Speech Acts Bibliography:
Articles of General Interest

Boxer, D. (2002). Applying sociolinguistics: Domains and face-to-face interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

The book focuses on encounters in the various domains of native-speaker life (based on Fishman's 1972 distinction): family, educational, social, religious, and work, with a chapter on L1-L2 cross-cultural face-to-face interaction in these social, work, and educational domains (through a small sample of data of interactions between university staff and international students). The chapters review current research in that domain, with a focus on research methodological issues, and end with an analysis of interaction in that domain. Pragmatics is defined as what is mean by what is said or written. Discourse analysis refers to any study of language beyond the utterance/sentence level. Conversational analysis only looks at what can be gleaned from a transcript of conversation (not from the social context, past history, etc.). Ethnography of communication is defined as anthropologically-based ethnography united with linguistic analysis. Interactional sociolinguistics -- sometimes known as microethnography, involves interactional analysis using video-taped data and taking into account non-verbal behavior such as facial gestures, postural shifts, and proxemics; it combines sociology, linguistics, and anthropology. It focuses on the miscommunication between different ethnic groups. Boxer discusses elicitation instruments, role plays, sociolinguistic interviews, radio and TV talk, laboratory data (subjects recording conversations about particular topics in a laboratory). The interaction situations: nagging in family interaction, conversational joking and teasing in social interaction, sarcasm in educational interaction, rite-of-passage discourse in religious interaction, bragging and boasting in workplace interaction, and gatekeeping discourse in cross-cultural interaction. For nagging, Boxer had her students write down nagging sequences as they occurred in domestic contexts. On sarcasm, Nelms used videotapes of classroom interaction and had interpretations verified with ethnographic interviews. She found its positive value for humorous intent, to make a point as through an indirect reprimand. Negatively it was found to be used to shame and to push students to performance.

Boxer, D. (2002). Discourse issues in cross-cultural pragmatics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 150-167.

Focuses on the clash of expectations and misperceptions when individuals from different societies or communities interact according to their own pragmatic norms. Such research is conducted by close ethnographic or interactional sociolinguistic analysis, not through interlanguage pragmatic research which involves elicited samples. An example of these clashes in the education sphere would be international teaching assistants with native-speaking college students.

Cohen, A.D. (1996). Speech acts. In S.L. McKay & N.H. Hornberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 383-420). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The chapter first defines speech acts and provides a brief overview of how this field of discourse has been applied to second language acquisition. Next, research methodologies used in studying speech acts are examined, and selected empirical studies are considered. Finally, a small set of studies on the teaching of speech act behavior to nonnative speakers is reviewed, and the pedagogical implications of the findings for these studies are described.

Kasper, G. (2000). Four perspectives on L2 pragmatic development. Honolulu: Dept. of English as a Second Language, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Deals with four approaches to pragmatic development in a second language: pragmatics and grammar (the relationship between control over grammatical features and pragmatic performance), cognitive processing perspectives (the issue of noticing and of the value of explicit instruction in pragmatics -- with explicitness advantageous according to research), sociocognitive theory (interactionist, Vygotskian, developmental), language socialization perspective on pragmatic development (both implicit and explicit socialization in the classroom).

Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2003). Pragmatic development in a second language. Oxford: Blackwell.

Ch. 2 lays out the benefits that can be derived from different theoretical approaches to studying pragmatics. Two groups: those with a primarily individual-psychological focus (the acculturation model and cognitive-processing models) and those interested in social practice theories (sociocultural theory, language socialization theory, and approaches to interactional competence). They underscore the value of studies conducted from a cognitive-processing perspective, as well as from different or combined social practice approaches with an analytical focus on interactional engagements. Ch. 3 is rich for its methodological insights. The authors stress the importance of matching research method to the task at hand, and being appropriately critical of its implementation. They point out the methodological flaw in the Sawyer (1992) study of learners' developing use of ne in four interviews -- namely the asymmetrical nature of the relationship. Their point is that if comparisons are to be made between native and nonnative use of ne, then the two groups need to be in the same discourse roles, which wasn't the case here (pp. 85-86). Ch. 4 focuses on the development of pragmatic ability. Ch. 5 is devoted to pragmatics and grammar. They note that while untutored learners may lead with their pragmatic knowledge before grammar is acquired, more advanced learners lead with their grammatical knowledge and acquire the pragmatics. Of interest to those who conduct research on study abroad is Ch. 6, "Learning context and learning opportunities." The chapter focuses on the role of the environment in pragmatic development. First the authors discuss the length of residence as a factor. For example, they reproduce the Olshtain & Blum-Kulka 1985 table indicating the percent of correct positive politeness in requests or apologies for immigrants of less than 2 years, 2-10 years, more than 10 years, as compared to natives. They bring up the variable of high- and low-input generators and the role this may have, based on a study by Kim (2000) of Korean ESL students. They note that just being in the environment need not produce the language development in Japan. Learners are provided differential access to learning opportunities based on social position. The authors then talk about institutional talk and cite the Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford research. Next, they look at the contribution on pragmatic performance of classroom instructions, sometimes the main contact with the language. Research shows that over time the learners become more adept at, for example, marking transitions and taking turns in German (Kasper 1981) without much instruction. They attribute this to the students' universal interactional competence and teacher input -- that these enabled them to identify transition-relevant places and start turns. After looking at numerous other interactive types, the authors move to study-abroad contexts. They cite Marriott (Marriott, H.E., "Code-switching in classroom interaction: Study of English transfers in Japanese classrooms," in H.E. Marriott and M. Low (eds.), Language and Cultural Contact with Japan, Occasional paper of the JSC, Monash Asia Institute, Clayton Australia, 26, 52-78, 1996) for evidence of language gain among Australian HS students in Japan for a year. Their politeness formulas improved, such as opening and closing conversational routines improved in oral proficiency interviews. They also increased their use of plain forms. They cite a study by Rodríguez (2001) of students in one semester in Spain vs. those who continued studying Spanish in the US. No advantages to study abroad were noted, but it was also pointed out that the measure was of assessment of question strategies, not one of production. They also describe Hoffman-Hicks’ (1999) doctoral research on study abroad in France. Three basic insights emerged from the study -- that spending time in the target community is no panacea, that length of residence is not a reliable predictor, and L2 classrooms can be a productive social context. The authors identify eleven themes relating to language learning abroad, based on their review of the literature:

