The speech act of disagreement has been one of the speech acts that receive the least attention in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, in terms of both linguistic and non-linguistic realization of disagreement strategies. The present study was aimed to investigate how Chinese EFL learners perform the speech act of disagreement in English by comparing SRQ and DCT data from four groups of speakers, including 60 native speakers of Chinese, 60 native speakers of English, 30 EFL-low proficiency speakers, and 30 EFL-high proficiency speakers. The speakers¡¦ language performance in variation with several contextual factors, such as formality of context, social distance, social status, speaker gender, interlocutor gender and topic, was also examined. The data on linguistic strategies showed that the Chinese speakers avoided disagreement more often while the English speakers frequently used direct disagreement characterized by various and original positive remarks as softening devices. It was also found that the perception data, from the SRQ and the opt-out reasons, suggests rich ¡¥sociopragmatic judgments and motivating factors that have explanatory power in describing products of pragmalinguistic decisions¡¦ (Bonikowska, 1988: 173). Therefore, as evidenced by the perception data and supported by sociological theories, the individualistic culture¡¦s emphasis on ¡¥I¡¦ consciousness might have promoted the English speakers¡¦ bald verbal expressions while the collectivistic culture¡¦s priority of ¡¥we¡¦ concept and face concern have explained the Chinese speakers¡¦ harmony orientation in disagreement. Moreover, cultural difference in distinction between in-group and out-group signified differences in language performance when the speakers were disagreeing with the interlocutor at the longest distance, that is, the stranger or the clerk. As for the interlanguage, the EFL-low speakers behaved closer to the Chinese native speakers in using such strategies as ¡¥avoidance¡¦ and ¡¥contradiction¡¦. The EFL-high speakers overperformed ¡¥challenge to the interlocutor¡¦ when disagreeing with the close friend in order to demonstrate their English proficiency. In addition, both the EFL groups performed non target-like linguistic features partly due to pragmatic transfer from Chinese. In the future, more interlanguage research could elicit the speakers¡¦ perception of the speech act under study, which would supply abundant evidence of cross-cultural differences in social values and other motivating factors that could help interpret the EFL learners¡¦ realization of speech acts.

The present study investigated learners’ interlanguage pragmatic development through analysis of ninety requestive emails written to a faculty member over a period of up to two years. Most previous studies on interlanguage pragmatics have been comparative. These studies focused on how nonnative speakers’ pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence differed from native speakers’ and compared learners with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to native speakers. In addition, the few existing literature on developmental pragmatics have used elicited. Naturally occurring data, in the form of emails, offer a more valid reflection of learners’ pragmatic competence. This study adopted speech event analysis approach, which seeks to account for all parts of requestive emails and recognize the “work” each part does in the production of the speech event. Results indicated that although quantitative analysis did not indicate much pragmatic development, content analysis revealed learners’ development of pragmatic competence such as showing ability, clearer requests and relevant supportive moves and improvement from a reason then request to request then reason structure. This study elucidated the merits of analyzing natural data in interlanguage pragmatics as well as offered the benefit of recognizing email requests as a situated event.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Li Yang / This study investigates and compares politeness strategies of Turkish learners of English (TLE) and American English speakers (AE) when they produce the speech act of refusal in English. A total of 24 participants took part in this study and each of them completed a background survey, an open role play and a semi-structured interview. The role-play asked all of the participants to refuse a party invitation offered by a classmate/colleague and was audio-recorded. The refusal interactions were coded according to the classification proposed by Beebe et al. (1990), and the sequence of the refusal interactions (i.e., head act, pre- and post-refusals) was also examined. The results showed that providing excuse/reason/explanation was the most preferred strategy by both groups overall, but closer examination of the strategy revealed that the TLE group was more specific in their explanations compared to the AE group. In addition, when the conductor of the role play insisted on the invitation, the AE group continued to refuse without giving specific reasons, whereas the TLE group chose to provide elaborate reasons upon insistence. During the interview session after the role play, the TLE group commented on cultural factors that influenced their choice of refusal strategies. Based on the findings, this study also proposed implications of the teaching of pragmatics in the English as a second language (ESL) context.

