Context, Individual Differences and Pragmatic Competence

Abstract

In Context, Individual Differences and Pragmatic Competence Naoko Taguchi provides a detailed account of research into second language acquisition pragmatics in a Japanese context. Pragmatics within second language acquisition (SLA) is a forgotten field, attracting very little practical attention in the classroom (very few SLA text-books cover more than the most common pragmatic meanings in a handful of situations: greetings, requesting, complementing at most). In SLA, students are dealing with interlanguage pragmatics, combining the pragmatics of two cultures, or even applying those of the mother culture to the second one. This results in SL students syntactically, lexically, and phonetically very competent but unable to understand speech acts such as a polite refusal. Studies like Taguchi's raise the profile of pragmatics in the SL classroom and the awareness of teachers as to its importance.Chapter 1 begins with a description of the study and its context, both within the field of pragmatics and of SLA. Taguchi's study follows 48 Japanese students of English in a bilingual university in Japan for one academic year. At the time

The Effects of Practice Modality on Pragmatic Development in L2 Chinese

“…However, gains in performance speed, which can serve as an indicator of the ability to process pragmatic knowledge (i.e., processing ability ), have largely been left unexamined. Because knowledge and processing are key components of pragmatic competence (Kasper, ; Taguchi, ), both should be examined to better understand instructed L2 pragmatic development. This study is an effort to address the above issues by examining the effects of input‐based and output‐based practices on the development of accuracy and speed in request‐making in L2 Chinese.…”

The Effects of Practice Modality on Pragmatic Development in L2 Chinese

“…Pragmatic competence has been theorized to incorporate both knowledge and processing components (e.g., Bialystok, 1993;Kasper, 2001;Taguchi, 2012). The development of knowledge involves expanding pragmalinguistic (i.e., linguistic forms for conveying pragmatic functions) and sociopragmatic (i.e., sociocultural conventions governing language use) repertoires (Leech, 1983;Thomas, 1983).…”

“…On the other hand, processing refers to the executive abilities to efficiently access, integrate, and demonstrate relevant pragmatic knowledge in real-time communication (Taguchi, 2012). The development of processing ability involves acquiring "control strategies to attend to the intended interpretations in contexts and to select the forms from the range of possibilities that satisfy the social and contextual needs of the communicative situation" (Bialystok, 1993, p. 54).…”

“…With repeated comprehension and production of pragmatic meanings, the execution of such strategies can gradually become automatized to allow fluent performance. In interlanguage pragmatics, indicators of processing ability include measures of performance speed, such as response times for interpreting implied meanings (e.g., Taguchi, 2005Taguchi, , 2007aTaguchi, , 2012 and planning times and speech rates in producing speech acts (e.g., Li, 2012;Taguchi, 2008). In the following sections, we will review instructional studies based on knowledge and processing dimensions of pragmatic competence.…”

“…However, gains in performance speed, which can serve as an indicator of the ability to process pragmatic knowledge (i.e., processing ability), have largely been left unexamined. Because knowledge and processing are key components of pragmatic competence (Kasper, 2001;Taguchi, 2012), both should be examined to better understand instructed L2 pragmatic development. This study is an effort to address the above issues by examining the effects of input-based and output-based practices on the development of accuracy and speed in request-making in L2 Chinese.…”