Prosodic pragmatics and feedback in intercultural communication

Abstract

In intercultural communication there is one element that typically makes L2 speakers feel uneasy and insecure about their linguistic performance: prosody. Mastering the prosodic features of the L2, and their pragmatic implications, is often a herculean task that only some learners are able to succeed at. Most studies relate this difficulty to the fact that prosody is one of the first features that are settled in the process of language acquisition from which L2 learners cannot “escape” when they learn another language. In my opinion, the reason for this prosodic “inadequacy” is because pragmatic research is often detached from prosody, possibly because of the lack of a systematic analytical methodology.The aim of the article will be twofold: first, to present a systematic account of feedback in intercultural communication through the comparison of feedback pragmatic markers in speaker contexts: English L1 conversations, and English L1 conversing with English L2 speakers. Second, to develop the methodology of corpus pragmatics as a useful and reliable tool for intercultural communication.