collected via DCTs from 292 advanced learners of Spanish. Hierarchical linear model (HLM) analyses demonstrated that the relative importance of the situational and learner variables differed according to dependent variables (e.g., speech-act type, downgrader, imposition). Moreover, proficiency predicted the outcomes of speech-act production most strongly. The relative contributions of multiple ID variables were also explored by Roever et al. (2014). They used a cross-sectional design, focusing on proficiency, length of residence (LOR), gender, and multilingualism (i.e., the number of languages spoken) as learner background/ID factors, and examined their contributions to learners’ comprehension of implicature, recognition of routine formulae, and production of speech acts. A Web-based pragmatics test assessing pragmatic knowledge in those three target areas was administered to 229 EFL and English as a second language (ESL) learners. The data were analyzed with Poisson regression to evaluate the relative effect of each factor. For implicature, only proficiency was found to be a significant factor. The recognition of routine formulae was predicted by LOR and proficiency. Gender and proficiency significantly constrained speech-act production. Overall, proficiency was found to provide the greatest impact on L2 pragmatic competence, though its effect varied depending on the target criterion measures (i.e., learners’ comprehension of implicature, recognition of routine formulae, and production of speech acts). On the other hand, multilingualism did not have a significant effect on any aspect of L2 pragmatic competence. The findings of the studies reviewed above provide insight into the nature of ID variables or their combinations affecting L2 pragmatic competence. Li (2017) verified that three foreignlanguage aptitudes intricately and differentially interact with learning conditions, affecting pragmatic performance; thus, Robinson’s (1997, 2002) theoretical claims about aptitude-treatment interaction were adequately confirmed in ILP as well. Takahashi’s (2005, 2012, 2013, 2015) studies demonstrated that motivation and proficiency affect the cognitive processes of attention to and awareness of pragmatic features, thereby contributing to ID/attention-interface research in SLA. The critical role of proficiency in L2 pragmatics was also attested in Kuriščák (2006) and Roever et al. (2014) through analyses of the relative contributions of ID variables. These studies suggest the importance of examining multiple ID variables (or their subcomponents) in complex linear models. While these complex-design studies contribute to expanding the scope of ID research in L2 pragmatics, a question arises as to how many ID variables should be examined together to obtain a more precise picture of the nature of IDs in pragmatics learning. This question essentially addresses one of the limitations of variable-centered linear models. Dörnyei and Ushioda (2011) described this limitation as focusing on ‘a small number of key variables that can explain a significant proportion of the variance in learners’ behavior or performance’ (p. 76) to ensure the model’s predictive power. With this reductionist approach, they argued, ‘incorporating too many variables clearly makes any linear model unwieldy and difficult to test empirically, and considerably weakens its explanatory power’ (p. 76). Given the significant role of context in pragmatics learning, this limitation of linear models decreases the chances of accurately determining the effects of various situational variables affecting pragmatics learning. The more serious limitation of variable-centered linear models is their focus on the ‘general tendencies’ observed in the interaction between ‘static ID variables’ and specific ‘static criterion variables,’ a reductionist view that has been criticized in recent ID research in SLA (e.g., Dörnyei 436

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& Ryan, 2015; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). In fact, the multivariate statistics such as SEM, HLM, and Poisson regression employed in the ILP studies reviewed above prevent researchers from exploring how the various attributes of an individual learner affect L2 pragmatics learning (see also Roever et al., 2014, for a similar argument). As Takahashi’s (2015) qualitative findings suggest, learners differ in terms of which aspects of pragmatic input they attend to, and different attentional targets may be influenced by individual learners’ L2 abilities. It is, therefore, highly likely that more fine-grained individual-level learner information could contribute to a deeper understanding of individual variations in pragmatics learning. If the ultimate goal is to explore intra- and inter-individual variations in pragmatic competence and development, we need a proper research framework to achieve it. In the next section, I will survey ILP research that had adopted an individual-level analysis within the framework of the holistic qualitative approach, which further provides basis for exploring the applicability of CDST as a theoretical framework for ID research in ILP.

Applying a Holistic Qualitative Approach to Explore Dynamicity in Pragmatics Learning Inspired by Kasper and Schmidt (1996) and Kasper and Rose (2002), a growing number of ILP studies have explored the developmental aspects of L2 pragmatics (e.g., Belz & Kinginger, 2003; DuFon, 1999; Hassall, 2006; Kinginger, 2008; Schauer, 2006; Taguchi, 2008; see Taguchi, 2010, for an overview). Methodologically, these studies employed individual-level analysis in that they followed a few L2 learners’ development as case histories and analyzed the data qualitatively and holistically. Some of these studies identified instances of individual variation in development. For example, in her investigation of address terms in L2 Indonesian, DuFon (1999) encountered cases where learners’ different values in their choices of address terms led to individual variation in the development of the target pragmatic feature. Specifically, against the target-language norms, one learner thought it important to minimize social differences between him and his interlocutors, resulting in the persistent use of impolite address terms in the L2; the other learner respected the sociolinguistic rules of the target feature, progressing toward more native-like performance. In another study, using a mixed-methods approach, Kinginger (2008) investigated the acquisition of knowledge of address forms, colloquialisms, and speech acts among American learners of French in a study-abroad context. While the quantitative data revealed significant increases in pragmatic competence in the target areas, qualitative data from interviews showed the possible impact of learners’ motivation on their development: Learners who were motivated to interact with local community members developed more pragmatic knowledge than those who avoided such interaction by maintaining closer contact with their home-country friends and family via the Internet. Unlike prior studies that only provided implications for impacts of IDs on pragmatic development, Taguchi (2011b, 2012, 2015b) systematically explored the possible influence of IDs on pragmatic development by explicitly adopting the CDST approach. In an eight-month longitudinal study in an English immersion context in Japan, Taguchi (2011b, 2012) examined changes in pragmatic competence among Japanese learners of English and the sources of individual variation evident in such changes. The study adopted a mixed-methods design. Quantitative analysis of data from 48 learners revealed general patterns of development. However, a close inspection of qualitative data from interviews and observations revealed considerable variations in 12 learners’ learning outcomes. In Taguchi (2011b), one of the two focal participants, Shoko, abruptly learned the function of the bi-clausal request form ‘I wonder if’ in a high-imposition context because her teacher provided explicit corrective feedback on her use of an unmitigated request in her email. This experience led her to not only appropriately use the bi-clausal form thereafter but also consciously search for other polite expressions in the input. Taguchi explained that Shoko’s 437

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positive stance toward pragmatics learning and her personality were the keys to her successful pragmatic development. In contrast, the other learner, Tomoyo, also acquired the bi-clausal form, but stopped using it eight months later and instead increasingly relied on more casual forms. Tomoyo’s change was attributed to her extensive personal contact with her native-English-speaking teachers who expected informal interaction styles from her. Taguchi’s studies showed that pragmatic development is idiosyncratic, and the reasons for such idiosyncrasies are evident only when we look at individual learners in context. More importantly, Taguchi contended that the observed idiosyncratic and nonlinear pragmatic development with some abrupt or continuous changes conform to CDST, which claims that complex interaction between learner internal and external resources triggers some developmental changes, thereby emphasizing the relevance of this theoretical framework for ILP research. Taguchi (2015b) further attempted to clarify how learner characteristics interacted with various internal and external resources in the development of interactional competence in Japanese as an L2 in a study-abroad context. As in her previous studies, the examination of the influence of IDs was systematically incorporated with a mixed-methods design and with CDST as the theoretical framework. Group-level analysis of peer-to-peer conversation data from 18 learners revealed changes in their interactional competence over a 12-week period in terms of appropriate use of speech styles (plain and polite forms) and incomplete sentences, but their style shifts between plain and polite forms remained unchanged. However, individual-level analysis of four case histories revealed many individual variations. Taguchi contrasted the interview data of two participants, Dewi and Adrian. Both of them had a positive attitude and high motivation in learning Japanese. However, Dewi’s outgoing personality, positive attitude, and interest in Japanese culture helped her initiate and maintain relationships with local community members, resulting in an increase in her interactional competence. Adrian failed to establish the same level of social networking with local Japanese people. This might be partly because his meticulous personality, which adhered to correctness and precision and did not allow for ambiguity, kept him from engaging in authentic communication with native speakers, leading to underdeveloped interactional competence (see also Félix-Brasdefer & HaslerBarker, 2015, for similar findings). From the theoretical perspective, Taguchi argued for the applicability of CDST in explaining the obtained findings with respect to the clear interaction between the individual learners’ unique characteristics and their learning environments in developing interactional competence. As noted above, pragmatic development is essentially idiosyncratic and nonlinear, and observed idiosyncrasies are apparently the outcomes of a complex interplay of various internal (individual) and external (contextual) resources. In particular, the influence of contextual resources is tremendous in pragmatics, as attested in Taguchi’s (2011b, 2012, 2015b) studies (see Taguchi, 2010, 2015a, for strong arguments for the significant role of context in pragmatics learning). Several studies have found that learners’ interactions with native speakers in the target language and the intensity of those interactions are crucial contextual factors for pragmatic development (see Bardovi-Harlig & Bastos, 2011; Taguchi, 2008), and these contextual factors dynamically interact with learners’ stances toward L2 pragmatics learning. Here, two things should be noted. First, such valuable information on individual variation is only available from individual-based qualitative investigations of long-term development. Thus, more future studies should employ this methodological framework to reveal the joint influence of individual and contextual factors on pragmatics learning. Second, the observed dynamic interaction between internal and external resources in pragmatic development could best be explained within the CDST framework. However, only a limited number of studies have explicitly applied CDST to the examination of IDs in pragmatics learning. We should thus make greater efforts to incorporate the CDST perspective in future ID research in ILP as a robust theoretical framework for our research endeavors. 438

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Comparing ILP with Mainstream SLA: Toward a New Agenda for ID Research in ILP The history of ID research in ILP is similar to that of mainstream SLA research, involving two distinct research traditions—discrete variable-centered quantitative research and holistic qualitative research. Though the number of discrete variable-centered studies in ILP is small compared to that of mainstream SLA research, those studies are well designed and have adequate complexity and scope, making their quality comparable to their mainstream SLA counterparts. In fact, recent ILP studies have addressed a growing number of internal and external variables, as observed in the above review. However, in both mainstream SLA and ILP, the reliance on a reductionist linear approach has some limitations. As discussed earlier, one such limitation is that the inclusion of a large number of variables in a linear model weakens its explanatory power. Pragmatics learning is considered to be affected by a number of learner and contextual variables because of the complexity of the construct of pragmatic competence and dynamicity involved in pragmatic development. Therefore, this limitation can be more serious in ILP than in SLA research dealing with the acquisition of grammatical forms. Moreover, as noted elsewhere, linear models do not allow us to identify and explain individual-level differences because their goal is to reveal general tendencies in certain learner characteristics observed across individuals. Given the significant role of context in pragmatics learning and dynamic interactions between context and individual learners’ internal resources, individual-based holistic qualitative research is suitable for examining individual learner characteristics in pragmatics learning. From the theoretical perspective, the current ID research in mainstream SLA is firmly grounded in theory by applying CDST to the data obtained through individual-level qualitative research. On the other hand, ID research in ILP is well behind the counterpart in mainstream SLA in this regard. The only exception is Taguchi’s (2011b, 2012, 2015b) research conducted under the individual-based holistic qualitative approach. She successfully demonstrated that the idiosyncratic and nonlinear pragmatic development arising from complex interaction between learner internal and external resources aligns with CDST. In view of such inadequacy in theory application in ID research in ILP, more efforts should be made to explicitly apply CDST to pragmatics learning and development. Another notable difference between mainstream SLA and ILP research from the theoretical perspective is that most CDST-based ID studies in mainstream SLA are ‘theory-driven’; they examine the theoretical tenets of CDST and then try to verify one or more of its theoretical claims using a longitudinal design. For example, many researchers investigating motivational dynamics have endeavored to provide empirical evidence for the ‘unstable’ and ‘nonlinear’ nature of L2 developmental motivation, as predicted by CDST. Others have pursued empirical evidence of ‘phase transition’ (i.e., a drastic change from one state to a higher-level state) and its association with ID variables (see Baba & Nitta, 2014). However, such theory-driven research has not yet been undertaken in ILP. Rather, individual-based longitudinal ILP studies tended to concentrate on describing their empirical findings and then explaining those findings from the CDST perspective. As such, there should be more theory-driven ILP studies exploring whether the CDST predictions related to the dynamic interaction between learner internal and external resources are precisely manifested in L2 pragmatic development (e.g., the verification of the existence of nonlinear changes in certain ID variables over time in L2 pragmatic development). Such research will help expand our knowledge of the impact of IDs on pragmatics learning.

Conclusion and Future Directions This review of the literature of ID research in SLA and ILP clearly indicates that the discrete variable-centered quantitative and holistic qualitative approaches provide significant but distinct findings 439

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and implications for the relationships between IDs and L2 learning. The findings on structural relationships between ID variables obtained from discrete variable-centered research promote our understanding of conceptual configurations between IDs and language learning. These studies tell us the ‘general tendencies’ with respect to the effects of IDs on L2 learning in an abstract sense. However, given the recent attempt to reconceptualize the notion of IDs with ecological validity, the individual-level holistic qualitative approach may provide richer and more insightful information on the reality of intra- and inter-individual variations, as it allows us to observe complex and dynamic interactions among learners’ internal attributes, context, and time. Moreover, from the theoretical perspective, such qualitative research should be undertaken more explicitly in the framework of CDST; pragmatics is essentially a context-dependent phenomenon, which is in line with the theoretical tenets of CDST. Thus, in order to more accurately and fully explain the influence of IDs in L2 pragmatics learning, future ID research in ILP should focus more on the individual-level holistic analysis of learner variations in different aspects of L2 pragmatic development by following the longitudinal qualitative approach adopting the CDST perspective. Specifically, two lines of future ID research in ILP are recommended, both of which may preferably adopt a mixed-methods design (see also Chapter 14 in this volume). One of them aims to identify the various kinds of learner attributes that interact with contextual resources in L2 pragmatic development, as well as to identify the kinds of contextual resources that the attributes interact with and the various ways in which this interaction takes place (see Taguchi, 2011b, 2012, 2015b). This objective can be pursued by using a longitudinal design in various learning contexts (e.g., studyabroad programs, computer-mediated communication, and formal classrooms) (see chapters in Part V in this volume). Based on the quantitative analysis of L2 pragmatic competence, a limited number of participants for the qualitative research can be selected, and various aspects of pragmatics learning by these learners can be longitudinally investigated with interviews and observations as the main data collection techniques. Qualitative data obtained from individual participants in multiple interviews and observation sessions can then be holistically analyzed with respect to the interaction between learner characteristics and contextual resources observed during their pragmatics learning, and the findings are then interpreted from the CDST perspective. The other line of future research can adopt a longitudinal design with theory-driven (or CDST-driven) orientations, aiming to clarify whether the CDST predictions can be confirmed in L2 pragmatic development. Prior to qualitative research, either some relatively influential ID variables can be selected as targets based on previous ID research in ILP or such ID factors can be quantitatively determined to be targeted in subsequent research. Those ID variables may include proficiency and motivation (Kuriščák, 2006; Roever et al., 2014; Takahashi, 2005, 2015). Through longitudinal individual-based qualitative research with selected participants, we can then examine whether and how those focal ID variables change over time and interact with contextual variables in the process of L2 pragmatics learning (see Dörnyei et al., 2015). We can also hypothesize that interaction between those influential ID variables and contextual variables triggers a drastic qualitative change in L2 pragmatic development—the condition described as ‘phase shift/transition’ in CDST. We should then indicate whether this is evident in the data obtained from individual participants. Such investigation would certainly enable us to verify the interplay of variability and stability, as predicted by CDST. It should be noted that, to accomplish such goals, we may need to rely on in-depth analysis of interdependence of learner internal and external resources using data obtained via various collection methods (e.g., interviews, observations, and journals) and at multiple developmental phases; robust statistical procedures may further be required to objectively determine ‘changes’ or ‘change points’ (see Baba & Nitta, 2014). Despite the complexity in its design, rigorous qualitative ID research within the CDST framework as recommended above will enable us to adequately grasp the nature of pragmatic development, eventually clarifying the constraints of IDs on pragmatics learning. 440

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Further reading Dörnyei, Z., MacIntyre, P. D., & Henry, A. (Eds.). (2015). Motivational dynamics in language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. This edited volume contains conceptual papers and empirical studies that apply complex dynamic systems principles to language learning motivation, covering a range of key concepts in complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), followed by the presentation of empirical studies on language learning motivation within the CDST framework. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. (Chapter 6: What differentiates learners: individual characteristics) The issue of individual differences (IDs) in L2 pragmatic development is thoroughly reviewed in Chapter 6 of this book. The authors lay out two approaches for ID research in L2 pragmatics: the cognitive componential approach and the dynamic interactive approach. Previous empirical studies using each approach are then critically evaluated.

References Alcón-Soler, E. (2012). Teachability and bilingualism effects on third language learners’ pragmatic knowledge. Intercultural Pragmatics, 9, 511–541. Baba, K., & Nitta, R. (2014). Phase transitions in development of writing fluency from a complex dynamic systems perspective. Language Learning, 64, 1–35. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Bastos, M.-T. (2011). Proficiency, length of stay, and intensity of interaction, and the acquisition of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 8, 347–384. Bella, S. (2012). Pragmatic development in a foreign language: A study of Greek FL requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1917–1947. Belz, J., & Kinginger, C. (2003). Discourse options and the development of pragmatic competence by classroom learners of German: The case of address forms. Language Learning, 53, 591–647. Carroll, J. B., & Sapon, S. (1959). The Modern Languages Aptitude Test. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation. Cigliana, K. A. (2016). The dynamic nature of individual experiences in study abroad: Motivational perspectives, language contact and the development of social relationships (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Southampton, UK. Crookes, G., & Schmidt, R. (1991). Motivation: Reopening the research agenda. Language Learning, 41, 469–512. Csizér, K., & Dörnyei, Z. (2005). Language learners’ motivational profiles and their motivated learning behavior. Language Learning, 55, 613–659. Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450–466. De Bot, K., Lowie, W., & Verspoor, M. (2007). A dynamic systems theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 7–21. De Bot, K. (2008). Introduction: Second language development as a dynamic process. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 166–178. Dörnyei, Z. (1990). Conceptualizing motivation in foreign language learning. Language Learning, 40, 46–78. Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Teaching and researching motivation. Harlow, UK: Longman. Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The L2 motivational self system. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.), Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 9–42). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dörnyei, Z., & Csizér, K. (2002). Some dynamics of language attitudes and motivation: Results of a longitudinal nationwide survey. Applied Linguistics, 23, 421–462. Dörnyei, Z., & Ryan, S. (2015). The psychology of the language learner revisited. New York/London: Routledge. Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2011). Teaching and researching motivation (2nd ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson. Dörnyei, Z., Csizér, K., & Németh, N. (2006). Motivation, language attitudes and globalization: A Hungarian perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dörnyei, Z., MacIntyre, P. D., & Henry, A. (Eds.). (2015). Motivational dynamics in language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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DuFon, M. (1999). The acquisition of linguistic politeness in Indonesian as a second language by sojourners in a naturalistic context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI, U. S. A. Ellis, N., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (2006). Language emergence: Implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 27, 558–589. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Hasler-Barker, M. (2015). Complimenting in Spanish in a short-term study abroad context. System, 48, 75–85. Geluykens, R., & Kraft, B. (2007). Gender variation in native and interlanguage complaints. In B. Kraft & R. Geluykens (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics and interlanguage English (pp. 143–158). Munich: LINCOM Studies in English Linguistics. Hassall, T. (2006). Learning to take leave in social conversations: A diary study. In M. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 31–58). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jessner, U. (2008). A DST model of multilingualism and the role of metalinguistic awareness. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 270–283. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kasper, G., & Schmidt, R. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 149–169. Kim, H. Y. (2014). Learner investment, identity, and resistance to second language pragmatic norms. System, 45, 92–102. Kinginger, C. (2008). Language learning in study abroad: Case studies of Americans in France. The Modern Language Journal, 92 (s1), 1–124. Kuriščák, L. M. (2006). Pragmatic variation in L2 Spanish: Learner and situational effects (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, U. S. A. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2006). The emergence of complexity, fluency, and accuracy in the oral and written production of five Chinese learners of English. Applied Linguistics, 27, 590–619. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2007). Reflecting on the cognitive-social debate in second language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91, 773–787. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2012). Complexity theory. In S. M. Gass & A. Mackey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 73–87). London/New York: Routledge. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008a). Complex systems and applied linguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008b). Research methodology on language development from a complex systems perspective. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 200–213. Lenzing, A. (2015). Exploring regularities and dynamic systems in L2 development. Language Learning, 65, 89–122. Li, S. (2017). An exploratory study on the role of foreign language aptitudes in instructed pragmatics learning in L2 Chinese. Chinese Second Language Acquisition Research, 6, 103–128. MacIntyre, P. D., & Serroul, A. (2015). Motivation on a per-second timescale: Examining approachavoidance motivation during L2 task performance. In Z. Dörnyei, P. D. MacIntyre, & A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 109–138). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Matsumura, S. (2003). Modelling the relationships among interlanguage pragmatic development, L2 proficiency, and exposure to L2. Applied Linguistics, 24, 465–491. Nitta, R., & Baba, K. (2015). Self-regulation in the evolution of the ideal L2 self: A complex dynamic systems approach to the L2 Motivational Self System. In Z. Dörnyei, P. D. MacIntyre, & A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 367–396). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ortega, L., & Han, Z. (Eds.) (2017). Complexity theory and language development: In celebration of Diane Larsen-Freeman. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Piniel, K., & Csizér, K. (2015). Changes in motivation, anxiety and self-efficacy during the course of an academic writing seminar. In Z. Dörnyei, P. D. MacIntyre, & A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 164–194). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Robinson, P. (1997). Individual differences and the fundamental similarity of implicit and explicit adult second language learning. Language Learning, 47, 45–99. Robinson, P. (2002). Effects of individual differences in intelligence, aptitude and working memory on adult incidental SLA: A replication and extension of Reber, Walkenfield and Hernstadt (1991). In P. Robinson (Ed.), Individual differences and instructed language learning (p. 211–266). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rodríguez, G. A. (2008). Second language sentence processing: Is it fundamentally different? (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A. Roever, C., Wang, S., & Brophy, S. (2014). Learner background factors and learning of second language pragmatics. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 52, 377–401. 442

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Ryan, S. (2009). Self and identity in L2 motivation in Japan: The ideal L2 self and Japanese learners of English. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.), Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 120–143). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Schauer, G. (2006). Pragmatic awareness in ESL and EFL contexts: Contrast and development. Language Learning, 56, 269–318. Serafini, E. J. (2017). Exploring the dynamic long-term interaction between cognitive and psychosocial resources in adult second language development at varying proficiency. The Modern Language Journal, 101, 369–390. Tagarelli, K. M., Ruiz, S., Vega, J. L. M., & Rebuschat P. (2016). Variability in second language learning: The role of individual differences, learning conditions, and linguistic complexity. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 38, 293–316. Taguchi, N. (2008). Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning, 58, 33–71. Taguchi, N. (2010). Longitudinal studies in interlanguage pragmatics. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Handbook of pragmatics vol.7: Pragmatics across languages and cultures (pp. 333–361). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Taguchi, N. (2011a). The effect of L2 proficiency and study-abroad experience on pragmatic comprehension. Language Learning, 61, 904–939. Taguchi, N. (2011b). Pragmatic development as a dynamic complex process: General patterns and case histories. The Modern Language Journal, 95, 605–627. Taguchi, N. (2012). Context, individual differences and pragmatic competence. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N. (2014). Personality and development of second language pragmatic competence. Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, 16, 203–221. Taguchi, N. (2015a). ‘Contextually’ speaking: A survey of pragmatic learning abroad, in class, and online. System, 48, 3–20. Taguchi, N. (2015b). Developing interactional competence in a Japanese study abroad context. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taguchi, N., Xiao, F., & Li, S. (2016). Development of pragmatic knowledge in L2 Chinese: Effects of intercultural competence and social contact on speech act production in a study abroad context. The Modern Language Journal, 100, 775–796. Takahashi, S. (2005). Pragmalinguistic awareness: Is it related to motivation and proficiency? Applied Linguistics, 26, 90–120. Takahashi, S. (2012). Individual differences and pragmalinguistic awareness: A structural equation modeling approach. Language, Culture, and Communication, 4, 103–125. Takahashi, S. (2013). Awareness and learning in second language pragmatics. Language, Culture, and Communication, 5, 53–76. Takahashi, S. (2015). The effects of learner profiles on pragmalinguistic awareness and learning. System, 48, 48–61. Thompson, A. S. (2017). Don’t tell me what to do! The anti-ought-to self and language learning motivation. System, 67, 38–49. Ushioda, E. (1998). Effective motivational thinking: A cognitive theoretical approach to the study of language learning motivation. In E. A. Soler & V. C. Espurz (Eds.), Current issues in English language methodology (pp. 77–89). Castelló de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I. Ushioda, E. (2001). Language learning at university: Exploring the role of motivational thinking. In Z. Dörnyei & R. Schmidt (Eds.), Motivation and second language acquisition (pp. 93–125). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press. Ushioda, E. (2009). A person-in-context relational view of emergent motivation, self and identity. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.), Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 215–228). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Van Geert, P. (2008). The dynamic systems approach in the study of L1 and L2 acquisition: An introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 179–199. Xu, W., Case, R. E., & Wang, Y. (2009). Pragmatic and grammatical competence, length of residence, and overall L2 proficiency. System, 37, 205–216. Yalçın, S., & Spada, N. (2016). Language aptitude and grammatical difficulty: An EFL classroom-based study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 38, 239–263.

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Part VI

L2 Pragmatics in the Global Era

29 Norms and Variation in L2 Pragmatics Anne Barron

Introduction Taguchi and Roever (2017) identified three major areas in which the impact of globalization is prominent in L2 pragmatic research: English as a lingua franca, intercultural competence, and heritage language learning. The present chapter proposes a fourth area, namely intralingual regional pragmatic variation. Intralingual regional pragmatic variation is defined as pragmatic variation within a single language where variation according to region is seen on a number of levels, including a national level (e.g., Philippine English vs. American English) and a sub-national level (e.g., the state of Lower Saxony vs. Bavaria in Germany) (cf. Schneider & Barron, 2008; Schneider & Placencia, 2017). In the language classroom, regional variation is typically disregarded, and instead an oversimplified, homogeneous, standardized, native-speaker norm is presented (cf. Barron, 2005; Bieswanger, 2008; Nestor, Ní Chasaide & Regan, 2012). For example, in a German classroom, Hochdeutsch—Standard German—often serves as the norm. However, as L2 speakers become more globally mobile, they become exposed to intralingual regional pragmatic variation in the target language. L2 German users in Austria, for instance, may witness speakers of Austrian German producing speech acts of greeting and leave-taking in a different way compared to the speech acts that they are exposed to in a German classroom in Germany; the same L2 German users may also recognize regional pragmatic features in different areas of Germany, which are not addressed in a classroom due to the focus on a homogeneous norm. An awareness of intralingual regional pragmatic variation is important in a global context, particularly when L2 users are in the target language community, such as the case of immigrants or stay abroad students (cf. also Nestor & Regan, 2015). It is namely above all in such contexts that ‘ideologies surrounding “standardness” may come into conflict with the desire to integrate into the local community’ (Diskin & Regan, 2017, p. 192). Indeed, L2 speakers in those contexts may experience a conflict between the particular standard language variety propagated in instructional contexts and the variety of the region in which they find themselves. It is only recently that research in L2 pragmatics has investigated L2 users’ awareness and production of regional pragmatic features. Traditionally, L2 pragmatics research has assumed a homogeneous native-speaker norm, ignoring variation among native speakers (cf. Barron, 2005; Kasper, 1995). Kasper (1995) notes that traditionally the macro-sociolinguistic characteristics of native speakers (based on region, age, social status, gender, and ethnic identity) have been either abstracted 447

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away or, at the very least, not systematically discussed in L2 pragmatics research. Lamenting on this situation, Kasper comments that, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the use of a homogeneous target-language norm is not justified because language use is influenced by context-external and context-internal factors. However, the underlying assumption that variation from macro-social factors does not exist still underlies much of L2 pragmatics research today. In today’s globalized world, however, learners are exposed to first language (L1) regional norms as well as to pragmatic variation according to gender, age, socio-economic status, and ethnic identity. Recognizing such intralingual pragmatic variation is critical for research and teaching in L2 pragmatics. The present paper focuses on intralingual regional pragmatic variation and examines recent research on L2 users’ awareness and use of target-language regional pragmatic features, as well as the factors influencing their awareness and use of those regional features. The chapter first contextualizes the study of intralingual regional pragmatic variation by presenting existing findings on such variation. Then, the chapter turns to research on L2 users’ awareness and use of such regional pragmatic features, and discusses the factors that impede or facilitate L2 users’ awareness and use of regional pragmatic variation in the target language. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research and practical implications.

Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts Regional Pragmatic Variation In the article published in The Handbook of World Englishes (Kachru, Kachru, & Nelson, 2006), Kachru (2006) wrote that ‘Although there is a large body of research available on speech acts across languages, not much has as yet been published comparing speech acts across varieties …’ (p. 366). A decade later in the article that appeared in The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes (Filppula, Klemola, & Sharma, 2017), Kachru (2017) notes that: Users of English do not use the language to make meanings in identical ways. They do not respond to invitations, make requests, pay compliments, apologize, and so on, in the same ways. How these acts may be different had, however, received little attention until recently … (p. 276) As these quotes reveal, researchers in the area of World Englishes have long recognized the existence of intralingual regional pragmatic variation. However, it is only in recent years that actual empirical attention has been paid to such pragmatic variation. With such research has come the insight that the way speakers ‘do things with words’ via speech acts (Austin, 1976) is influenced by regional conventions of language use. That is, speech acts, and in particular speech-act realization patterns, differ not only across languages (as cross-cultural pragmatic research had shown; cf., e.g., Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989), but also across varieties of a language. Parallel to these discussions in World Englishes, variational pragmatics has emerged as a branch of pragmatics, influenced by cross-cultural pragmatics and modern dialectology within sociolinguistics. Variational pragmatics has focused on revealing intralingual pragmatic variation across varieties of languages via systematic analysis (Barron, 2014, 2017a; Barron & Schneider, 2009; Schneider, 2010, 2012; Schneider & Barron, 2008; Schneider & Placencia, 2017). As in World Englishes, the focus of variational pragmatic research is on regional variation; however, variational pragmatics also focuses on the influence of other macro-social factors, such as gender, age, socioeconomic class, and ethnicity, on language use. It also addresses the interplay among these macrosocial factors, as well as their interaction with micro-social factors.1 Thus, variational pragmatics can be defined as the study of synchronic intralingual pragmatic variation coming from macro-social 448

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factors of region, gender, age, socio-economic status, and ethnic identity, as these factors interact with micro-social factors (e.g., social distance and degree of imposition). In contrast to the field of World Englishes where much of the focus is on speech act realizations across varieties of English, variational pragmatics distinguishes five levels of analysis: (1) the formal level (e.g., discoursepragmatic markers, pragmatic routines), (2) the actional level (e.g., speech acts), (3) the interactional level (e.g., sequential patterns), (4) the topic level (e.g., content and topic management), and (5) the organizational level (e.g., turn taking). Empirical analyses sometimes combine these levels. In the variational pragmatic framework, region may be investigated on a range of levels. These levels include the supranational, national, and sub-national levels, but also local and sublocal levels (Schneider & Barron, 2008; Schneider & Placencia, 2017). While variation on the supranational level refers to norms shared among varieties or languages (e.g., north-western Europe), variation on the national level refers to national varieties of pluricentric languages (e.g., Germany vs. Austria). Sub-national variation denotes variation within different regions (e.g., variation between the Rhineland and Hesse, coming from different states in Germany). Local-level variation refers to variation in a particular town or city (e.g., Berlin vs. Hamburg), and sub-local variation means variation existing within a town or city (e.g., Hammer, Clonard, Ballmacarrett— all working-class districts in Belfast; cf. Milroy, 1981). Region in variational pragmatics may be operationalized as a geographical variable in research design, but it may also be viewed as an identity, or an individual’s ‘doing region.’ Such a perspective views region as a social fact (similar to gender, age, and socio-economic status, and ethnic identity). In other words, using a particular regional pragmatic feature may be interpreted as evidence of ascribing to a particular identity. There are various approaches to the study of region as identity (Haugh & Schneider, 2012). On the one hand, research may be constructionist in nature, involving in-depth ethnographic analysis. On the other hand, researchers may take an emic firstorder approach, treating ‘macro-social factors as identities as they are displayed and perceived by participants (in the emic sense) in an interaction’ (Haugh & Schneider, 2012, p. 1017; Schneider & Placencia, 2017, p. 543). The latter approach builds on the observation that language users categorize other language users based on verbal and non-verbal behavior during interaction. In sum, with developments in the fields of variational pragmatics and World Englishes, it is only recently that macro-social pragmatic variation according to region (and also according to gender, age, socio-economic status, and ethnic identity) has been added to the research agenda in L1 pragmatics (cf. Félix-Brasdefer & Koike, 2012). Schneider (2017) summarizes the goal of variational analysis in pragmatics as follows: The ultimate aim [of the study of intralingual macro-social pragmatic variation] is to establish the patterns of language use that are relatively invariant across varieties and situations and thus may be seen to form the pragmatic core of a language, and those patterns that vary in systematic ways and can therefore be seen as pragmatic variables. (p. 320) As this quote shows, Schneider envisages both the identification of a ‘pragmatic core’ of language patterns shared across varieties, and also the systematic description of pragmatic variation existing across varieties. In the next section, we turn to descriptions of systematic pragmatic variation across varieties, focusing on Irish English in comparison to other English varieties.