This project deals with the sociocultural and pragmatic aspects of second language acquisition. Most current research in this field examines the ability of second language learners to produce socioculturally appropriate utterances in simulated speech settings. Researchers are interested in whether students can interact adequately within the confines of both their linguistic competence and the foreign culture's interactional norms. Analyses of learners' speech routines are quite valuable to our understanding of their ability to enact conversational routines. However, they do not indicate to use what the learners understand; that is, they do not tease apart what learners understand to be true about the language from what they can do under the pressure of performance. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for 'you,' ty (informal/intimate) and Vy (formal/polite). In this project, the term understand is used in two ways, each of which is tested empirically. First, understanding implies knowledge about the pragmatic impact of the pronouns. Do learners correctly indicate which pronoun is appropriate in context? Second, understanding is listening ability. Do learners utilize their pragmatic knowledge when they listen to native speech? Or do proficiency factors, individual learner characteristics, syntactic saliency (overt pronoun vs. pro-drop), and overall attentional limitations affect their listening ability? Students at Middlebury College and at the University of Iowa participated in two experimental tasks evaluating their pragmatic knowledge and listening ability with the ty / Vy feature: (a) a metapragmatic judgment task and (b) a listening task using video clips from famous Russian films. Results indicate that pragmatic knowledge is not significantly different across proficiency levels, nor is perception of the pronouns in a listening task; that is, beginning learners and advanced learners demonstrate similar ability with the understanding of the feature. Furthermore, female learners outperformed male learners on the listening task, although performance on the pragmatic knowledge task did not vary by gender. These results add to the body of knowledge in second language acquisition and, more specifically, to our knowledge of how pragmatic features of a language are acquired.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Li Yang / This study investigates and compares politeness strategies of Turkish learners of English (TLE) and American English speakers (AE) when they produce the speech act of refusal in English. A total of 24 participants took part in this study and each of them completed a background survey, an open role play and a semi-structured interview. The role-play asked all of the participants to refuse a party invitation offered by a classmate/colleague and was audio-recorded. The refusal interactions were coded according to the classification proposed by Beebe et al. (1990), and the sequence of the refusal interactions (i.e., head act, pre- and post-refusals) was also examined. The results showed that providing excuse/reason/explanation was the most preferred strategy by both groups overall, but closer examination of the strategy revealed that the TLE group was more specific in their explanations compared to the AE group. In addition, when the conductor of the role play insisted on the invitation, the AE group continued to refuse without giving specific reasons, whereas the TLE group chose to provide elaborate reasons upon insistence. During the interview session after the role play, the TLE group commented on cultural factors that influenced their choice of refusal strategies. Based on the findings, this study also proposed implications of the teaching of pragmatics in the English as a second language (ESL) context.

Complaining happens in all cultures, and offers a unique insight into the values, taboos, and communicative practices of a given society. The ways in which complaining is viewed and performed vary drastically not only cross-culturally, but across smaller communal groups and between individuals, too. This dissertation approaches complaining from a multilateral perspective to investigate how individuals in three different language groups – monolingual French speakers, monolingual English speakers, and native English speakers enrolled in upper-division university French courses – perceive and produce complaints as well as the influential role played by social context. In the perception study, the researcher explores how individuals within the examined language groups identify the presence of complaints and perceive their naturalness when presented with contextualized scenarios involving native speakers. In the production study, the researcher examines both the frequency with which individuals complain and the strategies they employ to perform a complaint in various social situations. Additionally, within the production study the researcher examines the frequency with which participants opt out from complaining and their provided rationale for doing so. This dissertation not only identifies a variety of universal linguistic and sociocultural features of complaints, it also uncovers several aspects distinctive to the individual language groups. At the core of this dissertation is the argument that to best understand complaint behavior, researchers should acknowledge the essential influence of social context on both the perception and production of complaints. Above all, future research must consider the complex and dynamic interplay that exists between cross-cultural complaint behaviors and social norms of politeness.

abstract: Using Spencer-Oatey's rapport management approach, the present study evaluates the interlanguage pragmatic development of 17 native English-speaking American learners over the course of a semester in Spain, specifically in terms of the strategies they used in their second language (L2) to manage rapport in an advice-giving, oral role-play situation at semester start and semester end. To allow for a more in-depth analysis of the effect that a semester abroad has on Spanish L2 advice-giving behaviors, the learners were grouped into two distinct proficiency levels. Group 1 (n=9) represents learners who entered the semester abroad with a beginning to intermediate-low proficiency level and group 2 (n=8) represents learners who entered the semester abroad with an intermediate-high proficiency level. The results indicate that both learner groups had similar overarching behavioral expectations in this context. Specifically, both sets of learners expressed empathy, involvement, and respect for the interlocutor, while at the same time they used advice-giving strategies of varied illocutionary force to claim authority in addressing the interlocutor's dilemma. Both groups also balanced face sensitivities through strategies that both enhanced and challenged the interlocutor's identity face. However, it is argued that in this context claiming authority and challenging the interlocutor's identity face were permitted behaviors that emphasized the relational goals of the participants. Additionally, when developmental differences between the two proficiency levels were analyzed, the results showed that learner proficiency had an impact on specific strategy choices. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2011

