Interlanguage Pragmatics

Interlanguage Development; Pragmatics – Rose
Rose, K.R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional

study of interlanguage pragmatic development.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 27-67.
Pragmatics: a branch of linguistics concerned with
the meanings that sentences have in the particular
contexts in which they are uttered.
Speech act: an utterance conceived as an act by
which the speaker does something.
Example: you are watching television with your
friend, and you are holding the remote. Your friend
asks, “Can you hear it?”
What is the speech act? What is your friend “doing
with words”? 1
Other speech acts: requesting, apologizing,
complimenting.
Pragmatic competence: being able to interpret the
meanings of sentences within the contexts in which
they are uttered.
Pragmalinguistics / pragmalinguistic competence:
being able to form requests, apologies,
compliments, and so on.
Sociopragmatics / sociopragmatic competence:
being able to use requests, apologies,
compliments, and so on, in appropriate situations,
and to recognize the appropriateness of particular
forms for particular situations. 2
Literature Review (pp. 28–35)
1. First language pragmatic development, which
comprises “a substantial literature” (p. 28).
Note studies on children’s development of
requests (Gordon and Ervin-Tripp, 1984) and
acquisition of politeness in L1 (Ervin-Tripp, Guo,
& Lampert, 1990, among others) (pp. 28–29).
2. Interlanguage pragmatics “lags far behind” L1
studies (p. 29).
a. IL pragmatics, longitudinal studies:
• Schmidt (1983), Wes, requests in ENG (p. 29)
• Seigal (1994), deference in Japanese (p. 29).
3
b. Effect of instruction on pragmatic development
• Billmyer (1990), instructed v. noninstructed
learners of Japanese; compliments; some
instructional effect, but not definitive (p. 30).
c. IL pragmatics, cross-sectional studies (“looks at
different learners at different moments in time
and establishes development by comparing the
successive states in different people” p. 31):
• Scarcella (1979), p. 33, participants acquired
English politeness forms before rules of use
(i.e., pragmalinguistics before sociopragmatics).
4
c. IL pragmatics, cross-sectional studies (con’t):
• Hill (1997), Japanese English learners, heavier
reliance on direct requests in low-proficiency
group than in high-proficiency group (p. 34).
d. Rose’s study (p. 34):
• true cross-sectional design (recognizing different
learners at different moments in development)
• focus on IL pragmatic development (not IL
pragmatic performance)
e. Questions – end the lit review. A skillful lit
review leads us inexorably to questions. 5
e. Questions (p. 35):
6
Data Collection (pp. 36–39)
a. participants
• three groups of primary students in Hong Kong
– age 7 (P-2), 9 (P-4), 11 (P-6).
• Each group broken into three groups
1) those who answered the initial questionnaire
and suggested the various speech acts used in
development of COPT; 15 students
2) those who answered the COPT in English (53
students)
3) those who answered COPT in Cantonese (45
students). 7
Data Collection (pp. 36–39)
b. COPT – cartoon oral proficiency test, see
Appendix, p. 60.
• designed to elicit requests, apologies, and
compliment responses.
• tape recorded; students asked to “say what they
thought Siu Keung should say” (p. 39).
8
Data Analysis (pp. 40–55)
a. requests (pp. 40–47)
• request strategies in English (Table 1, p. 40)
Direct:
“Give me
your
notes.”
Conv.
indirect:
“Can I
borrow
your
notes?” 9
10
• request strategies in Cantonese (Table 7, p. 46)
11
12
13
• situational variation – i.e., the degree to which
participants “exhibit sensitivity to social status
and degree of imposition differences in their
choice of request strategy”; sociopragmatic
competence (Table 3): “There is virtually no
situational variation in request strategy for these
groups” (p. 42).
14
• supportive moves (p. 43)
i. pre-commitment: “Could you do me a favor?”
ii. grounders: “I missed class yesterday. Could I
borrow your notes?”
iii. and others, p. 43.
15
• supportive moves (p. 43)
16
• supportive moves (Table 4)
Highlighted statistics
“may be indicative of
some sort of
developmental
threshold that has
been crossed by the P-
6 participants” (p. 43).
(Statistical analysis
would make a stronger
argument.) 17
• conclusion: “The higher frequency of directness
