Applied Pragmatics - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2024

This exploratory study examined the intonational patterns and corresponding speech act strategies in L1 and L2 English speakers’ production of high imposition requests and refusals that were elicited using video-based multiple turn discourse completion tasks (DCTs). The participants, 34 L1 American English speakers and 14 high-proficiency L2 English speakers, recorded their oral responses to 10 multiple-turn video-based DCTs. Using Brazil’s (1997) framework, the collected speech samples were analyzed for tone choices in each tone unit. Pragmatic strategies in the produced speech acts were analyzed by adapting the existing coding frameworks (Beebe et al., 1990; Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). The extracted tone choices and lexico-mathematical strategies were compared between the two language groups. The results preliminarily revealed differences in the use of tones by L1 and L2 English speakers in performing requests and refusals. Moreover, while the employed speech act strategies were largely similar between the two speaker groups, the associated tone choices showed contrasting usage patterns.

Employing conversation analysis (CA) to analyze a first encounter between a second language (L2) learner and a native speaker (NS) of Spanish, this study demonstrates how interactants’ differences in deploying sequence expansion and recipient uptake impact the interaction. Focusing on sequence organization during storytelling episodes, I argue that both interactants, teller and recipient, act as co-authors of the telling episode by conveying stancetaking differently, to display (mis)alignment and/or (dis)affiliation with the telling. The focal data are derived from one videotaped, semi-structured conversation of an L2-NS dyad. I identify ten focal episodes of sequences representing some form of post-expansions, recipient uptake, and stancetaking. The study reveals that these two speakers used post-expansions differently: the Spanish NS used them to accept a second-pair part; the Spanish learner employed them to close a second-pair part and transition toward a new topic, such as when encountering less-preferred recipient uptake. Gestures and gaze (e.g., looking away from the interlocutor) accentuated closing a dispreferred second-pair part. Given the importance of recipient uptake in talk-in-interaction, the article offers implications for research and pedagogy regarding training L2 learners to produce appropriate sequences beyond minimal post-expansions in talk.

Speech act studies often compare two or more groups of speakers by analyzing how often each group uses a given strategy to realize a speech act. Since the goal of such studies is to compare groups, they often do not discuss the variation that exists within the groups and, by extension, what can be considered a speech act tendency for a given group. To illustrate within-group variation and how such variation can be interpreted to identify the speech act tendencies of a group, this study used e-mail refusals of requests written by 50 native speakers of English as a case study. Data were collected using a discourse completion task and analyzed for participants’ strategies to refuse a request. Descriptive statistics show a considerable amount of variation in this rather homogenous group of English speakers but also allow for the identification of both commonly and rarely used refusal strategies. These findings highlight the importance of considering the commonly used strategies and the rarely used strategies when attempting to empirically identify speech act tendencies for teaching and assessment purposes. Implications of the results for future research, teaching, and assessment practices are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the pragmatic competence of writing request emails by Chinese learners of Japanese (CLJs). The study focused on the features of the external modification devices and framing moves of request emails by CLJs when compared to emails by native speakers of Japanese (NSJs). Data were collected from 104 CLJs and 53 NSJs, using an Electronic Writing Discourse Completion Test questionnaire. One-way ANOVA results showed that as the CLJs’ levels of proficiency in Japanese increased, their use of external modification devices and framing moves tended to increase. In addition, a Fisher’s exact test showed that as the CLJs’ proficiency increased, a distinct statistical difference only existed in the use of individual framing moves, but not in that of individual external modification devices. This study provides conceptual categories and utterances used in both external modification devices and framing moves for teaching email communication to CLJs.