Investigating the Learning of Pragmatics Across Ages and Contexts [1 ed.] 9789004409699, 9789004407855

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Investigating the Learning of Pragmatics across Ages and Contexts

Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication Series Editors Paul van den Hoven Jan ten Thije

volume 34

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/uslc

Investigating the Learning of Pragmatics across Ages and Contexts Edited by

Patricia Salazar-Campillo Victòria Codina-Espurz

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Salazar-Campillo, Patricia, editor. | Codina-Espurz, Victòria,  editor. Title: Investigating the learning of pragmatics across ages and contexts /  Patricia Salazar-Campillo, Victòria Codina-Espurz. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, 2019. | Series: Utrecht  studies in language and communication, 09277706 ; volume 34 |  Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2019023161 (print) | LCCN 2019023162 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004407855 (paperback) | ISBN 9789004409699 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Pragmatics. | Interlanguage (Language learning) |  Speech acts (Linguistics) Classification: LCC P53.62 .I585 2019 (print) | LCC P53.62 (ebook) |  DDC 418.0071—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023161 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023162

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0927-7706 isbn 978-90-04-40785-5 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-40969-9 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures viii List of Tables x Notes on Contributors xii Introduction 1 Patricia Salazar-Campillo and Victòria Codina-Espurz

Part 1 Formal Instruction Contexts 1 Speech Act Acquisition in Instructed Pragmatics: Advanced EFL Learners’ Patterns of Downgrading and Upgrading in Disagreements 7 Karen Glaser 2 Exploring Case Stories in the Development of Textual Discourse-Pragmatic Markers in Formal English Language Classrooms 40 Sofía Martín-Laguna 3 The Pragmatic Competence of CLIL Students across Different Educational Levels in Secondary Stage: The Case of Requests 54 Nashwa Nashaat Sobhy 4 Is Teacher Talk for Very Young Language Learners Pragmatically Tuned? Directives in Two EAL Classrooms 87 Otilia Martí and Laura Portolés

Part 2 Study Abroad Contexts 5 Students’ Performance of Hedges in an English Medium Instruction Context: The Impact of Length of Study Abroad 125 Ana Herraiz-Martínez

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6 The Role of Individual Differences on Learning Pragmatic Routines in a Study Abroad Context 141 Ariadna Sánchez-Hernández and Eva Alcón-Soler

Part 3 Online Contexts 7 Pragmatic Translanguaging: Multilingual Practice in Adolescent Online Discourse 167 Richard Nightingale and Pilar Safont 8 Student-to-Faculty Email Consultation in English, Spanish and Catalan in an Academic Context 196 Victòria Codina-Espurz and Patricia Salazar-Campillo

Conclusion: Reflecting on Pragmatics Research Methods 9 Can You Tell a Move When You Encounter One? Identifying Clues to Communicative Functions 221 Sara Gesuato

Acknowledgements First of all, we would like to thank all the contributors to the volume for their participation in the volume. Special thanks to Eva Alcón-Soler and Pilar Safont for suggesting and giving us the possibility to edit a book which reflects the enthusiasm we all share about interlanguage pragmatics. We are also thankful to the laela research group at Universitat Jaume I for their support in the elaboration of this book. Thanks also to all editors at BRILL for their availability and never-ending patience with questions about the editing process. Finally, we have to acknowledge that the present volume has been possible thanks to a research project funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, cofounded by FEDER (FFI2012-38145).

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1

Average number of semantic strategies and adjuncts per scenario 19 Frequency of downgrader and upgrader use per semantic strategy 21 Frequency of downgrader and upgrader use per adjunct 21 Distribution of downgrader types in the semantic strategies 25 Distribution of downgrader types in the adjuncts 26 Distribution of upgrader types in the semantic strategies 29 Distribution of upgrader types in the adjuncts 29 Data collection timeline 45 Rebeca’s change in the ratio of use of TDPMs 47 María’s change in the ratio of use of TDPMs 48 Carlos’ change in the ratio of use of TDPMs 49 Javier’s change in the ratio of use of TDPMs 51 Percentages of CLIL students’ use of softening external request modifiers in the Ss‐T situation 65 3.2 Softening external request modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss situation) 65 3.3 Percentage of non‐implicating grounders (non‐specific and OBJ‐SOA combined) in Ss‐T and Ss‐Ss situations 68 3.4 Softening internal modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐T situation) 69 3.5 Softening internal modifiers – CLIL students (Ss‐Ss situation) 69 3.6 Query‐preparatory conditions – CLIL levels (Ss‐T situation) 71 3.7 Query‐preparatory conditions – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss situation) 71 3.8 Marked please and aggravating external modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐T) 73 3.9 Marked please and aggravating external modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss) 73 3.10 Upgraders‐aggravating internal modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐T) 76 3.11 Upgraders‐aggravating internal modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss) 76 3.12 Aggravating strategies – CLIL levels (Ss‐T situation) 78 3.13 Aggravating strategies – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss situation) 78 3.14 Action‐ceasing verbs – CLIL levels (Ss‐T situation) 80 3.15 Action‐ceasing verbs – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss situation) 80 4.1 Number of directives in instructional and regulative discourse per class 99 4.2 Percentages of instructional vs. regulative discourse in Group A and Group B 99 4.3 Number of directives in procedural regulative vs. disciplinary regulative discourse per class 103 4.4 Number of directives in procedural regulative discourse according to their typology per class 103

Figures 4.5 Percentages of formal realizations for procedural regulative discourse in Group A and Group B 104 4.6 Number of directives in disciplinary regulative discourse according to their typology per group 108 6.1 Recognition scores by individual difference 152 6.2 Production scores by individual difference 155 8.1 Level of directness in request realization 207