Irish English—A Case of Regional Pragmatic Variation To date, much research on regional pragmatic variation has focused on pragmalinguistic variation (cf., e.g., Barron, 2017b on regional sociopragmatic variation). Pragmalinguistic variation is concerned with the linguistic resources used to convey meaning and involves linguistic 449

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features such as deixis, discourse-pragmatic markers, speech-act strategies, and pragmatic routines. On the pragmalinguistic level, variety-specific and variety-preferential variation has been identified. Variety-specific variation exists where a particular variety has a specific linguistic form realizing a particular function in language, which does not exist in another particular variety. Variety-preferential variation, on the other hand, refers to cases where the same strategies and forms are found in the varieties contrasted, but particular forms are preferred in one variety relative to another. Variety-preferential pragmalinguistic variation is considered more common in a regional context. In the following, using Irish English as an example, we review studies that revealed variety-specific and variety-preferential macro-social pragmalinguistic variation. We focus on pragmatic variation on the formal level, specifically on studies of discourse-pragmatic markers. Our review focuses on region as a macro-social variable. However, as will become clear in the review, there is interaction among different macro-social variables (e.g., role of socio-economic class in the use of Irish English clause-final like). We focus on the case of Irish English because there is a considerable amount of research on this variety both in L1 and L2 contexts.2 A highly salient and frequent linguistic feature perceived as ‘emblematic’ of Irish English (Migge, 2015, p. 390) is the discourse-pragmatic marker now. Although now in Irish English shares many functions with now in British English, two specific functions—‘hedging now’ and ‘presentative now’—have been found as variety-specific features of Irish English (cf. Clancy & Vaughan, 2012). Speakers of Irish English use ‘hedging now’ to downtone the illocutionary force of face-threatening acts, such as challenges (‘That’s not fair now.’), disagreements (‘You can’t say that now.’), evaluations (‘I’d say I’m crap now.’), direct questions (‘How many Euros would that be now?’), and orders (‘Hold on a minute now.’) (Clancy & Vaughan, 2012, p. 236238; examples from Limerick Corpus of Irish English). Clancy and Vaughan (2012) argue that such uses of now function to minimise power and add to ‘the emphasis on solidarity and corollary downtoning of power, both actual and conversational’ in Irish society (p. 240). On the other hand, ‘presentative now’ involves the use of now as a lexicalized pointing device. The following example from the Limerick Corpus of Irish English illustrates this: Speaker 1:  How much is that? Speaker 2:  One fifty. Now. Thanks. In this example, the word now accompanies the sales assistant’s returning change and thus makes ‘money’ salient (Clancy & Vaughan, 2012). Other discourse-pragmatic markers, specifically tag questions, have revealed variety-preferential and variety-specific uses in Irish English. Barron, Pandarova, and Muderack (2015) compared Irish and British English in the International Corpus of English (ICE) and found variety-preferential uses of tag questions in Irish English, as seen in the more frequent use of tag questions exhibiting constant polarity between anchor and tag (e.g., ‘You were dreaming that, were you?’) and in the higher use of interrogative anchors (e.g., ‘… , is it?’). On a functional level, they recorded a higher frequency of tag questions used to seek information in Irish English than in British English. Variety-specific uses, on the other hand, included the uses of sure-tags recorded in Irish English, but not in the British counterpart (e.g., ‘You didn't have that long with the Dubs really sure you didn't’) (see also Barron & Pandarova, 2016). Finally, we turn to variety-preferential and variety-specific use of the discourse-pragmatic marker like. Investigations of native speaker uses of like are many, with several studies highlighting its global nature and others documenting its multi-faceted functions and the range of positions it occupies (cf. Diskin, 2017; Murphy, 2015; Nestor & Regan, 2015). On a variety-preferential level, studies found that the frequency of like in Irish English is particularly high relative to other varieties of English, such as British English, Indian English, Philippine English, and East 450

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African English (cf. Schweinberger, 2015; Siemund, Maier & Schweinberger, 2009). In addition, rather specific to the use of like in Irish English relative to many other varieties of English is its extensive use in clause-final position (e.g., ‘he’s got this maroon hair, like’ (source: ICE-Ireland English) and in clause-marginal position that encompasses clause final and clause initial like (e.g., ‘Like I haven’t visited her in years’(source: ICE-Ireland English) (Diskin, 2017; Nestor et al., 2012; Schweinberger, 2015; Siemund et al., 2009). In addition, clause-final like in Irish English is distinctive on the phonetic level, as Diskin (2017) notes: [in like] the vowel tends to be reduced and less diphthongal than its clause-initial and clause-medial counterparts … Moreover, the /k/ tends to be fully closed and realised, rather than lenited … and the utterance is generally accompanied by an abrupt falling intonation. (p. 154) Thus, Irish English has a localized, variety-specific clause-final like and a globalized clausemedial like, with the latter associated with American English (cf. Nestor & Regan, 2015). Studies on Irish English have revealed that the use of like is not consistent across all regions of Ireland and that the regional variable may interact with other macro-social variables (e.g., socio-economic status), leading to variation in the use of like. For instance, Amador-Moreno’s (2012) study suggests that globalized like is frequent in Dublin English and that clause-final like is used to a lesser extent than in the rest of the country (cf. Amador-Moreno, 2015). However, as Amador-Moreno (2012) also points out, it may not be just Dublin English that is associated with clause-medial like over clause final like; rather, it may be that upwardly mobile, globally-oriented upper and middle-class Dublin South-side speakers distance themselves from the more local Dublin speakers by using clause-medial like rather than close-final like. Nestor et al. (2012) also suggest that this division of like relates to socio-economic class since the Southside of Dublin is more upper/middle class and the Northside is more working-class. So far, we have illustrated variety-preferential and variety-specific uses of discourse-pragmatic markers in Irish English. We have also highlighted the interaction between the regional factor and other macro-social factors on variation. We now turn to the research on L2 users’ awareness of pragmatic variation in the target language, as well as to research on their use of regional-specific pragmatic features and factors influencing their use.

Literature Review: Pragmatic Variation and L2 Users L2 Users’ Awareness and Use of Regional Pragmatic Features L2 research on macro-social pragmatic variation examines three primary issues: (a) whether L2 speakers are aware of intralingual regional pragmatic variation; (b) whether L2 speakers actively use L1 regional pragmatic features; and (c) what factors may affect L2 speakers’ awareness and use of L1 regional pragmatic features. The following review first addresses L2 users’ awareness and use of regional pragmatic features in the target language and then discusses factors affecting their awareness and use. Overall, existing findings point to L2 speakers’ awareness of regional pragmatic features but generally low level of use of these forms. Migge (2015), for instance, investigated immigrants’ awareness and use of the discourse-pragmatic marker now. She conducted semi-guided interviews with 59 newcomers to Ireland from a variety of countries (both European and non-European) including also L1 English speakers from a range of countries (e.g., Britain, U.S.A., India, and Africa) (cf. Migge, 2012). Migge revealed participants’ awareness of the distinctive uses of now in Irish English. She also found that newcomers used the ‘hedging now’ specific to Irish English, 451

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but not the ‘presentative now’. However, Migge (2015) found that even the use of the ‘hedging now’ was not widespread among newcomers. In addition, one of the pragmatic functions of now appeared to be slightly different from the functions of now described in Clancy and Vaughan (2012). Migge (2015) found that immigrants used now not only to mitigate a threat to the hearer’s face, but also to downtone a threat to the speaker’s face. Based on these findings, Migge (2015) suggested that ‘interviewees have not at all or only weakly acculturated to Irish ways of speaking English’ (p. 405). Similar findings were reported in Davis’s (2007) study, which investigated Korean ESL learners’ attitudes toward, awareness of, and preferred uses of Australian English routines while studying in Australia. Using a multiple-choice ranking task and an attitude questionnaire, Davis found that, despite their awareness of Australian English routines, the ESL learners showed resistance to Australian English routines and a preference toward American English routines. Diskin (2017), Nestor et al.’s (2012), and Kanwitt, Elias and Clay (2018) reported similar findings in terms of the use of variety-specific or variety-preferential forms. Diskin (2017) investigated the use of the discourse-pragmatic marker like by 42 Polish and Chinese migrants in Dublin, and compared their use to data from native speakers of Irish English. She found that, after three years in Ireland, L2 users employed like as frequently as native speakers. However, in her functional-positional analysis of like, she reported that, in contrast to other uses of like, like as a mitigator in clause-final position (variety-specific use of like in Irish English) was only adopted by a small number of migrants. Similarly, Nestor et al. (2012) investigated the use of like by L2 users of English in Ireland. They analyzed the positional distribution of like in sociolinguistic interviews conducted with Polish migrants in the urban area of Dublin and in rural Ireland. They found that the use of clause-final like was associated with a large degree of inter-speaker variation. In other words, L2 users did use clause-final like but their rates of usage differed. Although such inter-speaker variation was also seen among native speakers, L2 users showed a higher degree of variation. Finally, using a multiple-choice test, Kanwit et al. (2018) reported L2 Spanish learners’ acquisition of regional-preferential intensifiers while abroad (in Spain and Mexico). They found that the learners’ usage patterns of intensifiers differed depending on the adjectives intensified. The learners’ awareness of context-specific constraints affecting the use was rather limited. These findings suggest that L2 users have some awareness of regional pragmatic features, but they only exhibit limited use of these forms. Also, inter-speaker variation may be high and context-specific constraints may remain unnoticed among L2 users. The next section surveys the literature on the factors facilitating or impeding L2 speakers’ awareness and use of regional pragmatic features.

Exposure to Regional Pragmatic Features in the Local Community Low levels of contact with local speakers of a particular variety may (partly) account for the low levels of awareness and use of regional-specific or regional-preferential pragmatic features found among L2 speakers. Migge (2015), for instance, suggests that low-level exposure to variety-specific uses of now could explain L2 users’ low-level awareness and use of this marker. Migge’s interview data revealed that her participants did not have a close relationship with Irish locals (cf. also Nestor et al., 2012; Nestor & Regan, 2015). Similarly, Kanwit et al.’s (2018) study on intensifier variation revealed that L2 Spanish learners in Ovideo, Spain, preferred the intensifier muy to a higher extent than their counterparts in Mérida, Mexico. Kanwit et al. explained this finding with reference to learners’ exposure to native speaker input. The intensifier muy occurs more frequently among native speakers in Oviedo than in Mérida. However, the authors also noted differential degrees of use across intensifiers tested in the L2 data because particular intensifiers were not ‘robustly available in learner input abroad’ (p. 467). They also noted that such different uses may have resulted from the types of adjectives intensified and from the frequency of those adjectives in learners’ input. 452

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Prior Exposure to Regional Pragmatic Features Prior exposure to pragmatic features, such as exposure in a classroom, may prepare L2 users for the input they receive in the target speech community and thus influence their awareness and use of regional pragmatic features in the target speech community. Diskin (2017) found that L2 users’ overall frequency of use of like matched with native speakers’ frequencies after three years in Ireland. However, L2 users did not show similar distributions of functional-positional uses of like as native speakers. In contrast to other uses of like, like as a mitigator in clause-final position (a particularly characteristic use of like in Irish English) was only adopted by a small number of migrants. Diskin (2017) argued that, though features of conversational English such as discourse-pragmatic marker like are not generally taught in the classroom context (cf. Rühlemann, 2008), migrants may have been exposed to more global forms of like, such as clause-medial like, through films and TV shows. However, migrants probably had no prior exposure to clause-final like given the general homogenization of English in the language classroom and the lack of attention to varieties in the classroom context (cf. Bieswanger, 2008). As Diskin (2017) argued, the lack of exposure to and instruction on varieties of English may also potentially explain the limited use of localized varieties among L2 speakers. Similarly, Kanwit et al. (2018), writing on the acquisition of intensifier variation in the stay-abroad context, noted that pre-departure instruction can help L2 users process the varied input they experience while abroad.

Attitudes L2 users’ attitudes toward a particular variety may affect language use. Also, L2 users’ perceptions of local attitudes towards L2 users’ localized uses may affect L2 users’ language use. Korean ESL study abroad students in Australia in Davis’ (2007) study showed a conscious resistance to Australian English routines. Davis explained the findings with reference to the status of American English as the preferred variety and a recognized global norm in English classrooms in South Korea. Australian English was seen to be globally less recognized, and the ESL participants explicitly noted a potential lack of comprehensibility if they used Australian routines outside the Australian context. This study, thus, shows that learner attitudes may determine whether localized features are employed or not. Attitudes that language users perceive L2 localized language use to potentially trigger among native speakers may also influence L2 users’ reluctance in using localized features despite having an awareness of these features. L2 users may feel that local members might have negative attitudes toward learners’ use of localized pragmatic features. Migge (2015), for instance, reported that some informants of African origin and interviewees from the U.S.A. noted that native speakers of Irish English may feel ridiculed by a non-Irish speaker’s use of localized features because of the status of these features as in-group identity markers in Ireland (see also Davis, 2007; Migge, 2012).

Context of Use The context of L2 use also affects whether L2 users produce a regional pragmatic form or not. L2 users, for instance, show different preferences for the localized norm depending on whether the context of use is global or local. In Davis’ (2007) study, Korean ESL learners revealed a general preference toward American English routines over Australian English routines. At the same time, they were also aware of the benefits of using Australian routines in the Australian context because data showed that the preference for American English routines became weakened in the Australian context. These findings illustrate a case of dynamic language use, with choices of language use tailored to the circumstances at hand. As Davis (2007) writes, ‘one of the determining 453

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factors in learning routines in an ESL environment will be the socio-political relevance of different styles of English at global and local levels’ (p. 636). In addition to the context of L2 use, the context of data collection can also influence L2 users’ production of regional pragmatic features. Kanwit et al. (2018), for instance, suggested that a written multiple-choice task used in the study might have affected their findings because some intensifiers such as bien occur primarily in colloquial, informal contexts. In other words, informants may have decided not to use bien due to the written form of the task.

Identity Construction Regional pragmatic features specific to a particular variety may be used to signal identity. L2 speakers’ use of a specific regional pragmatic feature may be related to whether they wish to acculturate to the local community and construct a local identity for themselves. Nestor et al. (2012), for example, explained their findings on clause-final like with reference to the kind of identity that this discourse-pragmatic marker helps to construct and also to L2 users’ desire to employ the marker as a way of acculturating into Ireland. They suggested that clause-final like is employed by L2 users who are locally-aligned and who identify themselves with Ireland. Migge (2015) also showed that identity construction plays a role in L2 speakers’ use of the discourse-pragmatic marker now. She commented that many of the informants interviewed held positive opinions about Irish English as a variety and were largely happy to use linguistic features specific to Irish English. However other informants stated that they ‘actively avoided such properties as they felt that it undermined their identity’ (cf. also Migge, 2015, p. 405). Some of these informants with a strong discourse of resistance were from other Englishspeaking countries (e.g., U.K). These studies make it clear that investigation into L2 speakers’ use of regional pragmatic variation also means finding out the extent to which L2 users recognize the social identity that the variation indexes. Such investigation also means finding out the extent to which L2 users construct a particular regional identity for themselves, while at the same time recognizing that L2 identity is fluid and multi-faceted (cf. Norton, 2000). In other words, L2 users may construct a local identity for themselves using a localized pragmatic marker in a local context of use or with the interlocutors who are familiar with a particular local variety. The same users may, however, construct a different identity for themselves in a more global context where use of Irish English features may not lead to alignment with the culture, but instead to potential estrangement or to potentially negative evaluation in a formal examination context (cf. above, ‘Context of Use’).

Complexity and Functional Range of Pragmatic Features The complexity of the local pragmatic features may also affect L2 speakers’ use of the features. For instance, clause-final like in Irish English requires interaction between syntactic and pragmatic information, and as such it is subject to instability and incomplete acquisition among L2 users. In addition, this form is phonologically distinct and has a mitigating function that is also challenging for L2 users. Diskin (2017) suggests that such complexity involved in the form may also explain the fact that only a limited number of L2 speakers in her study used this regionalspecific pragmatic marker. Another explanation for the limited uses of localized pragmatic features is a limited range of the functions exhibited in the features. Diskin (2017) argued that L2 users may not use clausefinal like potentially because this discourse-pragmatic marker serves a limited range of functions, and as a result L2 users have limited exposure to this maker compared to like in clause-initial and medial positions. For example, clause-final like serves a mitigatory function and occurs when expressing opposing opinion to the interlocutor. In contrast, like in other positions serves 454

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a greater range of functions, including illustration, filler, hesitation, approximation, and self-­ correction (Diskin, 2017), suggesting that like in clause-initial and medial positions is more frequent than clause-final like in input.

Age Nestor et al. (2012) found that five of their eight L2 informants did not use the discourse-pragmatic marker like (in global or local forms) to any significant degree. The informants who used like were relatively young (age range: 21-40). Nestor et al. suggested that like was not used by older speakers as it does not express social identity in this age group. However, not all young participants used like either. Although Nestor et al.’s study did not reveal a statistically significant effect of age, there is evidence that younger native speakers (particularly young females) tend to use like (global uses) more frequently than older speakers, especially in teenager discourse (cf. Diskin, 2017; Murphy, 2015; Nestor & Regan, 2015), suggesting potential future research on the age effect. It is possible that the regional factor may interact with other macro-social factors (e.g., age, gender, socio-economic class, and ethnic identity) affecting the use of clause-final like, and this thus merits future investigation.

Conclusion and Future Directions The present chapter has focused on regional pragmatic variation as a type of macro-social pragmatic variation. The study of macro-social pragmatic variation (i.e., intralingual pragmatic variation according to factors like region, gender, age, socio-economic class, and ethnic identity) is a relative newcomer in the field of L1 pragmatics. In L2 pragmatics, research on L2 users’ awareness and use of regional pragmatic features (and other macro-social pragmatic features) has just started. On the one hand, existing studies have revealed some awareness of regional pragmatic features among L2 speakers. One the other hand, studies have revealed that L2 users can use regional pragmatic features, but their use is often limited. Also, inter-speaker variation may be high among L2 users, and context-specific constraints may remain unnoticed. The factors influencing L2 users’ awareness and use of regional pragmatic features include exposure—both exposure to local speakers’ use in the community and prior exposure in a classroom setting. L2 speakers’ attitudes toward the localized variety also influence their use of localized features. L2 speakers may choose to reject localized pragmatic features due to their preference toward a standardized variety taught in the classroom. L2 speakers may also think that local speakers might hold negative attitudes toward their use of in-group features and thus refrain from using regional features. The context of use may also influence L2 speakers’ use of a localized pragmatic feature. While a regionalized pragmatic norm may be rejected in a global context, it may be accepted in a local context as a means of displaying alignment with local speakers. L2 speakers may also use regionalized pragmatic features to construct an identity that aligns them to local context. Moreover, the complexity of a particular pragmatic feature and its functional range may influence L2 use. Finally, macro-social factors such as age, along with region, can potentially influence L2 use. The following section presents implications for research and teaching on regional pragmatic variation.

Research Implications Recent research developments in investigating L2 users’ awareness and use of macro-social pragmatic variation present a trend to be continued. This chapter has focused on variation at the formal level and in particular on discourse-pragmatic marker use. As Nestor and Regan (2015) note, discourse markers are ‘available as a quick route to “sounding” like a native speaker due to 455

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their salience and frequency in the input available to the L2 speaker’ (Nestor & Regan, 2015, p. 409). Discourse markers are also ‘a powerful tool in the identikits of both L1 and L2 speakers’ (Nestor et al., 2012, p. 349). However, research scope should be broadened in the future, extending to different levels of language (e.g., speech acts, topic management, conversation openings and closings, turn taking) and varieties of languages (see Endnote 2). From a methodological point of view, two types of data collection methods have dominated the current L2 research—multiple-choice questionnaires and semi-directed sociolinguistic interviews. In Kanwit et al.’s (2018) study, for instance, informants were given a multiple-choice questionnaire consisting of a series of situational scenarios and were asked to indicate what a particular individual in the situation would say. They were asked to choose a sentence from two options that differed in the intensifier they employed. Multiple-choice questionnaires have also been used in combination with attitude questionnaires, as in Davis’s (2007) study. The semi-directed sociolinguistic interview (Labov, 1972) is another popular data collection method (Diskin & Regan, 2017; Migge, 2015; Nestor & Regan, 2015). Sociolinguistic interviews should be conducted in an informal setting in order to relax informants (Nestor & Regan, 2015). Topics discussed in the interviews vary. For instance, Nestor and Regan (2015) and Migge’s (2015) studies used topics related to different facets of informants’ experiences in Ireland, while Diskin and Regan (2017) talked about participants’ daily lives, interests, and attitudes toward Irish English. Sociolinguistic interviews are sometimes triangulated with ethnographic questionnaires eliciting biographical, linguistic, socio-psychological, and linguistic-educational information (cf. Nestor & Regan, 2015). These data collection methods are suited to investigating localized features as they generate data based on participants’ everyday language use. These methods can also generate insight into L2 users’ attitudes toward the variety. There are several methodological points to consider in future research. First, studies need to take into consideration that L2 speakers’ use of macro-social pragmatic variation may be context-dependent. This means that L2 speakers may deem a regional-specific/regional-preferred form to be appropriate in some contexts but not in others (see the section on ‘Context of Use’ above). Thus, research conducted in a formal examination context (e.g., oral interview, which is later graded) may not reveal L2 speakers’ use of localized features because the formal examination context typically demands standard norms. Similarly, since many regional features are acquired in an informal context, their use may be rejected in written contexts (e.g., written multiple-choice questionnaires) (cf. Kanwit et al., 2018). This is because the written mode and the questionnaire format are often associated with a formal context. In contrast, the semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews that create an informal atmosphere would appear more likely to elicit localized uses. Similarly, future studies must clearly state with whom L2 users are interacting and discuss possible influences of their interlocutors on the data. In Nestor and Regan’s (2015) study, for instance, the sociolinguistic interviews with Polish immigrants were conducted by the first author who speaks fluent Polish and has spent time in Poland, which, as the authors suggested, contributed to the relaxed atmosphere in the interviews. Not only does the background of an interviewer have an effect on the relative formality of a setting, but informants may also try to accommodate the interviewer’s norms (Thackerar, Giles, & Cheshire, 1982). As a result, informants may produce more or less of a pragmatic feature depending on its use by the interviewer. Also, as discussed above, perceived attitudes to native speakers’ views on alignment may also influence L2 speakers’ use of a localized feature in data collection. Hence, details about interviewers’ backgrounds need to be presented clearly as possible influences on the data. In addition, interviews should be conducted systematically using a format comparable to all participants. In Nestor & Regan’s (2015) study, interviews with younger informants were conducted with the first author alone, but the interviews with older participants were carried out by two interviewers whose backgrounds were unknown. Hence, it is possible that the 456

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atmosphere of the interviews with the younger informants were more informal, leading to these informants’ higher use of discourse-pragmatic like. A third methodological consideration is that L2 research should use the same data collection method as the L1 research to which the L2 data are compared. Otherwise, different data collection methods may influence findings. For example, the semi-guided interviews in Migge’s (2015) study may partly explain low frequency of the pragmatic marker now among L2 speakers, because the interview data differs from the conversational data among peers used as the baseline L1 data. L1 variational pragmatics research often uses corpus data and elicited data, such as data collected through discourse completion tasks (Barron, 2017a). Hence, achieving comparability between L1 and L2 data represents a challenge for researchers. Another methodological consideration is that, in future research, multiple-choice questionnaires and sociolinguistic interviews might be triangulated with the use of verbal guise tests to gain informants’ perceptions toward a localized feature. In verbal guise tests, informants are given two spoken texts and asked to rate the speaker in each text using a series of semantic differential scales (cf., e.g., Davydova, Tytus, & Schleef, 2017). These scales focus on a variety of personality traits (e.g., annoying vs. pleasant; casual vs. formal) and use a scale for evaluation (e.g., Likert-scale ranging from 1 to 5). Another useful data triangulation involves eliciting informants’ overt reactions toward certain localized uses. Informants can be asked what they know of the use of a particular feature, who uses it, in what type of talk, and whether they themselves use it (cf. Davydova, Tytus, & Schleef, 2017). Such instruments can supplement the existing interview-based methods and help us gain additional insights into L1 and L2 users’ attitudes toward pragmatic variation. Finally, L2 pragmatics research in general needs to take on board the L2 findings on macrosocial pragmatic variation when selecting an L2 comparative norm. To take an example, Sell, Renkwitz, Sickinger, and Schneider (2019) selected Canadian native-speaker data as a norm to assess L2 pragmatic development against, because participants were exposed to Canadian English during their stay in Canada. One might argue that this norm is appropriate since the participants were exposed to Canadian English. However, the participants were German students coming from a system in which a standardized British norm is upheld. The participants also returned to Germany after their sojourn abroad. Hence, it is possible that the school-goers would reject Canadian pragmatic norms if they appear to diverge from the British English norms practiced in the German EFL classrooms. What can researchers do in such cases? It seems necessary to examine whether L2 participants have an awareness of the pragmatic feature under investigation, and if so, whether they orient to a localized, global, or lingua franca norm of the feature. Metapragmatic interviews and ethnographic data can help investigate such orientations and identities. These methods can also help us go beyond predetermined categorizations (e.g., region, gender, age) when investigating individual orientations (cf. Regan, 2013).

Pedagogical Implications Research on intralingual regional pragmatic variation makes clear that the homogeneous prestige native-speaker norm presented in the classroom is short-sighted in the present global society (Bieswanger, 2008; Nestor et al., 2012). As we saw in this chapter, pragmatic variation abounds in the globalized world. Thus, L2 users need to be aware of the existence and status of pragmatic variation, understanding it not as an incorrect feature relative to an external prestigious norm, but as a systematic component of the variety at hand. In addition, L2 users must become aware of the role that regional pragmatic features play in signalling identity and attitudes toward a variety. Similarly, the current use of standardized norms for teaching and the absence of macro-social pragmatic variation in the school context may actually affect students’ attitudes to variation and 457

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impede their use of localized norms. Student mobility continues to record ever higher numbers of stay-abroad students each year (cf., e.g., European Commission, 2015). These stay-abroad students are exposed to the target language in its local context during their sojourn abroad, but they have to return to the institutional framework after a limited time (cf. Barron, forthcoming). If in this institutional context macro-social pragmatic variation has no role, is frowned upon, or is even penalized, students will avoid using such regional pragmatic features despite the role they play in constructing and performing a localized identity, with the potential assimilation benefits offered (cf. also McKay & Rubdy, 2013). Some suggestions have been made as to how macrosocial pragmatic variation can be integrated into the foreign language classroom (cf. Barron, 2005; Schneider, 2006). Critically, proposals have been made to inform L2 users that languages are not homogenous, standardized entities; rather, languages adapt to their context of use and are frequently employed to create identities. In this vein, metapragmatic descriptions of varieties can be incorporated into teaching so L2 users understand the features of a variety.3

Notes 1 The term macro-social pragmatic variation derives from the term makrosoziolinguistisch (‘macro sociolinguistic’), a term that was first employed in L2 pragmatics by Kasper (1995) in an article in which she problematizes the homogeneous target language pragmatic norm adopted in L2 pragmatics research. Kasper’s (1995) use of the term is reminiscent of Fishman’s (1970) societally oriented macro-level analysis, in which he contrasts macro-level analysis with linguistically oriented micro-level analysis. In L1 and L2 pragmatics, micro-analysis (or analysis of situational variation in language use) is generally studied by means of micro-social factors such as social distance, social dominance, and degree of imposition (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987). 2 Kachru (2017) and Schneider (2012) both provide an overview of a range of pragmatic variation across the varieties of English. Fuchs and Gut (2016) present an overview focusing on intensifiers across the Englishes. Schneider and Placencia (2017) include an overview of regional intralingual pragmatic variation focusing on speech acts, turn taking, topic, and pragmatic sequences in a range of languages. Finally, Barron and Pandarova (2016) provide an overview of macro-social variation focusing on particular sub-regional levels of variation and the interface of factors, such as gender, age, and region. 3 Empirical findings on language contact and retention explain many synchronic variational pragmatic features. Barron et al. (2015), for instance, suggest that their findings on tag questions in Irish and British English can be explained from linguistic conservatism and retention of earlier forms of English imported during colonization.

Further Reading Barron, A. (Ed.) (2015). Special Issue: A variational pragmatic approach to regional variation in language: Celebrating the work of Klaus P. Schneider. Multilingua, 34(4). This publication is a special issue on regional pragmatic variation. L1 analyses focus on a broad range of regional varieties of English, Spanish, and French, with the levels of analysis investigated including the formal level (e.g., tag questions, nominal address forms), the actional level (e.g., invitation refusals, responding to thanks, advise, and complaints), the interactional level (e.g., rapport management), and the topic level (e.g., self-disclosure). All papers follow three methodological principles of variational pragmatic research: empiricity, comparability, and contrastivity. In other words, the analyses are empirically based and involve contrasts of regional varieties using comparable data. Beeching, K., & Woodfield, H. (Eds.) (2015). Researching sociopragmatic variability. Perspectives from variational, interlanguage and contrastive pragmatics. Hampshire, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. This edited volume presents research on sociopragmatic variability from the standpoints of variational pragmatics, interlanguage pragmatics, and contrastive pragmatics. The volume presents a wealth of variational pragmatic studies focusing on macro-social L1 pragmatic variation, also for languages apart from English, and using an array of methods ranging from data eliciting instruments (e.g., discourse completion tests) to corpus data. The range of macro-social factors examined in the studies is broad, including region, gender, age, and socio-economic class. 458

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Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Koike, D. A. (Eds.) (2012). Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts. Methodological issues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. This edited volume focuses on pragmatic variation in a variety of first- and second- language contexts. It includes several chapters focusing on pragmatic variation according to macro-social factors (e.g., gender) and micro-social factors (e.g., social power, social distance, and situation) and includes analyses of a wide range of pragmatic features, such as speech acts, conventional expressions, stance, frames, mitigation, communicative action, and implicature. A particular focus of the volume is methodological issues, with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches featured across chapters. Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (Eds.) (2008). Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. This seminal volume established variational pragmatics as a field of research. The introductory chapter outlines the rationale for studying variational pragmatics as a separate field of inquiry, systematically illustrating the broader theoretical framework and presenting a framework for further analysis. Individual chapters in the volume present examples of empirical variational pragmatic research focusing on regional varieties of a range of pluricentric languages. Languages and varieties investigated include English (British English, Irish English, American English, and New Zealand English), Dutch (Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch), French (French French and Canadian French), German (German German and Austrian German) and Spanish (Venezuelan Spanish and Argentinean Spanish). Analyses are on the formal (e.g., response tokens, T/V pronouns), actional (e.g., requests, apologies, invitations, and thanking) and interactional (e.g., small-talk) levels.

