Metapragmatic awareness and pragmatic production of third language learners of English: A focus on request acts realizations*1

Abstract

The present study attempts to expand the scope of investigation on the role of bilingualism in third language use. Recent studies have attributed an advantage to bilinguals over monolinguals with respect to particular aspects of language use like communicative sensitivity(Oskaar, 1990), metalinguistic awareness(Cenoz & Valencia, 1994; Jessner, 1999; Lasagabaster, 1998) and interactional competence(Jessner, 1997). Nevertheless, very little research to date has been devoted to investigate pragmatic competence of third language learners(Fouser, 1997). On that account, our study aims at ascertaining the effect of bilingualism in third language learners' pragmatic production and metapragmatic awareness with a focus on request acts linguistic formulations. Regarding pragmatic production, we analyzed the use of request formulae by 80 monolingual(Castilian) and 80 bilingual(Catalan and Castilian) female learners of English as a foreign language in a discourse completion test and role-play task. We also contrasted participants' responses to a discourse evaluation test in determining their degree of metapragmatic awareness. Results from our analysis point to the advantage of bilinguals over monolinguals in justifying their evaluation on the appropriateness of certain requests'strategies to particular contexts, as well as on their use of request realizations. Findings from our study seem to call for further research on the pragmatic competence of third language learners of English thereby considering other speech acts or pragmatic aspects and also by analyzing subjects from different linguistic backgroun ds.