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Tables 1.1

Situational variables, social roles and disagreement topics in the DCT scenarios 16 1.2 Data overview – invalid responses, opt-outs, and valid disagreement responses 18 1.3 Coding scheme for modification markers 18 1.4 Numbers of semantic strategies, adjuncts, downgraders and upgraders analyzed 20 2.1 Selected participants’ background information 43 2.2 Descriptive statistics of the ratio of use of TDPMs 46 2.3 Selected participants’ performance in TDPM production at Time 1 and 2 46 3.1 The participants by educational level in the CLIL program 60 3.2 A taxonomy reflecting CLIL Spanish students’ use of request modifiers and strategies (cf. Nashaat Sobhy, 2014) 62 3.3 Softening external request modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss-T situation) 66 3.4 Softening external request modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss-Ss situation) 67 3.5 CLIL students’ use of non‐implicating grounders (non‐specific and OBJ‐SOA) combined across both Ss‐T and Ss‐Ss situations 67 3.6 Softening internal modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐T situation) 70 3.7 Softening internal modifiers – CLIL students (Ss‐Ss situation) 70 3.8 Query‐preparatory conditions – CLIL levels (Ss‐T) 72 3.9 Query‐preparatory conditions – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss) 72 3.10 Marked please and aggravating external modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐T) 75 3.11 Marked please and aggravating external modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐Ss) 75 3.12 Upgraders‐aggravating internal modifiers – CLIL levels (Ss‐T and Ss‐Ss) 77 3.13 Aggravating strategies – CLIL levels (Ss‐T and Ss‐Ss situations) 79 3.14 Action‐ceasing verbs – CLIL levels (Ss‐T and Ss situation) 81 4.1 Typology of request head acts in teacher directives (adapted from Liu & Hong, 2009) 97 4.2 Typology of peripheral modification devices in teacher directives (from AlcónSoler et al., 2005) 98 4.3 Typology of teacher instructional directives per group 101 4.4 Typology of procedural regulative directives per group 106 4.5 Typology of disciplinary regulative directives per class 109 5.1 Taxonomy of hedges followed in the analysis of students’ performance of hedging (adapted from O’Keeffe, Clancy & Adolphs, 2011) 131 5.2 Analysis of the modal verbs employed in the present investigation 132

Tables 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2 6.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6

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Analysis of the verbs with modal meaning employed in the present investigation 133 Analysis of the adverbs employed in the present investigation 133 Performance of the three subcategories of hedging 134 Descriptive statistics for the time spent abroad variable 135 Nonparametric correlational analysis between the performance of hedging and the time spent abroad 136 Descriptive statistics of recognition and production of pragmatic routines 151 Descriptive statistics of recognition scores across individual differences 151 Descriptive statistics of production scores across individual differences 155 Request realizations in the present study 202 Internal modifiers in the present study 205 Distribution of the sub-request strategies in the three language groups 208 Types of request in the present study 209 Distribution of internal modification 211 Distribution of lexical and syntactic modifiers 212

Notes on Contributors Eva Alcón-Soler is Full Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Universitat Jaume I (Castelló) and leader of the Research Group in Applied Linguistics to English Language Teaching (LAELA, in Spanish). Her research interests include the acquisition of L2 pragmatics, the role of interaction in L2 learning and multilingualism. She has published widely on those issues in international journals such as Communication and Cognition, International Review of Applied Linguistics, System, Intercultural Pragmatics, Multilingua, among others). She is the author of Bases Lingüísticas y Metodológicas para la Enseñanza de la Lengua Inglesa (2002), has co-edited Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning (Springer, 2007), and Investigating Pragmatics in Foreign Language Learning, Teaching and Testing (Multilingual Matters, 2008). Her publications also include English and multilingualism (In C.A. Chapelle, ed. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 2012); Discourse and pragmatics in SLA (In P. Robinson, ed. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second language Acquisition, 2012); Negotiated Input and Output/Interaction (In The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, 2013; and Eliciting oral interaction data in EFL settings (In A. Mackey and E. Marsden, eds. Advancing Methodology and Practice, 2016). Victòria Codina-Espurz is a tenured professor in the English Studies Department of Universitat Jaume I, where she currently co-directs the MELACOM master. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching Methodology (University of Pittsburgh), and a M.A. in TESOL (West Virginia University). She has published internationally on a range of topics in applied linguistics as well as a number of instructional publications. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics as well as factors influencing second language acquisition. Sara Gesuato earned her PhD from Padua University and the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently associate professor of English at Padua University, Italy, where she teaches English language and linguistics. Her fields of activity include discourse and genre analysis, and pragmatics and corpus linguistics. She has published on the phraseology and content of academic genres, the structure and wording of expressive speech acts, and the temporal and

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aspectual meanings of catenative motion verbs. She has recently co-edited a volume on pragmatic issues in language teaching and learning. Her current research interest is in pedagogical applications of speech act analysis. Karen Glaser is Junior Professor for TEFL/TEYL at University of Leipzig, Germany. She holds a PhD in English Linguistics from Leuphana University Lüneburg, and has taught ESL/EFL, linguistics and teacher training courses at several universities in Germany and at Kent State University, Ohio/USA. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, classroom interaction, and Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Ana Herraiz-Martínez graduated in English Studies from the Universitat Jaume I, Spain. She holds a MA in English Language Teaching in Multilingual Contexts and another MA in English Language Teaching in Secondary Education. She is currently researching a PhD in Applied Linguistics at Universitat Jaume I, as part of a grant from the FPI University Program. Her research interests include second and third language acquisition, interlanguage pragmatics, pragmatic development, English Medium Instruction, hedging and the study abroad context. Otilia Martí is an assistant professor in the Department of Education and member of the LAELA research group at Universitat Jaume I, Spain. Martí finished her PhD in Applied Linguistics under the supervision of Dr. Pilar Safont in December 2010. Her research interests include the acquisition of English as a third language and multilingual education with a special focus on Infant and Primary teacher training, as well as the impact of the variable gender on interlanguage pragmatics. She has coedited volumes on both fields of enquiry, such as Achieving Multilingualism: Wills and Ways with Pilar Safont (2008) or Refusals in instructional contexts and beyond with Patricia Salazar-Campillo (Rodopi, 2013). Sofía Martín-Laguna graduated in English Philology from the Universitat Jaume I with an Academic Achievement Award. She holds a MA in English Language Teaching in Secondary Education and another MA in English Language Teaching in Multilingual Contexts. She has recently completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics, which was directed by Dr. Eva Alcón-Soler as part of a grant from the FPU program of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. Her research interests