References Amador-Moreno, C. P. (2012). A corpus-based approach to contemporary Irish writing: Ross O’CarrollKelly’s use of like as a discourse marker. International Journal of English Studies, 12(2), 19–38. Amador-Moreno, C. P. (2015). ‘There’s, like, total silence again, roysh, and no one says anything’: Fictional representations of ‘new’ pragmatic markers and quotatives in Irish English. In C. P. Amador-Moreno, K. McCafferty, & E. Vaughan (Eds.), Pragmatic markers in Irish English (pp. 370–389). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Austin, J. L. (1976). How to do things with words (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Barron, A. (2005). Variational pragmatics in the foreign language classroom. System, 33(3), 519–536. Barron, A. (2014). Variational pragmatics. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics: Electronic version. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Barron, A. (2017a). Variational pragmatics. In A. Barron, Y. Gu & G. Steen (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of pragmatics (pp. 91–104). Abingdon, Oxon, UK/New York, NY: Routledge. Barron, A. (2017b). The speech act of ‘offers’ in Irish English. World Englishes, 36(2), 224–238. Barron, A. (forthcoming). Developing pragmatic competence in a study abroad context. In K. P. Schneider & E. Ifantidou (Eds.), Handbook of developmental and clinical pragmatics. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton. Barron, A., & Pandarova, I. (2016). The sociolinguistics of language use in Ireland. In R. Hickey (Ed.), Sociolinguistics in Ireland (pp. 107–130). London: Palgrave MacMillan. Barron, A., & Schneider, K. P. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425–442. Barron, A., Pandarova, I., & Muderack, K. (2015). Tag questions across Irish English and British English: A corpus analysis of form and function. Multilingua, 34(4), 495–524. Bieswanger, M. (2008). Varieties of English in current English language teaching. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 38, 27–47. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Clancy, B., & Vaughan, E. (2012). It’s lunacy now: A corpus-based pragmatic analysis of the use of ‘now’ in contemporary Irish English. In B. Migge & M. Ní Chiosáin (Eds.), New perspectives on Irish English (pp. 225–245). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Davis, J. McE. (2007). Resistance to L2 pragmatics in the Australian ESL context. Language Learning, 57(4), 611–649. Davydova, J., Tytus, A. E., & Schleef, E. (2017). Acquisition of sociolinguistic awareness by German learners of English: A study in perceptions of quotative ‘be like’. Linguistics, 55(4), 783–812. 459

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Diskin, C. (2017). The use of the discourse-pragmatic marker ‘like’ by native and non-native speakers of English in Ireland. Journal of Pragmatics, 120, 144–157. Diskin, C., & Regan, R. (2017). The attitudes of recently-arrived Polish migrants to Irish English. World Englishes, 36(2), 191–207. European Commission. (2015). Erasmus – facts, figures & trends. The European Union support for student and staff exchanges and university cooperation in 2013–14. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Retrieved on February 22, 2018, from http:​//ec.​europ​a.eu/​dgs/e​ducat​ion_c​ultur​e/rep​ osito​ry/ed​ucati​on/li​brary​/stat​istic​s/era​smus-​plus-​facts​-figu​res_e​n.pdf​ Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Koike, D. (2012). Introduction: Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts. In J. C. Félix-Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 1–15). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Filppula, M., Klemola, J., & Sharma, D. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford handbook of world Englishes. New York: Oxford University Press. Fishman, J. A. (1970). Sociolinguistics: A brief introduction. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Fuchs, R., & Gut, U. (2016). Register variation in intensifier usage across Asian Englishes. In H. Pichler (Ed.), Discourse-pragmatic variation and change: Insights from English (pp. 185-210). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Haugh, M., & Schneider, K. P. (2012). Editorial: Im/Politeness across Englishes. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1017–1021. International Corpus of English (n. d.). Retrieved on February 13, 2018, from http://ice-corpora.net/ice/ Kachru, B. B., Kachru, Y., & Nelson, C. L. (Eds). (2006). The handbook of World Englishes. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Kachru, Y. (2006). Speaking and writing in World Englishes. In B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru & C. L. Nelson (Eds). The handbook of World Englishes (pp. 366–385). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Kachru, Y. (2017). World Englishes, pragmatics, and discourse. In M. Filppula, J. Klemola & D. Sharma (Eds). The Oxford handbook of World Englishes (pp. 272–290). New York: Oxford University Press. Kanwit, M., Elias, V., & Clay, R. (2018). Acquiring intensifier variation abroad: Exploring muy and bien in Spain and Mexico. Foreign Language Annals, 51(2), 455–471. Kasper, G. (1995). Wessen Pragmatik? Für eine Neubestimmung fremdsprachlicher Handlungskompetenz. Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung, 6(1), 69–94. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. McKay, S. L., & Rubdy, R. (2013). The social and sociolinguistic contexts of language teaching. In M. H. Long & C. J. Doughty (Eds.), The handbook of language teaching (pp. 9–25). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Migge, B. (2012). Irish English and recent immigrants to Ireland. In B. Migge & M. Ní Chiosáin (Eds.), New perspectives on Irish English (pp. 311–326). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Migge, B. (2015). Now in the speech of newcomers to Ireland. In C. P. Amador-Moreno, K. McCafferty, & E. Vaughan (Eds.), Pragmatic markers in Irish English (pp. 390–407). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Milroy, J. (1981). Regional accents of English: Belfast. Dundonald, Belfast: Blackstaff Press. Murphy, B. (2015). A corpus-based investigation of pragmatic markers and sociolinguistic variation in Irish English. In C. P. Amador-Moreno, K. McCafferty & E. Vaughan (Eds.), Pragmatic markers in Irish English (pp. 65–88). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nestor, N., & Regan, V. (2015). The significance of age and place of residence in the positional distribution of discourse like in L2 speech. In C. P. Amador-Moreno, K. McCafferty & E. Vaughan (Eds.), Pragmatic markers in Irish English (pp. 408–432). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nestor, N., Ní Chasaide, C., & Regan, V. (2012). Discourse ‘like’ and social identity - A case study of Poles in Ireland. In B. Migge & M. Ní Chiosáin (Eds.), New perspectives on Irish English (pp. 327–353). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. Regan, V. (2013). Variation. In J. Herschensohn & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 272–291). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rühlemann, C. (2008). Conversational grammar – bad grammar? A situation-based description of quotative I goes in the BNC. ICAME Journal, 32, 157–177. Schneider, K. P. (2006). Fluchen, danken, Komplimente machen: Kommunikationsnormen in Varietäten des Englischen erforschen. Der Fremdsprachliche Unterricht Englisch, 83, 43–45. Schneider, K. P. (2010). Variational pragmatics. In M. Fried, J. Östman & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Variation and change: Pragmatic perspectives (pp. 239–267). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 460

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Schneider, K. P. (2012). Pragmatics. In R. Hickey (Ed.), Areal features of the Anglophone world (pp. 463–86). Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton. Schneider, K. P. (2017). Pragmatic competence and pragmatic variation. In R. Giora & M. Haugh (Eds.), Doing pragmatics interculturally: Cognitive, philosophical, and sociopragmatic perspectives (pp. 315–333). Berlin/Boston, MA: Mouton de Gruyter. Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (2008). Where pragmatics and dialectology meet: Introducing variational pragmatics. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 1–32). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schneider, K. P., & Placencia M. E. (2017). (Im)politeness and regional variation. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh & D. Z. Kádár(Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (Im)politeness (pp. 539–570). London: Palgrave. Schweinberger, M. (2015). A comparative study of the pragmatic marker like in Irish English and in southeastern varieties of British English. In C. P. Amador-Moreno, K. McCafferty, & E. Vaughan (Eds.), Pragmatic markers in Irish English (pp. 114–134). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sell, F., Renkwitz, K., Sickinger, P., & Schneider, K. P. (2019). Measuring pragmatic competence on the functional and lexical level: The development of German high-school students’ requests during a stay abroad in Canada. Journal of Pragmatics, forthcoming. Siemund, P., Maier, G., & Schweinberger, M. (2009). Towards a more fine-grained analysis of the areal distributions of non-standard features of English. In E. Penttilä & H. Paulasto (Eds.), Language contacts meet English dialects: Studies in honor of Markku Filppula (pp. 19–46). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Thackerar, J., Giles, H., & Cheshire, J. (1982). Psychological and linguistic parameters of speech accommodation theory. In C. Fraser & K. R. Scherer (Eds.), Advances in the social psychology of language (pp. 205–255). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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30 Heritage Learner Pragmatics Yang Xiao-Desai

Introduction Heritage learners, like heritage language scholarship, are byproducts of globalization. Most typically, they are early bilinguals whose language ability develops through a series of sociolinguistic events—contact with a home language and a societal language in early childhood, shift to societal language as the primary language at school, dominance in societal language by early adulthood, and sometimes, relearning of the home language during adulthood. Such a learning journey breaks the codified norms we usually hold for first language (L1), second language (L2), and native language, suggesting a fertile ground to study problems of language learning and use in social contexts – the central concern of pragmatics. Unfortunately, in the rapidly growing field of heritage language research, pragmatics has been rather neglected for a long time, with only a few studies addressing it peripherally. Recently, however, there has been a surge of research interest in pragmatics in heritage language context from diverse theoretical perspectives. This chapter critically reviews the development of this nascent research area and systematically appraises the recent literature, based on a thematic analysis of empirical studies over the last ten years (2007–2017). The chapter starts with a discussion of key concepts and theoretical considerations of heritage learner pragmatics. The literature appraisal first provides an overview of the research scope and methods, then synthesizes the main findings according to essential questions regarding heritage pragmatic competence. The conclusion section reflects on the key notions that have emerged in this line of research—contextuality, hybridity, bidirectionality, and learner agency—and calls for a more systematic examination of pragmatics in heritage language context.

Key Concepts The term ‘heritage learner pragmatics’ (HLP) first appeared in Taguchi (2015) and was thereafter used in a series of comprehensive reviews of L2 pragmatics (Taguchi, 2018; Taguchi & Roever, 2017). As a fairly new term, a precise definition has not been formulated, and predictably, will be difficult to achieve given the elusive meanings of each of the three composite words. To illustrate the complex nature of HLP, this section relates the terms to fundamental debates within a broader field of heritage language research. 462

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Heritage Language, Heritage Speakers, and Heritage Learners The notion of ‘heritage language’ is sociolinguistically and sociopolitically complicated. Rothman (2009b) defined that a language ‘qualifies as a heritage language if it is a language spoken at home or otherwise readily available to young children,’ and ‘not a dominant language of the larger (national) society’ (p. 156). Since its debut in Canada in the 1970s, ‘heritage language’ has become an umbrella term for various kinds of minority languages, including immigrant languages, community languages, and certain indigenous languages that have assumed a minority status due to historical reasons, such as Catalan Quechua in Peru. Thus, determining the heritage status of a language is not straightforward, due to the ever-changing sociolinguistic context in a time of globalization and the sociopolitical sensitivity assigned to the majority vs. minority status (Montrul, 2015). Defining ‘heritage speakers’ is even trickier. A broad approach to the definition may emphasize ethnic affiliation, while a narrow one may focus on language proficiency (Carreira & Kagan, 2011). Regardless of which criteria is used, heterogeneity is the hallmark of this population, who vary considerably in linguistic ability, language experience, attitude, and sociocultural status. As rightly observed in Montrul (2015), the heterogeneity is so remarkable that a common practice of heritage-language researchers has been to spend ‘a significant portion of their introductory sections discussing issues concerning the label heritage speaker and its connotations’ (p. 15). Moreover, ‘heritage speakers’ and ‘heritage learners’ overlap to a great extent. Although a distinction can be drawn depending on whether the individual is currently learning the language, in practice many studies have used the two terms interchangeably. The boundary is indeed not entirely clear, since all heritage speakers were, arguably, once learners of their home language, and heritage learners in instructional settings, termed ‘heritage language re-learners’ in Polinskey (2015), represent only small portion of the population. The label ‘heritage learner’ is also complicated in educational settings. For heritage languages with rich dialectal variations (e.g., Chinese, Spanish), there is often a mismatch between learners’ actual heritage language and the ‘assumed’ heritage language in the classroom. Cantonese speakers in Mandarin classes, for example, are considered ‘Chinese heritage learners’ even though Mandarin has never been their home language (Wong & Xiao, 2010). The mismatch reveals that current labels in this field may not be sufficient to describe heritage learners’ linguistic repertoires and language practices, and carry the risk of erasing ‘the geographic, social, and stylistic variation that they encompass’ (Leeman, 2015, p. 108). Who are the heritage learners in HLP? Researchers in this area, perhaps more than those working with other areas of heritage language, must carefully consider the many layers of the meanings in this term. With an intrinsic social concern, pragmatics inquiry in heritage language context is tied to the rich and complex sociocultural and sociopolitical information loaded in the label ‘heritage language’ or ‘heritage learners.’ The hegemony of the majority language, the assimilative pressure from host society, the status of the heritage language in the home country, and access to formal and literacy education, all have determinative impact on social and personal use of the language. Moreover, a heritage individual’s attitude, perception, and language experiences are also indicators of pragmatic development. It is crucial for researchers of HLP to have a refined understanding of these issues when defining study participants and approaching heritage learners’ pragmatic behaviors.

Heritage Language Competence Different theoretical positions have emerged to explain how heritage learners’ competence diverges from that of L2 learners or their monolingual counterparts. Accordingly, these positions have made distinctive predictions for heritage pragmatic competence. 463

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One influential position considers ‘incomplete acquisition’ to be the main cause of the heritage language divergence from native speaker standards (Montrul, 2015). Because of the reduced or interrupted input, heritage language children may have missed the opportunity to acquire some linguistic properties that are normally acquired in later stages of L1 acquisition, such as pragmatic knowledge. Another position, however, considers heritage speakers’ divergence from monolingual L1 groups as different but not necessarily incomplete (Kupisch & Rothman, 2016). From this perspective, heritage language is a contact variety resulting from linguistic change, assuming an equal status with its monolingual variety of origin (Rothman, 2009b). As such, heritage speakers are considered as native speakers too, because heritage language is learned as an L1 in naturalistic setting (Rothman & Treffers-Daller, 2014). These two theoretical positions paint two drastically different portraits of heritage language competence, both in general language areas and pragmatics. From the point of view of incomplete acquisition, heritage learners exhibit simplified syntax, limited pragmatic repertoire, inappropriate use of registers, and underdeveloped sociocultural knowledge. However, from the point of view of linguistic change, heritage learners possess language abilities that characterize native speakers, though different from its homeland variety in terms of native-like accent, high proficiency in comprehension and production, skills of language creation in bilingual contexts, and ‘an affective and cultural proximity that generally has less weight in non-native acquisition’ (Flores, 2015, p. 253). These distinctive linguistic profiles may trace back to the complex definition issues in heritage language field. It has been noted that studies of these two positions have deployed different definitions and selection criteria in their study designs (Nagy, 2015). While the former position sees language deficit as a defining feature of heritage speakers, the latter recognizes that highly proficient, balanced bilinguals are also part of the heritage learner population. As Nagy (2015) maintained, different demarcation of who a heritage language speaker/learner is may have generated different conclusions about heritage-language acquisition. To approach HLP research, we need a more refined and integrated definition to fine-tune the complex social connotations of various labels and fully recognize the diversity of the heritage population. Ignoring social and contextual information of heritage learners may risk ignoring the very cause and rationale behind heritage learners’ pragmatic behaviors. Defining heritage learners narrowly based on language proficiency alone may also risk missing participants who should be included in investigations of pragmatics. Moreover, multiple theoretical perspectives and analytical tools should be adopted to understand the intricate nature of HLP, which will be discussed in the next section.

Theoretical Preliminaries: Contextuality, Hybridity, Bidirectionality, and Learner Agency At this early stage, a first-hand framework for HLP research has yet to be developed, but the very name indicates an interdisciplinary nature among second language acquisition (SLA), bilingualism, sociolinguistics, and anthropology. These source domains have indeed provided some theoretical underpinnings and toolkits for this bourgeoning research area. Most notable is the proposal advanced by Taguchi and her collaborators (Taguchi, 2015, 2018; Taguchi & Roever, 2017; Taguchi, Zhang, & Li, 2017), which suggests that HLP is a hybrid system reflecting norms of interaction in both societal and heritage language and that HLP develops in a blended social context and is mediated by bidirectional cross-linguistic influence and learner agency. Approaching from an L2 pragmatics perspective, this proposal highlights several key ideas that resonate with the scholarship of language socialization, bilingual acquisition, and sociolinguistics. This section illustrates how these scholarships can help define the nature of HLP in relation to the notions of contextuality, hybridity, bidirectionality, and learner agency that characterize heritage learners’ pragmatic competence. 464

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An SLA Perspective: The Hybrid Pragmatic System in Heritage Language L2 pragmatics research in SLA tradition has been a fundamental source field for the study of HLP. With globalization, the notion of pragmatic competence has evolved into a multi-dimensional concept that moves away from monolingual focus and embraces multilingual pragmatic norms (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Such a reconceptualization centralizes the role of context in pragmatics learning and underscores the influence of learner agency on the implementation of the pragmatic knowledge. As such, Taguchi (2018) proposed an updated model of pragmatic competence that includes not only paralinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge, but also ‘the ability to use these knowledge bases to create a communicative act in interaction’ (p. 3). The updated model of pragmatic competence is particularly suitable when studying HLP. Specifically, Taguchi and Roever (2017) proposed examining heritage-learner pragmatic competence as ‘a hybrid system of home and societal languages under the framework of bilingual pragmatics’ (p. 270) (see also Chapter 32 in this volume). Heritage language context embodies a mixture of L1 acquisition, L2 learning, and adaptive bilingual use in complex sociolinguistic situations across time and space. Such a blended context enables heritage learners to draw on pragmatic strategies and patterns from two languages in order to accommodate ever-changing communication needs. In so doing, their pragmatic development proceeds simultaneously in two languages and is thus prone to cross-linguistic influences coming from both directions (societal and home language). Equally important in this system is learner subjectivity (see Chapter 11 in this volume). Unlike other L2 learners, heritage leaners have a strong yet complicated identity-based connection to the target language, and heritage language has always been a site of identity struggle. How heritage learners position themselves, either as assimilated members of the majority language community or as willing successors to the heritage language, will influence their pragmatic choices and shape the course of pragmatic development (Brown, 2013; Taguchi, 2015; Xiao-Desai & Wong, 2017).

A Language Socialization Perspective: Bidirectionality and Learner Agency in Heritage Pragmatic Socialization The theory of language socialization pays close attention to linguistic forms that socialize children or novices into members of a community with specific cultural norms and expectations (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). In this sense, pragmatic development is ‘a dual process of socialization’ (Taguchi & Roever, 2017, p. 73). As the language socialization framework has expanded to multilingual and heritage language contexts, it has similarly centralized the notions of bidirectionality and learner agency (see also Chapter 9 in this volume). Unlike bidirectional linguistic influence, bidirectional socialization influence refers to the reciprocal exchanges and uptakes between expert and novice. By addressing the fluid expertise during interactions, the bidirectionality in a socialization process makes salient the role of learner agency, identity, and subjectivity (Duff & Talmy, 2011). Kecskés’ (2016) model of bilingual pragmatic competence further underscores learner agency and bidirectional influence in pragmatic performance. He claims that bilingual pragmatic competence exhibits the following features: the modification of an existing system, the dynamic nature of the pragmatic process, the bidirectional pragmatic influence between languages, and the leading role of subjectivity in making pragmatic choices. As such, pragmatic development is mostly driven by bilingual individuals’ subjectivity, and pragmatic changes are outcomes of deliberate blending of new pragmatic strategies and sociocultural knowledge with old ones. Heritage language socialization represents exactly such ‘a twist in the interface of language learning and socialization into identity construction’ (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2011, p. 16). With the language contact, shift, and dominance that occur throughout their lives, heritage learners experience multiple socialization sites across time and space, each reflecting complex and fluid cultural 465

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norms, beliefs, and values. Their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge is instilled during the process of being socialized in two languages from early in life, and continues to grow in a ‘complex, developing, transnational, intergenerational, intercultural, cross-linguistic, and hybrid’ heritage culture context (He, 2011, p. 589). Heritage learners, the novices of this often imagined and idealized heritage culture (Wong & Xiao, 2010), need to draw linguistic codes from two languages to express their stances of resistance, ambivalence, accommodation, or compliance while managing multiple, morally conflicting selves and loyalties in language contact situations. Consequently, the bidirectionality of heritage pragmatic socialization emphasizes not only the dynamic exchanges between two languages, but also the mutual pragmatic influences between participants involved in social interactions that are driven by participants’ agency, identity, and subjectivity.

A Formal Linguistics Perspective: Cross-Linguistic Influence and SyntaxPragmatics Interface in Heritage Language This line of research focuses on pragmatic properties in formal linguistic structures and highlights ‘the crucial role of pragmatics in determining syntactic choice’ (Argyri & Sorace, 2007, p.80). Researchers in this area have found that linguistic constructions regulated by both syntactic and pragmatic rules—so called ‘syntax-pragmatics interface’ phenomena—pose persistent difficulty for bilinguals of all types, whereas those governed by narrow syntax are much less prone to error (Sorace & Serratrice, 2009). The most widely studied syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon is the distribution of null and overt subject pronouns. In languages such as Spanish and Italian, both null and overt pronouns are grammatically possible, but their distribution is licensed by discourse/pragmatic factors, such as topic continuation, topic shift, or switch reference. In English, there is a partial overlap at the surface level with Spanish or Italian for this particular structure in that English allows only the overt subject. Studies have found bilinguals of these two types of languages tend to have difficulties to integrate the syntactic information with discourse/pragmatic information, leading to high rate of pragmatically inappropriate overt subject pronouns in topic continuation and focus contexts (Sorace, 2011) The investigations of interface phenomena have attributed bilinguals’ difficulties at the interfaces to cross-linguistic influence and underscored the role of pragmatic transfer in bilingual acquisition. In an earlier influential hypothesis, Hulk and Müller (2000) proposed that syntax-pragmatics interface is the most likely locus of cross-linguistic influence. In this hypothesis, transfer occurs under two conditions as exemplified in the distribution of null and overt subject pronouns in Spanish and English: (1) the construction requires the integration of syntactic and pragmatic knowledge, and (2) the constructions in two languages overlap at the surface level. Later, Sorace and colleagues put forth an ‘Interface Hypothesis’ (Serratrice, Sorace, & Paoli, 2004; Sorace, 2011; Sorace & Serratrice, 2009). Studies based on this hypothesis were able to pin down the outcomes of crosslinguistic influence at different developmental stages of bilingual acquisition: While the interface vulnerability at early stage may result in grammatical omission errors by younger bilinguals, at later developmental stages the outcome of cross-linguistic influence is usually pragmatically infelicitous errors rather than syntactic ones (Serratrice, 2005; Serratrice et al., 2004). This line of research represents the effort in bilingual research to reveal the interaction between pragmatics and syntax. Over the past decade it has been fruitfully extended to heritage language context, generating new insights into the directionality of cross-linguistic influence and specific role of pragmatic transfer. Montrul (2004), for example, found that Spanish heritage speakers in the U.S.A. overproduced overt subjects in topic shift and switch reference contexts in Spanish, where null subjects would be pragmatically more appropriate. 466

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A Sociolinguistic Perspective: Pragmatic Variations in Heritage Language Contact Situation Sociolinguists draw on sociohistorical circumstances of heritage communities and analyze the language of heritage speakers as different regional and community varieties of the homeland language in diaspora, such as Spanish in Los Angeles, Estonian in Sweden, and Russian in America (Montrul, 2015). In this sense, heritage language development embodies the formation of a new dialect/language (Nagy, 2015), which essentially becomes the third language in contact situation, receiving influences from its homeland variety and societal language. With this understanding, pragmatic variations in heritage language can be examined as a type of contact-induced change, characterized by contact phenomena such as code-switching, pragmatic borrowing, and style shifting. Social factors, such as power relations, immigration history, societal attitude toward the heritage language, and immigrants’ identification with the heritage culture, mediate how these changes happen, and further instantiate norms of the new variety (Meeuwis, 1991). Investigating pragmatic variations from this perspective enriches our understanding of the hybridity and bidirectionality of HLP. Heritage language may be contrasted with societal language with an approach of contrastive pragmatics, describing pragmatic variations as results of bilingual interference, such as replacing, mixing, or matching pragmatic strategies and patterns from two languages, fallback on universal pragmatics, or transfer of L1 pragmatics to L2 behavior (Muysken, 2013). A variational pragmatics approach, on the other hand, can help us compare heritage language with homeland variety. We can examine how speech acts, routines, or broader notions of politeness are realized across varieties of the same language. We can also examine the role of macro-social factors (such as region, gender, age, socioeconomic status, or ethnic identity) in developing pragmatic variations (Barron, 2005, also see Chapter 29 in this volume). The four theoretical perspectives discussed in this section have attracted a growing number of HLP studies over the past decade. The next two sections present a critical review of the current HLP research. The first section summarizes the research scope and methods of HLP along these four theoretical perspectives. In the second section the trends of empirical findings are reviewed as responses to essential questions regarding HLP.

Research Scope and Methods in HLP Literature A systematic bibliographic search was conducted to synthesize the current literature on HLP. The search was restricted to the last ten years (2007–2017) given the paucity of empirical HLP studies before 2007. In anticipating the small number of studies available, a broader definition of heritage learners was adopted to include the heritage speakers who are not currently learning the language as well as younger heritage speakers (children and teenagers). Dissertations during this period were also included. The search was conducted with two levels of search terms. The primary terms focused on the status of the language or population, such as ‘heritage learners/speakers,’ ‘immigrant language,’ and ‘early bilingual.’ The secondary terms were specific to the research of pragmatics, such as ‘pragmatic competence,’ ‘politeness,’ and ‘speech acts.’ Terms were combined to search across major academic databases (Elsevier, ERIC, ProQuest, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Google scholar). The publications identified in the search process were entered into Nvivo 11.4 Software (©  QSR International) for content and thematic analysis. Forty-two primary studies (marked with * in the reference) were identified to form the base for literature appraisal, using the following criteria: (1) The study has an empirical design; (2) The study has pragmatic features as its 467

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main, or one of the main, investigations; and (3) The study focuses on heritage speakers exclusively or as a subgroup. It should be noted that the intention here is not to conduct a quantitative mate-analysis, but to critically synthesize the major findings and identify research trends. The primary studies were divided into four groups, along four theoretical perspectives described in the previous section: 1 2 3 4

Pragmatic competence of heritage language learners Pragmatic practices in heritage language socialization Pragmatic properties of syntactic constructions in heritage language acquisition Pragmatic patterns in heritage language contact situations

The remaining part of the section discusses the research scope and method found in each group.

Pragmatic Competence of Heritage Language Learners Eighteen of the primary studies came from the SLA tradition, mostly resulting from the recent extension of L2 pragmatics to heritage language context (see Table 30.1). The pragmatic targets and data elicitation methods were consistent with the paradigm of L2 pragmatics research, mostly using discourse completion tasks (DCT), role-plays, or judgment tests. In more recent studies, learner corpora and corpus analytic tools provided naturalistic data. Usually, each study focused on one particular pragmatic target. While speech acts have been a common area of investigation, epistemic stance, formula, and implicature were also examined in this group of studies. Study designs were mostly experimental and comparative, examining the heritage learner group in comparison with L2 learners and/or their monolingual counterparts. While the majority of these studies focused on heritage learners at the college level in Northern America, Backus and Yağmur (2017) compared bilingual Turkish immigrant children with their monolingual peers.

Table 30.1  Studies of HLP competence with L2 pragmatics approach Pragmatics target

Study

Heritage language

Imperative Request

Tsylina (2016) Dubinina & Malamud (2017) Dubinina (2012) Pinto & Raschio (2007) Garcia & Bachelor (2017)

Russian Russian

Request and apology Complaints Refusal Honorifics

Mitigators Sentence final particles and formulae Implicature Epistemic stance Socio-pragmatic skills

468

Koike & Palmiere (2011) Pinto & Raschio (2008) M. V. Elias (2013) V. Elias (2016) Ahn (2013) Kim, Lee, & Kim (2018) Brown & Walter (2011) Brown (2013) Q. Li et al. (2017) Taguchi et al. (2017) Taguchi, Li, & Liu (2013) Xiao-Desai & Wong (2017) Backus & Yağmur (2017)

Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish Korean Korean Korean Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Turkish

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These studies mainly concerned the learning and development of heritage pragmatic competence by exploring a specific pragmatic target in relation to some common concerns of the SLA field, such as transfer (Dubinina & Malamud, 2017; M. V. Elias, 2013), pragmatic development (Xiao-Desai & Wong, 2017), teaching effectiveness (Ahn, 2013), and ‘heritage advantages’ in learning pragmatics (Li, Zhang, & Taguchi, 2017). Brown and Walter (2011) investigated the link between ethnicity and pragmatic strategies among heritage learners.

Pragmatic Practices in Heritage Language Socialization Pragmatic socialization has been examined in seven studies with various heritage languages, including Korean (Lo, 2009; Park, 2008; Song, 2009), Spanish (Showstack, 2017), Persian (Atoofi, 2013), and Burmese (Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016). Research methods and data were in line with those in ethnographic studies, adopting a qualitative, discourse-oriented approach and using natural interaction data collected at home or in schools. Instead of focusing on a single pragmatic target, the studies in this group investigated a range of pragmatic strategies used to construct cultural knowledge, social knowledge, ideologies, and identities. A main concern in these studies is how pragmatic practices are co-constructed and negotiated by both experts (parents, teachers, etc.) and novices (children, students, etc.) in the heritage language community. Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) examined young Burmese heritage speakers’ bilingual practice of politeness expressions and address terms in constructing an ideology of ‘age’. Atoofi (2013) investigated a wide range of linguistic resources used for affective stance-taking in a Persian heritage language school. Focusing on metapragmatic devices, Guardado (2013) examined preference organization in the interaction between Hispanic Canadian caregiver and heritage children, focusing on explicit and implicit directives such as commands, requests, and clarification.

Pragmatic Properties of Syntactic Constructions in Heritage Language Acquisition Eleven studies fall into this category. Besides null and overt subject realization, other syntaxpragmatics interface phenomena were examined, including focus constructions in Hungarian and Turkish (Hoot, 2017; Rijswijk, Muntendam, & Dijkstra, 2017), cleft construction in Chinese (Mai, 2013), aspect in Russian (Laleko, 2010), topic and case marking in Japanese and Korean (Laleko & Polinsky, 2013), case ellipsis in Korean (Chung, 2013), and differential object marking in Spanish (Montrul, 2010). Their main concerns focused on identifying the direction and precise nature of cross-linguistic influence at the syntax-pragmatics interface, by comparing heritage speakers with monolingual natives or with other bilinguals who share some characteristics but differ in acquisition history. These studies have followed experimental methods drawing on research in L1 acquisition, L2 acquisition, and psycholinguistics. The data elicitation tasks involve oral narrative tasks, oral and written elicitation tasks, and judgment tasks. Some researchers have used psycholinguistic techniques such as response time measures and eye tracking (Rijswijk et al., 2017). Other studies have analyzed speech and gesture to examine cross-linguistic influence at the syntax-pragmatics interface (Azar, Backus, & Özyürek, 2017).

Pragmatic Patterns in Heritage Language Contact Situations Six studies adopted the sociolinguistic perspective to identify pragmatic patterns in a heritage language that are different from those of the societal language and other varieties of the heritage 469

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language. These studies adopted the variationist approach in study design, rather than experimental, and analyzed naturalistic recordings of narratives, conversations, interviews, and classroom activities. For instance, Albirini and Chakrani (2017) studied Arabic heritage speakers’ code switching among Colloquial Arabic, Standard Arabic, and English in narratives. Besides heritage speakers in home and classroom settings, the studies in this group addressed broader heritage language situations. Keevallik (2012) examined pragmatic patterns in the speech of Estonian heritage speakers in Sweden, mostly World War II refugees and their descendants. Manley (2007) interviewed home and farm workers in Peru, who are Quechua heritage speakers with Spanish as the societal language. While these studies have investigated a wide range of pragmatic features, discourse/pragmatic markers received more attention (Sánchez-Muñoz, 2007; Kim, 2012; Kern, 2017).

Trends in Empirical Findings Despite different epistemology, approaches, and assumptions, research from these four perspectives has collectively steered our attention to contextuality, hybridity, bidirectionality, and learner subjectivity of HLP. Though findings are still mostly inconclusive, the studies help build a foundation to understand the intricate nature of HLP, lending support to further theoretical development. This section analyzes major empirical findings from this decade with five essential questions about HLP: 1 2 3 4 5

Is there a ‘heritage advantage’ in pragmatics learning? How does heritage pragmatic competence develop? What is the role of cross-linguistic influence in heritage pragmatic competence? What is the role of learner agency in heritage learner pragmatics? Is pragmatic instruction useful for heritage learners?

Is There a ‘Heritage Advantage’ in Pragmatics Learning? Whether heritage learners have advantages over L2 learners has been explored in different areas of language such as phonology, grammar, and semantics (Montrul, 2015). Studies asking the same question in pragmatics have generated a rather complex picture. First, the heritage advantage in pragmatics learning is not as clear or robust as it is in other linguistic areas, and studies do not always find the advantage. This finding is particularly evident in syntax-pragmatics interface studies. Laleko & Polinsky (2013) studied syntax and pragmatics knowledge of nominative case and topic markers in Japanese and Korean to see if heritage learners have advantages over L2 learners in both areas. The results showed a clear heritage advantage in the syntactic but not in the discourse-pragmatic area. However, other studies found that, while both heritage and L2 learners exhibited difficulty in producing or interpreting pragmatic properties of interface constructions, heritage learners still outperformed L2 learners. In his study of case ellipsis in Korean, Chung (2013) found that L2 learners were insensitive to discoursepragmatic cues when dropping case markers in Korean, while heritage speakers had closer, albeit still deficient, performance to the native baseline. Mai (2013) reported similar findings with her study of Chinese focus construction. Another trend found in the literature is that the heritage advantage is not evenly distributed across all aspects of pragmatics and can be affected by task type and interaction setting. On the comprehension of implicature, Taguchi, Li, and Liu (2013) found that Chinese heritage learners outperformed L2 learners only in the accuracy, but not in the speed, of the comprehension. Taguchi et al. (2017) identified the heritage advantage in both production and comprehension 470

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of speech acts. However, the advantage was weaker for formal written tasks in which heritage learners addressed their instructors, university officers, or professionals. Q. Li et al. (2017) studied Chinese heritage learners’ use of mitigation devices in email/text messaging tasks that differed in power and social distance. They found heritage advantage only in the use of one mitigation device (yixia/xia) in power/distance-low situations (e.g., addressing to a friend and family member). The authors suggested the lack of heritage advantage in other devices (e.g., sentence final particles, reduplication of verbs) was because they are Chinese-specific or not semantically salient. The discussion of heritage advantage has highlighted the important role of societal and contextual factors in learning pragmatics. Laleko and Polinsky (2013) compared acceptability ratings on the use of topic and nominative markers at the syntax-pragmatics interface between two pairs of learners: Korean heritage learners vs. Korean L2 learners and Japanese heritage learners vs. Japanese L2 learners. The heritage advantage was found in the Korean, but not in the Japanese, groups. The authors attributed this result to the fact that the two heritage language situations differ in terms of societal factors, such as immigration history, linguistic practices, and intergenerational transmission. This finding suggests that the availability and use of the heritage language contributes more to proficiency than to learning advantages. This echoes what Taguchi et al. (2017) found—the amount of social contact was an indicator of pragmatic performance. The authors stated that, like general proficiency, pragmatic competence ‘exhibits a direct connection with social contact among heritage learners’ (p. 36).

