Applied Pragmatics - Online First

With English as the medium of instruction (EMI) at UK universities, international Chinese graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are crucial in the delivery of teaching and learning support. While their English proficiency is generally strong, the influence of first language (L1) pragmatic transfer remains a key consideration, particularly the transfer of Chinese modal particles, which are functional words that convey the speaker’s attitude, stance, or communicative intent. Developing (meta)pragmatic awareness is therefore essential for second language (L2) speakers to interpret and apply pragmatic norms appropriately in instructional contexts. This study examines L2 speakers in instructional roles within EMI settings at UK universities. Through a longitudinal qualitative investigation of nine Chinese GTAs from two UK universities, this study delineates Chinese GTAs’ progression of (meta)pragmatic awareness of L1 pragmatic transfer and how Chinese modal particles (including ba 吧, ma 吗, and bei 呗) are reflected in their teacher requests during classroom teaching. The findings suggest that Chinese GTAs can retain L2 output intelligibility while incorporating L1-influenced pragmatic features, revealing how intercultural pragmatic transfer can transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and highlighting the importance of embracing intercultural pragmatic diversity for a more inclusive and internationalised discourse in UK higher education contexts.

Assessing interactional competence (IC) in second/additional/foreign languages (L2) is increasingly becoming a primary construct to examine the interactional ability of language learners, which calls for assessment contexts that provide opportunities for mutually managing interactions. This study focuses on paired role-play tasks as the assessment context and investigates the systematic methods deployed by L2 learners to collaboratively accomplish the progressivity of task-oriented assessment conversations. Using Multimodal Conversation Analysis as the research methodology, we examine video-recorded paired role-play interactions and specifically deal with how L2 learners topicalize the instructed social actions and engage in role-exchange to ensure progressivity. Relatedly, the findings show that the participants skilfully switch their pre-assigned roles when they identify or pre-empt troubles in progressivity, which, in return, enables them to move the assessment task and talk-in-interaction forward, thus bearing relevance for a situated understanding of the participants’ displays of IC. The findings bring new insights into L2 IC assessment.

This study explores individual variation in advanced foreign language learners’ cognitive processes in speech act performance while negotiating meaning in English as a foreign language (EFL). To reveal learner perceptions and cognitions on their clarification request (CR) production, data were collected using retrospective verbal reports from 16 advanced Korean EFL learners through two conversation tasks. Ten verbal reports were analyzed by conducting introspective thematic analysis, considering concepts in pragmatics and second language (L2) acquisition. The sampled learners had multiple foci of attention, such as sociopragmatic norms and subjective perceptions of face and rapport, pragmalinguistic awareness, and emotion in the employment of CR strategies. These findings reveal that learners’ decision-making processes regarding employment/avoidance of CRs during EFL conversation tasks varied: (i) for some learners, it related to perceptions of the interlocutor’s linguistic proficiency and first-language pragmatics; (ii) for others, despite their pragmalinguistic awareness, it related to a lack of sufficient L2 sociopragmatic and L2 pragmalinguistic knowledge. These learners’ CR choices are not necessarily face-threatening because for many these choices were made to scaffold the interlocutor or politely express disagreement based on their construction of explicature in micro-contexts created during conversations, rather than focused solely on face.

This paper examines a teacher’s humor through gesture-speech incongruity when explaining vocabulary in a beginning ESL classroom. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we analyze the teacher’s humor through gesture-speech incongruity when explaining the word ‘handcuffs.’ While the incongruity of humor in social interaction contains only the verbal aspect, our analysis shows that it is a performance of both verbal and embodied actions. Further, it shows that the teacher’s humor of gesture-speech incongruity generates prolonged laughter and smiling from students. We argue that such humorous moments facilitate student engagement and make the relevant word easy for them to understand. Findings contribute to still under-investigated research of humor in gesture-speech incongruity in vocabulary explanation, particularly for beginning ESL learners and have practical implications for language teachers regarding implementing humor in vocabulary explanations.

Adopting retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) as the data collection instrument, this study investigates native English-speaking (NES) and English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers’ perceptions of their performances of major speech acts (i.e., requests, apologies, and refusals). Each of the 12 college students (6 NESs in U.S. and 6 EFLs in China) completed six role plays (two on each speech act). An RVR was administered immediately after each role play to capture participants’ thoughts during the speech act performance. The results showed that the participants shared the same intentions in some situations but differed in others. Both groups reported attending to linguistic aspects such as vocabulary and pronunciation. Whereas EFLs emphasized the cultural/language influences on their performances, NESs stressed the issue of politeness. The participants demonstrated a variety of multisequence steps while planning for their role plays. Although no EFL indicated satisfaction in their self-evaluations, NESs were mostly satisfied with their performances. NESs also had more sociopragmatic references, while EFLs almost exclusively focused on pragmalinguistics. This study provides multifaceted information on the perceptions of L1 and L2 speakers while executing the same sets of speech acts and warrants the need to introduce social factors into L2 pragmatic instruction for beginners.