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include second and third language acquisition, discourse development, pragmatic development, and multilingual education. Nashwa Nashaat Sobhy is Assistant Professor at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Her research focus is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) across different educational stages. She is a member of the UAM-CLIL group, which carries out applied linguistic research on a spectrum of issues in CLIL including second language acquisition and subject literacy. Richard Nightingale holds a BA (honors) in History of Design, Culture and Society, a MA in Language Acquisition in Multilingual Contexts (MELACOM), and a PhD in Applied Linguistics. He teaches parts of the English Studies degree at Universitat Jaume I. Richard has worked for several years in the private sector as an EFL teacher and is currently an ESOL oral examiner for the University of Cambridge. Richard’s research interests include sociolinguistics, multilingualism, complex dynamic systems, formulaic language, affective factors, contextual factors, young learners, and pragmatic development. Laura Portolés is an assistant professor, member of the LAELA (Applied Linguistics to the Teaching of the English Language) research group at Universitat Jaume I. She graduated in English Philology and was further specialized in English learning and teaching in multilingual contexts. In 2013, Laura Portolés defended her doctoral thesis “Early multilingualism: an analysis of pragmatic awareness and language attitudes in consecutive multilingual children” directed by Dr. Pilar Safont. On the defense panel sat Dr. Ulrike Jessner, Dr. Eva Alcón-Soler, and Dr. Jasone Cenoz. She has published several book chapters and journal articles. Her research interests include third language acquisition, affective factors, early multilingual development and multilingual education. Pilar Safont is Full Professor of English Language Sociolinguistics at Universitat Jaume I, Castelló. Her research is centered in the development of pragmatic competence in learners of English as a third language, factors which influence the use of an L3, and early multilingualism (2–7 years). She has published her research in international scientific journals such as The International

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Journal of Multilingualism, The International Journal of Bilingualism, and The International Journal of Sociolinguistic Studies. She is the author of Third Language Learners. Pragmatic production and Awareness (2005) published by Multilingual Matters. Her most recent publications include, among others: (i) Pragmatic Competence in Multilingual Contexts (2011) in The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, (ii) Early pragmatic development in consecutive third language learning (2012) in The International Journal of Multilingualism; and (iii) Early stages of trilingual pragmatic development (2013) in the Journal of Pragmatics. Moreover, she is a member of the organizing committee of the International Association of Multilingualism (IAM). Patricia Salazar-Campillo is a tenured professor at Universitat Jaume I. She is a member of the research group LAELA (Lingüística Aplicada a l’Ensenyament de la Llengua Anglesa) and her main interests include teaching and learning English as a foreign language, especially those areas involving corrective feedback. She has also conducted research on online discourse and on interlanguage pragmatics. Her research has been published in international publishing companies such as Springer, Peter Lang, and Ibérica. Some of her national publications can be found in Rael and Porta Linguarum, among other relevant journals. She coedited the book Refusals in instructional contexts and beyond (Rodopi, 2013). Since 2012 she is the coordinator, along with Dr. Codina-Espurz, of the MA Teaching and Acquisition of the English Language in Multilingual Contexts (MELACOM) at Universitat Jaume I. Ariadna Sánchez-Hernández is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of English Studies at Universitat Jaume I, where she also obtained her PhD (2017). She is a member of the research group Applied Linguistics to the Teaching of the English Language (LAELA), and her research interests include second language pragmatics and intercultural competence, with a special focus on the study abroad context and English-medium instruction (EMI). Her publications include articles in international journals (Journal of Pragmatics 2018, System 2018, English Language Teaching 2019) and in Spanish ones (ATLANTIS 2017, Porta Linguarum 2018), chapters in collective volumes (EUROSLA Series 2018; Peter Lang 2018), and she is the co-editor of the volume Learning Second Language Pragmatics beyond Traditional Contexts (Peter Lang 2018).

Introduction Patricia Salazar-Campillo and Victòria Codina-Espurz Within the field of second language acquisition, interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has emerged as a subfield with its own entity (Safont, 2005), focusing on the pragmatic competence and performance of L2 learners on their way to developing a target language. In this endeavor, a vast number of studies (see Taguchi, 2015, for a state-of-the-art article) show that explicit instruction along with metapragmatic information and production tend to be more effective than the implicit condition. In the past, learners’ pragmatic behavior has been examined in a number of speech acts to shed light on the similarities and differences, for example, between native speakers’ and learners’ production, or L1 transfer, to mention but a few. In this sense, requests, due to their facethreatening nature (Brown & Levinson, 1987), have been the focus of extensive research as they may entail negative consequences for the requestee’s face if not properly formulated. Moreover, when the requester is a non-native speaker of the target language, these negative effects may be exacerbated mainly due to, on the one hand, lack of pragmalinguistic competence, and on the other, transfer from the L1, which may result in pragmatic infelicities. Pragmatic failure may happen in the study abroad context where learners engage in face-toface interaction and pragmatic competence is at stake. Pragmatic errors may also take place in virtual environments (i.e., email communication, WhatsApp), despite the fact that they may allow for more planning and editing of the message. For these reasons, studies on interlanguage pragmatics have focused on the study abroad context (for example, Taguchi, Xiao & Li, 2016) as a powerful arena for pragmatic development, moving from L2 learning settings which involve more formal instruction of pragmatics. In this sense, contexts other than the instructional ones may favor pragmatic learning, which may translate into not only production, but also on recognition of pragmatic aspects. The complexities arising from the investigation of pragmatic progress in study abroad environments was pointed out by Bardovi-Harlig (2013). In the same vein, the importance of context in pragmatic competence development was also addressed in a special issue of System in 2015, edited by Alcón-Soler and Yates. Since then, a growing number of studies have followed this line of research including a variety of contexts in which ILP development may take place. This volume features a series of studies on pragmatic issues in different settings which offer wider perspectives on pragmatic development. Eight of the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004409699_002

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nine chapters in this book are grouped into three sections, which focus on formal instruction contexts, study abroad contexts and online contexts. The last contribution stands by itself as a concluding chapter on research methodology. Part 1 deals with formal instruction contexts and includes three chapters. Whereas the speech act of requesting has been extensively researched, as attested by several chapters in the present volume, Glaser (chapter 1) examines learner pragmatics usage in disagreements, a speech act which has received less attention as it is a dispreferred response. In her study, EFL learners received explicit instruction on downgraders (including notions of face and power distance) but not on upgraders. The results emerging from six Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) were compared to baseline data from native speakers, showing that instruction yields an increase in the use of downgrading. Moreover, upgraders also increased, especially in the form of intensifiers. Glaser concludes by claiming more pragmatic instruction on upgrading and downgrading in disagreements to further interlanguage pragmatics. In chapter 2, Martín-Laguna presents four case stories on the pragmatic development of textual discourse-pragmatic markers (DPMs) such as first of all or however, which guide the reader through the written text. Her participants wrote 3 argumentative essays at three different times (beginning, middle and end of an academic year) to ascertain gains in this type of pragmatic markers over time. As the author states, pragmatic development seems to be affected by the learning context together with the learner’s personal experiences. Nashaat Shoby, in chapter 3, examines modification strategies in the speech act of requesting in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) context. Her participants included four consecutive groups of adolescents (12 to 16 year olds) who completed two written DCTs. Results of the study show that across age groups, grounders are broadly used, especially by the older students. The author also points to the relative lack of awareness of social norms (sociopragmatic competence) in these subjects. With this in mind, Nashaat stresses a need for further research to examine variables such as power, imposition and social distance in adolescent learners. Martí and Portolés (chapter 4) analyze teacher directives in English as an Additional Language classroom in pre-schoolers. Taking a discourse-pragmatic perspective, directives were examined according to level of directness, peripheral modifiers and deixis. Their findings support previous studies regarding the predominant use of imperatives in teacher discourse, softened by the use of please and inclusive forms of deixis. Moreover, establishing good rapport by means of thanking or complementing these young learners shows teachers’ sensitivity and makes the learning environment a rich arena for the provision of naturalistic pragmatic input.

