Second language pragmatics: a corpus-based study of the pragmatic marker like

Abstract

This paper presents the extent to which like is used as a pragmatic marker (PM) by Brazilian university students living in Ireland. This is a case study which is part of a broader PhD research project on L2 pragmatic development within a study-abroad context. The results and reflections of this study are based on a sample corpus of spoken language, which comprises four 30-minute informal interactions between 6 participants and the researcher. Drawing on the Limerick Corpus of Irish English, a representative corpus of spoken Irish English (IrE), the interpersonal functions and procedural meanings of the PM like in the participants’ L2 are compared and contrasted against those of the IrE data. Quantitatively, the PM like is found to be a keyword in the L2 corpus and three times more frequent by comparison to the IrE data. Qualitatively, this study shows evidence of like being used multifunctionally by the L2-speakers of English, with all functions of the PM also previously described in the literature on IrE. However, some specific functional patterns also emerge from the L2 data, which indicates the pragmatic needs and linguistic demands which may arise during communication when using an L2.***Pragmática da segunda língua: um estudo de corpus do marcador pragmático like***Este artigo apresenta a extensão com que like é usado como marcador pragmático (MP) por brasileiros universitários na Irlanda. Este é um estudo de caso, e parte de um projeto de pesquisa de doutorado sobre o desenvolvimento da pragmática da segunda língua (L2) no contexto de intercâmbio. Os resultados e reflexões deste estudo são embasados em uma amostra de um corpus de língua falada, que é constituído de quatro interações informais de 30 minutos entre 6 participantes e o pesquisador. Tendo como referência o Limerick Corpus of Irish English, um corpus representativo do inglês irlandês falado, as funções interpessoais e os significados procedurais do MP like usados pelos participantes são comparados e contrastados. Quantitativamente, o MP like se encontra como uma palavra-chave no corpus de L2, e é três vezes mais frequente se comparado com os dados do inglês irlandês. Qualitativamente, este estudo evidencia a multifuncionalidade de like na L2 dos participantes, sendo todas as funções usadas pelos participantes também previamente descritas na literatura sobre o inglês irlandês. Contudo, alguns padrões funcionais específicos também emergem do corpus de L2, o que indica as necessidades pragmáticas e exigências linguísticas que podem surgir durante a comunicação quando usando uma L2.

The Use of English Pragmatic Markers by Learners of English in Interlanguage Communication

“…These findings indicate that the use of the pragmatic markers by ES learners varies by the learners' backgrounds. As suggested in previous research (Aijmer, 2011;Salas, 2022;Santos, 2019), more data should be compiled for further analysis.…”

Designing and building SCoPE²: A spoken corpus of Brazilian Portuguese and L2-English

“…According to Jucker et al (2018), CP is one of the three empirical methodological approaches for the analysis of pragmatic phenomena (the others being experimentational pragmatics and observational pragmatics). What is more, PMs are perceived as one of the key areas of corpus-pragmatic research (Clancy and O'Keeffe 2015), which includes, but is not limited to, PMs across languages (see contributions in Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2006), in L2 (Veiga 2016;Santos 2019), and in comparisons between native and non-native speakers (Aijmer 2004;Fung and Carter 2007).…”

The Use of English Pragmatic Markers by Learners of English from Different Linguacultural Backgrounds

“…Öztürk and Köse, 2021; Pan and Aroonmanakun, 2022;Santos, 2019), as illustrated in Table1. Functions of the pm like identified in previous research…”