Corpus linguistics in L2 pragmatics research

Abstract

AbstractIn second language acquisition, corpus linguistics (CL) enjoys prominence as a methodology valuable for its descriptive power in the textual analysis of patterns. Within second language (L2) pragmatics, CL has been increasingly influential in shaping our understanding of learners’ pragmatic capacities and articulating new insights and possibilities. In this narrative review, I take a broad view of corpora in L2 pragmatics research with a focus on automatization, size, representativeness, temporal design, and annotation. This is followed by a review of representative research highlighting language proficiency, prosodic pragmatics, pragmatic particles and oral fluency, and pragmatics pedagogy. I conclude with future directions where the discussion centers on bringing CL and other methodologies together for pragmatic analysis and extending the use of these methodologies to more L2 pragmatic learning contexts.