Introduction

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Two studies which report on data from study abroad contexts are included in Part 2 of this volume. In chapter 5, Herraiz-Martínez examines how study abroad affects the production of hedges in an English Medium Instruction (EMI) context with university students. The participants were to write a motivation letter to a company. Results showed that modal verbs were mainly used in detriment of other hedging devices. The author did not find any relationship between length of study abroad and production of hedges. In light of these results, Herraiz-Martínez calls for more instruction on hedges as they do not seem to be acquired by mere exposure to input. In chapter 6, Sánchez-Hernández and Alcón-Soler explore recognition and production of pragmatic routines. While a great deal of research has focused on the individual variable of proficiency, the authors also incorporate attitude toward the target language cultures and country of origin to determine international students’ knowledge and productive ability of pragmatic routines. In light of their findings, Sánchez-Hernández and Alcón-Soler argue that the three variables under study (proficiency, culture and attitude) had a positive impact on recognition, but level of proficiency did not prove to be a determining factor on production. This claim is in line with previous research (Bardovi-Harlig, 2008) which also revealed that using routines appropriately was more difficult than being able to recognize them. Part 3 of the book includes two studies concerning the development of interlanguage pragmatics in online contexts. Nowadays, given the commonness of online communication exchanges, there seems to be a growing interest on research on how students develop their pragmatic competence in this type of setting. In this sense, Nightingale and Safont (chapter 7) explore translanguaging practices of adolescent students when engaged in different online platforms and digital media. By means of analyzing semi-structured interviews in which the participants explain their translanguaging, results show that students intentionally alternate languages for three main purposes: (1) inject humor (i.e., they are multilinguals able to play and joke with different languages); (2) mark a preferred identity, and (3) modify requests in an attempt to soften the imposition. Therefore, as the authors state, translanguaging is an intentional multilingual practice with special interactional purposes. In chapter 8, Codina-Espurz and Salazar-Campillo examine the degree of politeness in requestive emails sent to two university professors. The data consisted of Spanish students’ emails written in two L1s (Spanish and Catalan) and in English as a foreign language. Irrespective of the language used in the emails, students opted for direct requests. The type of request (mainly asking for information) involved in most emails may account for the directness of the requests. However, in an attempt to address issues of politeness and deference

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towards the professors, direct requests were mitigated by means of syntactic and lexical modifiers. The last section of this volume embodies a concluding chapter on research methodology. Gesuato (chapter 9) offers a detailed analysis of the concept of move (i.e., fundamental tools in text analysis), and argues for the need to establish appropriate criteria to properly identify discursive moves. Therefore, Gesuato suggests a proposal on how to define and recognize moves by means of a multi-dimensional approach which takes into account several parameters such as relevance, relative status or interactional goal, among others. In this way, the discourse analyst can reliably detect and classify moves beyond mere intuitive recognition. The selection of articles in this volume aims to contribute to the body of research in interlanguage pragmatics by filling in some gaps of recent investigation, as most studies have focused on university language learners and the language classroom. Therefore, we intended to open up the spectrum by including other learning contexts and age groups, in an attempt to further the understanding of pragmatic learning in less researched environments. Accordingly, the book is addressed to language professionals interested in the field of interlanguage pragmatics. Language teachers can also benefit from the many insights emerging from the different studies reported which try to capture the plethora of aspects involved in the development of pragmatic competence. References Alcón-Soler, E. & Yates, L. (2015). Editors’ introduction to pragmatic learning across contexts. System, 48, 1–2. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2008). Recognition and production of formulas in L2 pragmatics. In Z.H. Han (Ed.), Understanding second language process (pp. 205–222). Clevedon, England, Multilingual Matters. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2013). Developing L2 Pragmatics. Language Learning, 63(1): 68–86. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00738.x. Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Safont, P. (2005). Third language learners. Pragmatic production and awareness. Clevedon, England, Multilingual Matters. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48(1): 1–50. Taguchi, N. Xiao, F. & Li, S. (2016). Effects of intercultural competence and social contact on speech act production in a Chinese study abroad context. The Modern Language Journal, 100(4), 1–22. doi: 10.1111/modl.12349.

part 1 Formal Instruction Contexts

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chapter 1

Speech Act Acquisition in Instructed Pragmatics: Advanced EFL Learners’ Patterns of Downgrading and Upgrading in Disagreements Karen Glaser 1 Introduction Research on the teaching and learning of pragmatics in a foreign language has traditionally put a strong focus on aspects of politeness, face-work and mitigation. This focus is rooted, among other things, in the interest of empowering language learners to get their messages across and achieve their communicative goals while managing rapport and maintaining harmonious social relationships (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). In the area of speech act studies, this has resulted in a rich body of research on indirectness (e.g., Usó-Juan, 2013), facesaving strategies (e.g., Dippold, 2011), and mitigating adjuncts (e.g., Alcón-Soler, Safont & Portolés, 2012). In terms of internal modification, studies have mostly focused on hedging and downgrading (e.g., Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2009), but comparatively little emphasis has been placed on the use and development of upgraders (Barron, 2007). However, the appropriate use of such amplifying devices is as important as that of downtoning modifiers for a target-like speech act performance that helps maintain speaker-hearer relations. For instance, Taguchi, Naganuma and Budding (2015) report that Japanese EFL learners have a tendency to underuse both types of modality markers unless explicitly instructed about their usage. Mallon-Gerland (2011) observed that the impolite nature of her German EFL learners’ disagreements resulted to the same degree from the underuse of mitigators as from the overuse of upgraders. As these examples show, analyses of internal speech act modification in developmental pragmatics are called for that focus on the use of both downgraders and upgraders. In order to address this gap, this chapter reports on the development of both downgrading and upgrading in the disagreement strategies of advanced EFL learners who received explicit instruction on the speech act. For the purpose of this study, internal modification is defined as the range of syntactic and/or lexical markers that do not affect the propositional content of the speech act but that “serve to mitigate [in the case of downgraders] or emphasize [in the

