Applied Pragmatics - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2022

In this paper I first briefly define the notion of English as a lingua franca and then give an overview of research into the pragmatics of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Investigations into the phenomenon of ELF started during the last two decades of the previous century. ELF in oral interactions was characterized by interactants’ joint, collaborative action making the discourse robust and ‘normal’ in the face of interactants’ often non-normative use of the English language. Later research focused on how ELF interactants managed to accommodate to each other, how they negotiated meanings and co-constructed utterances often employing ELF-specific pragmatic markers. Researchers also investigated how ELF users turn to pragmatic transfer and code-switching whenever it is necessary to plug competence gaps arising in their use of English. Finally, I list several critical points of ELF research and make a few suggestions for the future of ELF research.

This paper reviews research on teaching pragmatics – and more specifically speech acts – to young L2 learners from two perspectives: (1) studies investigating young L2 learners’ pragmatic competence and (2) studies examining the potential of different materials with regard to pragmatics instruction. The review of L2 learners’ speech act competence addresses cross-sectional and longitudinal developmental studies, as well as studies that examined the effects of specific instructional approaches, learning contexts or materials on young L2 learners’ pragmatic competence. The review of studies examining materials addresses both studies focusing on designated L2 teaching materials produced for the explicit purpose of foreign language instruction of young learners, as well as studies examining speech acts included in children’s books. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues relevant to young learners and the teaching and researching of L2 pragmatics.

Over the past two decades, the theoretical backgrounds of instructed second language (L2) pragmatics studies have diversified, and instructional materials have been designed and implemented based on various theories of second language acquisition (SLA). As a result, the field of instructed pragmatics has made significant strides in developing empirically driven, effective instructional methods. Recently, researchers in the fields of task-based language teaching (TBLT) and L2 pragmatics have claimed there are synergistic effects when teaching pragmatics from a TBLT perspective. These researchers argue that both pragmatics instruction and TBLT approaches to language teaching highlight the importance of language use in authentic contexts and achieving communication goals. The focus of the current review article is on task design and implementation in L2 pragmatics research, particularly those studies which were conducted from a TBLT perspective. Pedagogical implications of these studies are discussed, and future directions for task-based approaches to teaching L2 pragmatics for both research and pedagogy are proposed.

In second language acquisition, corpus linguistics (CL) enjoys prominence as a methodology valuable for its descriptive power in the textual analysis of patterns. Within second language (L2) pragmatics, CL has been increasingly influential in shaping our understanding of learners’ pragmatic capacities and articulating new insights and possibilities. In this narrative review, I take a broad view of corpora in L2 pragmatics research with a focus on automatization, size, representativeness, temporal design, and annotation. This is followed by a review of representative research highlighting language proficiency, prosodic pragmatics, pragmatic particles and oral fluency, and pragmatics pedagogy. I conclude with future directions where the discussion centers on bringing CL and other methodologies together for pragmatic analysis and extending the use of these methodologies to more L2 pragmatic learning contexts.