Abstract

 
 
 This paper reports on an ongoing study of Dutch native speakers learning Italian as a foreign language in a guided learning context. The study compares native and non-native realization patterns of complaints, both in terms of the type of expression of judgment and the request for reparation performed (following the classifications suggested by Nuzzo, 2007), and of the use of modifiers. Special attention is given to the potential effects of learners’ language proficiency levels on the native- likeness of their realization patterns and of the quantity and variety of modifiers they used. Methods consisted of a sociolinguistic questionnaire, a written discourse completion test, and a conditional inference trees analysis of the production of 23 learners attending a B1 level course, 19 learners attending a B2 level course, and 23 native Italian speakers.
 
 
Highlights
The present paper reports on an ongoing study of how native Italian speakers and learners of Italian as a foreign language (IFL) perform complaints
This paper will address the following, focusing on the realization patterns of complaints: RQ1: What are the most common ways native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) of Italian express their judgment for a negative action that they find annoying? (Do they ask for reparation of the negative action with the same frequency and illocutionary force? That is, are there substantial differences between NSs and NNSs in terms of the selection of the complaint type to perform?)
The present paper analyzes initial data from on an ongoing study in two classrooms of Dutch NSs learning Italian as a foreign language in a language center in Belgium, 23 at a B1 level, 19 at a B2 level
Summary
The present paper reports on an ongoing study of how native Italian speakers and learners of Italian as a foreign language (IFL) perform complaints. Grounded in the field of acquisitional pragmatics of Italian as a second or a foreign language (Giacalone-‐Ramat, Chini, & Andorno, 2013), this paper focuses on pragmatic competence, considered here as the ability to perform specific communicative acts in a native-‐like way. The results of observation and analysis are compared with the native speakers’ linguistic behaviour and evaluated in terms of native-‐likeness. These results provide a first step for developing specific didactic methods, advancing recommendations on input to provide to learners, and studying whether didactic approaches have any significant effect on the cultivation of pragmatic competence.
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