Sociopragmatic Competence Research Articles

과업기반 수업을 활용한 초등영어 요청화행 지도의 효과

The purpose of this study is to investigate a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach to teaching pragmatic competence for EFL elementary English learners focusing on requests. A series of 15 task-based lessons was developed to teach requests to 6th-grade English learners for eight weeks. In terms of choosing target request expressions, various request expressions were initially extracted from the English curriculum and textbooks and additional request strategies were added. Three target tasks that require request expressions were designed, incorporating pragmatic social variables such as power, distance, and imposition. Each task differed in terms of difficulty and complexity. Students’ pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence were evaluated using a discourse completion test (DCT) as pre- and post-tests. Rating criteria, assessing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence, were also developed and two raters evaluated the learners’ pragmatic production on DCT items to ensure inter-rater reliability. The findings revealed that the TBLT approach was effective in teaching EFL elementary school students’ request competence in terms of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic components. We discuss potential challenges and directions in teaching pragmatic competence for elementary school students in Korea.

A Variationist Study of Quotative System in the Non-native Speech of French

Abstract: Based on sociolinguistic data collected with 40 Chinese L1 learners of French in Paris, this article examines the quotative markers used by nonnative speakers of French in their direct speech reporting. Our results confirm previous findings in other ethnic groups that both linguistic and extralinguistic factors influence the use of some socio-pragmatic variables in non-native speech. On the one hand, it provides new data on the acquisition of socio-pragmatic competence by a less studied learner group; on the other hand, it offers a further reflection on the influence of linguistic taboo on learners’ L1 and the impact of the critical period in the immigration process on their language acquisition.

The pitch contour of the French discourse marker donc: A corpus-based study using generalized additive mixed modeling

AbstractIn this article, we explored the pitch contour patterns of the French discourse marker donc in realizing different pragmatic functions from native and non-native oral corpora in French. Statistical analyses using generalized additive mixed modeling revealed that even though Mandarin Chinese L1 speakers learning French also used the pitch cue to realize pragmatic functions, their prosodic pattern is different from the native pattern. Their L1 Chinese seemed to influence their usage of the pitch cue significantly. In addition, women were shown to be better than men in using the pitch cue in conveying pragmatic functions with a closer pattern to the native pattern. Overall, our study sheds new light on the relationship between speakers’ L1 and L2 regarding the interaction between pragmatic and prosodic features. It also provides new reflections on the acquisition of socio-pragmatic competence.

An Investigation of Teachers’ Attitude towards developing Kurdish EFL University Students’ Sociopragmatic Competence

This research aims at finding out the attitude of teachers toward developing Kurdish EFL university students’ verbal and non-verbal sociopragmatic competence, and the problems of developing this sort of competence that are mainly cultural problems. The sample of the study consists of fifty EFL instructors, who have experienced in teaching speaking, conversation, communication, and cross-cultural communication at the colleges of education and basic education at six universities: Sulaimani, Salahaddin -Erbil, Duhok, Halabja, Charmo and Garmian Universities A quantitative method has been adopted for this study and the data have been collected through using a survey questionnaire. The findings of the research reveal that teachers regarded sociopragmatic competence as an essential part of teaching in EFL classes. The findings also show that teachers agree that the problems of developing sociopragmatic elements relate to the fact that students lack cultural knowledge and they are unable to identify cultural similarities and differences between Kurdish and English.

Social and pedagogical approach in the process of forming the foreign students competence at the university

The article determines on the base of sociopedagogical approach in the process of sociopragmatic competence of foreign students at university as necessary condition of their social adaptation to the life in new circumstances of foreign country. The formation of sociopragmatic competence of foreign students is considered on the institutional and environmental, interactive and inactive levels of analysis.

Mitigating requesting acts by deaf Jordanian adults

Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate the linguistic mitigating devices that deaf Jordanian adults use when making requests. To this end, a sample of 52 people (of whom 26 were hearing and 26 were deaf) was collected through a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). It was found that the two groups of participants showed variations in the way they structured their request acts and spelled them out. This was evident in the deaf group’s obvious underuse of certain request mitigation strategies and the lexico-grammatical items mapping them; in the absence of some strategies (i.e., sweetener, promise of reward, hint, and threat); and in the underassessment of social distance, relative power, and degree of imposition. This inappropriate use of requesting acts by deaf participants is attributed to their inadequate linguistic, pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic competence. The study concludes with some suggestions how to improve the Jordanian educational system for the deaf.

Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills

International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators’ perspectives on international students’ communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students’ general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students’ understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies.

Reverse Back the Car: Reduplication as Language Variation in Nigerian English Usage

This paper investigates the use of reduplicated English elements as aspects of Nigerian English usage in the speech events among participants in Calabar, a multilingual city in Southern Nigeria. The study adopts Variationist Sociolinguistics and Sociopragmatic Competence as the theoretical foundations because both account for the occurrence of variation and semantic change resulting from interference from L1 and other factors. The data for the study were generated through a two-year field investigation by means of participant observation and audiotape recording of interactions among participants who are bi/multilingual in English and one or more Nigerian indigenous languages. The active sites where the data were extracted include interactions among participants in the University environment, markets, churches and other social gatherings, and discussants on television and radio programmes. The findings indicate that the use of reduplicated elements cut across ages, gender, social status, and the diverse ethnolinguistic and educational backgrounds of Nigerians. These features of Nigerian English occur as lexical reduplication which combines identical elements in the open class system and the semantic reduplication that denotes redundancy and other contrastive forms. The features generate new semantic forms that perform several sociopragmatic functions within the Nigerian sociocultural context indicative of variant of new Englishes as outcome of English contact with indigenous languages.

Refusal Strategies among Spanish-English Bilinguals: Comparing Adolescents with Hearing Loss to Adolescents with Typical Hearing

Abstract This study compares the sociopragmatic competence demonstrated by adolescents with hearing loss to that of adolescents with typical hearing raised in a bilingual Spanish-English context. We examine the speech act of refusals made by sixteen subjects, 12–19 years old, from the city of Miami, Florida. Eight of them were typically hearing. The other eight were diagnosed with bilateral severe to profound prelingual hearing loss before 2 ½ years of age and used spoken language as their primary method of communication. Our main objectives were: 1) to describe the preferred politeness strategies of these individuals while performing refusals in English and in Spanish; 2) to assess the degree of (in)directness with an interlocutor depending on power and distance; and 3) to determine if some pragmatic transfer occurs from one language to the other. The pragmatic abilities of both groups appeared higher in English than in Spanish, but it cannot be concluded that adolescents with hearing loss lack pragmatic abilities in either language.

Realisation of the Speech Act of Request, Suggestion and Apology by Libyan EFL Learners

This study investigates the three speech act strategies of request, suggestion and apology in Libyan Arab EFL undergraduate students (AREFLUS) and Amazigh EFL undergraduate students (AMEFLUS). It also examines their linguistic and pragmatic competence in these strategies. Two Libyan universities (Sebha and Zwara) are selected for the study, which includes 50 AREFLUS and 37 AMEFLUS participants. To investigate the students’ socio-pragmatic and pragma linguistic competence, two instruments are used: a questionnaire in the form of a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and a rating scale. The results reveal numerous similarities between the Libyan Arab and Amazigh participants in performing all the speech act strategies of request, suggest and apology. However, some significant differences regarding gender are found among Libyan EFL students. Overall, both groups appear to be more competent in functioning than in structuring the three mentioned speech act strategies.

Modality across genres in Spanish as a heritage language

Abstract Writers’ use of modality, an interpersonal linguistic resource commonly used for expressing probability, reveals key information about their claims. Most research on modality addresses L2 English learners, leaving a gap in research in advanced language development in other languages. This paper addresses this gap by studying how heritage language (HL) speakers of Spanish express doubt and probability in Spanish and how the lexicogrammatical features they use across genres reveal how they express these meanings. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics and pragmatics, this study examines modality in 125 texts written in Spanish by HL students in the U.S., including narratives, expositions, article reviews, personal responses, and research papers. The results reveal that students use the most modality resources in personal responses and the least in reviews. This work offers insights about the interpersonal resources writers choose to express their argumentative stance and the socio-pragmatic competence in writing among HL students.

