The Pragmatic Effects of the Second Language on Native Language’s Acquisition and Application in Conversational Context

Abstract

With the development of frequent communication between countries, the present paper aims to explore the pragmatic effects of the second language on native language’s acquisition and application, especially in the conversational context. During the application of a foreign language, the Second Language (L2) is also exerting a latent influence on the use of the First Language (L1), which is named as "reverse transfer." The data is collected from a questionnaires and transcripts of recorded audios. There are 100 participants involved, who were seperated into three groups. After the comparison between groups, this research conducted a quantitative analysis of the data. Main findings were: 1) The influence of the L2 on the L1 can be understood as the application of the native language is influenced by the foreign language in the process of SLA. 2) The reverse transfer is not outstanding at the early stage of the beginning of language study. However, there will be more impact of L2 on L1 when the learner achieves proficiency at some level of their L2. 3) At present, the study of the backward effects of a second language on a native language has attracted extensive attention to language acquisition and application in the pragmatics field. However, scholars have held disparate views on the extent to which the second language affects the first language. Therefore, the study of the reverse effect of the second language on the native language can help bilingual learners better acquire and improve their bilingual ability. Future researchers are likely to be inspired to work on the application of the second language in manifold categories of pragmatics, which can have further preventive measures in infection control of bilingual speech-language pathologies, such as communication disorders and cognitive-communication disorders. Furthermore, it can better avoid communicative lingerings, cross-language intrusion, and first language attrition.