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case of upgraders] its potential effects” (Ren, 2013, p. 716). As the pragmatic instruction was based on recommendations from the literature, it largely focused on mitigating and hedging strategies and did not address upgrading explicitly. Accordingly, the data allow an insight into the internal modification patterns that learners develop when not explicitly instructed about upgrading. Learner data were collected in a pretest-posttest design, and comparisons with native speaker baseline data were carried out to investigate possible L1– L2 differences. All internal modification devices were analyzed separately for semantic strategies (those utterance segments that carried out the disagreement proper) and for adjuncts (those utterance segments that accompanied the semantic strategies), to permit a more fine-grained understanding of the distribution patterns of modification devices within speech act realizations. 2

Speech Act Modification in Interlanguage Pragmatic Development

“Few studies have so far examined in detail how learners use modification in order to mitigate or aggravate their speech acts” (Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2009, p. 80), and as with virtually all speech act research, most of the relevant studies that have been carried out have focused on requests, as sparked by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper’s (1989) seminal CCSARP project. Their coding scheme, which has analyzed internal modification only for the head act (the request equivalent of the semantic strategies analyzed here), has been applied to a plethora of follow-up studies (e.g., Schauer, 2009; Trosborg, 1995; Varghese & Billmyer, 1996). Even though it featured a rather detailed list of upgraders alongside downgraders, most comparisons of native and non-native speakers conducted in the wake of the CCSARP have focused heavily on the different downgrading types such as understaters (a bit), subjectivizers (I believe), downtoning adverbials (perhaps), the politeness marker please, or appealers and cajolers (you know, okay?); if upgrading is considered, it is mostly included in the form of one single ‘intensifier’ category only (e.g., Codina-Espurz, 2008; Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2009; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; Gu, 2011; Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Vilar-Beltrán, 2008). The results show that learners usually lack the richness in downgrading displayed by native speakers, both in terms of frequency and variation (even at highly advanced levels after years of immersion, as Lundell & Erman (2012) have shown); accordingly, teaching suggestions are usually focused on increasing the learners’ downgrader use (e.g., Fukuya, 2002; Rinnert & Iwai, 2010; Yates, 2003). L2 underuse of downgrading has been reported for other speech acts as well (for the speech act of disagreement, which is the focus of this study, the

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literature is reviewed in more detail in the following section). Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1993) collected authentic interaction data during university advising sessions and analyzed it with regard to the students’ rejection of advice. In terms of internal modification, they looked at both downgraders (which they called “mitigators”) and upgraders (termed “aggravators”) in both refusals produced by learners and native speakers of English (NSE). They found that the learners, while developing towards the NSE target in their overall negotiation behavior, continued to underuse mitigators and to employ aggravators, which were absent from the baseline data. In contrast to most other studies in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), the authors used a relatively detailed list of aggravators, distinguishing, for instance, between such categories as overstaters (absolutely), intensifiers (really), plus-committers (I’m sure), lexical intensifiers (swear words), and aggressive interrogatives. The authors further found that the learners displayed non-target-like combinations of up- and downgrading, which hints at the rather complex and challenging nature of acquiring targetlike modification patterns in a second language. This complexity is attested to by the other (few) studies focusing on learner development of internal modification (longitudinal and cross-sectional). Barron (2003, 2007) investigated the development of requests, offer, and offer refusal behavior in Irish learners during a 10-month study abroad sojourn in Germany. The 2003 publication focuses on the development in downgra­ ding for all three speech acts, while the 2007 paper presents the results for upgrading in refusals. The findings for downgrader use are varied, with the learners increasing their complexity of syntactic downgrading over time, while lexical-phrasal downgrading increased most in refusals compared to the other two speech acts, although it never reached the intensity shown in the requests, for which the learners were closest to the target norm in their use of downgrading from the beginning. In terms of refusal upgrading, the learners were also already rather target-like in their intensity at the start of their stay abroad, which the author explains with positive L1 transfer from Irish English refusals. At the same time, a closer look at the scenarios revealed that the learners deviated more from the target norm in non-formulaic refusals between socially close interlocutors than in the more formulaic refusals exchanged between speakers with greater social distance. This suggests an effect of cognitive load, which Barron (2007) links to the complexification hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, “those linguistic structures which demand a high degree of processing capacity will be acquired late; those requiring a minimum of processing capacity, early” (p. 159), making the use of upgraders possible at earlier stages in formulaic contexts but not in others.

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This interpretation reconciles Barron’s (2007) findings with other ILP studies on modality markers which have shown that internal modification usually appears at later stages of development, concomitantly with an increased overall proficiency. Using a cross-sectional design, Trosborg (1987) analyzed the apologies of Danish learners of English at intermediate, low-advanced and high-advanced levels and found that the use of modification increased with proficiency level. In a follow-up study that also included requests and complaints, Trosborg (1995) showed that especially upgrading did not develop noticeably until a rather advanced stage of proficiency had been reached, leading her to conclude that upgrading develops more slowly than downgrading. That upgrading is relatively more challenging than downgrading was also shown by Sabaté-Dalmau and Curell-Gotor (2007) in a cross-sectional study of apologies by Catalan learners of English at intermediate, advanced, and proficient levels. They observed that apology intensification occurred very late in the learners, with only the proficient group consistently intensifying their apologies and showing “awareness of the use of intensification as a conflict avoidance (negative face) strategy” (p. 308). However, even the proficient group still employed reinforcement techniques from their L1 and thus failed to reach target-like upgrading patterns. Warga and Schölmberger (2007) also studied apologies, documenting the pragmatic development of Austrian learners of Canadian French during study abroad in Montreal. While in the studies just reviewed the learners did not upgrade enough, the learners in this study were faced with the task of decreasing their upgrading from a relatively high L1-transferred level to a comparatively lower target-language level. While in general the learners managed to decrease their upgrading towards the target norm, the data revealed a marked increase in one specific upgrader, that is, the intensifier très (‘very’), which can neither be explained by L1 nor by target language features. The authors suggest that this stems from the “potential ‘all-purpose’ character of très, [which] … can be used in a great variety of contexts” (Warga & Schölmberger, 2007, p. 236). Ren (2013) also analyzed internal modification in a study abroad setting, comparing the refusals of Chinese learners of English in the UK to those produced by their peers in the at-home context over the span of one academic year. The two groups showed largely parallel developments in their range and frequency of internal modification types, increasing in modifier use over time with increasing proficiency. Differences between the groups were, however, observed with regard to downtoning adverbials and upgraders. While the at-home group did not change their downtoning frequency much, the study abroad group showed an increase over time. For upgrader use, the development occurred in the opposite direction, but unfortunately the study does not

