Pragmatic Awareness and Engagement with Language from a Multilingual Perspective

Abstract

List of abbreviationsALA -Association of Language Awareness CLA -Critical Language Awareness CLT -Communicative Language Teaching CP -Cooperative principle CR -Consciousness-raising DCT -Discourse completion test DST -Dynamic Systems Theory EAL -English as an Additional Language EFL -English as a Foreign Language EMI -English as a medium of instruction ENS -English native speaker ESL -English as a Second Language ESP -English for Specific Purposes EWL -Engagement with Language FL -Foreign language FTA -Face-threatening act GSP -Grand strategy of politeness KAL -Knowledge about Language L1 -First language L2 -Second language viii L3 -Third language L4 -Fourth language LA -Language Awareness LRE -Language-related episodes NAR -Negative affective requests NCLE -National Council for Language Education PAR -Positive affective requests PEPLI -Programa d'educació plurilingüe i intercultural PEV -Programa d'educació en valencià PIP -Programa d'incorporació progressiva PIV-Programa d'immersió lingüística PP -Principle of politeness PPEC -Programa plurilingüe d'ensenyament en castellà PPEV -Programa plurilingüe d'ensenyament en valencià PRE -Pragmatic-related episode QPT -Oxford Quick Placement Test SLA -Second Language Acquisition UJI -Universitat Jaume I UK -United Kingdom US -United States ZPD -Zone of proximal development negotiation (McConachy & Liddicoat, 2022). In an attempt to cover the above-mentioned research gaps, we have examined multilingual learners' awareness during the co-construction of request making exchanges by attending to their engagement with Spanish, Catalan and English in collaborative dialogue. In doing so, we intend to provide fresh insights into the way multilingual learners' engagement with the languages contribute to the negotiation of pragmatic-related notions and the development of their pragmatic awareness. practices to promote engagement and, in particular, pragmatic awareness and the development of sociopragmatic notions (McConachy, 2019;van Compernolle, 2019;Myrset, 2021). Finally, this study is also guided by the importance attributed to the learning of English in bilingual and multilingual communities, oftentimes neglected in second language acquisition research (Cenoz, 2009;Safont, 2017). This dissertation is grounded in three important and interrelated ideas. In the first place, the "multilingual turn" (May, 2015) and the way it has had an impact on the The second idea guiding the current study is multilingual learners' enhanced