Assessing Development of Meta-Pragmatic Awareness in Study Abroad

Abstract

The research reported herein is part of a larger project, sponsored by the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER), a National Foreign Language Resource Center at the Pennsylvania State University. This project aims to examine the achievement of foreign language learners in relation to the access to social and interactional affordances these learners negotiated in the host community during a study abroad sojourn in France in Spring, 2003.
 The present paper explores a methodology for assessing learners’ meta-pragmatic awareness of variation in French language use. “Meta-pragmatic awareness” is defined as knowledge of the social meaning of variable second language forms and awareness of the ways in which these forms mark different aspects of social contexts, and is therefore “a crucial force behind the meaning-generating capacity of language in use” (Verschueren, 2000: 439). For this paper, we take as a test case for the study of this phenomenon the learners’ awareness and use of address forms, or the “T/V system” in French (Brown & Gilman, 1960). The “T/V system” (tu versus vous in French) is a key component of sociolinguistic competence in European languages, presenting a complex, dynamic, and inherently ambiguous matter of social indexicality, a case where knowledge of language form necessarily intersects with broader awareness of socio-cultural norms and personal identities (Morford, 1997; Mühlh.usler & Harré, 1990). The differential use of these pronouns offers a significant communicative resource conveying a range of meanings about the relationship between interlocutors, the context of the interaction, and the standing of the interactants in the wider social order.