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provide a breakdown into individual upgrading types, so it is not possible to draw conclusions as to how specific kinds of intensifiers developed. This review closes with a study by Taguchi et al. (2015), who investigated the effects of targeted instruction on the development of request modification in Japanese learners of English. This study was designed as a follow-up to Taguchi (2012), who had shown that the instructed learners developed with regard to certain features of speech act production but not in their use of lexical-phrasal/syntactic downgrading and upgrading. The follow-up study documented a new round of pragmatic instruction which also included explicit instruction on these modality markers. The result indicated that the learners increased their usage significantly at post-test, an effect that was largely sustained in the delayed post-test four months later. This study thus shows that explicit instruction can assist and accelerate the development of target-like internal modification, which the authors attribute to the “the positive role of noticing and attention, promoted through explicit correction and modeling” (Taguchi, 2012, p. 17). 3

The Speech Act of Disagreement

Disagreement is an assertive speech act (Searle, 1979) by which the speaker communicates “an opinion or belief contrary to the view expressed by a previous speaker” (Edstrom, 2004, p. 1505). Accordingly, it is a responsive speech act that reacts to a previous speaker’s assessment and thus forms the second pair part in an assessment-disagreement adjacency pair (Holtgraves, 2002, p. 97). Due to their contradictory nature, disagreements often qualify as dispreferred responses (Pomerantz, 1984), especially in friendly encounters not aimed at dispute or debate. Compared to agreements (the preferred counterpart), they necessitate the production of longer and more complex utterances to compensate for their face-threat and their potential to damage social harmony. For language learners, this speech act thus poses extra challenges on both a psychological and a linguistic level. In interlanguage pragmatics, disagreement is among the less frequently studied speech acts and thus not quite as well explored as, for instance, requests, apologies, or refusals. The existing descriptions of English native speaker disagreements focus largely on the mitigating strategies that speakers employ to soften the face-threatening nature of this speech act. On the turn-level, native speakers of English have been found to frequently employ pausing and hesitation (Carroll, 2011; Houck & Fuji, 2006), token agreement (partial agreement of the yes, but … kind; Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004; Holtgraves, 1997), and

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initial and sandwich mitigation, i.e., the speakers start out with or even wrap their disagreement in mitigating strategies (Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004; Kreutel, 2007). The level of semantic strategies, i.e., the strategies the speakers use to express the actual disagreement, is often neglected in the literature, probably because of the fact that there are hardly any (conventionally) indirect ways of disagreeing (as there are with requesting or refusing, etc.). The few reports that exist list the following semantic strategies (and combinations thereof): negating adverbs (e.g., no), negative evaluation (e.g., That’s not right), challenge (e.g., Where do you know that from?), contradiction (the exact opposite proposition, e.g., I did send the e-mail), counterclaim (an alternative proposition, e.g., He’ll miss it – He’s on his way), evasion (It’s hard to say), and irony/sarcasm (Sure, if you’re into this kind of thing) (Ishihara, 2016; Lawson, 2009; Locher, 2004; Malamed, 2010; Muntigl & Turnbull, 1998; Niroomand, 2012; Walkinshaw, 2009). Most analyses of NSE disagreement have focused on adjuncts, i.e., on those elements that accompany the disagree­ment proper, again with a focus on mitigating strategies such as repetition/uptake of the prior speaker’s words (Hayashi; 1996; Malamed, 2010), clarification requests (Houck & Fuji, 2006; Lawson, 2009), grounders (Locher, 2004; Yates, 2010), alternative suggestions (García, 1989; Walkinshaw, 2007), positive remarks (García, 1989; Rees-Miller, 2000), and personalization (Holtgraves, 1997; Ishihara, 2016). On the level of internal mitigation, downgraders have received by far the most attention, with documentations of epistemic modal and sensory verbs (e.g., may, seem), downtoning adverbials (e.g., perhaps, just), understaters (e.g., kind of, a bit), subjectivizers (e.g., I think , I guess), appealers (e.g., you see, you know), the mitigating past tense, and mitigating interrogatives (Ishihara, 2016; Kreutel, 2007; Locher, 2004; Malamed, 2010; Mallon-Gerland, 2011; Rees-Miller, 2000; Salsbury & Bardovi-Harlig, 2001). Upgraders have only been sparsely treated in the ILP literature on disagreements, with the existing reports mentioning plus-committers (e.g., I’m sure, I’m positive; Kreutel, 2007), intensifiers (e.g., absolutely, really; Ishihara, 2016), aggravators (aggressive or judgmental vocabulary such as swear words; Glaser, 2014), and aggressive, often rhetorical interrogatives (Rees-Miller, 2000). English language learners’ disagreements have been reported to diverge from the native-speaker norm1 by a marked absence of the mitigating devices 1  Assuming a native-speaker norm as the benchmark in ILP is not unproblematic, for a number of reasons (Lee, 2005; McKay, 2009; Roever, 2011). Intervention studies do, however, need a pedagogical target, which cannot be as “fluid” and “hybrid” (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey, 2011, p. 296) as lingua franca English. For teaching purposes, “there appears to be no alternative to

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above, especially by the tendency to leave out initial mitigation, which results in comparatively blunt and harsh disagreements characterized by a high degree of directness (Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004; Lawson 2009; Zhu & Boxer, 2012). Specific features typically associated with L2 disagreements are the performative I disagree (Beebe & Takahashi, 1989; Salsbury & Bardovi-Harlig, 2001) and the overuse of the regret indicator I’m sorry (Kreutel, 2007; Srisuruk, 2011). In terms of output quantity, Mallon-Gerland (2011) observed a high degree of verbosity in her learners’ disagreements, which mostly resulted from lengthy adjuncts. This “waffle phenomenon” in learners (Edmondson & House, 1991, p. 273) has also been observed for a range of other speech acts involving conflict such as apologies, requests, complaints and refusals (Bergman & Kasper, 1993; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Lin, 2014; Olshtain & Weinbach, 1993). Detailed analyses of internal modification in learner disagreements are generally rare and have typically addressed and ‘diagnosed’ the underuse of downgraders (Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004; Salsbury & Bardovi-Harlig, 2001). Upgraders have, to my knowledge, not been the focus of ILP studies on dispreferred disagreement, with the exception of Mallon-Gerland (2011), who analyzed disagreements produced by German working professionals in workplace exchanges with American colleagues. Even though she used a somewhat different terminology, she differentiated in her analysis between semantic strategies (the disagreement proper) and adjuncts (any accompanying external modification of the disagreement) and identified a rather interesting distribution pattern of modality markers: while the participants tended to underuse downgraders in the semantic strategies, they displayed an overuse of upgraders in the adjuncts. Accordingly, the learners expressed their disagreement in a rather direct and factual fashion without much linguistic ‘frilling,’ possibly borne out of the desire to ‘get their point across.’ On the other hand, they tended to embellish and amplify their cooperation-indicating adjuncts through upgrading, perhaps as a compensatory strategy to make up for the harshness of the disagreement proper. While for the learners this might be a subconscious attempt to achieve both message clarity and rapport management, to the NSE ear this combination is rather a mismatch which might cause confusion and even lead to “relational misunderstandings” (p. 289). Such fine-grained analyses of the internal makeup of speech act realizations help further the understanding of speech act production and acquisition. In addition, such findings are helpful input and feedback for language learners the standard native speaker variety. A better standard, if any, has yet to emerge” (Liu, 2010, p. 479).