Investigating language identities of international postgraduate students in Britain: a qualitative inquiry

ABSTRACT This paper explores eight Kazakhstani postgraduate students’ reflections of their international educational experiences in the UK after their immediate re-entry into Kazakhstan. Special focus was on their language identity development after their one-year stay in the UK. It was informed by Benson et al.’s ([2013]. Second Language Identity in Narratives of Study Abroad. London: Palgrave Macmillan) three-dimensional model of L2 identity: (a) identity-related aspects of L2 proficiency, (b) linguistic self-concept, and (c) L2-mediated aspects of personal development. The qualitative data collected from a written narrative and three subsequent rounds of individual semi-structured interviews suggest that most participants had lofty goals in the first period of their study abroad. They gradually became aware that full immersion in the host country could take a long time, and accordingly, they set concrete goals. The analysis of the data also revealed that the participants exercised their agency in displaying their development of sociopragmatic competence and a global citizenship identity, by respecting different opinions and accepting cultural differences. Nevertheless, some of them experienced racism based on their usage of English and presumed ethnicity. This study underlines the significance of introducing pedagogical interventions in all phases of study abroad to avoid student sojourners’ unrealistic or impractical goals and empower their language identities.

Use of Refusal Strategies among Saudi EFL Students: An Investigative Study

The current study seeks to probe the use of refusal strategies and their frequency among Saudi EFL students of Bachelor of Science (BS) at Moon University (pseudonym), Saudi Arabia. Through a convenient sampling procedure, 20 students were selected, and Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was administered. This test comprised 12 situations eliciting refusals to suggestions, requests, offers, and invitations. Their answers were then coded using the refusal strategies categories laid down by Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz (1990) and were analyzed via content analysis. Each participant’s refusal strategy for each speech act was analyzed using descriptive statistics, to discover exact frequency counts. The results indicated that the indirect refusal strategies were adopted by Saudi EFL students with greater frequency than the direct strategies even though Saudi culture is characteristically inclined towards directness resulting in numerous face-threatening acts. The results demonstrated the tendency towards the use of adjuncts by EFL students which to some extent indicated the cultural grooming of interlocutors. Moreover, lack of pragma-linguistic competence was reflected in flawed and ambiguous syntactic structures which impacted the clarity of meaning. The findings also suggested that in this globalized world where cross-cultural communication is unavoidable, the teaching of English should be geared towards the development of both pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic competence among EFL students.

Pragmatic failures in public-sign translation: an eco-pragma-translatology analysis of environmental signage in Quanzhou

Abstract This study proposes an integrated model called the Eco-Pragma-Translatology Model (EPTM) with four Kernel Guidelines for accounting for translation of public (environmental protection) signs. An EPTM analysis of pragmatic failures in public environmental protection signs (from the database) demonstrates that the ubiquitous errors and mistakes of rendering come under the rubric of pragmalinguistic failures of translation, sociopragmatic failures, or pragmatic failures straddling boundaries and leads to the conclusion that translators should correspondingly enhance their pragmalinguistic and/or sociopragmatic competence. EPTM is a new, interdisciplinary theoretical approach that largely applies to issues of poor translation of public signs.

Teaching and learning how to make requests in different contexts in Italian as a foreign language

This study is motivated by the dearth of research in pragmatic instruction in Italian as a foreign language (IFL) with beginner learners. Based on the limitations in the way IFL textbooks present requests, instructional material was designed with the following objectives: to improve learners’ pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competences and to raise their awareness of request realisation across different contexts. The material, designed for a 60-minute pedagogical intervention, was then used in an Italian language school in Sao Paulo with five intact classes of beginner Brazilian learners of Italian. We implemented a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental methodological design, where three classes were randomly selected to serve as the experimental group, and two classes served as the control group. The data collected through written DCTs and simplified retrospective questionnaires revealed that the learners in the experimental group showed a more significant improvement in their socio pragmatic, pragmalinguistic and metapragmatic competence compared to the control group. These results suggest a positive effect of consciousness-raising activities on learners’ declarative knowledge in the short term.

The Sociopragmatic and Pragmalinguistic Strategies in L2 Pragmatic Competence: A Case of Pakistani ESL Learners

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the existing literature on teaching ESL by investigating Pakistani learners’ responses to the apology speech acts. The study considered the two primary aspects of pragmatic competence: pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic. A multimethod data collection approach – a discourse completion task and a scaled-response questionnaire – was employed to elicit performance and perception data from 150 participants divided into three groups. Findings indicate that Pakistani ESL learners mostly produced the semantic content consisting of cultural-specific and language-specific patterns of apology responses. There also occurred pragmatics transfer in the use of apology responses of Pakistani ESL learners. Findings suggest the inclusion of sociopragmatic competence into the ESL curriculum.