1. time in the target community is helpful depending on the quality and quantity of input;
2. ideologies in the local community can get in the way of the learners' access to locals;
3. the role of foreigner may make it difficult to get input, though a person’s situational role may override this difficulty;
4. there are two-way stereotypes -- that Americans are direct/egalitarian may have locals avoid the self-humbling formulaic expressions, and conversely may prevent learners from noticing polite language use that in fact is being exercised in the American community;
5. learners tend to see co-participants as relevant role models and not those with a different status;
6. non-instructional feedback may be on grammar, not on pragmatics;
7. pragmatic salience and input frequency contribute to acquisition, which can explain why even on short trips some pragmatic development can take place;
8. the pragmatics of different social domains and activity types may be learned in different ways, so we would want to know about access to sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic input in the target culture with specific attention to the interactional organization of different activity types;
9. teachers can explicitly model and guide students in their use of target practices, engage students in awareness-raising activities of L2 pragmatics, and provide feedback on students' production;
10. prior to departure, teachers can prepare students for pragmatic practices in the target speech community and during the study abroad, students will benefit from language courses or courses related to L2 culture and society that encourage them to discuss and reflect on their experiences with L2 interactional practices;
11. aspects of L2 pragmatics vary in the learning difficulty they pose for learners with different backgrounds, learners may have differential exposure to the input, and the forms may be more or less usable in the learner's own production.

Ch. 7 reviews studies on the role of instruction in learning L2 pragmatics. They note that explicit instruction is better than none. Ch. 8, "Individual Differences in L2 Pragmatic Development": They point out that within the small body of research on individual differences in SLA, there is a 4-way split in categorization -- theory-led studies in natural settings or experimentally, exploratory studies in natural settings or where groups have been identified and studied. They then consider studies that have dealt with age, gender, motivation, social and psychological distance, and social identity.

Kasper, G. & Schmidt, R. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18 (2), 149-169.

Explores cognitive and socio-psychological theories that might offer explanations of different aspects of pragmatic development. Suggestions are provided for a research agenda as well. They cite the cross-sectional studies and then describe several of the longitudinal studies, such as Schmidt's (1983) study of Wes, Ellis' (1992) study of a Portuguese and a Pakistani boy developing directives. Basic questions about SLA and what is known about the answers with respect to interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). (1) Are there universals of language underlying cross-linguistic variation and, if so, do they play a role in ILP? (2) How can approximation to target language norms be measured? (3) Does the L1 influence the learning of a second language? (4) Is pragmatic development in a second language similar to first language learning? (5) Do children enjoy an advantage over adults in learning a second language? (6) Is there a natural route of development, as evidenced by difficulty, accuracy, or acquisition orders or discrete stages of development? (7) Does type of input make a difference? (8) Does instruction make a difference? (9) Do motivation and attitudes make a difference in level of acquisition? (10) Does personality play a role? (11) Does learners' gender play a role? (12) Does (must) perception or comprehension precede production in acquisition? (13) Does chunk learning (formulaic speech) play a role in acquisition? (14) What mechanisms drive development from stage to stage?

Márquez Reiter, R. & Placencia, M. E. (2004). The pragmatics of Spanish beyond Spain. In Márquez Reiter, R. & Placencia, M. E. (Eds.), Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 15-34). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.