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and thus have a great potential of applicability in the language classroom. The present study therefore attempts to increase the knowledge in this area by analyzing the development of both downgrading and upgrading patterns in the disagreement expressions of advanced learners of EFL before and after explicit pragmatic intervention. 4

Research Aims

The analysis of downgrading and upgrading patterns in EFL learner disagreements was guided by the following two research questions: RQ1: How did the learners employ internal mitigation (downgraders and upgraders) in the semantic strategies and in the adjuncts before and after the pragmatic instruction vis-à-vis native speaker usage quantitatively in terms of frequency? RQ2: How did the learners employ internal mitigation (downgraders and upgraders) in the semantic strategies and in the adjuncts before and after the pragmatic instruction vis-à-vis native speaker usage qualitatively in terms of modification types employed? 5 Participants Learner data were collected from forty-nine EFL learners who at the time of data collection and pragmatic intervention were enrolled in the English program at a German university. A paper-based TOEFL test showed that participants were of upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 32 years; eight participants were male (16%) and 41 female (84%). Thirty-five students (71%) spoke German as their L1, the remaining L1s were Turkish and Russian (4 students each), Indonesian, Albanian, Spanish, Catalan, Czech, and Italian (1 student each). Although all learner participants had had at least eight years of English instruction when the investigation started, none had received explicit pragmatic instruction and/or instruction on speech acts before. The native speaker baseline data were provided by 61 native speakers of American English. Forty-three of these (71%) were female and 18 (30%) male. These NSE informants were comparable in age and educational background to

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the learner participants in that they were current or former university students and covered an age range of 18 to 30 years. 6

Data Collection

The data presented here were collected in the framework of a larger research project on instructional pragmatics (cf. Glaser, 2014), which collected learner speech act data by means of DCTs (Discourse Completion Tasks) and role plays. The current analysis is based on the DCT data only, for two reasons: first, native-speaker baseline data, which serves as the basis for the L1–L2 comparison, is only available in the form of DCT data since the role plays were only conducted with the learners; second, DCT data are supposed to reflect offline rather than online speech production and thus language output that has been pre-planned to a certain degree. While this feature of the DCT is often criticized for its paucity of discourse features such as turn-taking, fillers, repetition, hesitation, etc. (Golato, 2003; Yuan, 2001), it has the advantage of eliciting what the speakers perceive to be appropriate utterances and thus of tapping into their understanding of pragmatic rules and their declarative knowledge (Faerch & Kasper, 1984). The study employed three versions of the DCT, that is, the pre-test for the learners prior to the instruction at t1 (DCT 1), the post-test for the learners after the instruction at t2 (DCT 2), and the version for the native speakers (DCT NSE ), which consisted of half the scenarios from DCT 1 and DCT 2, respectively. Each DCT consisted of six disagreement scenarios, which were administered within an omnibus questionnaire containing other speech act scenarios so as not to reveal the research focus to the participants. All disagreement scenarios were of the friendly-encounter type not aimed at dispute and thus elicited dispreferred disagreement. The scenarios featured social roles familiar to university students and were varied and controlled for different intensities of PD (Power & Social Distance) and K (Rank of Stake) as displayed in Table 1.1. The decision to group Power and Social Distance together (high P with high D and vice versa) was motivated by the desire to create clear, unambiguous stimuli since previous research has pointed to the interconnect­ed­ness of these two variables (Hudson, Detmer & Brown, 1995; Martínez-Flor, 2004; Spencer-Oatey, 1993). The variable Rank of Stake has been reported by Ishihara (2016), Kreutel (2007), and Rees-Miller (2000) to be an influential factor in the decision of whether and how to perform disagreements. It refers to what the disagreer perceives is at risk for him/her in the situation and has been defined as “the

16 table 1.1

Glaser Situational variables, social roles and disagreement topics in the DCT scenarios

PD-high DCT 1 K-high

disagreeing with professor on whether essay was handed in [Essay] K-medium disagreeing with landlord on source of loud music [Music] K-low

PD-low DCT 2

DCT 1

DCT 2

disagreeing with landlord on whether rent was paid [Rent]

disagreeing with friend on correct airport gate [Airport]

disagreeing with a classmate on a credit pair-assignment [Assignment]

disagreeing disagreeing with boss about with classmate on exercises to availability do in an Italian of newsletter language class print samples [Italian] [Newsletter] disagreeing with disagreeing with disagreeing colleague about with boss on professor on the purpose of how to best cure the singer of a a vegetarian a hoarse throat song at a work [Hoarse Throat] party [Song] dip [Dip] DCT NSE

disagreeing with colleague about which talk to attend at a conference [Conference] disagreeing with friend after a concert about the band’s performance [Concert]

potential damages, negative consequences or disadvantages that would result from opting out of disagreeing, as perceived by S [the speaker].” (Glaser, 2014, p. 150). The scenarios were extensively pretested for their content validity and cross-cultural comparability in several rounds with German and American English native speakers. Table 1.1 illustrates their distributions in the three DCT versions. The scenarios were administered online. Each scenario description was accompanied by a box for the participant’s response (no character limit), the check-box option I wouldn’t say anything, and space to provide a comment, which was not obligatory unless the opt-out box was checked. Each scenario was presented on a separate screen, and participants could only advance to the next scenario once the current one was completed. Aside from the scenarios, the questionnaire collected demographic and linguistic background information as necessary for the research aims.