A comparative sociopragmatic analysis of the dialogues in Turkish and Azerbaijani B1-B2 EFL textbooks

Different communities assess social distance, social power, rights and obligations, and degree of imposition used in specific speech acts differently. As a result of this difference, foreign language learners are likely to make sociopragmatic failure. This kind of failure is harder to correct because of the learners’ justifiable sensitivity in social (or political, religious, and moral) matters. Nevertheless, the research has proven the effectiveness of instruction on development of learners’ awareness of sociopragmatic aspects of language use. However, there is almost no investigation on the representation of sociopragmatic variables in second or foreign language textbooks. Considering that textbooks are essential for providing input for the learners in development of their sociopragmatic competence, we compared EFL textbooks designed for and employed in public schools of Turkey with those designed for and employed in public schools of Azerbaijan, to evaluate how sociopragmatic and related variables have been addressed in dialogues present in these textbooks. The results of the investigation revealed that there are some significant differences between Turkish and Azerbaijani textbooks regarding representation of speech acts, vertical distance, and strength of socially defined rights and obligations. These differences, on the other hand, can be accounted for by the inadequate representation of speech situations. By this study, we aspired to draw textbook writers’ attention to such inadequacies elimination of which may result in sociopragmatically more adequate textbooks, and attract second- or foreign language teachers and learners’ attention on the significance of sociopragmatic competence for appropriate language use.

Politeness of Vietnamese Students in Writing Request Email in English: a Course-based and Socio-pragmatic Study

This exploratory study investigates politeness strategies employed by Vietnamese EFL learners when writing English request emails sent to foreign and Vietnamese professors and school staff. A corpus-based critical discourse analysis is used to analyze sub-elements of politeness including the degree of imposition, terms of address, request-giving strategy and lexicon-syntactic modifier. The results support the assumption that Vietnamese language pragmatic knowledge is deeply ingrained and has tremendous influence on students’ L2 email writing skills. The study also reveals that Vietnamese students applied a high level of imposition with formal term of address and salutation, directness strategies with the overuse of “please” and other hedges. While gender is not a determining factor, the inflexible adoption of fixed phrases and syntactic-lexical devices were attributed to the lack of sociopragmatic competence. Thus, apart from linguistic knowledge, the role of cultural awareness and socio-pragmatic knowledge should be highlighted in communicative English learning and teaching.

Sociopragmatic competence in American and Chinese children’s realization of apology and refusal

This study explores the cross-cultural difference in the change of sociopragmatic competence by collecting perception and production data from native English-speaking children and native Mandarin Chinese-speaking children. The study focused on the development of interlocutor sensitivity in the realization of speech acts of apology and refusal. The participants consisted of four groups: American 1st-grade, American 8th-grade, Chinese 1st-grade and Chinese 8th-grade students. The children’s interlocutor sensitivity was examined through the following aspects: (1) their perception of severity of the offense, (2) their perception of the “need to be more polite” when apologizing to or refusing a familiar interlocutor or an interlocutor with higher social status, and (3) the use of apology and refusal strategies. The results showed that cross-cultural differences exist in the change pattern of interlocutor variation.

THE EFFECTS OF IMPLICIT VERSUS EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS TO TEACH REFUSAL STRATEGIES ON STUDENTS’ SOCIOPRAGMATIC AND PRAGMALINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

Abstract
 The purposes of the study were to explain the effects of implicit instruction on student’s sociopragmatic competences, implicit instructions on students’ pragmalinguistic competences, explicit instructions on students’ sociopragmatic competences, explicit instructions on students’ pragmalinguistic competences, the differences between implicit and explicit instructions on students’ sociopragmatic competences, the differences between implicit and explicit instructions on student’s pragmalinguistic competences, and the interaction between instructions with the students’ sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competences. The study used a quantitative research by using experimental factorial design 2x2. The data were taken from 80 second semester students at English Language Education Study Program at STAIN. The result of the study revealed that the mean score of post-test in implicit instruction on students’ sociopragmatic was 80.000 while explicit 92.550. Meanwhile, the mean score of post-test in implicit instruction on students’ pragmalinguistic was 83.000 while explicit 95.5000. It could be concluded that explicit has better effect to teach refusal strategies than implicit instruction on students’ sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence based on the difference between the means score on implicit and explicit.