Proficiency and preference organization in second language refusals

Interactional Features of L2 Pragmatic Interaction in Role‐Play Speaking Assessment

“…For example, oral proficiency interviews (OPIs) primarily elicit L2 speakers’ abilities to answer interviewers’ questions given that OPIs are mainly organized as question and answer sequences (e.g., He, ; Johnson & Tyler, ; Kasper & Ross, ), rather than abilities to initiate the conversation or shift topics during interaction. On the other hand, role‐plays can assess learners’ pragmatic competence of achieving diverse language functions in spoken interaction, such as requests or refusals (e.g., Al‐Gahtani & Roever, , ; Huth, ; Okada, ). These findings illustrate that the nature of elicited speaking performance is specific to task types and accordingly interactional phenomena are subject to communicative functions required in tasks.…”

“…Research on assessing L2 pragmatic interaction has been increasingly available (e.g., Grabowski, ; Ross & Kasper, ; Youn, ), as have qualitative accounts of what interactional features characterize pragmatic interaction at varying performance levels (e.g., Al‐Gahtani & Roever, , ; Youn, ). Nonetheless, quantitative evidence for what interactional features count as competent L2 pragmatic interaction is still limited.…”

Strategies in Forming the Speech Act of Refusals of Non-Native English Speakers and Native English Speakers in Entry-Level Customer Service Positions in Canada

“…Finally, Searle considered utterances that take direct change about the world by means of voicing the utterance like a parent naming a child (e.g., "I'll name her Julia"), a priest marrying two people (e.g., "I now pronounce you husband and wife"), and a judge convicting a criminal (e.g., "the defendant is guilty as charged"), as declaratives. Although not explicitly stated in Searle's (1979) original taxonomy of illocutionary acts, refusals are understood to be a commissive (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2018;Bella, 2014), as they are an illocutionary act where the speaker makes themselves obligated to not perform an action.…”

“…This classification of refusals has enabled researchers to identify and classify pragmalinguistic conventions -the forms of mitigation devices that let an utterance be recognized as a specific speech act -of refusals across different languages and dialects including: Arabic (Abed, 2011;Al Masaeed et al, 2020), English (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2018Beebe et al, 1990;Salazar-Campillo, 2013), Greek (Bella, 2011;2014), Japanese (Beebe et al, 1990;Nurjaleka, 2020), Persian (Aliakbari & Changizi, 2012;Ghazanfari, Bonyadi, & Malekzadeh, 2013;Mokhtari, 2015), Spanish (Félix-Brasdefer, 2003;2004;2008), and Vietnamese (Nguyen, 2006), among others. The refusals can be studied in a single language (e.g., Al Masaeed et al, 2020;Bella, 2011;2014;Codina-Espurz, 2013;Farnia & Wu, 2012;Salazar-Campillo, 2013), or across two or more languages (Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2018;Beebe et al, 1990;Félix-Brasdefer, 2003, 2008. The speech act of refusals has also been studied in the participants' L2 (e.g., Codina-Espurz, 2013;Farnia & Wu, 2012;Salazar-Campillo, 2013), or has been compared between native speakers with non-native speakers of a language (e.g., Beebe et al, 1990;Bella, 2011Bella, , 2014Félix-Brasdefer, 2003, 2008.…”

“…Studies have investigated refusals to these four stimulating acts (i.e., requests, invitations, suggestions, and offers) through DCTs (Al-Eryani, 2007;Keshavarz, Eslami, & Ghahraman, 2006), role plays (e.g., Taguchi, 2013) or authentic data (Riddiford & Holmes, 2015;Schnurr and Zayts, 2013). Other studies have focused on refusals to a single initiating act, including refusals of requests (e.g., Abdolrezapour & Dastjerdi, 2012;Al-Gahtani & Roever, 2018;Al Masaeed et al, 2020;Bella, 2014;Codina-Espurz, 2013;Salazar-Campillo, 2013), refusals to invitations (e.g., Bella, 2011;Farnia & Wu, 2012;Félix-Brasdefer, 2003;2008), and refusals to suggestions (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1993).…”