in the P-2 requests [falling to P-4 and P-6;
coupled with the lower frequency of
conventional indirect strategies, rising to P-4
and P-6] is indicative of … pragmatic
development sequences in English” (p. 46).
18
b. apologies (pp. 47–51)
In terms of the
“illocutionary
force indicating
device” (i.e.,
“sorry”) “there
is little to
distinguish
across groups”
(p. 47). See
Table 9, p. 48.
19
• apology adjuncts are “a different story” (p. 47).
Adjuncts include intensifiers (“I’m very / so
sorry”), taking responsibility, offering
explanation, offering repair, and so on. Table 10,
p. 48.
20
21
• situational variance / sociopragmatic
competence – there is “no clear pattern of
variation according to social status or severity of
offense” (p. 49).
• conclusion – the “distribution of apology
adjuncts across groups … offer[s] some
evidence of developmental trends, with a
tendency for both a higher frequency and a
wider range of apology adjuncts with P-6
participants” (p. 49).
22
c. compliment responses (pp. 51–55)
• compliment-response strategies: “there was
considerable uniformity across groups in terms
of main compliment-response strategy” (p. 52).
• The most common compliment response was
acceptance: “Thanks” or “Thank you” in
response to a compliment.
23
24
• compliment response adjuncts (thank you very
much!). “There is a marked increase in both
frequency and range of strategies used with the
P-6 group” (pp. 52–53); see Table 15, p. 53.
25
26
• situational variance / sociopragmatic
competence – there is “little evidence of
situational variation in the compliment
responses” (p. 54).
• conclusion – the “increase in frequency and
range of [complement response adjunct]
strategies used [by] the P-6 group … add[s] to
the evidence for development patterns” in
interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 52–53).
27
Conclusion (pp. 55–56)
• Data “provide some evidence of pragmatic
development, particularly in the movement from
direct to conventionally indirect request
strategies, and in the higher frequency of
supportive moves, apology adjuncts and
compliment-response adjuncts for the P-6
group.”
• Data suggest “little evidence of situational
variation in any of the speech acts, which may
indicate the precedence of pragmalinguistics
over sociopragmatics in the early stages of
pragmatic development in a second language.” 28
Conclusion (pp. 55–56)
• evidence of pragmatic development
• little evidence of situational variation
• does he answer his questions?
29
Midterm Exam Review
I. Research traditions
1. Know the difference between quantitative and
qualitative paradigms. Be familiar with the
assumptions/orientations of each about discovery,
variables, data collection, data analysis, and data
use.
2. Know the fundamentals of the different research
methods we discussed: correlation, survey,
experiment, case study, and ethnography. With
which paradigm do the various methods associate?
Why (re: discovery, variables, data collection, data
analysis, and data use)?
3. Be prepared to apply your knowledge of research
traditions. 30
Midterm Exam Review
II. History
1. Understand Behaviorism and Nativism as it relates
to second language acquisition. Be prepared to
discuss these concepts in historical context. That
is, be able to answer questions like, What ways of
thinking dominated during what periods? With
whom were these ways of thinking associated?
With what movements in second language
acquisition theory were these epistemological
orientations associated?
31
Midterm Exam Review
II. History
2. Most specifically, be able to locate scholars like
Robert Lado and Pit Corder and movements like
Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis within the
context of the epistemological (epistemology, the
study of knowledge) history of second language
acquisition research.
32
Midterm Exam Review
III. Interlanguage
Be prepared to define interlanguage, understand
the epistemological assumptions upon which it
operates, and discuss the ways it has been studied.
More specifically, be able to explain scholars’
interest in systematicity / variation, development
sequences, and first language influence.
33

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Interlanguage Development; Pragmatics – Rose

Rose, K.R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional

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