Do They Mean What They Say? Sociopragmatic Competence and Second Language Learners

Harlow, Linda L.

doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1990.tb01070.x

Cited by 51 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Concerning the correlation between complexity of request strategies and level of language proficiency in EFL learners, the findings of present study, following other studies in this field (Harlow, 1990;Francis, 1997;Parent, 2002), support request development of learners from being direct to indirect and from being simple to complex. On the one hand, there is a positive correlation between the use of indirect strategy types and the English proficiency level.…”

Section: Question Onesupporting

confidence: 62%

“…In other words, linguistic ability correlates with strategy use. The greater use of Imperative as the most direct type of requesting by the low learners, as Harlow (1990) suggests, is also probably due to the linguistic deficiency or perhaps lack of attention to the rules of politeness (p. 335). They do not possess enough linguistic ability to employ other types of direct request such as Want statement as frequent as the higher groups.…”

Section: Question Onementioning

confidence: 99%

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Request Strategies: Cross-Sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners and Australian Native Speakers

Jalilifar¹

2009

ELT

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This study was a cross-sectional investigation into the request strategies used by Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language and Australian native speakers of English. The sample involved 96 BA and MA Persian students and 10 native speakers of English. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to generate data related to the request strategies used by each group. Selection of request situations in DCT was based on two social factors of relative power and social distance. Although results revealed pragmatic development, particularly in the movement from direct to conventionally indirect strategies on the part of EFL learners, learners with higher proficiency displayed overuse of indirect type of requesting; whereas the native group was characterized by the more balanced use of this strategy. The lower proficiency learners, on the other hand, overused the most direct strategy type. In terms of the influence of the social variables, the findings of this research revealed that as far as social power is concerned EFL learners display closer performance to native speakers. But considering social distance, it seems that Iranian EFL learners have not acquired sufficient sociopragmatic knowledge to display proper social behavior.

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Section: Question Onesupporting

confidence: 62%

Section: Question Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Request Strategies: Cross-Sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners and Australian Native Speakers

Jalilifar¹

2009

ELT

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“…As it is suggested in literature, while acquiring the language, native speakers of a language also acquire the knowledge of rules and choose among the speech acts when communicating with others. However, the situation is different when people learn a second/foreign language since speech acts have been accepted as one of the troublesome points in learning a second/foreign language (Wolfson 1989;Harlow 1990;Schmidt and Richards 1980). It has been claimed in literature that second/foreign language learners face problems in using speech acts as their usage requires sociopragmatic competence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sociolinguistic competence includes appropriateness of meaning and appropriateness of form and for nonnative speakers every situation is potentially unfamiliar because of unknown sociolinguistic conventions (Shaw, 1992). Being a part of sociolinguistic competence, sociopragmatic competence in a language includes not only linguistic and lexical knowledge but also knowing how to vary speech act strategies according to the situational or social variables in communication (Harlow, 1990). …”

Section: Communicative Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

The use of apologies by EFL learners

Istifci¹

2009

ELT

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The aim of this study is to investigate the act of apologizing with subjects from two different levels of English proficiency to find out whether there are similarities and differences between these groups and whether they approach native speaker apology norms. 20 subjects in intermediate level, 20 subjects in advanced level and 5 native speakers of English participate in the study. The data are gathered by a Discourse Completion Test that had 8 apology situations. In the analysis of the data, all responses are categorized according to Cohen and Olshtain's (1981) apology speech act set. The results of the study reveal some similarities and differences between the two groups. Their L1 can be said to have an influence on their use of apologies, especially intermediate level subjects transfer native Turkish speaker norms into English.

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“…The meaning of the emoticon is, thus, not seen as inherent in the sign, but must be understood in relation to the message and context (Walther and D'Addario 2001). This points to the situatedness of communication that implies a sociopragmatic competence; that is, to be able to appropriately use linguistic repertoires in specific contexts, which often is subordinated in L2 practices of schooling (Blattner and Fiori 2011;Harlow 1990;Lomicka and Lord 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Language play in a second language: Social media as contexts for emerging Sociopragmatic competence

Lantz-Andersson

2017

Educ Inf Technol

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The aim of this study is to gain insights into students' language use on social media as part of the specific linguistic activities of second language (L2) learning, including development of sociopragmatic competence. Two Facebook groups were introduced in different English-as-L2 classes that were part of an international collaborative project comprising secondary schools in Colombia, Finland, Sweden and Taiwan. The study is theoretically grounded in sociocultural perspectives on learning, and the methods involve logging the students' linguistic interactions in the social media groups. The analysis of the empirical material explored how the students framed the activities by different types of keying in their choice of linguistic repertoires. The findings show that the social media context offered a casual space for communication in which the students, by attentively attuning to the local coordinated framing, used diverse linguistic repertoires to play with the language. In instances of upkeyed framings, the language play was not only used with pragmatic intentions, but also as a means for various socializing purposes. In conclusion, it is suggested that language play on social media can be seen as a valuable activity in developing sociopragmatic competence to prepare students for L2 use outside of school.Keywords English as second language learning . Social media . Language play . Framing . Keying . Sociopragmatic competence Social media has only been around for the last few decades and, from an historical perspective, it can be seen as a fairly new area for communication. Nonetheless, it is already an essential dimension of many people's daily activities (Erstad and SeftonGreen 2013) and therefore also of importance for education (e.g., Greenhow and Askari 2015). In social media spaces, English has become the dominant language, serving as Educ Inf Technol (2018) 23:705-724

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Do They Mean What They Say? Sociopragmatic Competence and Second Language Learners

Cited by 51 publications

References 16 publications

Request Strategies: Cross-Sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners and Australian Native Speakers

Request Strategies: Cross-Sectional Study of Iranian EFL Learners and Australian Native Speakers

The use of apologies by EFL learners

Language play in a second language: Social media as contexts for emerging Sociopragmatic competence

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