Major Factors in the Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence

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Research on the acquisition of second language syntax, morphology, phonology, and semantics abounds, but there is a paucity of studies in the acquisition of pragmatic competence in a second language. This post summarizes some major factors in acquiring native-like competence in second language pragmatics.

1. Transfer: Sociolinguistic and socio-cultural norms often impede the acquisition of second 
    language pragmatics. Consider, for example, a native speaker of Russian replying to a native 
    English speaker's greeting "how are you?" The native English speaker expects a response
    such as "fine/good/thanks, and you?" However, the Russian speaker follows her socio-
    cultural norms and tells a long story of her life, causing both confusion and frustration to 
    the native English speaker.

2. Linguistic Proficiency: Second language learners may have limited L2 linguistic proficiency. As a 
    result, they can perform the speech acts that are communicatively important to them but experience
    considerable difficulty in performing them in native-like ways. Some types of deviations may 
    result from gaps in linguistic competence (see Olshtain and Cohen 1989). The second learner also
    may make overt linguistic errors. Take the following apology, for example, offered by a non-native
    English speaker to a native English speaker:
    Situation: bumping into a woman in the way. "I'm sorry but what can I do? It can't be stopped.' 
                    (avoided)
    Furthermore, the second language learner may make covert linguistic errors, which may be 
    linguistically correct but used inappropriately. 
 
    Situation: apologizing for failing to keep a meeting. "I really very sorry. I just forgot. I feel asleep. 
    Understand." 

3. Status of Learner: 
    Psychological convergence (Accommodation Theory) - The learner may attempt to converge
    towards a stereotypical norm of native-speaker behavior, but overshoot the mark. 
 
    Ethnic identity - Learners may prefer to maintain their own ethnic identity or may wish to 
    establish a separate identity as an L2 learner/user. 
 
    Impression management - how the speakers achieve communicative effects by manipulating their 
    linguistic and non-linguistic resources. Learners may not have access to the contextualization cues
    they need to construct a context favorable to themselves. 

Second language learners are likely to find themselves in an unequal position because: 
  • they are unequal in L2 knowledge
  • they are unequal in status (gatekeeping situations)
  • sometimes learners want to appear 'learner-like' because it may give them communicative advantages in certain situations
  • their communicative style is transparent, and they feel a need to establish, rather than presuppose, common ground in order to create a 'safer' communicative situation. 

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