How Does Heritage Pragmatic Competence Develop? In the absence of longitudinal studies, our knowledge of heritage language pragmatic development largely derives from comparative analyses between heritage speakers and their monolingual counterparts. These analyses assume that monolingual speakers represent the final stage of development and that the deviation from the baseline indicates different stages of the development. Major findings from this perspective suggest that the development of heritage pragmatics is halted in certain areas, resulting in a deviation from monolingual standards. Chinese heritage learners in Q. Li et al. (2017) and Taguchi et al.’s (2017) cross-sectional studies, for instance, exhibited restricted pragmalinguistic repertoire and sociopragmatic knowledge in the use of mitigation devices and request-making strategies compared to native Chinese speakers’ use. Laleko (2010) studied the pragmatic function of Russian aspect and found that heritage speakers tended to produce syntactically well-formed but pragmatically illicit structures, indicating developmental instability due to incomplete acquisition (or L1 attrition) of pragmatic knowledge. Backus and Yağmur (2017) compared 30 Turkish immigrant children in the Netherlands (five to six years old) with 30 monolingual peers in Turkey in the development of pragmatic skills assessed in their use of declaratives (communicating a response, expressing an opinion, and voicing a suggestion) and interrogatives (asking a question and communicating a request). They found that the immigrant children’s pragmatic development lagged behind that of their monolingual counterparts. The author suspected that such arrested development of pragmatic skills in the heritage language may even jeopardize the development of pragmatic skills in Dutch, the majority language. While the studies described above examined one heritage learner group, other cross-sectional studies have compared heritage learners across different proficiency levels or age groups. XiaoDesai & Wong (2017) studied epistemic markers in a corpus of blog entries produced by Chinese heritage speakers at four different levels. Their findings revealed three notable developmental patterns in the use of these markers: an increase in frequency and diversity of the stance markers after the first quarter of heritage language classes, a period of stability from the second to third quarter, and a divergence of frequency and diversity at the advanced level, whereby the frequency 471

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of epistemic markers did not change but the diversity increased again. Significant developmental variability was also found among three sub-groups of epistemic markers: ‘I + cognitive verb’ construction, epistemic adverbs, and epistemic modal verbs. Another effort in studying the development of heritage learner pragmatics involved linking research findings of bilingual pre-school children and young adult heritage speakers. Montrul (2016) called this method ‘connecting the dots’ to ‘construct a path between the initial and end state of heritage language development’ (p. 1). She tested whether young adult Spanish heritage speakers’ incomplete acquisition of pragmatic constraints in subject realization could be mapped to developmental patterns in school-age bilingual children’s language, and was able to establish a developmental link between the two groups. Both groups had similar developmental difficulties, i.e., they experienced more difficulty with the pragmatic constraints on overt than on null subjects, suggesting that difficulty with the discourse/pragmatic distribution of subjects in bilingual childhood ‘continues well into the adult years’ (p. 12) in heritage learners.

What is the Role of Cross-linguistic Influence in Heritage Pragmatic Competence? Existing HLP studies have extensively explored the effects, locus, and directionality of crosslinguistic influence in heritage learners’ pragmatic performance. Research findings on the effects of cross-linguistic influence provided insights into the nature of hybridity in HLP. By examining speech acts of Spanish heritage speakers in the U.S.A., Pinto and Raschio (2007, 2008) identified various signs of cross-linguistic influences in speech act realization patterns. The effect of cross-linguistic influence may take different forms, such as pragmatic overgeneralization, borrowing, avoidance, omission, convergence, and misinterpretation, indicating a blending of English pragmatic conventions and heritage language conventions. These two studies found that heritage speakers produce Spanish speech act utterances that are grammatically correct and native-like, yet are not conventionalized in Spanish but in English. For instance, heritage learners avoided using direct imperatives in making requests, which resembled monolingual English patterns but differed from monolingual Spanish patterns. Another instance of cross-linguistic influence, which further revealed the hybridity of HLP, was the emergence of new pragmatic strategies created by heritage learners using their knowledge of the societal and heritage languages. Dubinina and Malamud (2017) found that Russian heritage learners frequently use the construction možno (possible) + požalujsta (please) to make informal requests in Russian. This combination is mostly judged as unacceptable or at least ‘strange’ by monolingual Russian native speakers. It appeared that heritage speakers transferred the use of English ‘please’ to Russian politeness marker požalujsta and combined it with an internal restructuring of the Russian impersonal modal možno. The authors hypothesize that the immigrant children in this study did not have the chance to acquire Russian conventions for ‘expressing deference and mitigating the illocutionary force of requests’ (p. 111), nor were able to rely on only Russian resources to adjust to changing social dimensions linguistically. As a result, they compensated Russian lexical conventions acquired in early childhood, such as the use of požalujsta or možno, with English syntactic conventions that ‘they know very well’ (p. 111). As such, transfer from English, together with incomplete acquisition and internal restructuring, led to new conventions specific to heritage Russian. The locus of cross-linguistic influence is likely to be in the domain of pragmatics. Studies of interface phenomena in heritage languages indicated that pragmatic properties of linguistic constructions are more vulnerable to transfer than syntactic properties. Despite sophisticated native-like syntactic forms, heritage speakers sometimes produce non-target like syntactic forms largely due to their limited pragmatic knowledge. In other words, it is the erosion of pragmatic features that causes transfer and convergence between two languages (Argyri & Sorace, 2007; 472

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Rothman, 2009a). Muntendam (2013), for example, attempted to determine whether the nature of transfer from Quechua (a minority language usually with heritage status) into Andean Spanish (the majority language) is syntactic or pragmatic. After carefully teasing apart the syntactic properties (weak crossover and long-distance movement) and pragmatic properties (the given/new and topic/focus interpretations) in the word order of these languages, she found a transfer of pragmatic uses and interpretations but not of syntactic properties. The directionality of pragmatic transfer has been explored to a great extent. So far, findings in this area suggest that pragmatic transfer in heritage language learners is both one-directional and multi-directional. On the one hand, there has been overwhelming evidence for one-directional transfer from the dominant language, like the transfer of pragmatic strategies from the societal to heritage language found in Pinto and Rachio’s (2007, 2008) studies. On the other hand, there was also evidence for pragmatic transfer from heritage (weaker) to majority (dominant) language, as shown in Muntendam (2013). This type of tansfer was also found in interpretation of focus by heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands (Rijswijk, Muntendam, & Dijkstra, 2017). Besides bi-directional transfer, there were findings on how pragmatic transfer operates in L3 acquisition among heritage speakers. Koike and Palmiere (2011) showed that Spanish heritage speakers relied on their heritage language, not dominant language (English), in their production of Portuguese (L3) speech acts. These findings suggest that in L3 learners’ pragmatics, transfer comes from the language that learners deem as most similar to L3. In other words, the direction of pragmatic transfer can be determined by topological similarity, not by language dominance or the status of L1 or L2.

What is the Role of Learner Agency in Heritage Learner Pragmatics? The resilient interaction between learner agency and pragmatic practice has been clearly demonstrated in HLP studies. The Korean heritage learner in Brown’s (2013) study, for example, found himself in a dilemma with the use of honorifics—whether to establish an authentic Korean identity by using honorifics fluently or to comply his Western upbringing that favors equality in language use. Recent findings, particularly those from the domain of language socialization, have further deepened our understanding of the hybridity and bi-directionality in heritage language learners’ pragmatic practices. Learner agency regulates the multi-directionality of heritage pragmatic socialization in the sense that experts and novices interactively co-construct stance and ideologies, resulting in mutual influences on each other’s use of pragmatic strategies. Atoofi (2013) investigated a wide range of linguistic resources used for affective stance-taking in a Persian heritage language school, illustrating how the teachers and students acknowledged and modified their pragmatic behaviors based on the affective feedback they received from one another. Showstack (2017) demonstrated how Spanish heritage learners’ stance-taking practices in classroom can negotiate expert/novice roles, construct sociolinguistic identities, and index (and challenge) dominant language ideology. The hybrid and multi-directional nature of heritage language socialization was also found in Lo’s (2009) study. She demonstrated instances of co-construction of the ideologies of (dis)respect by Korean heritage teacher and students. For instance, teachers reworked their metapragmatic ideologies as heritage children exercised their agency in offering ‘half-hearted’ and ‘double-voiced’ compliance (p. 231). Learner agency is also evidenced by the bilingual creativity in heritage learners’ pragmatic practices. Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) illustrated the hybridity and fluidity of address forms used by Burmese heritage speakers in the U.S.A. when constructing an ideology of ‘age.’ In this study, heritage teenagers mixed different address terms and shifted between address terms to conform to Burmese norms of politeness, as well as to signal that they are young, casual, and friendly individuals who are familiar with older interlocutors. The hybrid usage of address terms, the authors argued, displayed how heritage youth creatively accommodate competing ideologies 473

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in two cultures as they negotiate multiple identities. Similarly, Song (2009) explored Korean heritage children’s socialization into Korean honorific terms and their creative use of these terms in bilingual environment. She found that, while caregivers encouraged and modeled how to address other children’s name followed by an honorific term of ‘older brother/sister,’ one child used the term only in settings where the caregiver was present. When interacting with peers, the child created a hybrid address term that combined English and Korean pronunciation. These findings illustrate children’s agency in blending language to create their own meanings and signify their negotiation of multiple ideologies in context.

Is Pragmatic Instruction Useful for Heritage Learners? Empirical findings about the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction for heritage learners are scarce. This issue was most often addressed as part of pedagogical implications of study findings. For instance, on teaching Russian aspect, Laleko (2010) recommended creating dialogues that provide a salient discourse-pragmatic context to promote the learning of pragmatic meanings associated with the imperfective aspect in Russian. Two recent studies, both on Korean honorifics, provided evidence for the effectiveness of instruction. Kim, Lee, and Kim (2018) made a first attempt to examine the benefits of collaborative writing tasks for learning pragmatics in a mixed class of heritage learners and L2 learners. Their findings confirmed that task-based interaction on learning pragmatics helped both heritage learners and L2 learners to develop their receptive and productive knowledge of Korean honorifics. Moreover, L2 learners who were paired with heritage learners had an advantage over L2 learners who were paired with other L2 learners in the immediate posttests (but not in the delayed posttests). Ahn (2013) examined the effects of corrective feedback on learning Korean honorifics by heritage and non-heritage learners. She found that pragmatic instruction was more effective for non-heritage learners. For heritage learners, explicit feedback was more effective than implicit feedback. Despite the positive outcomes of instruction found in these studies, the necessity of teaching pragmatics to heritage leaners is not always keenly felt by practitioners and scholars. The main concern is whether it is legitimate to teach monolingual pragmatic norms to heritage learners. Garcia and Bachelor (2017) gave a straightforward negative answer. They found that the pragmatic intervention on request-making was only effective for L2 Spanish group, not for Spanish heritage learners. They also did not find any negative pragmatic transfer in heritage learners’ data, and therefore concluded that there is no need to teach pragmatic norms to heritage learners. Unfortunately, these results are based on small sample size and heavily skewed to high-proficiency heritage learners. Because the proficiency level plays a significant role in heritage learners’ pragmatic competence, the conclusion may not be generalizable to larger heritage learner populations. While questioning the legitimacy of teaching heritage learners to speak like monolingual speakers, scholars and practitioners generally agree that certain areas warrant pedagogical intervention to reduce instances of inappropriate pragmatic behaviors that may hinder communication or generate negative perceptions toward heritage speakers. In addition, heritage learners’ limited knowledge in formal register may undermine their performance in academic settings (Pinto, 2012). More empirical studies are necessary to assess these claims.

Conclusion and Future Directions Globalization has engendered non-traditional social contexts for languages to be used, which are essentially transforming the ways in which pragmatics are learnt, taught, and researched. This chapter focuses on heritage language context, outlining what we currently know about the unique heritage pragmatic system. Positioning HLP in the general research of heritage language, the analyses here demonstrate that it is critical to take into account the complex social meanings 474

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associated with heritage language as well as the diverse types of heritage learners. A stronger integration of various theoretical perspectives and broadened methodologies is also needed in order to overcome the divide of positions in current approaches to heritage language research. Contextuality, hybridity, bidirectionality, and learner agency are the key notions that have emerged in the review of theoretical underpinnings and empirical findings, offering possible angles to delineate the intricate nature of HLP. Based on this review, I recommend the following theoretical considerations for developing a framework for the hybrid model of HLP: 1 Bidirectionality of HLP operates in two dimensions: bi-directional influence between the societal and home language, and bi-directional influence between interactional participants in heritage language socialization. 2 The nature of hybridity in HLP is determined by the interaction among heritage language proficiency, pragmatic transfer, learner agency, and social context. a. When young heritage speakers or adult heritage learners at the low end of the proficiency continuum acquire basic pragmatics, they draw pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms from two languages to form a hybrid knowledge base. Variations in the development of pragmatic development can be explained by factors such as reduced input, contact variety, interface vulnerability, and cross-linguistic influence. b. As heritage language proficiency grows, learner agency plays an increasingly important role in shaping the hybrid pragmatic system. Personal preference, identity positioning, and perceived social values all impact how heritage speakers use specific pragmatic strategies. Their pragmatic choices reflect translanguaging strategies, bilingual creativity, and co-construction with their interlocutors. 3 Contextuality of HLP can be understood as a wide range of contextual factors that enable the hybrid employment of pragmatic resources—the resources that are available to heritage learners because of their dynamic, fluid connection with two language communities. As a research area in its infancy, many questions about HLP remain. For future research, three directions seem paramount. First, the field will need to obtain a fuller profile of heritage pragmatic competence. To this end, studies comparing heritage learners with different types of bilinguals should continue to expand across interaction settings and task modalities (e.g., oral and written). Second, longitudinal or cross-sectional studies are much-needed to understand the waxing and waning of heritage pragmatic development. Meanwhile, in addition to pragmatic development, future studies should also investigate how learner agency shapes and mediates heritage learners’ pragmatic practices over time. Third, pragmatic instruction for heritage learners deserves further investigation and may offer answers that are different from what we know about L2 pragmatic instruction. When teaching pragmatics to heritage learners, it is vital to recognize HLP on its own terms, rather than evaluating it merely as heritage learners’ success or failure in performing native pragmatic norms. All of these research endeavors will hopefully lead to coherent and testable theoretical conceptualizations of HLP and allow for a greater understanding of its complex nature.

Further Reading Dubinina, I. Y., & Malamud, S. A. (2017). Emergent communicative norms in a contact language: Indirect requests in heritage Russian. Linguistics, 55(1), 67–116 This in-depth paper of request-making by Russian heritage speakers presents a corpus study and an experimental study. The authors situated their investigation in the conjunction of speech act pragmatics, language contact, bilingualism, and heritage languages. The results revealed a complex picture of heritage pragmatic competence. Most significantly, they described the emergence of pragmatic conventions in heritage Russian in relation to incomplete acquisition, internal restructuring, and dominant language transfer. 475

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Montrul, S. (2015). The acquisition of heritage languages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. This book provides a comprehensive account of heritage language acquisition, presenting findings from linguistic research conducted over the past decade in the field of heritage language research. Though the primary focus is on heritage grammars, the book discusses pragmatic aspects of the language acquisition process in relation to the unique language contact and sociolinguistic situations (Chapter 4). Chapters 7 and 8 introduce several important studies of syntax-pragmatics interface phenomena and illustrate how the findings from these studies can inform our understanding of the differences and similarities between heritage learners and L2 learners/native speakers. Xiao-Desai, Y., & Wong, K. F. (2017). Epistemic stance in Chinese heritage language writing – A developmental view. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 6(1), 73–102. This learner corpus study analyzed the frequency and diversity of three subgroups of epistemic expressions in a corpus of over 6000 blog entries written by 261 heritage learners, whose proficiency levels range from novice to advanced. By identifying patterns and variabilities in heritage learners’ epistemic stance taking in instructional setting, this study illustrated the ‘later development’ of pragmatic competence after heritage learners resume their learning during adulthood. The study also provided an inventory of epistemic markers in Chinese heritage language writing, and discusses methodological issues when applying corpus approaches to pragmatic research.

References Note. * indicates a primary study identified in the search in this paper. Ahn, S. (2013). L2 pragmatic development through conversational interaction: Heritage language background and explicitness of feedback (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. *Albirini, A., & Chakrani, B. (2017). Switching codes and registers: An analysis of heritage Arabic speakers’ sociolinguistic competence. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(3), 317–339. Argyri, E., & Sorace, A. (2007). Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(1), 79–99. *Atoofi, S. (2013). Linguistic markers of affect in heritage Persian: A linguistic anthropological study among Persian heritage language students and their teachers. Iranian Studies, 46(6), 877–901. *Azar, Z., Backus, A., & Özyürek, A. (2017). Highly proficient bilinguals maintain language-specific pragmatic constraints on pronouns: Evidence from speech and gesture. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th annual conference of the cognitive science society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 81–86). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. *Backus, A., & Yağmur, K. (2017). Differences in pragmatic skills between bilingual Turkish immigrant children in the Netherlands and monolingual peers. International Journal of Bilingualism. Early view. DOI:10.1177/1367006917703455 Barron, A. (2005). Variational pragmatics in the foreign language classroom. System, 33(3), 519–536. *Brown, L. (2013). Identity and honorifics use in Korean study abroad. In C. Kinginger (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of language learning in study abroad (pp. 269–298). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. *Brown, L., & Walter, B. (2011). Korean honorifics and politeness in second language learning. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Carreira, M., & Kagan, O. (2011). The results of the national heritage language survey: Implications for teaching, curriculum design, and professional development. Foreign Language Annals, 44(1), 40–64. *Chung, E. S. (2013). Exploring the degree of native-likeness in bilingual acquisition: Second and heritage language acquisition of Korean case-ellipsis (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, IL. *Dubinina, I. Y. (2012). How to ask for a favor: An exploration of speech act pragmatics in heritage Russian (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA. *Dubinina, I. Y., & Malamud, S. A. (2017). Emergent communicative norms in a contact language: Indirect requests in heritage Russian. Linguistics, 55(1), 67–116. Duff, P. A., & Talmy, S. (2011). Language socialization approaches to second language acquisition: Social cultural and linguistic development in additional languages. In D. Atkinson (Eds.), Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 95–116). Abington: Routledge. *Elias, M. V. (2013). “Tengo bien harto esperando en la línea”: Complaint strategies by second-generation Mexican-American bilinguals (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ. 476

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*Elias, V. (2016). Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic variation: Refusing among Spanish heritage speakers. IULC Working Papers, 15(1), 1–32 Flores, C. M. M. (2015). Understanding heritage language acquisition: Some contributions from the research on heritage speakers of European Portuguese. Lingua, 164(Part B), 251–265. *Garcia, M. J. B., & Bachelor, J. W. (2017). Pragmatic instruction may not be necessary among heritage speakers of Spanish: A study on requests. Journal of Foreign Language Education and Technology, 3(1), 163–193. *Guardado, M. (2013). The metapragmatic regimentation of heritage language use in Hispanic Canadian caregiver–child interactions. International Multilingual Research Journal, 7(3), 230–247. He, A. W. (2011). Heritage language socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 587–609). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. *Hoot, B. (2017). Focus in heritage Hungarian. Language Acquisition. Early view. DOI:10.1080/1048922 3.2017.1393078. Hulk, A., & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(3), 227–244. Kecskés, I. (2016). Bilingual pragmatic competence. In M. Reif & J. A. Robinson (Eds.), Cognitive Perspectives on Bilingualism (Vol. 17, pp. 39–64). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *Keevallik, L. (2012). Pragmatics of the Estonian heritage speakers in Sweden. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen, 35, 1–22. *Kern, J. (2017). Discourse-pragmatic features in English and Spanish among bilinguals (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The University of Arizona, Phoenix, AZ. *Kim, I. (2012). Phenomena of discourse marker use of bilingual children and implications for heritage language education. The Korean Language in America, 17, 24–54. *Kim, M., Lee, H., & Kim, Y. (2018). Learning of Korean honorifics through collaborative tasks: Comparing heritage and foreign language learners. In N. Taguchi & Y. Kim (Eds.), Task-based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics (pp. 27–54). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. *Koike, D., & Palmiere, D. T. L. (2011). First and second language pragmatics in third Language oral and written modalities. Foreign Language Annals, 44(1), 80–104. Kupisch, T., & Rothman, J. (2016). Terminology matters! Why difference is not incompleteness and how early child bilinguals are heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism. Early view. DOI:10.1177/1367006916654355 *Laleko, O. (2010). The syntax-pragmatics interface in language loss: Covert restructuring of aspect in Heritage Russian (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN. *Laleko, O., & Polinsky, M. (2013). Marking topic or marking case: A comparative investigation of heritage Japanese and heritage Korean. Heritage Language Journal, 10(2), 40–64. Leeman, J. (2015). Heritage language education and identity in the United States. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 100–119. *Li, Q., Zhang, H., & Taguchi, N. (2017). The use of mitigation devices in heritage learners of Chinese. Heritage Language Journal, 14(2), 150–170. *Lo, A. (2009). Lessons about respect and affect in a Korean heritage language school. Linguistics and Education, 20(3), 217–234. *Mai, Z. (2013). Properties of the (Shi).. de focus construction in adult L2 acquisition and heritage language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Cambridge, UK. *Manley, M. (2007) Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish. In K. Potowski & R. Cameron (Eds.), Spanish in contact: Policy, social, and linguistic inquiries (pp. 191–209). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. *Manosuthikit, A., & De Costa, P. I. (2016). Ideologizing age in an era of superdiversity: A heritage language learner practice perspective. Applied Linguistics Review, 7(1), 1–25. Meeuwis, M. (1991). A pragmatic perspective on contact-induced language change: Dynamics in interlinguistics. Pragmatics, 1(4), 481–516. Montrul, S. (2004). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(2), 125–142. *Montrul, S. (2010). Dominant language transfer in adult second language learners and heritage speakers. Second Language Research 26(3), 293–327. Montrul, S. (2015). The acquisition of heritage languages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. *Montrul, S. (2016). Heritage language development: Connecting the dots. International Journal of Bilingualism. Early view. DOI:10.1177/1367006916654368 *Muntendam, A. G. (2013). On the nature of cross-linguistic transfer: A case study of Andean Spanish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(1), 111–131. 477

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Muysken, P. (2013). Language contact outcomes as the result of bilingual optimization strategies. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(4), 709–730. Nagy, N. (2015). A sociolinguistic view of null subjects and VOT in Toronto heritage languages. Lingua, 164(Part B), 309–327. Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. B. (2011). The theory of language socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 1–21). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. *Park, E. (2008). Intergenerational transmission of cultural values in Korean American families: an analysis of the verb suffix. Heritage Language Journal, 6(2), 21–53. Pinto, D. (2012). Pragmatics and discourse: Doing things with words in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 121–138). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. *Pinto, D., & Raschio, R. (2007). A comparative study of requests in heritage speaker Spanish, L1 Spanish, and L1 English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(2), 135–155. *Pinto, D., & Raschio, R. (2008). Oye,? qué onda con mi dinero? An analysis of heritage speaker complaints. Sociolinguistic Studies, 2(2), 221–249. Polinsky, M. (2015). When L1 becomes an L3: Do heritage speakers make better L3 learners?. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(2), 163–178. *Rijswijk, R. van, Muntendam, A., & Dijkstra, T. (2017). Focus in Dutch reading: an eye-tracking experiment with heritage speakers of Turkish. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(8), 984–1000. *Rothman, J. (2009a). Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences?: L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(5), 951–973. Rothman, J. (2009b). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–163. Rothman, J., & Treffers-Daller, J. (2014). A prolegomenon to the construct of the native speaker: Heritage speaker bilinguals are natives too!. Applied linguistics, 35(1), 93–98. *Sánchez-Muñoz, A. (2007). Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language. In K. Potowski & R. Cameron (Eds.), Spanish in contact: Policy, social and linguistic inquiries (pp. 153– 172). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Schieffelin, B., & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 163–191. Serratrice, L. (2005). The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(3), 437–462. Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., & Paoli, S. (2004). Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(3), 183–205. *Showstack, R. E. (2017). Stancetaking and language ideologies in heritage language learner classroom discourse. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 16(5), 271–284. *Song, J. (2009) Bilingual creativity and self-negotiation: Korean American children’s language socialization into Korean address terms. In A. Reyes & A. Lo (Eds.), Beyond yellow English: Toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America (pp. 213–232). New York: Oxford University Press. Sorace, A. (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33. Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 195–210. Taguchi, N. (2015). Pragmatics in Chinese as a second/foreign language. Studies in Chinese Learning and Teaching, 1(1), 3–17. Taguchi, N. (2018). Contexts and pragmatics learning: Problems and opportunities of the study abroad research. Language Teaching, 51(1), 124–137. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. *Taguchi, N., Li, S., & Liu, Y. (2013). Comprehension of conversational implicature in L2 Chinese. Pragmatics & Cognition, 21(1), 139–157. *Taguchi, N., Zhang, H., & Li, Q. (2017). Pragmatic competence of heritage learners of Chinese and its relationship to social contact. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 6(1), 7–37. *Tsylina, M. (2016). Perception of pragmatic appropriateness of Russian imperatives: The case of L2 learners and heritage learners of Russian (Unpublished MA thesis). University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. Wong, K. F., & Xiao, Y. (2010). Diversity and difference: Identity issues of Chinese heritage language learners from dialect backgrounds. Heritage Language Journal, 7(2), 153–187. *Xiao-Desai, Y., & Wong, K. F. (2017). Epistemic stance in Chinese heritage language writing – A developmental view. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 6(1), 73–102.

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31 Intercultural Competence and L2 Pragmatics Jane Jackson

Introduction In recent decades, our world has become increasingly interdependent and complex, due, in part, to accelerating globalization and internationalization, migration, and rapid advances in transportation and communication technologies. With more and more intercultural interactions both at home and abroad, the need for bi(multi)lingual and intercultural competencies has never been greater. As a consequence, more and more institutions of higher education are being pressed to prepare global citizens or ‘global ready’ graduates, that is, globally minded individuals who are adequately equipped with language and intercultural communication skills to thrive in a diverse society and workforce (Cartwright, 2015; Jackson, 2014, 2018a). This chapter begins with a review of shifting understandings and conceptions of intercultural competence and then follows with descriptions of some well-known models of intercultural competence. As intercultural scholars have become more attuned to the vital role of language in intercultural interactions, some definitions and intercultural competence frameworks have incorporated linguistic dimensions, including sociopragmatic awareness. Reflecting this development, drawing on the work of specialists in cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics, this chapter discusses the notion of pragmatic competence in relation to L2/intercultural interactions and the broader construct of intercultural competence. This review encompasses contemporary critical perspectives of interculturality and pragmatic competence. Finally, the chapter concludes with a brief discussion of pedagogical implications for the teaching and assessment of the intercultural and pragmatic competence of L2 learners. Suggestions are also put forward for future research on intercultural competence and L2 pragmatics.

Shifting Conceptions of Intercultural Competence Intercultural competence is a difficult construct to pin down and over the years scholars have put forward numerous definitions. To complicate matters, in their research and practice, many scholars from different disciplines have used a wide array of terms to refer to this construct, such as transcultural competence, intercultural effectiveness, cross-cultural effectiveness, crosscultural adjustment, intercultural communication competence, cross-cultural awareness, intercultural communicative competence, global competitive intelligence, intercultural competence, and global mindset, among others (Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017; Deardorff, 2015; Fantini, 2009; 479

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Guilherme, 2015). Many definitions of intercultural competence have also been presented, reflecting the disciplinary roots, ideology, and experiences of the scholars (Griffith, Wolfeld, Armon, Rios & Liu, 2016; Sinicrope, Norris &Watanabe, 2007). In 1989 the International Journal of Intercultural Relations (IJIR) published a special issue on intercultural communication competence, featuring some of the most prominent communication specialists in this area of study. At this time, intercultural communication research generally focused on the interpersonal communication between individuals who were perceived to represent two distinct cultures or nations. Comparisons of cultural elements in different parts of the world (e.g., communication styles and strategies, values, beliefs, attitudes toward conflict, etc.) (e.g., Hall, 1976; Hofstede, 1980) were used to identify potential sources of miscommunication in intercultural interactions as well as other aspects that could pose difficulties for border crossers. Thus, much of the work of intercultural scholars during this time period focused on acculturation, that is, adjustment or adaptation issues and practical challenges facing individuals who lived and worked abroad. Although there was no single definition of intercultural competence that was agreed upon, Imahori and Lanigan (1989) noted that scholars tended to characterize it as an attitudinal, cognitive, and/or behavioural construct. Twenty-five years later, Arasaratnam and Deardorff (2015) edited another special issue of the IJIR to focus attention on developments in intercultural competence research and practice, drawing on the perspectives of scholars from various disciplines (e.g., psychology, education, applied linguistics, communication studies). While applauding advances in the field, Arasaratnam (2015) stressed the need for more interdisciplinary, collaborative research to delve more deeply into the complex construct of intercultural competence in today’s globalized world. The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (Deardorff, 2009a) has also made a valuable contribution to the field. In this volume, scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds and fields of study offered their understanding of intercultural competence (e.g., Deardorff, 2009b; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009). A review of the chapters revealed that cross-cultural psychologists, anthropologists, international educators, and social psychologists have tended to focus on the traits, skills, and behaviours of interculturally competent individuals who reside temporarily or permanently in a new environment. Consequently, many notions of intercultural competence still focus on adaptability and effectiveness in unfamiliar cultural contexts (e.g., the mindset and behaviors that facilitate the long-term adaptation of immigrants or the intercultural adjustment of short-term sojourners). Communication specialists have tended to concentrate on the identification of traits and behaviors that are associated with intercultural competence. ‘Interculturally competent persons,’ according to Chen and Starosta (2006), ‘know how to elicit a desired response in interactions and to fulfill their own communication goals by respecting and affirming the worldview and cultural identities of the interactants’ (p. 357). For these scholars, ‘intercultural communication competence’ denotes ‘the ability to acknowledge, respect, tolerate, and integrate cultural differences that qualifies one for enlightened global citizenship’ (ibid., p. 357). Jandt (2007, p. 48) maintains that successful intercultural communicators possess personality strength (self-confidence and being at-ease in a social situation), well-developed nonverbal and verbal communication skills, the ability to adapt to unfamiliar situations, and cultural awareness. For this communication specialist, intercultural communication competence requires ‘understanding dominant cultural values and understanding how our own cultural values affect the way we perceive ourselves and others’ (Jandt, 2007, p. 184). Through a survey of more than twenty intercultural communication experts, Deardorff (2004), an intercultural education specialist, aimed to arrive at a common conception of intercultural competence. The top three elements that her respondents associated with this construct were: ‘awareness, valuing, and understanding of cultural differences; experiencing other cultures; and self-awareness of one’s own culture’ (Deardroff, 2004, p. 247). After reviewing nine definitions 480

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of intercultural competence, the experts selected one proposed by Michael Byram (1997) as most pertinent to their institution’s internationalisation strategies: ‘knowledge of others, knowledge of self; skills to interpret and relate; skills to discover and/ or to interact; valuing others’ values, beliefs, and behaviors; and relativising one’s self. Linguistic competence plays a key role’ (Deardorff, 2006, p. 247). Although most of the experts in this research were not applied linguists, their selection indicates that they recognised the important role of the linguistic dimension in intercultural interactions. With L2 speakers in mind, applied linguists have also offered definitions of intercultural (communicative) competence. For Fantini (2006), it entails ‘a complex of abilities needed to perform “effectively” and “appropriately” when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself’ (p. 12). In his view, it is not enough for individuals to perceive their intercultural communication to be effective: Interlocutors must also consider the interaction to be respectful and culturally appropriate. Byram (1997) formulated a definition of ‘intercultural communicative competence’ that focuses on the ability to nurture meaningful intercultural relationships through the use of an L2. The close connection between culture, language, identity, and intercultural competence is conveyed in the notion of the ‘intercultural speaker’, which Byram and Zarate (1997) proposed to describe foreign language/culture learners who are able to establish mutually satisfying intercultural relationships through the use of their L2. Byram, Gribkova, and Starkey (2002) describe intercultural speakers as competent, flexible communicators who ‘engage with complexity and multiple identities’ and ‘avoid stereotyping which accompanies perceiving someone through a single identity’ (p. 5). The construct of the ‘intercultural speaker’ raised awareness of the attitudes, knowledge, and skills necessary for L2 speakers to interact in constructive, meaningful ways with people who have a different linguistic and cultural background; it also prompted the de-centering of the native speaker as the ideal model for language learners in second- or foreign- language teaching and drew attention to the ways in which L2 speakers communicate in intercultural settings (Dasli & Díaz, 2017a; Guilherme, 2015). This development was congruent with the rise of world Englishes (recognition of localized or indigenous varieties of English) (Kirkpatrick, 2007; Sharifian, 2012) and the growing interest in the study of English as a lingua franca (ELF), which Seidlhofer (2011) defines as ‘any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option’ (p. 7). Today, there are far more speakers of ELF around the world than first language (L1) speakers of English and also many varieties of ‘world Englishes’ (e.g., Nigerian English, Singaporean English) (Kirkpatrick, 2007). Accordingly, L2 speakers and contemporary applied linguists argue that the language no longer belongs to the ‘native speaker’ (Baker, 2016; Risager, 2016). More recently, drawing on the perspectives and experiences of scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds, Deardorff and Arasaratnam-Smith (2017) edited a volume that centres on intercultural competence in relation to higher education. The first part includes four chapters that discuss shifting conceptions of this complex construct. Summarizing recent developments, Arasaratnam-Smith (2017) observes that effectiveness (the ability to attain one’s communication aims) and appropriateness (the ability to achieve this in a way that is deemed acceptable by one’s interlocutor) remain dominant elements in definitions of intercultural competence. She concluded her review by calling on scholars to view the construct from a holistic perspective, noting that interpersonal communication entails the perception and skills of all participants involved in intercultural communication.

Models of Intercultural Competence The previous section drew attention to differing conceptions and definitions of intercultural competence. We now turn our attention to theoretical models or frameworks related to this complex 481

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construct. More than 30 models of intercultural competence have been put forward by scholars from diverse fields of study (Deardorff, 2009a; Matveev, 2017). Some emphasize the components and attributes associated with intercultural competence (sometimes referred to as ‘list models’), whereas others draw attention to the process of becoming more intercultural, that is, the stages of development (structural frameworks with interdependency and cause and effect implied) (see Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009 for a fuller review and categorization of various models of intercultural competence). In this section, we take a look at some of the frameworks that have been particularly influential in L2/international education: Byram’s (1997) model of Intercultural Communicative Competence, Fantini’s (2006) Intercultural Competencies Dimensions Model, M. J. Bennett’s (1993) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), and Deardorff’s (2004, 2006) Process Model of Intercultural Competence.

