Native-Like Performance of Pragmatic Features: Speech Acts in Spanish

Marta Vacas Matos,Andrew D Cohen

doi:10.1163/26660393-bja10034

Marta Vacas Matos, Andrew D Cohen

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-bja10034

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Abstract

Abstract This study had as its goal to investigate how nonnative speakers (NNSs) of Spanish were able to perform pragmatics which in various ways resembled that of native speakers (NSs). The study focused on three advanced NNSs of Spanish who had contributed data six years earlier to a corpus of NS and NNS speech acts of complimenting, apologizing and refusing. The purpose was to do a contrastive analysis comparing the pragmatic performance of NNSs and NSs in order to capture both similarities and areas where highly competent NNSs displayed knowledge gaps, however subtle. The subjects responded to a language background questionnaire regarding their learning of Spanish and also completed a learning style preference survey. They were then asked to revisit their earlier performance in pragmatics from the corpus data and to describe the strategies that they used to produce their highly-rated performance in Spanish pragmatics at that time. The findings revealed ways in which the three subjects differentially imitated NS behavior, and provided insights as to how they arrived at native-like behavior in their facial expressions, use of clicks, physical contact practices, colloquial language, and cursing. The subjects’ reported learning style preferences appeared to be generally consistent with the strategies that they reported using for dealing with the pragmatic features of interest, such as the way that they dealt with cursing.

Highlights

Any effort to describe the ability of NNSs to approach native-like performance requires identifying norms, which can be problematic
The current study aims to fill another gap in the research literature, namely, that of investigating the role that learning style preferences may play alongside language learner strategies such that TL learners are considered native-like in their pragmatic performance
5.6 Conclusions Employing a corpus like the COREMAH, which was productively used in this study with both native and non-native speakers, provided an opportunity to see differences in speech act performance between NSs and NNSs, but more importantly to see ways in which NNSs performed like NSs, and to explore reasons for this

Summary

Introduction

Any effort to describe the ability of NNSs to approach native-like performance requires identifying norms, which can be problematic. There are so-called ideal norms – where even the identification of the population to serve as the reference point for norms can be controversial – in contrast to judgments by NSs and advanced target-language (TL) users as to whether the observed pragmatic behavior fits their sense of what is appropriate in that situation within that context. The issue arises as to whether performance of pragmatics in the media mirrors unscripted, real-life behavior. The actors’ performance tends to be highly scripted and rehearsed. In order to make leading heroes in films more attractive to viewers, the script may have them behave less boorishly than they might behave in a given real-world situation. In real life both NSs and TL learners do not usually have the luxury of rehearsing their lines before delivering them, resulting in an unpolished delivery which in and of itself could result in pragmatic failure

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