Advanced learners’ responses to Chinese greetings in study abroad

Abstract

This study explored the pragmatic strategies that advanced L2 learners of Chinese produced in greeting responses (GRs). Data were collected through roleplays and retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) from 11 advanced learners of Chinese who were studying in China. To obtain comparison data, 20 Chinese students were recruited to complete the same roleplays. The GRs were coded into openings, head acts and closings, and classified into ten strategies: phatic phrases, address terms, corresponding answers, reciprocal compliments, disagreeing, seeking confirmation, thanking, reciprocity questions, introducing another topic and reasons. The findings revealed that compared with Chinese native speakers (NSs), advanced learners produced non-target-like GRs, although their GRs were acceptable based on two NSs’ evaluation. The RVR data indicated that the learners’ non-target-like GRs might result from their idiosyncratic perceptions of Chinese greetings, pragmatic knowledge deficits, effects of instruction and learner agency. Implications for future research and teaching Chinese pragmatics are also discussed.

Self‐praise on social media WeChat Moments in L1 and L2 Chinese

“…No learners realized self‐praise through denigration, a common phenomenon in Chinese culture (Gu, 1990; Kádár & Zhou, 2021). These findings indicate that even these advanced learners still lag behind Chinese native speakers in their pragmalinguistic competence to perform self‐praise, echoing previous findings related to other interactional phenomena and speech acts in the L2 Chinese pragmatics literature (Ying & Ren, 2022) and more generally in L2 pragmatics studies in other languages (see Kasper & Rose, 2002; Taguchi & Roever, 2017).…”

“…Chinese native speakers in their pragmalinguistic competence to perform self-praise, echoing previous findings related to other interactional phenomena and speech acts in the L2 Chinese pragmatics literature (Ying & Ren, 2022) and more generally in L2 pragmatics studies in other languages (see Kasper & Rose, 2002;Taguchi & Roever, 2017).…”

“…In contrast, research on L2 pragmatics in Chinese started late, but the number of studies in Chinese is increasing rapidly. Previous L2 pragmatics research in Chinese has investigated speech acts such as requests (e.g., Li et al., 2021; Ren, 2019; Su & Ren, 2017), apologies (e.g., Yang & Ke, 2021), refusals (e.g., Su, 2022), compliment responses (e.g., Jin, 2012; Tang et al., 2021), greeting responses (e.g., Ying & Ren, 2022), formulaic expressions (e.g., Taguchi et al., 2013; Wang & Halenko, 2019), and pragmatic markers (e.g., Diao, 2016; Ren, 2022a). Studies have shown that learners’ pragmatic development often follows a non‐linear trajectory, which is influenced by a number of factors including L2 proficiency, study abroad length, availability of pragmatic targets, and learners’ pragmatic agency.…”

“…There were notable differences between the two groups’ (meta)pragmatic competence, although the reasons for the two groups incorrectly evaluating the RFIEs varied. Similarly, Ying and Ren (2022) used roleplay and retrospective verbal reports to examine advanced L2 Chinese learners’ pragmatic strategies for greeting responses. This study found that L2 Chinese learners produced various nontarget‐like greeting response strategies, although these strategies were also acceptable.…”

The pragmatic resistance of Chinese learners of Korean

“…Recent studies of L2 Chinese enriched this line of research by involving Asian learners of another Asian language. Ying and Ren (2021), for example, invited seven L2 Chinese learners from Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Thailand, in addition to two European learners, to provide their responses to Chinese greeting routines. Pragmatic resistance was found in their responses to compliments and situation‐bound questions in the greeting routines.…”