Byram’s Model of Intercultural Communicative Competence Building on Hymes (1972), Canale and Swain (1980), van Ek (1986), and the work of other scholars who theorized notions of communicative competence, Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence has had a major impact on intercultural pedagogy and second/foreign language teaching, especially in Europe. The initial construct of communicative competence described a learner’s ability to use a L2 appropriately in specific sociocultural settings, with the native speaker serving as the primary model for language learners (e.g., Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Canale & Swain, 1980). Byram (1997) observed that not enough attention was being paid to the cultural dimension in L2 teaching so he extended the notion of communicative competence to include more explicit reference to cultural elements. Instead of positioning the native speaker as the model for L2 learners, however, Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence encourages foreign language educators to view their students as intercultural speakers who co-construct meaning through the use of language in intercultural interactions, drawing on various linguistic and cultural resources, as well as their self-identities. In the first part of his model, Byram (1997) singled out the following linguistic elements as characteristic of an interculturally competent L2 speaker or ‘intercultural speaker’: linguistic competence (the ability to use the ‘rules’ of a language to produce and understand oral and written discourse), sociolinguistic competence (the ability to understand the meanings intended by the interlocutor), and discourse competence (the ability to use or negotiate strategies to produce or interpret oral or written language for specific purposes). The second part of his framework is associated with the French word savoir, which can refer to both knowledge or understanding how to do something. In an updated version of his model, Byram (2009) associates the following five savoirs or components with the cultural dimension of the intercultural speaker’s competence: knowledge (savoirs), intercultural attitudes (savoir être), interpreting/relating skills (savoir comprendre), discovery/interaction skills (savoir apprendre/ faire), and critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager). The savoirs informed the development of the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching Assessment (CEFR) (2001), which serves as a guide for the teaching and assessment of intercultural competence in European nations (Guilherme, 2015). Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence is not without critics. Some language educators note that it does not provide concrete guidelines for intercultural teaching and assessment, which makes it challenging for L2 educators to implement. A number of interculturalists (e.g., Dasli & Díaz, 2017a; Dervin, 2016, 2017; Díaz, 2013; Houghton, 2012; Risager, 2007) have cited other concerns about the use of Byram’s model to teach and measure the intercultural learning of L2 learners. Díaz (2013, p. 8), for example, maintains that the connection between 482

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language and culture lacks clarity and that ‘internal conceptual discrepancies’ raise doubts about applications of the model in intercultural teaching and assessment: although Byram and Zarate developed their model specifically in the context of foreign language teaching, its influential notion of ‘intercultural competence’ does not specifically deal with the interrelationship of these saviors and the linguistically oriented sub-components of the CC [communicative competence] model they aimed to complement. (Díaz, 2013, p. 8) As Byram’s model has been conceived in relation to individualistic and democratic cultures, Houghton (2012) questions its use in intercultural language education programs in non-Western countries whereby L2 learners are positioned as ‘critical social agents who are encouraged to act toward particular social and political ends’ (p. 183). More broadly, concerns have been expressed about the appropriateness of Western models of intercultural competence in other regions of the world, and many scholars now call for more indigenous perspectives and models of intercultural competence that are devised by scholars from diverse cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary backgrounds (Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017; Deardorff 2009a; Dervin & Gross, 2016; Guilherme, 2015).

Fantini’s Intercultural Competencies Dimensions Model Based on a review of definitions of intercultural competence and his own empirical research, Fantini (2006) put forward a model that identifies multiple dimensions and attributes associated with intercultural competence. Underpinning his framework is his view of cultural competence and intercultural competence, and the gulf between these constructs. The former refers to ‘the ability that enables us to be members within our own society’; it involves the ‘gradual process of enculturation beginning at birth’ (Fantini, 2012, p. 270). Put another way, Fantini (2012) refers to cultural competence as the mastery of one’s ‘native language-culture (linguacultural) system’ (p. 270). Interactions with individuals who have been socialized in a different linguistic and cultural environment open up the potential to enter ‘a new language-culture’ (Fantini, 2012, p. 271). The development of what Fantini (2012) terms a ‘second linguaculture’ can be challenging but, potentially, transformative as individuals encounter unfamiliar ways of being (e.g., different worldviews and communication styles) and, over time, learn to become interculturally competent. For Fantini (2006), intercultural competence entails ‘a complex of abilities needed to perform “effectively” and “appropriately” when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself’ (p. 12). The notion of ‘effectiveness’ relates to an individual’s perception of his or her own intercultural competence (an ‘etic’ or outsider’s view), while ‘appropriateness’ refers to how this performance is viewed by the hosts (an ‘emic’ or insider’s view). Fantini’s (2006) holistic framework encompasses four dimensions (attitudes, awareness, knowledge, skills), eight attributes or personal characteristics (curiosity, openness, empathy, patience, tolerance for ambiguity, humor, suspended judgment, flexibility), three interrelated areas (cooperation for mutual benefit, communication without disorientation, formation, maintenance of relationships), as well as a developmental process and target language proficiency. Fantini (2006, 2012) maintains that, through the process of deep reflection and introspection, the dimensions of knowledge, (positive) attitudes, and skills can bring about enhanced intercultural awareness, which, in turn, can foster the development of the other dimensions and result in a higher degree of intercultural competence. While many models of intercultural competence ignore target language proficiency, it is central in Fantini’s (2006) model, although ‘not equal to’ intercultural competence. Fantini (2009) asserts that ‘[p]roficiency in a second language at any level enhances all other aspects 483

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of intercultural competence in quantitative and qualitative ways’ (p. 459). By contrast, ‘the lack of second language proficiency, even minimally, constrains us to think about the world and act within it entirely in our native system, a decidedly ethnocentric approach’ (p. 459). Thus, for this applied linguist, the notions of linguistic and intercultural competence are interrelated. Further, Fantini (2009, 2012) maintains that intercultural competence development entails a longitudinal, ongoing process, noting that the attainment of competence depends on the amount of intercultural contact and an individual’s motivation (instrumental of integrative) to master the host language and learn about the host culture (Fantini, 2009, p. 459). Similar to Byram (1997), Fantini (2009) argues that L2 development is a core element in intercultural competence. Accordingly, he calls on second or foreign language educators to consider all components of intercultural competence when designing L2 programmes and a comprehensive assessment process. As Deardorff and Arasaratnam-Smith’s volume (2017) attests, more than a decade after it was formulated, Fantini’s framework is still guiding intercultural interventions and assessment in higher education contexts in many parts of the world.

Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) While some intercultural scholars have focused their attention on the identification of attributes and behaviors associated with interculturally competent individuals, other theorists have devised conceptual models that seek to illustrate the process of becoming interculturally competent. One of the most influential frameworks of this nature is the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), a six-stage model that was conceived by Milton Bennett in the late 1970s (Bennett, 1993, 2012). With regard to this linear model, Bennett and Bennett (2004) distinguish between intercultural competence and intercultural sensitivity. The former refers to ‘the ability to communicate effectively in cross-cultural situations and to relate appropriately in a variety of cultural contexts’ (p. 149), whereas the latter refers to the developmental process that influences an individual’s psychological ability to respond to cultural differences. Bennett’s (1993) theoretical framework seeks to account for the observed and reported experiences of individuals in intercultural encounters. As Bennett and Bennett contend (2004, p. 152, original emphasis), ‘the underlying assumption of the model is that as one’s experiences of cultural difference becomes more sophisticated, one’s competence in intercultural relations increases.’ The DMIS centers on the constructs of ethnocentricism and ethnorelativism; in the former, ‘the worldview of one’s own culture is central to all reality’ (Bennett, 1993, p. 30), whereas the latter refers to ‘being comfortable with many standards and customs and to having an ability to adapt behavior and judgments to a variety of interpersonal settings’ (ibid., p. 26). In the DMIS, intercultural sensitivity is viewed as a progressive, scalar phenomenon, which is associated with personal growth and the development of an intercultural orientation, that is, ‘a mindset capable of understanding from within and from without both one’s own culture and other cultures’ (Bennett, Bennett & Allen, 2003, p. 252). For Bennett (1993, 2012), the development of intercultural sensitivity occurs as individuals become more aware of and accepting of cultural differences. The DMIS theorizes that individuals move from ethnocentric stages where their culture is experienced as ‘central to reality’ (i.e., denial, defense, and minimization stage) through ethnorelative stages of greater recognition and acceptance of difference (i.e., acceptance, adaptation, and integration stage) (Paige & Bennett, 2015). People do not necessarily continuously advance to the next phase in sequence. Unpleasant intercultural experiences, for example, may pull them back to a lower level of sensitivity in the continuum of development. The first stage, denial of difference, measures a worldview that ignores or simplifies cultural difference. In this stage, an individual’s own culture is perceived as the only real one. Polarization: defense/reversal measures a judgmental orientation that regards cultural 484

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differences in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ whereby an individual’s own culture (or an adopted one) is experienced as the best or right way of doing things. In defense of difference, ‘us’ is uncritically deemed superior over ‘them’ (people who have a different cultural background). In reversal, the opposite bias dominates (i.e., ‘them’ being superior to ‘us’). Minimization measures a worldview that stresses universal values and cultural commonality. In this transitional phase, individuals do not pay sufficient attention to cultural differences, especially complex elements, and naively assume that other cultures are similar to their own. Acceptance of difference measures a worldview that can understand and appreciate complex cultural differences, whereas adaptation to difference identifies the capacity to shift one’s cultural perspective and modify one’s behavior so that it becomes appropriate in a particular cultural context or situation. Integration, the sixth and final stage in the DMIS, encompasses two forms: contextual evaluation and constructive marginality. Paige and Bennett (2015) explain that the former entails ‘the process of evaluating multiple cultural perspectives in making choices’ about how to best proceed in intercultural situations, whereas the latter refers to the ability to move from one cultural environment to another and easily adjust (p. 524). Constructive marginals or ‘cultural bridge builders’ are depicted as individuals who are able to ‘draw strength from their multiple cultures and often apply their expanded cultural knowledge and skills to help others work more effectively in culturally diverse environments’ (Paige & Bennett, 2015, p. 524). The DMIS is based on the premise that ethnorelative worldviews (acceptance, adaptation, integration) have more potential to generate the attitudes, knowledge, and behavior necessary for successful intercultural communication and cross-cultural adjustment. The DMIS is not without critics. Dervin (2006) maintains that it presents a ‘differentialist’ view of culture as static and unitary, ignoring diversity among learners and cultures. In addition, Liddicoat (2011) and Liddicoat, Papademetre, Scarino, and Kohler (2003) criticize the model for not making the role of language explicit in the process of gaining intercultural competence. They also doubt the usefulness of the model to measure the intercultural development of short-term sojourners. Comparing the frameworks developed by Byram (1997, 2012) and Bennett (1993), GarrettRucks (2012) also suggests that the DMIS is ‘more suitable for an immersion context, or to measure long-term changes in an immersion environment’ (p. 26), and thus it may not be suitable for other settings.

Deardorff’s Process Model of Intercultural Competence Drawing on the perspectives of 23 prominent interculturalists, Deardorff (2004, 2006) developed the Process Model of Intercultural Competence, which has been especially influential in international education contexts. The model draws attention to movement from ‘the individual level of attitudes/personal attributes to the interactive cultural level in regard to the outcomes’ (Deardorff, 2006, p. 194). Her framework highlights the internal shift in frame of reference that is essential for effective intercultural communicators. Like Byram’s (1997, 2006) models, Deardorff’s (2004, 2006) conceptual framework underscores the role that attitude plays in intercultural development. Deardorff (2004) explains that the intercultural experts she surveyed emphasized that ‘the attitudes of openness, respect (valuing all cultures), curiosity and discovery (tolerating ambiguity)’ are critical for individuals to become interculturally competent (p. 193). In accord with Byram’s (1997) savoirs, Deardorff’s (2008) model indicates that intercultural competence necessitates knowledge and understanding of ‘one’s own cultural norms and sensitivity to those of other cultures’ (p. 37). Further, in accord with Fantini (2006), she stresses that the development of intercultural competence entails life-long learning. 485

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Limitations of Intercultural Competence Models As the above review illustrates, some theories or models focus on the process of intercultural competence development, whereas others identify the attributes and actions associated with intercultural competence. While many frameworks include similar elements or attributes (e.g., attitudes, motivation, knowledge, skills), they differ with regard to their conceptual subcomponents. Communication specialists Spitzberg and Changnon (2009) criticize models that ignore the physiological and emotional dimensions of intercultural communication. Noting that ‘the vast majority of thought and language processing occurs at a subconscious level’ (p. 35), they urge scholars to incorporate the affective or emotional dimension when developing or refining existing models of intercultural competence. A number of concerns about intercultural competence frameworks have been raised by scholars from other fields of study. Applied linguists, for example, criticize models that largely overlook the language component or simplistically portray the developmental sequence of intercultural competence as parallel to the acquisition of linguistic competence in an L2 (Fantini, 2012; Jackson, 2014; Liddicoat, 2011). Accordingly, they call on intercultural theorists to pay much more attention to the linguistic dimension of intercultural communication, especially pragmatic elements in L2 or lingua franca interactions. Contemporary critical interculturalists question the ways in which intercultural competence has been conceived and assessed (e.g., Dervin, 2016; Dervin & Gross, 2016; Dasli & Díaz, 2017b). Dervin and Gross (2016), for example, argue that models of intercultural competence should be regarded as products of a particular ideology or worldview. As all individuals have multiple attributes and identities that may intersect when they engage in intercultural interactions, they call on theorists to acknowledge the principle of ‘diverse diversities’ in their conceptual frameworks and to shy away from essentialist notions of culture, which imply that individuals and their communicative behaviour and values are defined by national social structures (Holliday, 2011). Accordingly, critical interculturalists maintain that it is vital for scholars to recognize the ideology underpinning the ways in which they present culture and the development of intercultural competence. Critical intercultural scholars also stress the need for interdisciplinary approaches in intercultural pedagogy and assessment, and advocate the incorporation of ideas from the ‘periphery’ (outside Europe and America) in conceptions of intercultural competence and models of interculturality (Dasli & Díaz, 2017a, 2017b; Holliday, 2011; Jackson, 2018a).

L2 Pragmatics and Pragmatic Competence L2 pragmatics, which is sometimes referred to as interlanguage pragmatics, has become a primary area of investigation in SLA research, with mounting interest in L2 discourse and the role of language in intercultural relationship-building in various contexts (e.g., social, academic, professional) (see Chapter 1 in this volume). The most prominent areas of pragmatics research in L2 studies are speech acts (e.g., apologies, greetings, requests, refusals) and politeness behaviour (Archer, 2017; Bardovi-Harlig, 2013; Barron, 2003). There are several sub-fields of pragmatics that are closely connected to L2 pragmatics and interculturality, namely cross-cultural (transcultural) pragmatics and intercultural pragmatics. The former centers on a comparison of language use in different cultures (e.g., speech acts, behaviour patterns and/or patterns of language use in two or more contexts), whereas the latter is concerned with language use in intercultural interactions, and, more specifically, the nature of the communicative process when people who speak different first languages interact using a common language (Cogo & House, 2017; Wierzbicka 2003). The work of both cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics specialists has contributed to contemporary understandings of what it means to be pragmatically competent in an L2. Similar to 486

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intercultural competence, the notion of pragmatic competence is contested, and a number of scholars have put forward divergent ideas about what it entails. In their definitions, some scholars differentiate between the concepts of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics (Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983). The former is concerned with the linguistic resources of a language, which can be employed to serve a specific communicative function (e.g. the syntactic patterns which can be used to perform a particular speech act in a given language), whereas the latter examines the social circumstances under which a particular communicative act can be performed in a particular context or situation (e.g., the prevailing social rules of politeness). Thus, pragmalinguistics focuses on linguistic-specific elements, while sociopragmatics is concerned with culture-specific norms and conventions related to a communicative act. Attending to both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic dimensions, Barron (2003) defines pragmatic competence as ‘knowledge of the linguistic resources available in a given language for realising particular illocutions, knowledge of the sequential aspects of speech acts and finally, knowledge of the appropriate contextual use of the particular languages’ linguistic resources’ (p. 10). Her definition incorporates multiple elements, including knowledge of linguistic elements and awareness of the prevailing societal norms or conventions in a particular context. Familiarity with social norms is part of an individual’s sociocultural knowledge and includes ‘the conventions and principles that underlie language use in a given sociocultural group’ (Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009, p. 95). This aspect is also apparent in Shively’s (2010) conception of pragmatic competence as ‘the knowledge and skills needed to use and interpret the meanings, assumptions, and actions expressed by language in its sociocultural context’ (p. 106). The dimensions of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics described above have influenced our understanding of pragmatic competence in intercultural communication. In intercultural interactions, individuals may find that linguistic modes of expression (e.g., speech acts) and social expectations differ from what they are used to in their L1 and home environment. For example, they may encounter unfamiliar and unexpected ways to greet people, apologize, or refuse an invitation. Thus, Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2009) and Barron (2003) maintain that pragmatic competence has two essential components: the knowledge of pragmalinguistic resources (pragmalingusitic competence) and the sociopragmatic application of those resources in L2 contexts (sociopragmatic competence). These two components together are necessary for people to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural encounters and develop mutually satisfying intercultural relationships. More recently, Taguchi and Roever (2017) proposed a more dynamic perspective of pragmatic competence in intercultural communication. For these scholars, pragmatically competent speakers are individuals who can ‘adapt and calibrate their linguistic resources for the benefit of their interlocutors, communicative needs, and goals of interaction, and use their resources to mediate across cultural and linguistic boundaries’ (Taguchi & Roever 2017, p. 275). This perspective emphasizes the agency of the intercultural communicator and the role of mediation across linguacultural boundaries in intercultural interactions

The Relationship Between Intercultural Competence and Pragmatic Competence L2 pragmatic competence and intercultural competence are closely related, although scholars from different fields who do not read outside their primary discipline may not be fully aware of this or perhaps are unfamiliar with related terms used in both areas of study. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, within the context of L2 teaching and learning, notions of communicative competence (e.g., Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Canale & Swain, 1980, van Ek, 1986) informed several models and frameworks of intercultural competence. In particular, Byram’s (1997) model, which debunks the native speaker as the ideal model for foreign language learners, incorporates 487

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pragmatic dimensions in the conception of the ‘intercultural speaker’, emphasizing the role of linguistic, sociocultural, and discourse competences in mediating communicative demands in intercultural settings. More recently, the connection between intercultural competence and pragmatic competence has been articulated by Taguchi and Rover (2017), who argue that the former is a constituent of intercultural competence. Through the development of pragmatic competence (e.g., sociopragmatic awareness, pragmalinguistic refinement), L2 learners may enhance their intercultural competence, a broader construct that centers on their ability to engage in a constructive dialogue with individuals who have experienced enculturation in a different cultural environment. Thus, intercultural competence necessitates cultural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., sociopragmatic awareness), skills (e.g., verbal and nonverbal communication skills), and attitudes (e.g., an open, intercultural mindset) (Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017; Fantini, 2012). In intercultural interactions, a L2 learner may be considered pragmatically competent if he or she can effectively accommodate pragmatic norms of the target or host language and ‘mediate across cultural and linguistic boundaries’ (Taguchi & Roever, 2017, p. 275). Intercultural competence is a broader concept, referring to individuals who are able to communicate verbally and non-verbally with someone who has a different cultural background in a manner that is deemed satisfactory and respectful by both parties. As noted by a number of interculturalists, the onus is on both interlocutors to co-create meaning and mutual understanding through intercultural communication, mediation, and dialogue (Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017; Jackson, 2014, 2018a). Although the connection between intercultural competence and pragmatic competence has been articulated by a number of scholars, very few studies have closely examined the relationship between these two constructs, and the results of their research have been variable. Shively and Cohen (2008), for example, investigated the intercultural sensitivity and culturally appropriate use of speech acts among L2 Spanish learners while abroad, and did not find a correlation between them. They speculated that this lack of congruence may have partially been due to the short duration of the sojourn (a single semester). In a more recent study, Taguchi (2015) investigated the relationship between cross-cultural adaptability and the speech acts of L2 Japanese learners in Japan, and found a significant relationship between the initial-level cultural adaptability and use of appropriate speech act expressions, but no relationship with the appropriate use of speech style. Similar results were found in Taguchi, Xiao, & Li’s (2016) investigation of L2 Chinese learners’ development of speech acts during a semester abroad in Beijing. They discovered that cross-cultural adaptability indirectly contributed to gains in speech act production through the amount of social contact. In other words, cross-cultural adaptability facilitated learners’ access to social contact, which in turn led to pragmatic development. Although empirical research is largely limited, pedagogical progress in connecting pragmatics and intercultural teaching has been made. A number of study-abroad scholars have developed programs that incorporate pragmatic and intercultural communication components to better prepare students for an unfamiliar linguistic and cultural environment and foster the enhancement of both language skills and intercultural competence (see Chapter 23 in this volume). Drawing on insights from SLA, pragmatic instruction, and international education, Shively (2010), for example, prompted American students of Spanish to become ‘language and culture data gatherers’ to help them make connections between ‘pragmatic behaviour and larger cultural patterns, both through guided interaction with an expert on language and culture and through self-directed learning and reflection’ (p. 115). In this intervention, she also encouraged informal, social interaction with host nationals during the sojourn and reflection on these encounters. She concluded that the incorporation of the study of pragmatics helped students develop ‘practical skills for successful intercultural communication as well as abstract conceptual skills for understanding and articulating cultural difference’ (p. 123). 488

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Jackson (2008, 2010) has also woven pragmatics awareness activities into the preparation and support of English majors from Hong Kong who took part in a short-term sojourn in the U.K. Similar to Shively’s (2010) participants, her students developed ethnographic skills in their home environment which helped them to pay attention to pragmatic norms and patterns of linguistic and cultural behavior in various contexts and situations in the host environment. Regular debriefings and guided critical reflection were crucial elements in the program. A systematic review of the qualitative data generated in studies of this intervention (e.g., diaries, interview transcripts, responses to open-ended questionnaires, ethnographic reports) revealed that most students developed a higher level of sociopragmatic awareness and intercultural competence. More recently, Jackson (2018b) developed a fully online intercultural transitions course for students from a Hong Kong university who joined a semester or year-long international exchange program. Jackson (2019) found that those who developed more intercultural competence according to the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) (a cross-culturally validated psychometric instrument linked to DMIS) (Bennett, 1993; Hammer, 2012) demonstrated a higher level of sociopragmatic awareness and were better able to diversify their social networks, as evidenced by the rich qualitative data (e.g., online posts, interview transcripts, reflective essays). In their posts, they cited specific examples of linguistic norms of politeness that they had noticed in the host environment and provided detailed descriptions of intercultural encounters that were enhanced or hindered when local norms of politeness were either embraced or ignored. Similar to Shively (2010), the findings underscored the benefits of research-driven, theory-based pedagogical interventions that aim to foster pragmatic and competencies.

Conclusion and Future Directions This chapter has presented a number of definitions and models of intercultural competence and discussed evolving understandings of the elements associated with pragmatic competence, citing relevant research and practice. While this review has been very selective due to space limitations, it has highlighted the multifarious nature of intercultural competence and the need for models or frameworks of intercultural competence to recognize the vital role of language (e.g., pragmatic elements) in the development and maintenance of mutually respectful intercultural/ L2 interactions. This review points to the pressing need for contemporary educators to be attentive to both cultural and linguistic elements, especially the pragmatics dimension, when planning and implementing investigations of L2/intercultural interactions. It is essential to identify and make sense of the myriad of internal and external (or environmental) factors that can influence pragmatic development and the development of intercultural competence in L2 speakers. Such new understandings can then enhance the interrelated fields of pragmatics and intercultural communication. In addition to informing current and new theoretical models of intercultural competence and pragmatic competence, on a practical level, the interplay of intercultural and pragmatic competence has the potential to inform the design and delivery of pedagogical interventions (e.g., L2 instruction, study abroad), which can benefit both educators and students. This review also points to the need for more holistic, systematic studies (e.g., in-depth ethnographic investigations) to better understand the complex relationship between pragmatic competence and intercultural competence. In particular, multiple fields of study would benefit from collaborative, interdisciplinary research that centers on the relationship between pragmalinguistic competence, sociopragmatic competence, and the broader construct of intercultural competence in relation to L2 communication in various intercultural situations and contexts (e.g., study abroad, L2 classrooms, the workplace, social networks, online communication). For example, scholars in L2 pragmatics could collaborate with scholars in intercultural communication to conduct richly detailed qualitative or mixed-methods studies that explore intercultural relationship-building in 489

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situations where L2 is used as a lingua franca. In a study-abroad context, researchers could track and assess various dimensions of pragmatic competence (e.g., pragmalinguistic knowledge and sociopragmatic awareness) and intercultural competence (e.g., flexibility, openness, skills of interpreting and relating) among L2 learners and investigate how these dimensions facilitate learners’ social networking and cultural adjustment in the host community. Quality work of this nature would benefit a large number of stakeholders (e.g., L2 learners, study abroad participants, L2/intercultural educators) and enrich multiple areas of study (e.g., SLA, pragmatics acquisition, intercultural competence development, international education, communication studies). As this volume illustrates, there are many Asian scholars who are carrying out research on L2 pragmatics; however, the field of intercultural communication is still dominated by European and North American voices. Thus, most conceptions, theories, and research on intercultural competence have embraced and promulgated Western perspectives. While more indigenous scholars have entered the arena in recent years, especially in Asia, the field would benefit from much more input from scholars in Latin America and Africa, in particular (Arasaratnam-Smith 2017; Deardorff, 2009a; Guilherme, 2015; Jackson, 2018a). To enrich the multidisciplinary field of intercultural communication, the contribution of scholars from outside Europe and North America is critical. More openness and inclusivity could lead to the enhancement of ethical, methodological, and theoretical dimensions of this important field of study. It should also facilitate the emergence of perspectives on intercultural competence and intercultural competence development in areas of the world that are under-represented in the literature. To meet the complex challenges of today’s globalized, interconnected world, more interdisciplinary studies are needed that bring together pragmatics specialists with scholars from other specializations (e.g., intercultural psychology, international education, identity studies, ELF, communication studies, intercultural education, cultural studies) who are based in different regions of the world. Some international conferences (e.g., meetings hosted by the Intercultural Academy for Intercultural Research and the International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies) include colloquia with speakers from diverse disciplines who are conducting individual projects on a particular issue or theme. However, the reality is that the research projects that have investigated interculturality and pragmatic competence are truly interdisciplinary. Most researchers conduct work on their own or with scholars who share the same disciplinary background. To complicate matters, scholars may not read outside their area of specialization. This is regrettable as collaborative, interdisciplinary endeavors have the potential to deepen and expand our understanding of intercultural and pragmatic competencies in relation to L2 speakers. While challenging to blur disciplinary lines, it could help to peel back the layers in intercultural interactions and offer more insight into what it means to be a pragmatically competent intercultural communicator in today’s globalized world. In addition to raising awareness of diverse perspectives and research methodologies, the new understandings that emerge could inspire innovation in practice. As this and other chapters in this volume illustrate, theory-based, research-inspired interventions can enhance L2/intercultural teaching and assessment (e.g., L2 pragmatic instruction and assessment in study abroad, instructional material development in L2 pragmatics, computer-mediated pragmatics modules for intercultural transition courses). These practical outcomes can help to foster the development of ‘global-ready graduates’ (Cartwright, 2015; Jackson, 2014, 2018a; Jackson & Oguro, 2018).

Further Reading Bennett, J. (Ed.) (2015). The SAGE encyclopedia of intercultural competence. Volumes 1 & 2. Los Angeles/ London: Sage. This comprehensive edited collection, which spans two volumes, draws together multiple concepts and theories related to interaction between individuals who have different cultural identities. A broad range 490

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of disciplines and perspectives on intercultural competence are represented in more than 300 entries, including education, business, healthcare, and the social sciences (e.g., cross-cultural psychology, speech communication, linguistics, sociology). Of particular relevance to this chapter, the encyclopedia includes concise entries on pragmatics (e.g. as a branch of semiotics, definitions of, and politeness, speech act theory), language and intercultural communication, conceptions of intercultural communication and intercultural competence, and descriptions of various models of intercultural competence development. Jackson, J. (Ed.) (2012). The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication. Abingdon, U.K./New York: Routledge. This handbook constitutes a comprehensive introduction to the multidisciplinary field of intercultural communication, with a particular emphasis on the language dimension. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars from diverse fields of study, the volume has 35 chapters and is structured in five sections: ‘Foundations of language and intercultural communication’ (historical perspectives); ‘Core themes and issues’ (verbal and nonverbal communication, language, identity and intercultural communication, understanding intercultural transitions, intercultural communicative competence); ‘Theory into practice: towards intercultural (communicative) competence and citizenship’; ‘Language and intercultural communication in context’; and ‘New debates and future directions.’ The notion of intercultural competence is explored from diverse perspectives and several chapters discuss intercultural pragmatics and speech acts in relation to interculturality. Taguchi, N. & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. This volume presents a comprehensive review of recent developments in L2 pragmatics research, combining acquisitional and sociolinguistic perspectives. Within ten chapters, the authors cover a wide range of issues and topics, including theories of pragmatics learning and the use of various research methods to investigate L2 pragmatics in various contexts (e.g., study abroad, heritage language learning, L2 language teaching and assessment). Taguchi and Roever deftly link theoretical constructs with contemporary research findings that center on the development of pragmatic competence, offering valuable insight into the teaching and assessment of L2 pragmatics. Discussing pragmatics in the context of multilingual societies, they offer a broad perspective on this growing area of study. The chapter on L2 pragmatics and globalization is particularly relevant as it discusses pragmatics in relation to English as a lingua franca and intercultural competence development.