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Pragmatic Instruction

The pragmatic intervention was provided in the context of a semester-long oral skills course that met weekly for 1.5 hours. Alongside debating and presentation skills, this course featured four sessions of explicit pragmatic instruction that were spread out over the semester and centered on the speech acts of disagree­ment and offer refusal. The pragmatic intervention covered metaand sociopragmatic knowledge of pragmatics, speech acts, face (including face threat and face-saving strategies), and situational variation (especially the role of PD). In terms of disagreement strategies, the instruction featured pragmalinguistic means that had been reported in the literature as relevant and necessary to teach: on the turn-level, initial and sandwich mitigation, pausing and hesitation, and token agreement. On the level of adjuncts, repetition/uptake of the prior speaker’s words, clarification requests, grounders, and alternative suggestions. Semantic strategies for disagreement were not addressed explicitly due to the instruction’s focus on mitigating devices. In terms of internal modification, the instruction covered the following downgraders: epistemic modal and sensory verbs (called modal verbs in the instruction), downtoning adverbials, understaters, subjectivizers, appealers, and cajolers (all covered under the term hedging, with which the learners were familiar). Upgraders were not covered. The instruction featured native-speaker input (through extracts from TV series and from the NSE data), explicit explanations, sharing and discussion rounds, and ample opportunities for planned and spontaneous practice, including practice of pragmatic variation based on sociolinguistic background variables. A detailed description of the lesson activities and materials is provided in Glaser (2014). 8

Data Analysis Procedures and Data Overview

Once data collection was completed, the data were cleansed by removing all invalid responses and opt-outs. Responses were considered invalid if they did not feature verbatim turns but provided comments about the scenario or metalinguistic responses describing what the participant would do or say in this situation without providing a verbal reaction. Opt-outs were all those instances in which the participants had chosen the I wouldn’t say anything-option or given a response that constituted agreement instead of disagreement. Table 1.2 provides an overview of the discarded and the valid responses. As Table 1.2 shows, the results presented below are based on 281 disagreements produced by the native speakers, 251 learner disagreements collected

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table 1.2 Data overview – invalid responses, opt-outs, and valid disagreement responses

Data set

Scenarios administered

NSE Learners at t1 Learners at t2 Total

366 294 294 954

Invalid responses

6 1 4 11

Opt-outs

Valid disagreement responses analyzed in the study

79 42 42 163

281 251 248 780

prior to the instruction (t1), and 248 learner disagreements collected after the instruction (t2). All of these 780 valid disagreement responses were analyzed with regard to the types of semantic strategies (SemStrats) used to perform the disagreement and the types of adjuncts (ADJs) used to modify the semantic strategies (cf. Glaser (2014) for more details on these coding schemes). Then, all modality markers were coded for location (i.e., whether they appeared in a SemStrat or an ADJ), and for type according to the taxonomy displayed in Table 1.3. table 1.3

Coding scheme for modification markers

Downgraders

Upgraders

lexical– epistemic modal and phrasal: sensory verbs (e.g., may, seem) – downtoning adverbials (e.g., perhaps, just) – understaters (e.g., kind of, a bit) – subjectivizers (e.g., I think , I guess) – appealers and cajolers (e.g., you see, okay, right) – politeness marker please – regret indicator (e.g., sorry, I’m sorry) syntactic: – mitigating interrogatives syntactic: – mitigating past tense lexicalphrasal:

– plus-committers (e.g., I’m sure, I’m positive) – intensifiers (e.g., absolutely, really) – aggravators (aggressive or judgmental vocabulary such as swear words)

– aggressive interrogatives

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figure 1.1 Average number of semantic strategies and adjuncts per scenario

In coding the data, it became soon evident that the learners produced much longer responses than the native speakers: While on average the NSE realized a disagreement with 15.5 words per scenario, the learners produced 21.3 words at t1 (i.e., prior to the instruction) and 36.2 words at t2 (i.e., after the instruction; the differences in both comparisons are statistically significant). This not only echoes the observations of learner verbosity and waffling reported in earlier studies, but it also illustrates teaching-induced pragmatic deviations, so-called transfer-of-training effects (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996, p. 160). The learners’ increased awareness of speech act features, especially of face-saving strategies and mitigating devices, has in all likelihood resulted in their desire to produce these to a much greater extent after the instructional period. This interpretation seems justified by the marked increase in adjuncts compared to semantic strategies. As Figure 1.1 shows, the learners slightly reduced their average use of semantic strategies from 1.36 per scenario at t1 to 1.04 at t2, which constitutes an approximation to the NSE average of 1.14. Their use of adjuncts, on the other hand, exploded from an average of 1.85 at t1 (which was already considerably higher than the NSE average of 1.30) to 2.89 at t2 and thus to a value more than twice that observed in the NSE baseline. The present data thus clearly mirror Mallon-Gerland’s (2011) observations on waffling in disagreement adjuncts. To take these numerical imbalances into consideration, the frequencies of the modality markers were not calculated with regard to their occurrence per scenario, but in terms of occurrences per segment type, i.e., occurrences per semantic strategy or occurrences per adjunct, respectively. Table 1.4 provides an overview of the number (n) of semantic strategies and adjuncts as well as of downgraders (DGs) and upgraders (UGs) used within these two segment types that formed the basis of the analysis presented in the remainder of the article.

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table 1.4 Numbers of semantic strategies, adjuncts, downgraders and upgraders analyzed

Dataset

Valid scenarios

NSE Learners at t1 Learners at t2 Total

9

281 251 248 780

SemStrats

ADJs

n

DGs

UGs

n

DGs

UGs

321 341 259 921

152 79 270 501

94 102 57 253

365 464 717 1546

127 168 412 707

22 59 109 190

Results and Discussion

9.1 Research Question 1: Frequencies of Downgrader and Upgrader Use RQ 1 inquired about the learners’ use of downgrading and upgrading in the semantic strategies as well as in the adjuncts before and after the pragmatic instruction as compared to the native speaker baseline. Figure 1.2 displays the respective frequencies for semantic strategies and Figure 1.3 for adjuncts, for all three data sets (NSE, learners at t1, and learners at t2). The use of modification markers is displayed as the average number of downgraders (respectively, upgraders) used per semantic strategy (Figure 1.2) and per adjunct (Figure 1.3). The charts reveal a number of interesting patterns of internal modification in disagreements for both NSE and learners. First, we can see that the native speakers modified their semantic strategies to a much greater extent than their adjuncts, both with regard to downgrading (0.47 vs. 0.35) and upgrading (0.29 vs. 0.06). Paired-sample t-tests showed that these differences are highly significant (for downgraders, p=.008, for upgraders, p