While the role of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language has been receiving increased attention both from a research and a language teaching perspective, there is still a lamentable scarcity of systematic empirical studies into the effectiveness of instructional methods in the teaching of pragmatics. Addressing this research gap, this article reports about a quasi-experimental study into possible differences between an explicit-inductive and an explicitdeductive instructional approach in the teaching of pragmatic skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), more specifically the teaching of offer refusals to 49 advanced adult EFL learners in Germany. The instruction consisted of three 90-minute lessons, which were spread out over the duration of a 15-week academic semester and designed according to the deductive principle and the inductive principle, respectively. While the deductive group was provided with metapragmatic rules directly at the beginning of the instruction, the inductive group only encountered such rules after engaging in language use and guided discovery. Production data was elicited by means of DCTs and role play in a pretest-posttest format. Effectiveness of instruction was operationalized by means of two indicators: Indicator 1 measured the increased usage of the strategies taught in class, while indicator 2 measured the approximation to a native speaker target. The results indicate that the gains in the inductive group surpassed those in the deductive group, suggesting that when situated within the explicit framework, inductive instruction is more effective in the teaching of pragmatic skills.

This research involves three separate studies with the goal of investigating learner increases in the pragmatic awareness when exposed to various degrees of sustained, explicit instruction. Operationalized as a composite construct in the theory of communicative competence, pragmatic awareness includes knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic features, with sequential action events representing the former and relationship status categories the latter. Research questions for each study focus on gains learners revealed on a video-based pragmatic awareness assessment instrument delivered in pretest-posttest format. Data collection occurred from fall semester 2013 to spring semester 2015 in one single-sex junior/senior high school and two co-educational universities, one with a first-year focus group and the other with a second-year group, with participates across the contexts enrolled in 1 of 12 intact classes ranging in size from 23 to 33. At each site, data collection included response behaviors for comparison counterfactual groups. Data for the primary analyses of each study were subjected to a one-way ANCOVA. Results revealed a significant difference between the treatment group performances compared to a counterfactual group from each institution: Study 1, F(1,152) = 5.86, p = 0.02; Study 2, F(34, 115.28) = 5.71, p = 0.02; and Study 3, F(3, 77.30) = 8.04, p < 0.00. Relationship strength between the factor levels and the dependent variable, as measured in partial eta squared, accounted for 4%, 14%, and 16% of the variance, respectively. In Study 3 a Bayesian confirmatory analysis revealed that the least explicit treatment, one involving only a focus on pragmalinguistic input, showed the greatest gains. Implications for the three studies are: (a) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic categories reveal difficulty hierarchies, with particular sequential action events and relationship status categories consistently more challenging than others; (b) learners display differential awareness of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic sub-constructs, with the former registered as more difficult; and (c) explicit instruction on a limited number of pragmalinguistic categories might result in spillover learning effects to other, untaught categories. / Applied Linguistics

This study investigates the refusal realizations of native speakers of American English (AE), Turkish (TUR) and Turkish learners of English with advanced level of proficiency (TRE). It aims to uncover the refusal strategies of young AE, TUR and TRE in conversations between equals and also to uncover if the learners display pragmatic transfer in their refusal strategies. In addition to this, the extent to which the social variables of level of closeness and refusal eliciting acts affect the refusal productions of each group is pursued. The thesis also aimed to provide an explanation for the rapport management orientations of the three examined groups when refusing equal-status interlocutors. To this end, the data are collected from three different groups using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which is developed out of the situations in a TV Serial. The analysis of data is done manually and each refusal is coded. CLAN CHILDES is utilized in order to see the typical combinations of refusal semantic formulae used by three groups. Later, PASW is used to run descriptive statistics and calculate the frequency and percentages of refusal strategies/semantic formulae. The results of the study show that refusals and rapport management orientations while refusing status equal interlocutors are culture and situation specific and they differ both cross-culturally and intra-culturally. Research findings also reveal that TRE often produce pragmatically appropriate refusals because refusal strategies they use correspond to those of AE. However, there are some cases in which the evidence of pragmatic transfer are observed with respect to the frequency of certain semantic formula usages.