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London: Routledge. Dervin, F, (2006). Quality in intercultural education: the development of Proteophillic competence. In EU-Bildung 2010, Regionalveranstaltung für Wien, Niederösterreich und Burgenland (pp. 75–87). BM: BKW, Stadtschulrat für Wien. Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox. London: Palgrave. Dervin, F. (2017). Critical turns in language and intercultural communication pedagogy: The simplecomplex continuum (simplexity) as a new perspective. In M. Dasli & A. Díaz (Eds.), The critical turn in language and intercultural communication pedagogy: Theory, research and practice (pp. 58–71). London: Routledge. Dervin, F., & Gross, Z. (2016). Intercultural competence in education: Alternative approaches for different times. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Díaz, A. R. (2013). Developing critical languaculture pedagogies in higher education: Theory and practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Fantini, A. E. (2006). 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Fantini, A. E. (2009). Assessing intercultural competence: Issues and tools. In D. K. Deardorff (Ed.), The Sage handbook of intercultural competence. (pp. 456–476). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fantini, A. E. (2012). Language: an essential component of intercultural communicative competence. In J. Jackson (Ed.), Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 263–278). Abingdon, U.K./New York: Routledge. Garrett-Rucks, P. (2012). Byram versus Bennett: Discrepancies in the assessment of learners’ intercultural development. In B. Dupuy & L. Waugh (Eds.), Aiming for the third place: Proceedings of the second international conference on the development and assessment of intercultural competence (pp. 11–33). Retrieved on November 7, 2017, from http:​//cer​cll.a​rizon​a.edu​/_med​ia/de​velop​ment/​confe​rence​s/201​ 2_ICC​/garr​ett_r​ucks_​byram​_vers​us_be​nnett​_ic20​12.pd​f Griffith, R. L., Wolfeld, L., Armon, B. K., Rios, J., & Liu, O. L. (2016). Assessing intercultural competence in higher education: Existing research and future directions. Educational Testing Service (ETS) Research Report No. RR-16-25. doi:10.1002/ets2.12112 Guilherme, M. (2015). Intercultural communication in Europe. In J. M. Bennett (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of intercultural competence (Vol. 2, pp. 463–467). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Hall, E.T. (1976). Beyond culture. New York: Doubleday. Hammer, M.R. (2012). The intercultural development inventory: A new frontier in. assessment and development of intercultural competence. In M. Vande Berg, R. M. Paige, & K. H. Lou (Eds.), Student learning abroad: What our students are learning, what they’re not and what we can do about it (pp. 115–136). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Hofstede, G.H. (1980) Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural communication and ideology, London: Sage. Houghton, S. A. (2012). Intercultural dialogue in practice: Managing value judgment through foreign language education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Hymes, D. H. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. Pride and J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269–93). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Imarohi, T. T., & Lanigan, M. L. (1989). Relational model of intercultural communication competence, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 13, 269–286. Jackson, J. (2008) Language, identity, and study abroad. London: Equinox. Jackson, J. (2010) Intercultural journeys: From study to residence abroad. Hampshire. U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan. Jackson, J. (2014). Introducing language and intercultural communication. Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge. Jackson, J. (2018a). Interculturality in international education. London/New York: Routledge. Jackson, J. (2018b). Optimizing intercultural learning and engagement abroad through online mentoring. In J. Jackson & S. Oguro (Eds.) Intercultural interventions in study abroad (pp. 119-136). London/New York: Routledge. Jackson, J. (2019). Online intercultural education and study abroad: Theory into practice. London/New York: Routledge. Jackson, J., & Oguro, S. (2018). Introduction: Enhancing and extending study abroad learning through intercultural interventions. In J. Jackson & S. Oguro (Eds.), Intercultural interventions in study abroad (pp. 1-17). London/New York: Routledge. Jandt, F. (2007). An introduction to intercultural communication: Identities in a global community (5th ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Liddicoat, A. J. (2011). Language teaching and learning from an intercultural perspective. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. 2, pp. 837–855). London/New York: Routledge. Liddicoat, A. J., Papademetre, L., Scarino, A., & Kohler, M. (2003). Report on intercultural language learning. Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training. Matveev, A. (2017). Intercultural competence in organizations: A guide for leaders, educators and team players. New York: Springer. Paige, R. M., & Bennett, J. M. (2015). Intercultural sensitivity. In J. M. Bennett (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of intercultural competence (Vol. 2, pp. 519–525). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Risager, K. (2007). Language and culture pedagogy: From a national to a transnational paradigm. Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters. Risager, K. (2016). Lingua franca in a world of migrations. In P. Holmes & F. Dervin (Eds.), The cultural and intercultural dimensions of English as a lingua franca (pp. 33–49). Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters. 493

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Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca, Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Sharifian, F. (2012). World Englishes, intercultural communication and requisite competences. In J. Jackson (Ed.), Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 310–322). Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge. Shively, R. L. (2010). From the virtual world to the real world: A model of pragmatics instruction for study abroad. Foreign Language Annals, 43, 105–137. Shively, R. L., & Cohen, A. D. (2008). Development of Spanish requests and apologies during study abroad. Íkala, 13, 57–118. Sinicrope, C., Norris, J., & Watanabe, Y. (2007). Understanding and assessing intercultural competence: A summary of theory, research, and practice (Technical report for the Foreign Language Program Evaluation Project). Second Language Studies, 26, 1-58. Retrieved on October 31, 2017, from https​:// sc​holar​space​.mano​a.haw​aii.e​du/bi​tstre​am/10​125/4​0689/​1/Sin​icrop​e%20e​t%20a​l.%20​(2007​)_26(​1).pd​f Spencer-Oatey, H., & Franklin, P. (2009). Intercultural interaction: A multidisciplinary approach to intercultural communication. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave MacMillan. Spitzberg, B. H., & Changnon, G. (2009). Conceptualizing multicultural competence. In D. K. Deardorff (Ed.), Handbook of intercultural competence (pp. 2–52). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Taguchi N. (2015). Cross-cultural adaptability and development of speech act production in study abroad. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 25, 343–365. Taguchi, N., & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Taguchi, N., Xiao, F., & Li, S. (2016). Development of pragmatic knowledge in L2 Chinese: Effects of intercultural competence and social contact on speech act production in a study abroad context. Modern Language Journal, 100, 775–796. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91–112. Van Ek, J.A. (1986). Objectives for foreign language learning, vol. 1: Scope. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe. Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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32 Multilingual Pragmatics Implicature Comprehension in Adult L2 Learners and Multilingual Children1 Kyriakos Antoniou

Introduction In the past three decades, research on the cognitive functioning of multilinguals has seen a steep increase, reflecting an increasing awareness that empirical findings on monolinguals do not apply to a substantial number of people in the world who regularly use more than one language (or dialect) in everyday life (Barac, Bialystok, Castro, & Sanchez, 2014; Bialystok, Craik, Green & Gollan, 2009; Grosjean & Li, 2013; Hammer et al., 2014; Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015). Within this growing body of work, researchers have also investigated the effects of multilingualism on pragmatic competence, broadly defined as the ability to efficiently produce and understand meaning in context (Taguchi, 2009). In this chapter, I review the research on multilingual adults’ and children’s comprehension of non-literal (pragmatically implicated) meanings, an aspect of pragmatic competence that has been relatively well studied in the field of SLA and for which there is now a fair amount of research with multilingual children. The structure of this chapter is as follows. I start by briefly outlining some of Grice’s (1989) core ideas about meaning, which form the foundation for most recent theoretical and experimental approaches to pragmatics. I continue by examining the literature on the verbal and non-verbal cognitive effects of multilingualism. Psycholinguistic studies have often relied on this research to make predictions or explain empirical findings regarding the relation between multilingualism and pragmatic understanding. Then, I review the evidence from studies that examined implicature understanding skills in adult L2 learners (as compared to native speakers2) and multilingual children (as compared to monolinguals). Finally, I consider the implications of this research for the development and processing of pragmatic meanings in multilinguals and propose directions for future research. Throughout this chapter, I adopt a definition of multilingualism as including all speakers who use two or more languages (or dialects) on a daily basis (Grosjean & Li, 2003, p. 5). In this sense, multilingualism also includes individuals who are often described as L2 learners. This definition is necessarily broad, reflecting the large heteregoneity across studies on who is considered multilingual. Given the broad scope of the term multilingualism as adopted here, in subsequent sections, I give as much information as possible about the specific characteristics of the multilingual samples in the studies reviewed.

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Theoretical Underpinnings and Key Concepts Grice on Meaning and Implicature According to Grice (1989), speaker meaning can be defined in terms of intentions. By describing speaker meaning in this way, Grice laid the foundation for an inferential model of communication, whereby utterance interpretation consists of uncovering the speaker’s intentions behind an utterance (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) (see also Chapter 3 in this volume). Grice (1989) also systematically examined cases where what a speaker says with an utterance (sentence meaning) differs from what she/he intends to communicate (speaker meaning). He proposed that conversational exchanges are cooperative efforts that are expected to follow certain conversational maxims; specifically, the maxims of quantity (be no more and no less informative than is necessary), quality (tell the truth), relevance (provide relevant information), and manner (be clear). Consideration of these maxims during conversation often leads to the generation of implicit meanings, what Grice called ‘conversational implicatures.’ For instance, consider the following dialogue: (1)  A:  Did you eat all the cookies in the box?    B:  I ate some of the cookies in the box. (2)  B did not eat all the cookies in the box. B’s reply in (1) implicates the proposition in (2), which contains more information than the conventional meaning of B’s utterance. Linguistic inferences like the one in (2) (i.e., that ‘some’ implicates ‘not all’) are known as scalar implicatures (SIs) because they are generated based on scales that order lexical terms (e.g., ‘some’ and ‘all’) with respect to informational strength (Horn, 1972)3 (see also Chapter 18 in this volume). These inferences arise from consideration of Grice’s maxim of quantity: Given that the speaker used the less informative term in the scale (e.g., ‘some’), the listener is licensed to infer that the more informative term (e.g., ‘all’) does not hold. In a similar vein, a broad class of implicatures (e.g., metaphoric or ironic interpretations) may be generated by using the other maxims. Grice (1989) was never interested in cognitive-psychological issues related to utterance interpretation and production. Subsequent pragmatic theorists, however, viewed pragmatics as a capacity of the mind (e.g., Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Within this cognitive approach to pragmatics, issues concerning pragmatic development, the processing of pragmatic meanings, and the interaction of the pragmatic system with other mental capacities during pragmatic interpretation became particularly pertinent. In their influential work on Relevance Theory, for instance, Sperber and Wilson (2002) suggest that, since pragmatic comprehension requires the recognition of the speaker’s intentions behind an utterance, it further depends on a Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind is a cognitive process dedicated to the understanding of mental states (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985) including the understanding of intentions during communication. Other researchers (e.g., De Neys & Schaeken, 2007) have further proposed that pragmatic comprehension possibly interacts with non-linguistic cognitive components such as executive control. Executive control is an umbrella term for a set of partly interrelated cognitive processes, which include working memory (the abilility to maintain and use information in mind), task-switching (the skill to switch between tasks and representations), and inhibition (the ability to suppress automatic responses or irrelevant information) (Miyake et al., 2000). During pragmatic comprehension, these executive functions might be needed, for instance, to suppress a literal meaning, to flexibly switch between alternative meanings of the same statement (e.g., from a literal to a pragmatic meaning), or to hold in memory and combine linguistic and contextual information. Finally, given that pragmatic comprehension usually concerns verbal stimuli, language proficiency is another factor that by 496

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necessity interacts with and has been reported to affect pragmatic interpretation (see AndrésRoqueta & Katsos, 2017, for some empirical evidence). Within this cognitive conceptualisation of pragmatics, then, any experience that has an effect on language skills and other cognitive processes is likely to impact pragmatic interpretation too. Indeed, multilingualism is one such experience that has been suggested to have broad consequences for cognition. In the next section, I briefly review the findings regarding the impact of multilingualism on language skills, executive control, and Theory of Mind; that is, on three key cognitive components that have been linked to pragmatic interpretation. I also consider the evidence from studies that examined multilinguals’ use of various pragmatic cues in language processing and communication, given that pragmatic interpretation often requires considering such information.

Multilingualism, Language, and Non-verbal Cognition Research on the cognitive effects of multilingualism has revealed different patterns of results for verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills. In terms of language, multilingual participants appear disadvantaged in domains of language knowledge, processing, and development when compared to monolinguals in each of their languages separately (e.g., Bialystok et al., 2009; Hammer et al., 2014). Multilingual children, for instance, have been typically reported to possess smaller vocabularies in each of their two languages relative to monolinguals, a difference that some studies find to persist even in adulthood (see Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012). These findings, however, do not indicate a problem in the language acquisition process for multilinguals but, rather, largely reflect the different quantity and quality of language input that multilinguals receive as compared to monolinguals (most notably, multilinguals’ lesser exposure to each of their languages relative to monolinguals) (e.g., Hammer et al., 2014). In support to this conclusion, some studies report that monolingual–multilingual differences in vocabulary size often disappear when multilinguals’ total vocabulary (i.e., total lexical items known across languages) or conceptual vocabulary (i.e., total number of concepts for which a word is known across languages) is considered, when simultaneous multilingual children with daily exposure to their languages are tested, or when multilingual children are assessed in their dominant language (e.g., Hammer et al., 2014). Multilingual adults have been also reported to exhibit slower lexical access in controlled experiments (e.g., Bialystok, et al., 2009). Furthermore, they are often slower in processing semantic and grammatical phenomena in their L2, even though they might attain native-like semantic and grammatical processing with increased language proficiency (e.g., Clahsen & Felser, 2006). These differences have been attributed, once more, to multilinguals’ lesser experience in using each of their languages and/or to interference from the non-relevant language when using the other (e.g., see Bialystok et al., 2009). With regards to non-verbal (or at least not purely verbal) cognitive processing, some experimental evidence suggests a positive effect of multilingualism on executive functions (e.g., Barac et al., 2014; Bialystok et al., 2009) and various social and communicative skills (e.g., Liberman, Woodward, Keysar & Kinzler, 2017; Yow & Markman, 2011b). It has been proposed that multilinguals exhibit superior executive control skills as compared to monolinguals because of their continuous experience in using the executive control system to manage two languages in the mind and select the appropriate language (without intrusions from the other) in any given conversational situation (e.g., Bialystok et al., 2009). Superior executive control for multilinguals has been reported across the lifespan, although the effect seems to be weaker (or even absent) in young adults (Bialystok et al., 2012; Paap & Greenberg, 2013). However, recently, the claim that multilingualism enhances executive functions has been challenged by many researchers (e.g., Paap et al., 2015). 497

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Besides executive control, multilingual advantages have been also reported in various aspects of social and communicative functioning. Research with preschool-aged children has shown that multilinguals are better than monolinguals at using communicative cues like gaze direction and the speaker’s perspective, when making inference of their interlocutor’s intention (Liberman, Woodward, Keysar, & Kinzler, 2017; Yow & Markman, 2011b). In addition, studies that compared multilingual and monolingual children in Theory of Mind tasks reported superior multilingual performance (see in Barac et al., 2014), and this advantage seems to hold even for multilingual adults (Rubio-Fernández & Glucksberg, 2012). All these advantages have been attributed to multilinguals’ enhanced executive control skills or to their increased experience in considering which language their interlocutors speak in order to use the appropriate language (e.g., Liberman et al., 2017; Yow & Markman, 2011b). Finally, there is some evidence that multilingual children are more sensitive to pragmatic cues and weigh pragmatic information (e.g., intonation, pointing) more heavily than linguistic information during language acquisition and processing (Verhagen, Grassmann & Küntay, 2017; Yow & Markman, 2011a). To sum up, multilingualism has been found to affect various aspects of cognition, including facets of language knowledge and processing, executive functions, Theory of Mind, and the use of pragmatic cues during language processing and communication. These effects possibly have further consequences for multilingual implicature comprehension. On the one hand, linguistic costs for multilinguals might have a negative impact on pragmatic understanding. Insufficient language knowledge might lead to incomplete or erroneous semantic processing, that, in turn, results in drawing no or unintended pragmatic implications. In addition, slower and more effortful language processing might prohibit multilingual speakers from recruiting additional processing resources for further pragmatic processing. This is a particularly possible scenario given some evidence that implicature interpretation is itself an effortful process as compared to the comprehension of literal meanings (e.g., De Neys & Schaeken, 2007). On the other hand, multilingual benefits might lead to comparable pragmatic performance to that of monolinguals by balancing linguistic costs or might result to better implicature comprehension skills in multilinguals either because cognitive benefits outweigh the linguistic costs or because multilinguals have reached a stage of language proficiency at which linguistic costs are minimal. In the next section, I turn to the literatures on multilingual adults’ and children’s impicature understanding skills. I will argue that the bulk of the evidence from this research provides support to three generalisations regarding multilingual implicature comprehension. First, that, at initial stages of language learning, language proficiency (broadly understood as proficiency in language knowledge and processing) in the target language positively affects implicature understanding; and linguistc costs at this stage lead to problems in multilingual pragmatic comprehension. Second, that, with sufficient language proficiency, multilinguals can reach an equivalent level of implicature understanding to that of monolinguals/native speakers. At this stage, language proficiency no longer affects implicature comprehension. Third, that there is no strong evidence for a point in multilingual development where multilinguals outperform monolinguals in pragmatic comprehension. I conclude by proposing an account of multilingual implicature understanding according to which multilinguals have a single, language-independent pragmatic system (where universal pragmatic maxims of conversation are represented), which is not special as compared to monolinguals in terms of how it is acquired and functions.

Survey and Appraisal of the Current Literature Adult Multilinguals: How Well Do They Comprehend L2 Implicatures? Studies with multilingual adults have focused on individuals who are often described as L2 learners; that is, speakers who started learning or regularly using an L2 at a relatively old age in life, 498

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often during adolescence or young adulthood. In all the studies reviewed in this section, participants lived in a context that required the regular use of L2. However, the specific characteristics of this use vary widely from study to study, ranging, for instance, from speakers with a few months of daily use to learners with a lengthier daily experience with a L2. Based on the fndings reviewed in this section, the main argument to be developed is as follows. Implicature development in an L2 is best characterised in terms of two stages. First, an early stage at which multilinguals have not yet reached an adequate level of language proficiency in the L2. This results in poor L2 implicature performance relative to native speakers. During this stage, language proficiency is an important predictor of implicature performance. Second, a final stage of implicature development at which multilinguals have reached a threshold level of language proficiency. This leads to native-like implicature understanding. At this stage, language proficiency, no longer predicts implicature performance. In a pioneering series of studies, Bouton (1988, 1994) examined implicature interpretation (e.g., Joan: Do you have a lot of relatives? Fran: Are there flies in the summer?) in non-native English-speaking university students. In his first study, Bouton (1988) administered a test on different types of implicatures (e.g., relevance, scalar implicatures, irony) to international students entering university in the U.S.A. and to native speakers. The results of this study showed significantly lower implicature performance for the non-native group. However, in subsequent work, Bouton (1994) argued that after a 54-month stay in the U.S.A. non-native speakers became quite proficient with all types of implicatures. The non-native speakers’ implicature performance was still lower than that of native speakers, but the difference was not systematic and could not be attributed to specific implicature types (as in the initial study). In the same study, Bouton (1994) further reported that there was a medium-size but non-significant correlation between a composite language proficiency score and non-native participants’ overall implicature performance. The studies conducted by Bouton (1988, 1994) were the first to systematically investigate L2 implicature understanding. Research that followed up on Bouton’s findings reported clearer results showing that native-like implicature performance in L2 is indeed possible and that level of attainment with implicature in L2 depends on language proficiency. Destruel and Donaldson (2017) examined the pragmatic inference associated with the c’estcleft in L2 speakers of French. The clefted sentence in (3), for instance, conveys an exhaustive meaning (‘John and no one else ate a sandwich’), which has been suggested to arise as a scalar implicature: (3)  C’ est Jean qui a mangé un sandwich    ‘It’s John who ate a sandwich’ The L2 learners who took part in the study included English undergraduate and graduate students in French programs in the U.S.A., but also English expatriates living in France. All had studied French for between two to four years and were divided into low, intermediate, and high language proficiency groups. From a theoretical perspective, Destruel and Donaldson (2017) were interested in examining the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011), which posits that linguistic phenomena involving the coordination of linguistic (e.g., syntax, semantics) and non-linguistic factors (e.g., pragmatics) cannot be acquired by multilingual speakers to a native-like degree even at the highest level of L2 attainment. Destruel and Donaldson (2017) found that the high- and (to a lesser degree) the intermediate-proficiency groups, but not the low-proficiency group, exhibited interpretation patterns comparable to the native monolinguals. This suggests that, contra the Interface Hypothesis, speakers can achieve native-like proficiency with an implicature phenomenon lying at the syntax-pragmatics interface at relatively high levels of L2 attainment. Effects of language proficiency have been also consistently reported in studies examining other implicatures in L2 speakers, including, for instance, indirect speech and irony (see 499

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Chapter 3 in this volume for a summary). Based on their results on L2 learners’ understanding of indirect requests, Cook and Liddicoat (2002) suggest a processing account according to which different types of requests require a different amount of processing resources, and speakers at different stages of language learning have different processing capacity at their disposal because of the more effortful nature of language processing in the L2. Thus, initially, L2 learners often have difficulty in understanding indirect requests as compared to native speakers, because their access to language is not yet automatic enough to allow extra processing resources to be allocated to contextual processing. Another study by Johnson and Rosano (1993) reported comparable metaphor interpretation skills in native English-speaking participants (who themselves were mutilinguals) and L2 learners of English who had recently entered an English-speaking university in Canada (but resided in the country for two and a half to five years). The L2 learners were divided into a group who had just started a L2 English course and a group who had five months of additional English instruction. Participants were asked to provide interpretations of ambiguous metaphorical sentences (e.g., ‘My shirt was a butterfly’). Two scores were extracted from their responses: level of cognitive complexity of metaphorical interpretations (e.g, the response ‘The shirt could be very colorful’ was considered as less complex than the interpretation ‘Colorful—it had sort of like a Hawaian style’) and number of different interpretations for each item. Johnson and Rosano found that the two L2 groups underperformed on measures of language proficiency in L2 relative to the native group and did not differ from each other. However, there were no group differences in metaphor performance. Various studies have also examined multilingual adults’ understanding of the scalar implicature associated with the term ‘some,’ indicating, in general, native-level performance for L2 learners. In two experiments, Slabakova (2010) tested four groups of participants: Korean and English native speakers, and intermediate and advanced Korean learners of L2 English. A judgment task was used in each experiment, where participants had to respond whether they agreed or disagreed with statements presented with or without context (e.g., ‘Some elephants have trunks,’ where a disagree response indicates a scalar implicature interpretation). L2 English learners had started learning English in a classroom setting from the age of 12 or 13, and at the time of testing they were students at an American university. The findings revealed that the two L2 groups gave more implicature responses than the native groups. There was also no difference between the two native groups, suggesting that the maxim of quantity and the scalar implicature associated with ‘some’ are universal properties of language use; and no difference between the two non-native groups indicating no effect of language proficiency. Based on these results, Slabakova (2010) suggested that it is entirely possible to understand implicatures in L2. Subsequent studies corroborated but also qualified Slabakova’s (2010) conclusion. Dupuy et al. (2018; see also Miller, Giancaspro, Iverson, Rothman, & Slabakova, 2016) conducted two experiments with French learners of English (experiments 1a and 1b) and learners of Spanish (experiment 1a) as compared to French monolinguals. In experiment 1a, the L2 learners were recruited from a French university, they started learning their second language between 11 and 13 years of age and ‘were still exposed to their L2 both in classes and for communication purposes’ (Dupuy et al., 2018, p. 10). In experiment 1b, L2 learners were studying for an English studies degree at a French university. Dupuy et al. (2018) concluded that scalar implicature comprehension did not differ in L2 learners (whether tested in their first or second language) and monolinguals. They also found that the number of scalar implicature answers given by L2 learners did not differ in their two languages, providing further support for the universality of scalar implicature and the maxim of quantity. Finally, Lieberman (2009; as cited in Slabakova & Mayo, 2013) examined whether L2 learners’ understanding of scalar implicatures was modulated by processing difficulty. He presented Japanese learners of L2 English and native English speakers with a judgment task where they 500

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had to evaluate sentences that were pragmatically infelicitous based on the context given. Two types of sentences were used: statements, like (4), that conveyed direct implicatures (e.g., when ‘sometimes’ implicates ‘not always’ based on the scale ), and statements like (5), where the scalar term is negated, the scale is, thus, reversed () and an indirect scalar meaning is communicated (i.e., ‘sometimes’). (4)  When students show up late, George sometimes cancels classes. (5)  Joshua doesn’t always remember to pick up his dry-cleaning. Lieberman (2009) found that both groups had more difficulty understanding the indirect implicatures as in (5) than the direct implicatures as in (4). The L2 learners, however, were less accurate than the native speakers with indirect implicatures. Lieberman (2009) also used a different task where the processing demands were lowered by providing participants with two sentences as an appropriate description of an event. In this task, the L2 learners selected the pragmatically appropriate sentence at the same rate as native speakers, even if cases like (6) were included. In a discussion of these results, Slabakova and Mayo (2013) suggest that L2 learners do not have a problem in comprehending implicatures (because these involve universal computation mechanisms) but that ‘processing difficulty interferes with comprehension and affects learners more than natives’ (p. 195). To sum up, studies that have examined implicature comprehension in adult L2 learners have revealed two main findings. First, language proficiency in the L2 affects L2 implicature interpretation skills, especially at early stages of language learning (Cook & Liddicoat, 2002; Destruel & Donaldson, 2017; see also Chapter 3 in this volume). It is not clear, however, from the current research, how exactly language proficiency affects implicature comprehension. Language proficiency (broadly understood as proficiency in language knowledge and processing) can influence implicature interpretation in two ways: first, because L2 learners have a ‘deficient’ understanding of the semantics of target utterances due to a gap in their language knowledge; and second, because language processing in L2 is effortful and, thus, multilinguals’ cognitive resources are often consumed by semantic processing in the L2, leaving no resources for further pragmatic processing (Cook & Liddicoat, 2002). There also seems to be a threshold on the effect of language proficiency on L2 implicature interpretation, in that, after multilinguals reach a certain level of language proficiency in the L2, further improvement does not lead to better implicature performance (Destruel & Donaldson, 2017; Slabakova, 2010), possibly because multilinguals have reached a plateau (native level) in implicature understanding skills. This threshold is probably at the point where, for a given implicature, multilinguals have adequate proficiency to understand and process the semantics of the target utterance in a native-like manner. It is also possible that this threshold changes depending on implicature (or task) difficulty, in that for more demanding implicatures (or tasks), a higher level of automaticity in language processing is required. The existence of this threshold might also explain why some studies do not report a language proficiency effect on L2 implicature comprehension: Different studies have tested L2 learners at different levels of language proficiency and examined implicatures that vary in processing complexity. A positive effect of language proficiency is expected only for L2 learners at low levels of language proficiency and for more difficult implicature phenomena. The second important finding is that L2 learners can achieve native-like performance with implicature, provided, of course, that they have reached an adequate level of language proficiency. They might have difficulty in understanding more demanding implicatures, but even for those implicatures, native-like attainment is not impossible as the data in Lieberman (2009), but also some results from research with multilingual children (reviewed in a subsequent section) suggest. 501

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Evaluating Three Theoretical Accounts of Adult L2 Pragmatic Processing As described in the previous section, two theoretical models have been proposed to account or have implications for pragmatic interpretation in adult L2 learners. The Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011) proposes that linguistic phenomena that lie at the interfaces between linguistic and extralinguistic systems lead to enduring difficulties in bilinguals which cannot be overcome even at the highest levels of language proficiency. This account thus predicts that pragmatic phenomena which lie at the syntax-pragmatics or semantics-pragmatics interface cannot ever be attained to a native-like degree. This prediction, however, is not confirmed by the bulk of the evidence reviewed in the previous section. A second account, proposed by Slabakova (2010; also Slabakova & Mayo, 2013), suggests that implicature understanding is achieved using universal mechanisms of language use. This account predicts that, if learners know the semantics and have sufficient language processing capacity in the L2, then pragmatic computations should not constitute a problem for them (at least not to a greater degree than for monolinguals/native speakers). Indeed, the findings presented in this review are largely consistent with this proposal. A third theoretical account, which has not been discussed in relation to any empirical data in the previous section, is Bialystok’s (1993) two-dimensional model of pragmatic acquisition. Bialystok (1993) suggests that the main learning task regarding pragmatic competence in L2 is not about developing analysed pragmatic knowledge but about developing control over existing analysed representations from L1 (see also Chapter 8 in this volume). Thus, her account makes two important claims regarding pragmatic interpretation and development in the L2. The first claim is that much of pragmatic knowledge required for pragmatic interpretation in the L2 is already available and can be transferred from the L1. This claim is directly in line with the proposal of Slabakova (2010). The second claim is that pragmatic interpretation and development depends on executive control skills; and that the main problem of pragmatic acquisition and understanding in the L2 lies in executive control. Bialystok, however, is rather vague about how and why executive control is the main problem for L2 leaners. She suggests that selective attention is more difficult for L2 learners because ‘conventions are less familiar’ and because cultural differences ‘make the decision regarding the intended meaning difficult’ (p. 53). The account I have advocated here, however, explicitly attributes L2 learners’ non-native understanding of implicature to insufficient semantic understanding and/or to insufficient cognitive resources due to the more effortful nature of L2 processing.

Implicature Comprehension in Multilingual Children: Different from Monolinguals? In contrast to research with adult L2 learners, studies with multilingual children have typically targeted speakers with an earlier and more extensive daily experience of using two languages. In the present section, I will argue that a review of this literarure shows no consistent mutilingual– monolingual differences in pragmatic understanding. These results have been reported across several studies that used different tasks and tested various types of implicatures and different multilingual groups at various ages during childhood. There are also no clear findings that implicature comprehension in multilingual children depends differently to monolinguals on non-verbal cognitive resources, while some crosslinguistic evidence indicates that pragmatic maxims of conversation are universal. I suggest that the above results in combination provide support to the following model of multilingual implicature comprehension: Pragmatic maxims of conversation are represented as a single, language-independent system in multilinguals, which is no different to monolinguals in terms of the way it develops and functions during pragmatic comprehension. A set of studies conducted by Johnson (1989, 1991) investigated metaphor interpretation in bilingual Spanish-English children (7 to 12 years old). In her 1991 study, bilingual and 502

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monolingual children were given a task similar to the one used with adult L2 learners in Johnson and Rosano (1993; see previous section). All children were educated in English at school, and bilingual children had Spanish as their first language and were mostly exposed to Spanish at home. The bilingual children were further divided into long-term residents (with at least five years in Canada) and recent immigrants (with three years or less in Canada). Johnson (1991) reported that both groups of bilingual children performed worse than monolinguals on a measure of language proficiency (and recent immigrants underperformed relative to long-term resident bilinguals). Nevertheless, in the comparison between bilingual and monolingual children recruited from the same schools, there was no difference in complexity level of metaphorical interpretations between the bilingual long-term residents and monolinguals. The bilingual recent immigrants performed worse than monolinguals, but the group effect was very small and was due to only some of the metaphor items (items with ‘my shirt’ as topic, as in ‘My shirt was a rock’). In a previous study, Johnson (1989) had found that correlations between bilingual children’s metaphor scores in their two languages and between metaphor performance and measures of non-verbal mental-attentional capacity and conceptual knowledge were higher than with pure measures of language proficiency. Therefore, Johnson (1991) concludes that processing capacity and conceptual repertoire are the major factors affecting complexity level of metaphor interpretations and that language proficiency plays only a minor role. These results also provide support for the claim that implicature comprehension (and metaphor interpretation, specifically) is based on language-independent, universal mechanisms of language use. In more recent research, Siegal and collaborators (Siegal, Iozzi, & Surian, 2009; Siegal, Matsuo, Pond, & Otsu, 2007; Siegal et al., 2010) proposed that bilingual children of preschool age exhibit superior pragmatic skills as compared to monolinguals. In their first study, Siegal et al. (2007) reported that Japanese-English bilingual children (tested in Japanese) gave more pragmatic responses than Japanese and English monolinguals in a judgment task examining the comprehension of the scalar implicature associated with the term ‘some.’ Half of the bilinguals in this study were recruited from Japan and the rest from England. Most of them had one Japanese and one English parent, while the rest had both parents speaking the same language but lived in the country where their first language was not natively spoken. In subsequent work, Siegal et al. (2009, 2010) further found that bilingual children were more sensitive than monolinguals to Grice’s maxims of conversation (sometimes despite a smaller vocabulary in the language of testing). In their 2010 study, they further reported that the Japanese-English children’s pragmatic performance did not differ between their two languages, a finding that provides further support to the claim for the universality of pragmatic maxims of conversation. All children in the two studies were given a test in which, for each item, one doll asked a question (e.g., ‘Which baby animals do you like?’) and then two others replied, one with a pragmatically appropriate statement (e.g., ‘I like puppies.’) and the second with a sentence that violated one of Grice’s maxims of conversation (e.g., ‘I like puppies which are animals with four legs and a tail.’). Children had to indicate the pragmatically infelicitous answer. In Siegal et al. (2009), the bilingual children were predominantly exposed to Slovenian, their first language, at home and to Italian at preschool, and they were tested in Italian. Siegal et al. (2010), on the other hand, tested German-Italian bilinguals as compared to Italian monolingual children (experiment 1), and Japanese-English bilingual children in each of their languages compared to Japanese monolinguals (experiment 2). All bilingual children in Siegal et al. (2010) were exposed to both languages from birth or before the age of two. The German-Italian children lived in a Germanspeaking area and were predominantly exposed to German at home, but attended an Italianspeaking school. The English-Japanese children were recruited from England; they had at least one Japanese-speaking parent and heard a mixture of English and Japanese at home. Siegal et al. (2009) propose that bilingual children develop these pragmatic advantages either because of their superior executive control skills or as a compensation for the initial ‘delays’ 503

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they often exhibit in some aspects of language acquisition. It should be noted, however, that Siegal and colleagues (2007, 2009, and 2010) directly tested the impact of executive control on pragmatic performance but failed to find supporting evidence for the executive control account. Nevertheless, because they found a near ceiling level of performance in one of their executive control tasks (Card Sort task measuring task-switching) and they did not administer a working memory task, no strong conclusions can be drawn from these studies regarding the relation between pragmatics and executive functions in bilinguals. The findings of subsequent research, however, do not corroborate the strong conclusion of Siegal and collaborators (2007, 2009, and 2010) that bilingualism leads to precocious pragmatic development. Antoniou and Katsos (2017) compared three groups of school-aged children (six to nine years old): multilingual children (in Standard Modern Greek, Cypriot Greek, English, and, occassionally, an additional language), children who were bi-dialectal (in Standard Modern Greek and Cypriot Greek), and monolingual children (in Standard Modern Greek). Multilingual and bi-dilacetal children were recruited from Cyprus and monolingual children in Greece. All multilinguals attended an English-instructed school. Approximately half of them were predominantly exposed to/ used Cypriot Greek (Cypriot Greek-dominant) and the rest were mostly exposed to/used English (English-dominant). The strict majority of multilingual children had started being exposed to their L2 (Cypriot Greek or English) before their third year of life. All groups were tested in the interpretation of various implicatures (relevance, manner, scalar implicatures, and novel metaphors). Bi-dialectal and multilingual children took the test in Cypriot Greek (dialect of the community and bi-dialectals’ dominant, first dialect) and monolinguals in Standard Greek. Language proficiency in Greek was also measured for all children. Based on the previous study by Siegal et al. (2007), Antoniou and Katsos predicted that multilingual (and possibly bi-dialectal) children would excel in implicature comprehension relative to monolinguals. The multilingual advantage was also expected because past research (e.g., Barac et al., 2014; Siegal et al., 2009) showed superior multilingual skill in various factors that are thought to be implicated in the implicature interpretation process (sensitivity to Gricean maxims, Theory of Mind, and executive control). For most implicature types, a picture-selection test was used in which participants were presented with a statement (e.g., the figurative sentence ‘George’s father was a melting snowman’) and had to respond by selecting one of two pictures (e.g., a sad man and an angry man). For scalar implicatures, a judgment task was used. The researchers found lower expressive vocabulary in Greek for multilinguals and bi-dialectals as compared to monolinguals (with bi-dialectals having a higher vocabulary than multilinguals) but no group differences in implicature performance. Moreover, there were no differences with monolinguals whether considering the Cypriot Greek- or the English-dominant multilingual sub-group. Antoniou and Katsos suggest that these results support a weaker but still important conclusion regarding the impact of multilingualism on pragmatic comprehension: Multilingual and bi-dialectal children can be expected to have similar levels of implicature comprehension to monolinguals, even when their proficiency in the language of testing may be lower. Antoniou and Katsos (2017) further examined the factors that affect implicature understanding in children. Regression analyses on overall implicature performance across groups showed that only age and language proficiency in Greek were significant positive predictors of implicature understanding. Moreover, when considering each of the three groups separately, an interesting divide was found: Language proficiency predicted implicature comprehension in the monolingual and bi-dialectal groups, but only age was a significant positive predictor in multilinguals. Based on these results, Antoniou and Katsos suggest that multilingual children are comparable to monolinguals (and bi-dialectals) in their implicature understanding skills, but this is achieved, possibly, by using different resources. The authors suggest that, the positive contribution of age in multilinguals can be attributed to a non-verbal cognitive factor that develops with age. They speculate that this cognitive component is possibly Theory of Mind (the ability to understand 504

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other people’s mental states, including intentions during communication; see previous section), given that Theory of Mind has been theoretically linked to implicature comprehension (e.g. Sperber & Wilson, 2002) and has been often reported to be a domain of strength in multilinguals (e.g., Barac et al., 2014; Rubio-Fernández & Glucksberg, 2012). In line with the findings of Antoniou and Katsos (2017), Dupuy et al. (2018), Syrett et al. (2016) and Syrett et al. (2017) also reported no differences between bilingual and monolingual children in scalar implicature comprehension. The study by Dupuy et al. (2018) compared Slovenian-Italian bilingual and Slovenian monolingual children (10 to 11 years old). Bilingual children were recruited from Slovenia and Italy, started receiving input in both languages before the second year of life and had daily exposure to their two languages in school. The two studies by Syrett et al. (2016, 2017) were conducted with preschool-aged children and included Spanish-English bilinguals from the U.S.A. and Spanish monolinguals from Peru. Bilinguals were exposed to Spanish since birth, to English before 36 months of age, and were exposed to both languages in school. All these studies used judgment tasks similar in rational to the one employed by Siegal et al. (2007) except for the second experiment of Syrett et al. (2017), which featured a picture-selection task. In a more recent study, Antoniou, Veenstra, Kissine, and Katsos (in press) conducted another test of the hypothesis of superior implicature comprehension in bilingual children. They used a test that assessed both accuracy and processing speed of comprehension for various implicature types, including implicatures that had not been previously investigated in multilinguals, such as contrastive implicatures (e.g., when the phrase ‘Open window’ implicates that there is another window in the situation) and irony. The experiment included three groups of participants (10 to 12 years old): French-Dutch bilingual, Dutch-West Flemish bi-dialectal, and Dutch monolingual children. All bilingual children were dominant in French, but attended a Dutch-instructed school, roughly since they were three years of age. Participants were tested in Dutch. Results indicated that, with control items involving no implicature, all groups performed at ceiling and were equally fast. Moreover, there was significant variation in implicature performance on a number of variables other than the monolingual/multilingual status. First, overall implicature performance positively correlated with working memory (though not with vocabulary). There was, however, little evidence that the relation between implicature understanding and working memory differed in the three groups, suggesting that all groups relied on their working memory resources similarly when interpreting implicatures. Second, novel metaphors and irony were the hardest to understand for all children, regardless of how many languages or dialects they spoke. Third, implicature responses to critical items in all sub-tests were slower than literal responses to control items, suggesting that implicature processing is effortful for all children. Despite this variation, however, no differences were observed between monolinguals and the other two groups either in implicature responses or in speed of implicature processing. As in Antoniou and Katsos (2017), this was again true, despite bilinguals’ and bi-dialectals’ lower vocabularies in the language of testing. Based on these results and building on previous work by Slabakova (2010; also Slabakova & Mayo, 2013) and Kesckes (2015), Antoniou et al. (in press) propose an account of bilingual pragmatic development and processing according to which bilinguals have a single pragmatic system (at least for the kind of pragmatic competence that is required for implicature interpretation) that is language-independent and that develops and operates in a similar way to monolinguals. First, Antoniou et al.’s (in press) data show that there is a point in language development at which language proficiency stops being a significant predictor of pragmatic comprehension (even though there is still variability in pragmatic performance). These results suggest separation of pragmatics from language. Second, cross-linguistic evidence (as reviewed in this section, but see also Grice, 1989; Katsos et al., 2016; Prince, 1982) indicates that implicature comprehension and pragmatic maxims of conversation are universal properties of language use. 505

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This suggests that maxims of conversation are represented as a single pragmatic system and that, across their two languages, multilinguals have equal to monolinguals experience with pragmatic aspects of language. Finally, Antoniou et al. (in press) found that pragmatic comprehension draws on working memory, but there was little evidence that bilinguals or bi-dialectals used these resources differently to monolinguals when interpreting implicatures. The last two considerations indicate that pragmatic comprehension possibly develops and operates similarly in multilinguals and monolinguals. To sum up, two broad accounts have been proposed in the literature on multilingual children’s pragmatic skills. On the one hand, Siegal and colleagues suggest that bilingual children exhibit precocious pragmatic development. Indeed, research from this group indicates that bilingual children of preschool age are better than monolinguals in detecting utterances that violate Gricean maxims and in understanding scalar implicatures. On the other hand, research by Antoniou and colleagues (2017, in press), Dupuy et al. (2018), Johnson (1991) and Syrett and collaborators (2016, 2017) indicates no differences between multilingual and monolingual children in pragmatic comprehension. This has been shown for a wide range of implicatures (relevance, scalar, manner, contrastive implicatures, metaphors, and irony), with different methodologies (picture-selection, judgment tasks), for both comprehension accuracy and speed of processing, for different age groups (3 to 12 years old), for different language and cultural groups, and regardless of whether multilingual children were tested in their L1 or L2. There is also little evidence that multilingual children rely more or use differently their executive control resources as compared to monolinguals in the process of understanding implicatures. Thus, the bulk of the evidence suggests that implicature understanding develops and operates similarly in multilingual and monolingual children.

Conclusion and Future Directions In this chapter, I have reviewed the evidence from adult and child studies that examined the effect of multilingualism on pragmatic comprehension. I have argued that studies with adult L2 learners largely reveal two main generalisations. First, during initial stages of language learning, language proficiency (broadly understood as proficiency in language knowledge and processing) has a positive effect on implicature understanding; second, adult speakers can attain native-like pragmatic understanding skills in their L2 if they reach a certain level of language proficiency. On the other hand, research with multilingual children suggests largely no differences between multilingual and monolingual children in pragmatic comprehension or processing. There is also some evidence that pragmatic comprehension in children draws on non-verbal cognitive resources like working memory, but no clear evidence that these resources are used differently by multilingual and monolingual children in the process of understanding implicatures. Finally, in contrast to the adult literature, language proficiency effects on implicature have been less consistently reported for multilingual children. This difference with the adult literature, however, is likely due to the different characteristics of the targeted multilingual groups. Studies with adults have mostly focused on L2 learners with varying degrees of experience in their L2, some of whom at the very beginning of L2 learning. Research with children, on the other hand, has mostly recruited multilinguals with a substantial daily experience in both languages from relatively early on in life. This suggests that multilingual children, but not adult L2 learners in many studies, have probably reached the level of language proficiency necessary for native-like semantic processing at the time of testing. As already argued in a previous section, this is probably the threshold at which language proficiency stops being a signifcant predictor of implicature performance. What do these results then show regarding the mechanics and development of implicature comprehension in multilinguals? There is some crosslinguistic evidence suggesting that implicature and pragmatic maxims of conversation are universal properties of language use. The universality 506

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of implicature and pragmatic maxims of conversation and the experimental evidence indicating separation of pragmatic comprehension from language proficiency, suggest that this type of pragmatic competence is represented independently from language(s). It can be transferred from L1 in adult L2 learners and it develops similarly in monolingual and multilingual children, given that multilinguals are expected to have equal to monolinguals exposure to pragmatics across their two languages. Thus, as soon as multilinguals reach a certain level of language proficiency that allows semantic processing to proceed unobstructed in a given language, then pragmatic comprehension operates in fundamentally the same way for multilinguals and monolinguals; that is, by drawing on the same pragmatic knowledge and, possibly, based on the same non-verbal mechanisms. In this account, then, there is nothing special in multilingual or monolingual implicature comprehension and development that can be attributed to pragmatics per se. Of course, in this review I have considered a pragmatic phenomenon that is probably universal; and the account proposed in this chapter is specific to such phenomena that are based on pragmatic knowledge common to the multilinguals’ languages. I have argued that for these phenomena any differences between multilinguals and monolinguals are unrelated to pragmatics and result from differences in language proficiency, which, once levelled, should make pragmatic differences dissipate. Nevertheless, there are also other facets of pragmatic competence that are more language- and culture-specific. For these, one would expect differences between multilinguals and monolinguals that arise due to aspects such as incomplete pragmatic knowledge or negative pragmatic transfer; that is, differences in pragmatic performance which are directly attributable to pragmatic competence per se4. Moreover, multilingualism is a multifaceted phenomenon that can be characterised by a wide range of factors (e.g., age of onset of acquisition of, proficiency level in, daily exposure to/use of each language, language of schooling, age of the individual). Differences in any of these factors can lead each mutlingual individual to a uniquely different multilingual experience. In this chapter, I proposed an account of multilingual implicature interpretation and development based on the currently available data from the multilingual samples so far examined. However, it is an empirical question whether this account generalizes to all multilingual speakers. Having reviewed the evidence on multilingual adult and children’s implicature interpretation skills, I close this chapter by identifying some gaps in the literature and suggesting directions for future research.

Investigating Implicature Processing in Multilinguals Using More Fine-grained Psycholinguistic and Neuroscientific Tools Despite the variety of psycholinguistic and neuroscientific tools that have been used to investigate language processing in monolingual and multilingual participants, studies on multilinguals’ implicature understanding skills have only focused on behavioral measures of pragmatic performance: accuracy rates (mainly) and reaction times. Behavioral measures can provide useful information about the end-product of the pragmatic interpretation process (i.e., whether participants understood the intended pragmatic meaning or not) but can, nevertheless, give limited and only indirect information about the pragmatic process itself. In contrast, psycholinguistic techniques such as eye-tracking and neuroscientific tools such as event-related potentials can provide a clearer picture about the time-course (e.g., speed of pragmatic relative to literal processing) of pragmatic interpretation during real-time, natural comprehension (see also Chapter 18 in this volume). The eye-tracking psycholinguistic paradigm records participants’ eye-movements as they listen to speech and watch a visual display. The event-related potentials technique, on the other hand, provides brain waves time-locked to task events (e.g., critical words) that reflect the participants’ neural activity as they process language. Both tools provide high temporal resolution measures of language comprehension that are not influenced by metalinguistic 507

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and response-related (e.g., decision, motor) processes. In this respect, the use of these techniques could reveal more subtle differences in multilinguals’ and monolinguals’ processing of implicature, which cannot be detected by traditional, behavioural measures.

Direct Examinination of the Role of Theory of Mind in Multilingual Implicature Comprehension In this chapter, I suggested an account that multilingual implicature interpretation depends to the same degree and on the same non-verbal cognitive mechanisms as in monolinguals. This proposal was based on the empirical evidence suggesting largely no difference between multilinguals and monolinguals in the use of executive control skills during pragmatic interpretation (Antoniou et  al., in press), but it was also based on the lack of any direct evidence indicating that multilinguals rely on different non-linguistic cognitive components when they comprehend pragmatic meanings. Nevertheless, a possibility that still remains open is that implicature comprehension in multilinguals draws more heavily on Theory of Mind (Antoniou & Katsos, 2017). As already discussed, Theory of Mind is a cognitive process, which has been theoretically linked to pragmatic comprehension and in which multilinguals have been found to excel. Better multilingual performance in Theory of Mind tasks has been mainly reported for preschool-aged children (Barac et al., 2014), an advantage that suggests that Theory of Mind develops earlier in multilinguals. Some evidence, however, indicates that this benefit extends to multilingual adults too (Rubio-Fernández & Glucksberg, 2012), which suggests an advantage in the use of Theory of Mind (not in competence). Future research should aim to directly test this proposal by administering a range of Theory of Mind tasks to multilingual and monolingual participants. A related question is whether the effect of Theory of Mind (if any) can be found in both multilingual young children and adults.

Notes 1 The writing of this chapter has been supported by a fellowship from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation and by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 800305. 2 Note that the focus in L2 studies is on the comparison between non-native (multilingual) and native speakers. Some studies reviewed in this chapter are not clear about whether the native participants were monolingual or not. I provide this information in the description of the studies whenever it is available from the studies themselves. 3 For example, in the scale , ‘all’ is informationally stronger than ‘some’ because ‘all’ entails ‘some.’ 4 Note that pragmatic knowledge could be distinguished from cultural knowledge in the sense that the former includes general (possibly innate) properties of the human processing system (which is another way of making the universality claim for pragmatic maxims of conversation) just like Sperber and Wilson (19856/1995) propose for the principle of relevance. In this sense, pragmatic knowledge includes only pragmatic principles like Grice’s cooperative principle or Sperber and Wilson’s relevance principle; that is, principles that likely reflect general, universal properties of the human mind and are always recruited during implicature comprehension. Any other culturally, environmentally, and individually variable information can be just contextual information that is recruited ad hoc during implicature comprehension (and could, of course, also impact implicature interpretation if not available).

Further Reading Antoniou, K., & Katsos, N. (2017). The effect of childhood multilingualism and bilectalism on implicature understanding. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38, 787–833. This study compared multilingual, bi-dialectal, and monolingual children in implicature comprehension. The introduction includes a short review of research on the bilingualism effect on children’s pragmatic 508

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skills. Results showed no group differences in implicature understanding. The study also discusses factors that might explain the difference in the findings with previous research which did report superior pragmatic skills in bilingual children. Slabakova, R., & Mayo, M. D. P. G. (2013). Whether to teach and how to teach complex linguistic structures in a second language. In M. Whong, K.-H. Gil, & H. Marsden (Eds.), Universal grammar and the second language lassroom (pp. 187–205). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Sringer. This paper discusses the acquisition of complex meanings in a second language focusing on scalar implicature. Sections 10.3 and 10.5 are the most relevant to this chapter. The former section discusses some representative studies of implicature in a second language. The latter discusses in some detail the research by Slabakova (2010) and Lieberman (2009), which examined scalar implicature interpretation in second language learners as compared to native speakers.

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510

Index

Page numbers in bold denote tables, in italic denote figures Aarosond, P. A. 395 Abrams, Z. 379 Abutalebi, J. 273, 281 Achiba, M. 179, 230 Achugar, M. 263 Adams, R. 341 adaptive control of thought-rationale (ACT-R) 113–114, 117, 120 adult learners 1, 288–289, 402 Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) 419, 423 Ahearn, L. M. 130, 154, 163 Ahn, R. C. 311 Ahn, S. 468, 469, 474 Ahn, S.-Y. 66 Ai, H. 151 Aijmer, K. 84, 179, 241, 243–244 Albirini, A. 470 Al-Busaidi, S. 323 Alcón-Soler, E. 289, 292, 338, 360–362, 377, 379, 382, 430, 434 Al-Gahtani, S. 5, 19, 22, 24, 26–27, 180, 197–199, 230–231, 312 Al-Issa, A. 164, 169 Aljaafreh, A. 148 Allwood, J. 86 Amador-Moreno, C. P. 451 American Educational Research Association (AERA) 309 American English Sociopragmatic Comprehension Test (AESCT) 315 American Psychological Association (APA) 309 Anderson, J. R. 8, 117, 289 Andrés-Roqueta, C. 497 Anthony, L. 243–244 Antoniou, K. 504–506, 508 appropriateness judgment tasks (AJTs) 151, 153, 155, 203, 207, 217, 317, 319 aptitude 344, 429–432, 434–436 Arabic 5, 164, 180, 198, 389, 470 Arasaratnam, L. A. 480 Arasaratnam-Smith, L. A. 479, 481, 483–484, 488, 490 Archer, D. 79, 83, 86–87, 170, 198, 316, 486

Argyle, M. 86 Argyri, E. 466, 472 Arievitch, I. M. 105 Arminen, I. 328 Arnold, W. 323 Asal, V. 333 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 88 at home (AH) 52, 88, 104, 357, 363, 463, 469, 479, 503 Atak, P. 326 Atoofi, S. 469, 473 Attardo, S. 63, 419 Austin, J. L. 17–20, 226, 230, 276, 448 Avery, P. 79 Azar, Z. 469 Baba, K. 434, 439–440 BabaiShishavan, H. 168 Bachman, L. F. 3, 94, 97, 114, 338, 406, 482, 487 Backus, A. 458, 468, 471 Badjadi, N. E. I. 287, 303–304 Bailey, A. L. 318 Baker, C. 481 Baker, W. 170 Bakhtin, M. M. 139, 148 Balaman, U. 236 Bannink, A. 408 Barac, R. 495, 497–498, 504–505, 508 Bardovi-Harlig, K. 2, 5, 7, 24, 27, 47–59, 195–198, 200–201, 204, 208, 246–247, 288, 290, 316, 322, 324, 326–327, 333, 339, 357, 360–364, 396, 400, 403–404, 406, 438, 486 Baron-Cohen, S. 496 Barraja-Rohan, A. M. 232–233, 339, 406 Barron, A. 18, 49, 52, 56, 338–339, 360, 363–364, 380, 447–450, 457–458, 467, 486–487 Basnáková, J. 273, 281 Bataller, R. 197, 360 Béal, C. 73 Beebe, L. M. 162, 314 Belhiah, H. 236 Bell, N. D. 63–66, 65, 69, 71, 361 511

Index

Bella, S. 5, 434 Belz, J. A. 148–149, 155–156, 244–245, 248, 339–340, 374–376, 382–383, 437 Benner, P. E. 100 Bennett, J. M. 484 Bennett, M. J. 482, 484–485, 489 Bergen, L. 277 Berns, M. 161 Bhabha, H. K. 164 Bialystok, E. 1, 113–117, 125, 416–417, 495, 497, 502 Biber, D. 49, 247–248, 250 Biesenbach-Lucas, S. 377 Bieswanger, M. 447, 453, 457 bilingual 63, 66–67, 70–71, 73, 88, 128, 161, 164, 167–168, 279, 430, 434, 462, 464–469, 472–475, 502–506, 508–509 Billmyer, K. 198, 200 Bird, S. 120 Blattner, G. 394 Block, D. 6, 128, 157, 161–163, 227 Blum-Kulka, S. 4, 18, 51, 179–180, 197, 230, 310, 376, 448 Boersma, P. 78 Bonnefon, J. F. 277–278 Borenstein, M. 291, 293 Bott, L. 277 Bou-Franch, P. 379–380 Bourdieu, P. 129 Bouton, L. F. 32–33, 36, 235, 275, 357, 359–360, 362, 364, 499 Boxer, D. 322, 404 Brazil, D. 78–81, 83–85, 87, 90, 245 Breheny, R. 277 Broner, M. 66 Brouwer, C. E. 187, 235 Brown, J. D. 314 Brown, L. 6, 154, 165, 167–168, 465, 468, 469, 473 Brown, P. 28, 35, 64, 82, 179, 226, 229–230, 310, 313, 359, 381, 458 Bryant, G. A. 81–82 Bryant, T. 390, 394 Bucholtz, M. 163 Budden, J. 323 Bühler, K. 97 Burch, R. A. 179 Burdelski, M. 401–402 Bushnell, C. 66 business English as a Lingua Franca (BEFL) 423, 426 Butler, H.A. 391 Byon, A. S. 132, 132, 135–137, 402, 408 Byram, M. 481–485, 487 Byrnes, H. 260, 263, 265–267 Callies, M. 241 Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) 58 512

Cambridge English Language Assessment 78, 88 Campbell, S. 419, 423 Canagarajah, A. S. 161, 168–170 Canale, M. 3, 94, 97, 338, 406, 482, 487 Canto, S. 340–341 Carreira, M. 463 Carrell, P. L. 32, 280 Carroll, D. 231 Carroll, J. B. 434 Cartwright, C. T. 479, 490 Cashman, H. R. 167 Cauldwell, R. 79 Cekaite, A. 99, 106, 231, 402 Center for Chinese Linguistics Online Corpus 50 Chaiklin, S. 147 Chang, P. 260, 266 Chapelle, C. A. 8, 309 Cheang, H. S. 79 Chen, C.-F. E. 376, 379 Chen, G. M. 480 Chen, Y. 242, 247, 316 Cheng, W. 79–80, 245–246, 360, 364, 425 Chinese: heritage 136, 140, 463, 470–471, 468, 476; learner 6, 22, 54, 56, 115–116, 152, 201, 217, 488; speakers 39–41, 196, 471; see also Hong Kong Chinokul, S. 325 Chomsky, N. 94 Christie, F. 264 Chun, D. M. 8, 78, 89 Chung, E. S. 469–470 Cigliana, K. A. 433 Cirillo, V. 395 Clahsen, H. 497 Clancy, B. 450, 452 Clark, H. H. 17, 19–20, 38, 274 Clyne, M. 415–416 Coffin, C. 265 cognition hypothesis 8, 122, 342–343 Cogo, A. 170, 486 Cohen, A. D. 7, 327, 362, 405; d 292, 294–295 Cohen, J. 213 Cole, S. 360 Coleman, J. A. 357 Colombi, M. C. 260, 263, 267 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) 247, 482 communicative competence 3, 94, 97–98, 129, 255, 261, 388, 340, 372, 405–406, 479, 481–483, 487, 491 complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) 429–434, 437–441 computer assisted language learning (CALL) 215 computer-mediated-communication (CMC) 8–10, 196, 207, 245, 331, 340, 372–384; asynchronous (ACMC) 376, 379; synchronous (SCMC) 245, 291, 372–373, 376–379 concept-based instruction 104–106, 147, 149–151, 153, 155–157

Index

content and language integrated learning (CLIL) 259–260, 262–267, 403–404, 408 conversation analysis (CA) 5, 7, 10, 17, 19–20, 22, 26, 28, 43, 64, 93, 98, 104, 106–107, 167–168, 177–181, 187, 197–199, 206, 213–214, 218–219, 222–223, 226–236, 249, 267–268, 311–312, 318–319, 326, 334, 359, 381, 405–407; SLA (CA-SLA) 178 conversation task 41, 197–198 conversational maxims 31, 496 Cook, G. 74, 248 Cook, H. M. 6, 132, 132, 134, 137, 139, 168, 358 Cook, M. 32–33, 500–501 Cook, V. 161 Cordella, M. 361 Cornillie, F. 388 Costa, A. 281 Council of Europe 247 Couper-Kuhlen, E. 180–181 Coupland, J. 419 Craik, F. I. M. 119, 495 Crandall, E. 322 Crane, C. 265–266 Craven, A. 180 Cresti, E. 249 Creswell, J. 214 Cronbach, L. J. 308 Crookes, G. 429 Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) 197, 310, 376, 378 Crystal, D. 1, 87, 227, 256, 387 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 391 Csizér, K. 429, 433 Culpeper, J. 49, 83 cultural-historical psychology (CHP) 105, 145, 358 Cunningham, D. J. 8, 196, 340–341, 377–380, 382–383 Curl, T. S. 180, 230 Czerwionka, L. 360, 364 Dahm, M. R. 414–416, 421 Dalton-Puffer, C. 403–404 Daneman, M. 434 Darvin, R. 162, 166 Dasli, M. 481–482, 486 data collection 10, 73, 117–118, 137, 195–196, 207–208, 211, 234, 236, 245, 299, 333, 454, 456; methods 10, 42, 132–133, 169, 195, 206–208, 213, 223, 365, 440, 456–457 Davies, C. 64, 68 Davis, J. M. 167, 169, 452–453 Davydova, J. 457 De Bot, K. 6, 429, 431 De Felice, R. 242–243, 248–249 de Neys, W. 496, 498 De Pablos Ortega, C. 57, 360, 363 De Ruiter, J. 218, 222–223 Deardorff, D. K. 479–485, 490 Degen, J. 277

DeKeyser, R. M. 114, 117, 119–120, 125, 277, 356, 364 Dervin, F. 482–483, 485–486 Destruel, E. 499, 501 Deterding, D. 88 Developmental Learner Corpus (DLC) 245 Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) 482, 484–485, 489 Devrim, D. Y. 266 Dewey, D. P. 358, 366 Dewey, J. 340 Dialogue Act Markup in Several Layers (DAMSL) 249, 251 dialogue annotation and research tool (DART) 249, 251 Diao, W. 6, 132, 132, 135, 137–138, 217 Díaz, A. R. 482–483 Diepenbroek, L. 401, 404 digital games 8, 10, 251, 387–397; see also virtual Ding, J. 49 Dings, A. 102, 105, 233, 358, 361 DiPietro, R. J. 150 Dippold, D. 5 directness 3, 33, 133, 164–165, 310, 326, 379, 419–420; in- 32, 34–36, 41, 133, 179, 276, 281, 420–421 discourse completion test (DCT) 4, 8–9, 48–49, 51, 53–54, 56–58, 73, 88, 115, 117, 122–123, 137, 164, 169, 196, 198, 200, 204–208, 211, 223, 232, 234, 242, 290, 299, 299, 303, 310, 312–314, 316–317, 319, 326, 348, 377–378, 392, 408, 435–436, 457–458, 468; oral 53, 55, 58–59, 88, 115, 200, 204, 290, 310, 314, 316, 435 discursive approach 20, 28, 206, 310–313, 406 Diskin, C. 447, 450–456 ditransitive (VOO) 177, 185–186 Donato, R. 148 Dooly, M. 345 Dörnyei, Z. 6, 429–433, 436–437, 440 Douglas Fir Group, The 86 Drew, P. 180, 186, 414 Dreyfus, H. L. 100 Du Bois, J. W. 244 Dubinina, I. Y. 468, 469, 472 Duff, P. A. 1, 6, 44, 128, 130–131, 139, 141, 162, 171n3, 400–402, 425, 465 DuFon, M. A. 6, 132, 132, 134, 137, 167, 358, 360–361, 363–364, 437 Dupuy, L. 500, 505–506 Duran, C. S. 163 Dweck, C. 391 Eckert, P. 139 Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. 379 Edmonds, A. 49–51, 53, 56 Edmondson, W. 51 Edmonson, W. 19 Eggins, S. 260, 268 Egorova, N. 273, 281 513

Index

electrophysiological (ERP) 208, 272–273, 281 Elias, M. V. 468, 469 Elias, V. 468 Ellis, N. C. 124, 137, 176–177, 179, 186, 429, 431 Ellis, R. 5, 113, 120, 125n2, 339, 407 Engeström, Y. 154 English: American 90, 129, 164, 168, 227, 243–244, 447, 451–453, 459; British 84, 227, 244, 450, 457, 458n3, 459; Irish 449–454, 456, 459 English as a foreign language (EFL) 52, 67, 87, 116, 121–123, 153, 244, 260, 305, 315, 317, 325, 342–343, 403–406, 425, 434–436, 457; test of (TOEFL) 33, 78 English as a second language (ESL) 5, 52, 57, 59, 66, 68, 87, 99, 101, 163, 167, 181–182, 230–232, 236, 262, 281, 317, 319, 404–405, 409, 419–421, 436, 452–454 English for specific purposes (ESP) 417–418, 420 English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) 57, 59, 312, 316, 323, 426 Erickson, H. L. 104 Ericsson, A. K. 205, 207 Erman, B. 48 Eskildsen, S. W. 177–179, 182, 185–187, 187n1, 187n3, 233, 236 Eslami, Z. R. 164, 169, 377, 379–383 ethnomethodology (EM) 177–178, 212, 226, 235–236, 311–312, 349 European Commission 458 European Regional Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS+) 356 event-related potentials (ERPs) 273, 279, 282, 507 eye tracking 208, 281–282, 469, 507 Faerch, C. 113, 118 Falsgraf, C. 408 Fantini, A. E. 479, 481–486, 488 Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. 18–19, 26–27, 230, 233, 330, 339, 357, 360, 363–364, 396, 405–406, 438, 449 Fernández, J. 244–245, 247, 358 Fernandez, L. 150 Ferrenge, E. 249 Filipi, A. 406–407 Filppula, M. 448 Firth, A. 6, 227, 232–233, 235, 381, 404, 423 Firth, J. R. 97 Fishman, J. A. 458n1 Flores, C. M. M. 464 focus-on-form (FonF) 43, 68, 325, 340, 346, 347 Ford, C. 228 Fordyce, K. 289 foreign language (FL) 11n1, 52–53, 101, 107, 130, 153, 171, 216, 260, 263, 265–267, 275, 288, 291, 293, 305, 305n1, 311, 355, 361, 366, 380, 384, 402, 404, 413, 433–434, 458, 481–484, 487 form: comparison (FC) 123; search (FS) 123, 435 formality 1–2, 7, 89, 133, 151, 154, 165–166, 220, 310, 316, 413, 426, 456; in- 421, 426 Forrester, M. A. 181 514

Forsberg Lundell, F. 49, 56 Foster, P. 342 Foucart, A. 279–280 Fraser, B. 355 Frawley, W. 146–147 Freed, B. F. 102 French: learners 5, 24, 215, 244, 374, 500; speaking 98–99; students 148, 290 Fuchs, R. 458n2 Fujii, K. 361 Fukasawa, E. 360, 363 Fukuya, Y. 341 Fung, L. 244, 247 Furniss, E. A. 50, 52, 56–59 Gablasova, D. 244–245, 342 Gafaranga, J. 235 Gal’perin, P. Y. 105–106 Galaczi, E. D. 5 Galante, A. 406 Galperin, P. I. 150–151, 156 Garcia, M. J. B. 468, 474 Garcia, P. 32–33, 249, 252, 315 Gardner, R. 99, 187n1, 229 Garfinkel, H. 178–179, 226, 234–235, 311 Garland, J. 66 Garrett, P. B. 128–130, 164 Garrett-Rucks, P. 485 Gass, S. M. 2, 24, 205–206 Gatbonton, E. 120 Gautier, R. 366 Gauvain, M. 391 Gee, J. P. 266, 391 Geluykens, R. 97, 434 general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) 63–64 German: learner 51, 235, 244, 360, 374, 379–380; modal particles (MPs) 245, 375; speakers 196, 245, 261, 340, 360, 375, 378; students 315, 457 Ghavamnia, M. 198, 200 Gibbs, R. W. 274, 415 Gilabert, R. 343 Gilmore, A. 404–406 Gilquin, G. 242, 244, 247 Glide, M. 27 Godwin-Jones, R. 332 Goertler, S. 331 Goffman, E. 97, 107, 178, 226, 311 Golato, A. 200, 231, 314 Goldberg, A. 186 Gonzales, A. M. 333, 379, 394 GonzálesMoncada, A. 323 González Rey, F. L. 147 González-Lloret, M. 20, 236, 338, 340, 344–345, 346, 347–348, 374–375 Goodwin, C. 227 Goodwin, M. H. 97, 140, 402 Grabowski, K. C. 312, 316 grammar 1–2, 7, 32, 67, 78, 86, 94, 117, 120, 181, 242, 256, 267, 277, 291, 301, 303–305, 340,

Index

367, 404, 406, 470, 476; cognitive 177–178; interlanguage 47, 51, 55; knowledge 123–124; lexico- 146, 242, 256–257, 257; see also systemic functional grammar grammatical: competence 372; construction 181; development 107, 366; features 249, 251, 266, 376; format 180; lexico- 246, 249, 251, 256– 262, 265–266, 268; metaphor (GM) 263–265; structure 123, 262, 289 Granger, S. 47 Grant, L. 322 Gray, B. 250 Greek 5; Cypriot 504; Modern 504 Greene, J. C. 214 Greer, T. 167 Grice, H. P. 31–32, 34, 37–38, 41, 44, 81, 226, 230, 274–275, 359 Griffith, R. L. 480 Grosjean, F. 495 Gu, M. 168 Gu, Y. 171 Guardado, M. 469 Guilherme, M. 480–483, 490 Gumperz, J. J. 64, 129, 162 Gunnarsson, B.-L. 414, 419 Gut, U. 245, 249 Haenen, J. 105 Halenko, N. 362 Hall, E.T. 480 Hall, J. K. 17, 96–98, 104, 186, 235, 401 Halliday, M. A. K. 97, 107, 255–256, 257, 258, 260, 262–264 Halpern, D. F. 391 Hamblin, J. 35 Hammer, C. S. 495, 497 Hammer, M. R. 449, 489 Han, S. 360, 364 Hanks, W. F. 96 Hann, D. 66–67 Harmer, J. 324–325, 325, 329, 333 Harris, R. 8 Hartford, B. S. 314, 376 Hasan, R. 257–258 Hashemi, M. R. 212 Hasler-Barker, M. 27 Hassall, T. 6, 71, 115–116, 122, 132, 132–134, 137, 140, 167, 358, 361, 364, 424, 437 Hasselgren, A. 242, 244, 247 Hatoss, A. 322 Haugh, M. 73, 163, 171, 449 Hauser, E. 178–179, 233–234 Have, P. ten. 178, 249 Hawkins, M. R. 235 Hayes-Harb, R. 85 Hazel, S. 235 He, A. W. 130–132, 132, 136–137, 139, 141, 466 Heath, S. B. 130, 140 Heinemann, T. 180

Hellermann, J. 181, 186, 187n1, 231, 233, 235 Hendriks, B. 203–204 Henery, A. 150, 362 heritage learner pragmatics (HLP) 11, 462–465, 467, 468, 470, 472–475 Heritage, J. 218, 224, 229, 318 Hewings, M. 84 Hillman-Kobayashi, K. 219 Hinkel, E. 167 Hirschberg, J. 80–81, 83 Ho, V. L. 263 Hodson, R. 71 Hofstede, G. H. 480 Hogg, M. A. 162 Hoijtink, H. 222 Holden, C. 199, 208, 251, 333, 341, 393 Holliday, A. 486 Holmes, J. 413–422, 418 Holtgraves, T. 274, 276–278 Hong Kong 275, 323, 420, 489; Chinese speakers (HKC) 245 Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English 79, 245, 425 Hoot, B. 469 Hopper, P. 185 Horiba, Y. 279–280 Horiguchi, S. 404 Horn, L. R. 496 Hoshi, S. 407 Houck, N. 322, 405 Houghton, S. A. 482–483 House, J. 48, 51–52, 168, 405 Howard, J. 323 Howard, K. 129 Hubbard, P. 388 Hudson, T. D. 8, 308, 310–311, 314, 316 Huesca, R. 332 Hughes, A. 308 Hughes, R. 405 Hulk, A. 466 Hutchby, I. 19, 178 Huth, T. 27, 66, 231 Hyland, K. 245 Hymes, D. 94, 96, 129, 482 Iino, M. 358, 364 Illés, E. 68 illocutionary 50–51, 94; act 17–18, 230, 276; force 18–19, 21, 48, 93, 338, 423, 450, 472 implicature comprehension 31–33, 35–38, 41–44, 152, 201, 235, 403, 408, 498, 500–508, 508n4 impoliteness 81–83, 86, 93, 148, 170, 338, 359 Inawati, I. 338 indexicality 129, 150, 162, 166, 186, 355 individual difference (ID) 2, 107, 120, 123–125, 167, 213, 355, 357, 367, 429–441, 507 Initiation–Response–Feedback (IRF) 67, 379, 401–403 Institute of International Education 356 515

Index

instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) 7, 125, 288–289, 292, 301, 303 instruction: explicit 27–28, 121–122, 125, 289, 297–298, 303–304, 327, 338, 341, 375–378, 380, 382, 395, 400, 405, 419, 422, 424, 434; implicit 28, 121–125, 289, 297–298, 303–304, 327, 338, 341, 377, 400, 405, 435 interactional competence (IC) 3–5, 8, 10, 17, 24, 27, 93–107, 178, 180, 186, 219, 223, 333, 340, 358, 361, 402, 405–408, 438 Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) 489 intercultural: pragmatics 3, 38, 44, 170, 479, 486, 491; sensitivity 484, 488; see also Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) 2, 47, 51, 53, 152, 161, 169, 195, 291, 310, 349, 430, 432, 434–440, 458, 486 International Corpus of English (ICE) 450–451 International English Language Testing System (IELTS) 78, 87, 265 International Society for Conversation Analysis 236 international teaching assistants (ITAs) 85, 167, 242–243 internationally-educated nurses (IENs) 84–86 intersubjectivity 93–97, 99, 101–103, 105, 107, 178, 228–229, 231–232, 265, 395 Isabelli-García, C. 361 Ishida, M. 102–103, 106, 178, 187n2, 233, 358, 361 Ishihara, N. 4, 7, 57, 66, 132, 132, 135, 137, 139–140, 151, 153, 163, 165, 169, 171, 196, 251, 316, 318, 322, 326–327, 322, 387, 402–405, 408 Italian 405, 426, 466, 503, 505 Iwai, T. 406 Iwasaki, N. 132, 132, 135, 137, 154, 165–166, 169, 361 Jackson, J. 479, 486, 488–490 Jandt, F. 480 Jang, E. E. 215 Japanese: classes 5, 134, 402, 407; learners 6, 87, 116, 123, 134–135, 219–220, 231–232, 274, 325–326, 361, 376, 378, 402, 405, 408, 434–435, 437, 488, 500; speakers 39–40, 103, 133, 135, 165–166, 219, 223, 326, 376, 402, 503; students 94, 133 Jaspers, J. 69 Jefferson, G. 64, 227 Jenkins, H. 394 Jenkins, J. 168, 423 Jenks, C. J. 381 Jeon, E. H. 287–291, 296, 299, 300–301, 301, 303, 382, 400 Jessner, U. 431 Ji, P. 322 Johnson, J. 500, 502–503, 506 516

Johnson, K. E. 153 John-Steiner, V. P. 145–146 Jones, K. 165, 333, 405 Jucker, A. 242, 248 Juffs, A. 277, 279 Jurafsky, D. 249, 251 Jwa, S. 69 Kääntä, L. 403 Kachru, B. B. 171n2, 448 Kachru, Y. 448, 458n2 Kádár, D. Z. 169–170 Kakegawa, T. 376, 383, 408 Kakiuchi, Y. 404 Kalbermatten, M. 81 Kanagy, R. 132, 132, 134, 137–138, 401–402 Kane, M. 309, 317, 319 Kang, O. 78, 85 Kanoksilapatham, B. 249 Kanwit, M. 452–454, 456 Kappa, K. 70 Karrebæk, M. S. 235 Kasanga, L. A. 161 Kasper, G. 2–5, 7, 17, 19, 93, 96, 103–104, 113, 116, 120, 150, 154, 162, 168–169, 179, 187n1, 197, 199, 204, 206, 227, 230, 234, 272, 287, 289, 308–309, 311, 314, 316, 322, 338–339, 359, 387, 400, 405–406, 416, 430, 434, 437, 447–448, 458n1 Katsos, N. 505 Kayi-Aydar, H. 163 Kecskés, I. 3–4, 37–39, 43, 48–49, 51, 169, 465 Keevallik, L. 470 Kendrick, K. H. 218 Kermad, A. 87 Kern, J. 470 Kidd, J. A. 166, 169–170, 402–403 Kiesling, S. F. 129 Kim, E. Y. A. 20, 165, 375 Kim, H. Y. 167, 169, 430, 434 Kim, I. 470 Kim, J. 71–72, 150 Kim, M. 468 Kim, S. H. 232–233, 340–341 Kim, Y. 8, 122, 124, 178, 232–233, 343–344 Kim, Y.-H. 69 Kinginger, C. 102, 104, 131, 141n1, 148–149, 154–155, 355, 357–359, 361, 363–365, 367, 374, 437 Kirby, S. 389, 394 Kirkpatrick, A. 168, 481 Kiss, C. 213 Knight, D. 246, 250 Knowles, G. 84 Koester, A. J. 249, 413–414, 417, 419, 423, 425–426, 426n1, 426n2 Koike, A. D. 32 Koike, D. 468, 473 Kondo, S. 325, 360

Index

Korean heritage 136, 468, 471, 473–474; learner 122, 164, 167, 375, 452–453, 500; speakers 72, 167, 278, 375 Koschmann, T. 234 Koshik, I. 100 Kozulin, A. 152 Kramsch, C. 66, 93–94, 96, 102, 164, 170 Kubota, M. 43, 169 Kulick, D. 129–130, 139 Kuperberg, G. R. 279 Kupisch, T. 464 Kuriščák, L. M. 434, 436, 440 Labov, W. 196, 456 LaFlair, G. 245, 250 Lakens, D. 213 Lakoff, R. T. 345 Laleko, O. 469–471, 474 Lancaster, Z. 260, 263 Lancaster/IBM Spoken English Corpus 84 Langacker, R. W. 177–178, 187 language for specific purposes (LSP) 416–418, 420, 422–423, 425, 482 language socialization 6, 10, 43, 113, 128–132, 135, 138–141, 162–163, 165–166, 168, 181, 358, 366, 372, 394, 396, 400–402, 407–408, 416–417, 420, 422, 464–465, 468–469, 473, 475 Lantolf, J. P. 106, 145–147, 149, 151, 153–154, 156, 157n2, 163, 227 Larsen-Freeman, D. 6, 176, 429, 431–432 Larson-Hall, J. 305, 434 Laursen, H. 70 Lave, J. 139, 163, 324, 426n2 Lee, C. 275 Lee, J. H. 22–23, 26, 288, 296, 303 Lee, S. H. 22, 303 Lee, Y. A. 232–233 Leech, G. 114, 310, 487 Leeman, J. 463 Leitch, D. G. 146 length of residence (LOR) 52, 59, 104, 357, 360, 364, 436 Lenzing, A. 434 Leung, C. 149 Levine, T. R. 273 Levinson, S. C. 20, 178, 180–181, 230, 277, 355 Levis, J. M. 78, 89 lexical decision task (LDT) 273, 276 lexicon 67, 404; see also grammar, grammatical lexis 2, 7, 54, 177, 256, 346 Li, D. 6, 128, 131–133, 132, 137, 140, 420–422, 424 Li, Q. 121–122, 338, 468, 469, 471 Li, S. 8, 115, 117–119, 200, 208, 289, 430, 434, 436 Liamkina, O. 266 Liao, S. 167, 169 Liardét, C. L. 260, 262, 264 Liberman, Z. 497–408

Liddicoat, A. J. 66, 406, 485–486 Lieberman, M. 500–501, 509 Lieven, E. 177 Limberg, H. 338 Limerick Corpus of Irish English 450 Lin, H. 372–373, 381 Lin, P. M. S. 84–85 Lin, W.-C. 372 Lin, Y. L. 246, 250 Linck, J. A. 213 Lindström, A. 180 Littlejohn, A. 332 Liu, J. 315 Liu, Q. 291 Llinares, A. 260, 263, 267 Lo, A. 132, 132, 136–139, 469 LoCastro, V. 1, 4, 165, 167, 169, 387 Locher, M. A. 163, 170 Lockhart, R. S. 119 Lockwood, J. 425 Loewen, S. 7, 156 Long, M. H. 339, 345–346, 346 Lorenzo, F. 266 Louvain Corpus of Native English Conversation (LOCNEC) 244 Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI-FR) 244 Louw, K. 340 Lu, M.-Z. 163 Lucas, T. 66 Luff, P. 227 Lyster, R. 290, 303 McCabe, A. 264 McCarthy, M. 223 McDonough, J. 323 McDonough, S. H. 316 McEnery, T. 241 McGonigal, J. 391 McGrath, I. 323, 332 MacIntyre, P. D. 6, 433 McKay, S. L. 163, 458 Mackey, A. 301 Mackey, B. 222 McManus, K. 366 McNamara, T. 162 McNeill, D. 146 Mai, Z. 469–470 Mak, B. C. N. 413, 421 Maley, A. 324 Mandler, J. M. 280 Manley, M. 470 Manosuthikit, A. 469, 473 Markee, N. 98, 178, 187n1, 229 Marquez-Reiter, R. 18 Marriott, H. 364 Marsden, E. 292–293, 305 Martin, C. D. 280 Martin, J. R. 262, 265 517

Index

Martin, R. 64 Martínez-Flor, A. 97, 200, 322, 331 Martinsen, R. 357, 366 Marx, K. 154 Masuda, K. 165, 178, 187n2, 216–217, 361 Matsumoto, Y. 70 Matsumura, S. 202, 203, 357, 359, 363, 434 Matveev, A. 482 Maxim, H. 266 Maynard, D. W. 156n1 Meeuwis, M. 467 Mehan, H. 401 Meihami, H. 322 Mellow, J. D. 177 meta-analysis 9, 11, 214, 287–293, 296, 298, 299, 300–301, 303–306, 372–373, 381 Mey, J. L. 34, 355 Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) 50, 56–57, 59, 243, 327 Migge, B. 450–454, 456–457 Mikal, J. 332 Miller, D. 500 Miller, E. R. 163 Miller, R. 267 Milroy, J. 449 Mishan, F. 323 Mitchell, R. 244, 357–358 mixed methods 6–7, 10, 167, 212–220, 222–224, 313, 357, 366–367, 433, 437–438, 440, 459, 489 Miyake, A. 496 Mojica-Díaz, C. 363 Mok, N. 147 Mondada, L. 235 monolingual 19, 139, 141, 161, 164, 227, 463–465, 468–469, 471–472, 474, 495, 497–500, 502–508 Montrul, S. 463–464, 466–467, 469–470, 472 Moody, S. 69 Mori, J. 167, 232, 234, 407 Morishima, Y. 279 Morita, N. 403 Morollón Martí, N. 378–379, 382–383 morphology 51, 361, 375; see also syntax Morris, C. 31 Morris, K. 362 motivation 6, 123–124, 164–165, 169, 229, 311, 324, 349, 355, 357, 364, 366–367, 388, 391, 429–441, 484, 486 Mroz, A. 215 Mühlhäusler, P. 146 Mullan, K. 406 Müller, S. 242–244, 247 multi-dimensional analysis (MDA) 242, 250–251 multilingual 4, 10–11, 54, 63, 69, 88, 128, 141, 161, 164, 167–168, 171, 232, 235, 383, 389, 394–396, 430, 434, 436, 465, 491, 495, 497–502, 504–508, 508n1 Multimedia Adult English Learner Corpus 181 multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) 389–390 518

multiple choice questionnaires (MCQ) 8, 32, 36, 41, 117, 201–202, 202, 203, 206–207, 211, 290, 303, 314–316, 314–315, 456–457 multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) 8, 333, 392 Munro, M. J. 85 Muntendam, A. G. 473 Murphy, B. 450, 455 Murray, N. 171 Muysken, P. 467 Myles, J. 425 Nagy, N. 464, 467 Nakamura, J. 391 Nakane, I. 376, 383 Nakata, T. 120 Narita, S. 204 NasrollahiShahri, M. N. 166–167 National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) 309 native English speakers (NES) 84, 87, 204, 245–246, 274, 278, 317, 326, 435, 438, 500; non- (NNES) 246, 499 native speaker (NS) 4, 11, 21–25, 27, 48–51, 56–59, 85–88, 95, 102, 105, 116, 123, 134– 135, 141, 148–149, 152, 154, 161, 163–165, 167–168, 170–171, 203, 205, 216, 218, 227, 243–246, 248–249, 272, 276, 279, 304, 310, 315–316, 318, 339, 342, 359–361, 364, 374, 378, 394, 406, 423, 436, 438, 447, 450, 452–453, 455–457, 464, 472, 476, 481–482, 487, 495, 498–502, 508n2, 509; non- (NNS) 24, 51, 78, 85–86, 123, 161, 197, 203, 244, 272, 275, 279, 310, 394, 499, 508n2 Neary-Sundquist, C. 342 Negueruela, E. 149 Nestor, N. 447, 450–452, 454–457 Newton, J. 417, 425 Nguyen, H. t. 98–101, 106, 232–236 Nguyen, M. 197–199, 206 Nguyen, T. T. M. 121–122, 339 Nickels, E. L. 53 Niezgoda, K. 364 Nikula, T. 403–404 Ninio, A. 181 Nisbett, R. 204 Nitta, R. 433 Nizegorodcew, A. 404 Nolan, J. A. 180 Norris, J. M. 291–292, 301, 303, 330, 345, 346 Norton, B. 130–131, 157n3, 162–163, 166, 454 noticing hypothesis 7–8, 10, 43, 113, 120–125, 289, 358, 401, 416 Noveck, I. A. 272, 277 Nuzzo, E. 404–405 Ochs, E. 128–129, 135, 162, 164, 358, 400–401, 417, 465 Ogiermann, E. 200

Index

Ohta, A. S. 5–6,132, 132, 134, 137, 149, 151, 155, 216, 401–403, 408 O’Loughlin, M. 391 Ortega, L. 4, 140, 403, 429 Oskoz, A. 260, 267 Osuka, N. 360 Paap, K. R. 495, 497 Packer, M. 154 Paige, R. M. 484–485 Pallotti, G. 187n1, 231 Paradis, M. 146, 150–151, 156 Park, E. 469 Park, J. S. Y. 131 Pavlenko, A. 146 Pawley, A. 48 PekarekDoehler, S. 5, 24, 26, 98, 106, 178, 186–187, 187n1, 231, 233–235 Pennycook, A. 163, 170 Pérez Vidal, C. 355, 363 Perrett, G. 266 Peterson, M. 388 Petkova, M. 71–72 Petraki, E. 67 Phillips, M. 388 Pickering, L. 84–85, 88, 246–247 Pierrehumbert, J. 79–81, 83 Piirainen-Marsh, A. 236 Pike, K. L. 89 Piniel, K. 433 Pinto, D. 468, 472–474 Pitzl, M.-L. 88, 423 Plonsky, L. 214–216, 287, 291–294, 298–299, 301, 304 Poehner, M. E. 149, 151–152 Pojanapunya, P. 395 Polat, B. 244, 248, 416, 422 politeness 1–3, 7, 44, 64, 81–83, 86, 93, 103, 133, 135–136, 170, 203, 208, 248, 277–278, 291, 310, 316–317, 326, 330, 338, 340, 359, 376, 379–381, 419, 467, 473, 486–487, 489, 491; expression 355, 360, 469; markers 64, 404, 472; mock 73; negative 82–83; positive 82–83; routine 165, 402; theory 28, 179–180, 226, 230, 310, 313, 359; see also impoliteness Pomerantz, A. 35, 66, 69, 228–229, 312 Popovici, R. 323 Porte, G. 208 pragmalinguistics 2, 28, 49, 59, 104, 114–115, 167, 217, 246, 255–256, 259, 267, 291, 310, 317, 319, 342, 344, 346, 347–348, 356, 374, 377– 378, 393, 404, 414, 416, 419, 423, 425, 450, 471, 475, 487–489; awareness 435; features 346, 348, 392, 435; forms 115, 121–124, 137, 339, 347, 360, 373, 383, 407; knowledge 54, 114, 118, 310, 313, 319, 339, 348, 466, 490; resource 23, 47–54, 56, 340, 487; variation 449–450 pragmatic competence 2–8, 10, 17, 27, 44, 66, 69, 78, 87–89, 93–94, 97, 103, 113, 128, 154,

157, 161, 195, 201, 207, 247, 256, 258–259, 275, 277, 289, 304–305, 308–319, 338, 348, 355–356, 359, 361, 363–366, 373–374, 379–380, 383–384, 395–396, 400, 405, 408, 414, 424, 430, 436–437, 439–440, 462–465, 467–472, 474–476, 479, 486–491, 495, 502, 505, 507 Preece, S. 170 Prince, E. F. 505 Prodromou, L. 71 pronunciation 46, 67, 86, 89–90, 182, 231–232, 288, 301, 303, 474 Pullin Stark, P. 70, 423 Qin, T. S. 151–153, 152, 155–156 Rae, J. 97 Rai, M. K. 279 Rampton, B. 130 Raney, G. E. 279 Rau, D. 196 Reagan, D. 342 Rebuschat, P. 124 Reddington, E. 66, 74 Reder, S. 181 Regan, V. 361, 364, 457 Reinders, H. 388–389, 394 Reinhardt, J. 242–243, 247–248, 388 relevance theory (RT) 31, 34–35, 37–38, 41, 244, 275, 277, 282, 345, 359, 496 Relevance Theory (RT) 31, 34–35, 38, 41, 275, 277, 282, 345, 359, 496 Ren, W. 204, 206, 215, 217, 338, 355, 357–358, 360, 363 response time 35, 42, 118–119, 200–201, 207, 469 Riazi, A. M. 212, 214–216 Richards, K. 213 Riddiford, N. 326, 414, 417, 420, 422–423 Rijswijk, R. van 469, 473 Risager, K. 481–482 Ritchie, G. 323 Roberts, C. 414, 417, 425 Robinson, J. D. 218 Robinson, P. 8, 122, 124, 342–345, 429, 432, 434–436 Rockwell, P. 81 Rodríguez, G. A. 434 Rodríguez, S. 360, 363 Roehr-Brackin, K. 177 Roever, C. 8, 32, 42, 48–49, 51–53, 87–88, 290, 304, 308, 310–311, 313–314, 316–317, 396, 430, 434, 436–437, 440 Rogers, D. M. 403, 408 Rogers, J. 303 Rogers, R. 162 Rogoff, B. 96 role play 5, 8–9, 19, 22–28, 49, 53, 55, 67–68, 71, 88–89, 105, 117, 153, 169, 196, 198–200, 204, 206–208, 211, 217–218, 223, 230, 232–234, 519

Index

242–243, 246–248, 261, 290, 299, 299, 303–304, 310–312, 314, 316, 319, 326, 333, 359, 365, 378, 388, 406, 408, 419–422, 425, 435, 468 Romero-Rivas, C. 280 Romero-Trillo, J. 79, 86, 89 Ronald, J. 322 Rose, D. 265–266 Rose, K. R. 119, 400, 405 Rosenkjar, P. 332 Ross, S. J. 8, 19, 219, 308, 311 Rothery, J. 266 Rothman, J. 463–464, 473 Rubio-Fernández, P. 498, 505, 508 Rühlemann, C. 453 Russian: heritage speakers 472, 475; National Corpus 57, 59, 332 Ryan, J. 330, Ryan, R. M. 391 Ryshina-Pankova, M. 259–261, 263–267 Sacks, H. 17, 19–20, 38, 46, 97, 226–230, 235, 311 Saito, J. 419, 426 Sánchez-Muñoz, A. 470 Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE) 244 Sardegna, V. 380, 383 Sasaki, M. 215, 314, 316 Sauro, S. 372 Saville-Troike, M. 95, 101 Savova, L. 323 scalar expressions 272, 274, 277, 282 Scarcella, R. 48–49, 53 Schauer, G. A. 53, 58, 198, 207, 360, 363–364, 437 Schegloff, E. A. 19, 22–23, 38, 46, 97–98, 106, 178, 180, 187, 226, 228–230, 234, 312, 328, 328–329, 344 Schell, J. 388 Schieffelin, B. B. 6, 44, 128–130, 137, 163, 400, 465 Schleppegrell, M. J. 260, 262 Schmidt, R. 7, 43, 120–122, 179, 289, 358, 401, 403, 416; Noticing Hypothesis 113, 120 Schneider, K. P. 447–449, 458, 458n2 Schweinberger, M. 450–451 Scott, K. 395 Sealey, A. 186 Searle, J. R. 17–20, 28, 179, 226, 310, 359 second language acquisition (SLA): broader 169– 170; field 44, 469; issues 5, 32, 36; mainstream 4, 9, 227, 430, 432–434, 439; perspective 50, 416, 465; research 2, 4, 6, 8, 31, 47, 50, 90, 124–125, 128, 130, 170, 176, 212, 214, 223, 227, 429–433, 439, 486; studies 56, 58, 227, 280; theory 43; tradition 465, 468; see also instructed, conversation analysis Seedhouse, P. 19, 312 Segalowitz, N. 119, 277 Seidlhofer, B. 161, 168, 481 520

Sell, F. 457 semantic 31, 66, 70, 177, 179, 186, 228, 230, 256, 257, 258–259, 261, 263–264, 268, 277–281, 360, 457, 470–471, 497, 499, 501–502; discourse 260–261, 265–266, 268; formulas 22, 24, 50–51, 164, 392–393; meaning 68, 114, 277–278; patterns 97, 107; processing 280, 497–498, 501, 506–507; syntactic 290 Serafini, E. J. 433 Serratrice, L. 466 Sfard, A. 96 Shadish, W. 220–221 Shardakova, M. 66–67, 71, 73 Sharifian, F. 481 Shea, D. P. 94–95 Shimizu, T. 360 Shishavan, H. 200 Shively, R. L. 5–6, 22, 27, 32, 37, 44, 73, 82, 87, 131–135, 132, 137–140, 167, 196–197, 331, 358–359, 361–365, 487–489 Showstack, R. E. 469, 473 Sidnell, J. 227 Siegal, M. S. 132, 132, 135, 137, 139, 165, 169, 339, 364, 403, 503–506 Siemund, P. 450–451 Silverstein, M. 129 Simpson, R. C. 50, 243, 327 Sinclair, M. 401 Sinicrope, C. 480 Sinkeviciute, V. 73 situation-bound utterance (SBU) 48, 57 Skehan, P. 342, 244 Slabakova, R. 278–279, 500–502, 505, 509 Slobin, D. I. 146 Smagorinsky, P. 147 Soares, D. 389, 394 social media 8, 365, 397 socio-cognitive approach 4, 31, 37–38, 41, 43–44 sociocultural: knowledge 4, 290, 408, 424, 464–465, 487; norms 2, 74; structure 161–163, 171; theory (SCT) 8, 10, 113, 141, 145, 147–149, 153–157, 157n2, 157n3, 266, 289, 358 sociopragmatics 2, 59, 84, 122, 148, 217, 220, 231, 246, 251, 256, 259, 267, 310, 317, 319, 344, 346, 347, 356, 363, 373, 379, 394, 404, 406, 414, 416, 419, 422, 425, 458, 487; awareness 148, 217, 378, 382, 407, 420, 479, 488–490; competence 255,379, 420, 487, 489; factor 122, 343; feature 290, 342, 348; function 375; knowledge 48, 50, 54, 114, 118, 317, 339–340, 348, 383, 420–423, 465–466, 471; norm 219, 339, 348, 475; resource 104; rules 115; variation 449 Song, J. 469, 474 Sorace, A. 466, 499, 502 Spanish Corpus of Multimodal Speech Acts (Corpus Español Multimodal de Actos de Habla) (COREMAH) 246 Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpora (SPLLOC) 244

Index

Spanish: Andean 473; Argentinean 459; learners 5, 22, 37, 44, 82, 133, 196–197, 199, 201, 236, 245, 341, 374, 377–379, 382, 389, 452, 488; speakers 135, 279, 374, 378, 391–392; students 135, 341; Venezuelan 459 speech act: analysis 20, 28, 197, 199, 206, 208, 230, 250, 267, 359; automatic 243, 276–277; data 206, 208; development 22, 26; examining 17, 19, 21, 26, 28, 138, 472; explicit 276; implicit 274, 276; indirect 32–34, 81, 275–276, 499; in interaction 17–20, 26–28, 359; pragmatics 310, 313, 475; rationalist 310–311, 313; research 179–180, 241, 252, 310–311, 360; strategy 4, 197, 199–200, 325–326, 341, 346, 347, 450; theory 17–20, 28, 170, 179, 188, 226, 230, 310, 359, 491 Spencer-Oatey, H. 162–163, 359, 487 Sperber, D. 31, 34–38, 41–42, 244, 275, 277, 345, 496, 505, 508n4 Spitzberg, B. H. 101, 480, 482, 486 Stalker, J. C. 255–256 Staples, S. 84–86, 242, 246–250 Steinkuehler, C. 390 Sterling, S. 67 Stevanovic, M. 180 Streeck, J. 19 structural equation modeling (SEM) 213, 433, 435, 437 study abroad (SA): context 44, 103–104, 115, 141n1, 147, 150, 216, 366, 433, 437–438, 490; experience 42–43, 52, 87, 148, 150, 154, 331, 357, 362, 436; program 5–7, 9, 36, 52, 104, 139, 216–217, 322, 325, 327, 331–332, 360; settings 6, 26, 101–102, 197, 355–356, 359, 361, 365, 367; student 56, 73, 102, 131, 355–359, 361–366, 453 Su, Y. 22, 25–26 Suzuki, Y. 120, 124 Swain, M. 8, 145, 289 Swales, J. M. 249 Sydorenko, T. 68–69, 341 Sykes, J. M. 8, 199, 251, 333, 340, 362, 378, 381, 383, 388–393 syntax 24, 31, 51, 53, 82, 89, 100, 103, 116, 176–177, 187, 228, 251, 255–256, 264, 273, 277, 280, 361, 376–377, 419, 454, 464, 466, 468–473, 487, 499; morpho- 7, 47, 51–52, 66, 106, 120, 151, 374, 416; -pragmatics 466, 469–471, 476, 499, 502; see also semantic Syrett, K. 505–506 systemic functional: approach 268; grammar (SFG) 107, 257–259; linguistics (SFL) 10–11, 255, 265; theory 255, 266, 268 Szczepek Reed, B. 85–87, 89 Tagarelli, K. M. 432 Taguchi, N. 5–8, 17, 26–27, 35–37, 42–43, 49–53, 55–58, 73, 81–82, 87–88, 93, 102–104, 106, 113, 115–117, 121–122, 128–129, 131–134, 132, 137, 140, 152, 156, 168–169, 171, 179–180,

195–201, 202, 204, 206–208, 227, 231, 233, 235, 242, 258–259, 265, 275, 287–291, 297, 298, 303, 305, 308, 310, 315–316, 318, 322, 327, 333, 338, 341–342, 344, 348, 357–361, 363–364, 373, 379, 381–382, 387–388, 391, 393, 400–401, 403, 405–406, 408, 414, 430, 434, 437–440, 447, 462, 464–465, 468, 470–471, 487–488, 491, 495 Takahashi, S. 7, 116, 123–124, 274, 405, 430, 434–437, 440 Takamiya, Y. 378–379, 383 Takimoto, M. 8, 119, 121, 202, 203 Taleghani-Nikazm, C. 19, 180, 231 Tang, C. 279–280 target language (TL) 5–6, 11n1, 32, 50, 52–54, 56, 59, 59n3, 70, 78, 103–104, 120, 131, 140, 162, 180, 195, 206, 219, 223, 233, 281, 305, 324–325, 331, 338–340, 346, 346, 356, 362, 379, 390, 392, 395, 400, 402, 404–405, 407–408, 413–417, 419, 421–425, 437–438, 447–448, 451, 458, 458n1, 465, 483, 498 Tarone, E. 415–418, 422 task-based language teaching (TBLT) 9–11, 339–345, 346, 347–349 task: completion 122, 183, 205, 343, 346, 347; complexity 122, 341–344, 346, 348 Tateyama, Y. 51, 56 Tatsuki, D. 7, 322, 328, 330, 333, 405 Taylor, C. 73 television 72, 330 ten Have, P. 178, 249 Thackerar, J. 456 Theodórsdóttir, G. 233 theory of mind 273, 496–498, 504–505, 508 Thomas, J. 2, 31, 69, 114, 180, 338, 356, 487 Thomas, M. 388 Thompson, A. S. 433 Thorne, S. L. 383, 389–391, 394–395 Timpe-Laughlin, V. 255–256, 258, 315, 414, 416, 423–424 Tin, T. B. 69 Tocalli-Beller, A. 66 Tode, T. 177 Togo, K. 328 Tomasello, M. 156n1, 176–177 Tominaga, W. 19 Tomlinson, B. 323–325, 325, 327, 329–330 Trace, J. 417 transition-relevance place (TRP) 19, 103 Trevarthen, C. 102 Trinity Lancaster Corpus (TLC) 245 Trochim, W. M. 220 Tsai, M.-H. 381 Tsylina, M. 468 turn-constructional units (TCUs) 19, 228, 231 Tversky, A. 204 usage-based linguistics (UBL) 176–179, 186–187 U.S.-educated nurses (USNs) 84–86 521

Index

Ushioda, E. 429, 431, 433 Usó-Juan, E. 404 Uzum, B. 215–216 Vacas Matos, M. 246, 250 Valsiner, J. 147, 155 Van Berkum, J. J. 279 van Compernolle, R. A. 8, 146, 148–156, 156n1, 157n3, 163, 171, 217, 289, 339–340, 347–348, 373–375 Van Dam, J. 67 van den Branden, K. 339 van den Noort, M. W. 279 van Dijk, T. A. 19 Van Ek, J. A. 482, 487 Van Geert, P. 431 Van Patten, B. 8, 124, 324 Vandergriff, I. 380–381 Varghese, M. 163 variational pragmatics 4, 448–449, 457, 458n3, 458–459, 467 verb locative (VL) 177 verb object locative (VOL) 177 verb-argument constructions (VACs) 177 Verdugo, D. R. 245, 247 Verhagen, J. 498 Vietnamese: learners 99; teachers 67 VilarBeltrán, E. 360, 364 virtual: environment 8, 10, 121, 196, 199, 340–341, 387–389, 391–392, 394–396; games 9; see also multiuser vocabulary 1, 32, 53, 86, 89, 117, 120, 145, 148, 215, 242, 256, 277, 289, 301, 304–305, 355, 361, 403, 497, 503–505 Vyatkina, N. 375–376, 383 Vygotsky, L. S. 8, 105, 141, 145–151, 155–157, 156n1, 163, 266 Wagner, J. 227 Walkinshaw, I. 70 Walsh, S. 248 Walters, F. S. 312 Wanatabe, A. 231 Warga, M. 360 Waring, H. Z. 68, 231, 234, 401 Warren, M. 260, 262, 267 Watson-Gegeo, K. A. 128, 139, 403 Weedon, C. 162 Wehner, A. 391 Weigert, A. 266 Weigle, S. C. 250 Weinert, R. 48, 53 Weisser, M. 249, 251–252 Welch, C. 363 Wellington Language in the Workplace Project (WLWP) 419 Wells, G. 102–103

522

Wenger, E. 324, 417, 426n2 Wennerstrom, A. 84–85 Wertsch, J. 145–148 Whittaker, R. 262, 264, 267 Wierzbicka, A. 18, 486 Wigglesworth, G. 419, 422 Wildner-Bassett, M. E. 51 Wilkinson, S. 358, 364 Willett, J. 402 Winke, P. 281, 362 Wolfson, N. 2 Wong, H. 49–50 Wong, J. 38, 46, 322, 328, 407 Wong, K. F. 463, 466 Woodfield, H. 205–207, 360 Wooffitt, R. 214 Wootton, A. J. 181 world Englishes (WE) 88, 90, 168, 318, 448–449, 481 Wray, A. 48 Wu, Siew Mei. 263 Xiao, F. 116, 289 Xiao-Desai, Y. 465, 468, 469, 471 Xu, W. 357, 364, 434 Xuan, W. 262 Yalçın, S. 432 Yamanaka, J. 32–33, 37 Yamashita, S. O. 311, 315 Yan, X. 247, 250 Yang, J. 49–54, 56 Yang, L. 289 Yang, X. 287 Yasuda, S. 263, 266–267 Yates, L. 339, 345, 419, 421–423, 425–426 Yeh, S.-H. 57 Yim, Y. K. 132, 132, 134, 137, 139 Yoshimi, D. R. 132, 132, 136–137, 402, 404 Yoshitake, S. S. 311, 315 Youn, S. J. 8, 87–88, 120, 216–218, 311–313, 316 Young, R. F. 3–4, 8, 96–100, 103–104, 106–107, 138, 231, 233, 235, 401, 406 Yow, W. Q. 497–498 Yuan, Y. 314 Yule, G. 324, 387 Yus Ramos, F. 81 Yus, F. 395 Zegarac, V. 38 Zhu, H. 132, 132, 136–137, 140 Ziegler, N. 291, 372–373 Zimmerman, C. 391 Zimmerman, D. H. 234 Zimmerman, E. 167 zone of proximal development (ZPD) 145, 147–149, 151–153, 155–156 Zwaan, R. A. 279–280