This seminal article provides an overview of the work on Spanish pragmatics published in English or Spanish outside of Spain. It takes the position that the area of Spanish pragmatics does not form its own school of thought, but rather consists of a variety of pragmatic approaches to Spanish. The authors note that the majority of the work done in Spanish pragmatics outside of Spain has been centered in Holland, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with some work having been done in Australia, Germany, Argentina, and a few other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. The areas of analysis that have received the most attention from researchers are categorized and described using the work that has had the greatest impact. These areas are speech acts, conversational organization, application to applied linguistics, and pragmatics as related to grammar (discourse markers, mood, deixis, and anaphora). Important work in each of these categories is described. It should also be mentioned that politeness is noted as an overarching comparative ideology in many of these areas of research.

Márquez Reiter, R. & Placencia, M. E. (2005). Spanish Pragmatics. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

This book provides an overview of much of the research in the field of Spanish pragmatics, primarily from a sociopragmatic perspective. Each chapter provides an overview of theoretical foundations and empirical investigation from a different area of sociopragmatics. Chapter 2, entitled "Speech Act Theory" focuses primarily on language use at the utterance level. It begins with a review of Austin and Searle's speech act theory and then discusses the "uptake" of Speech Act Theory by scholars in the area of Spanish pragmatics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the empirical research surrounding speech acts in Spanish, specifically looking at those which do not include an orientation towards politeness. At the outset of Chapter 3 entitled "Conversation Analysis" (CA), the authors provide the theoretical foundations of CA and take a close look at the methodology employed (ethnography of speaking). They also briefly examine the principle areas to which CA analyses have contributed (sequential and overall organization, turn-taking, preference organization, laughter, and topic organization), and relate CA to sociopragmatics. The chapter concludes by considering the work done by Hispanists that utilize CA principles. Chapter 4, "Examining Linguistic Politeness Phenomena,” follows a similar style by first classifying the models of politeness from various perspectives (Cooperative Principle, conversation maxim view, face-saving view, emotive communication view, and rapport management view). They also provide an overview of perspectives on Hispanic politeness in which they discuss the various politeness models proposed by Hispanists as well as the empirical research in the field. Chapter 5 entitled "Examining Sociopragmatic Variation,” includes an examination of the research that has been done comparing different varieties of Spanish. Finally, in Chapter 6, “ Research Methods in Sociopragmatics," the authors compare and contrast the various methodologies utilized in sociopragmatic research. The book also includes an extensive bibliography in Spanish pragmatics (sociopragmatics).

Olshtain, E. & Cohen, A. D. (1989). Speech act behavior across languages. In H. W. Dechert et al. (Eds.), Transfer in production (pp. 53-67). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

One of the major concerns of discourse studies across languages is that of setting up comparable units of analysis within the various languages being studied. Speech acts represent a highly complex mapping of meaning onto form. Hence, comparative studies are faced with a number of theoretical and methodological problems. Some of these problems are discussed in this chapter, with the aid of empirical data drawn from the act of apologizing in different languages.

Sicola, L. (2003). "Communicative lingerings": An exploratory study of the emergence of 'foreign' communicative features in the interactions of American expatriates after reentry. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 18(2), 27-51.

The study considers ways that experiences living abroad have affected Americans' communicative behavior upon repatriation. The residual effects of learning the language and culture of the host country are referred to as communicative lingerings. Three general categories of lingerings are found: linguistic/paralinguistic lingerings, interactional lingerings, and perceptual lingerings. The article starts where the author, after two years, deflects a compliment: Ken: "You've improved; you're dancing really well tonight." Laura: "Well, I don't know, but if that were the case I'd be happy." Hers was a direct translation of Ja, shiranai kedo, soo daattara ureshii to omoismasu. Her explanation is that the new behavior replaces the old, which upon return cannot easily be defined. We don't remember its parameters. She points out that the research literature has dealt with numerous issues but not specifically with this one. Various fields have been considered such as cross-cultural pragmatics and especially microethnographic interactions involving speech acts: code switching; SLA and bilingualism; cultural homelessness and identity; and culture shock, but not re-entrants' language and culture experience. She looked at verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors that are foreign as used upon re-entry, and their beliefs about them. Also the re-entrants' reactions to "home culture" communicative style. She looked at seven re-entrants, including herself, who had been abroad for one year or longer. The data were anecdotal -- getting at re-entrants' recollections of events completely out of the ordinary, and stemming from the residual effects of having been abroad. Linguistic/paralinguistic lingerings: Uttering a word or phrase in the host country language without realizing it. Four categories of frequent ones: intensifiers, set phrases (e.g., "Good morning," "I don't know"), emotional expressions ("God willing" in Arabic - insha'ala), and backchanneling. Also their body language (e.g., the way the head is cocked) and thought organization would be effected. In the latter case, it was having to translate thoughts into the most simple, basic form in order to speak the host language (in this case a Pidgin dialect in Papua New Guinea with only about 2000 words!). For example, the person would hear bad news and say, "Sorry, sorry" even though he knew it was inappropriate and even condescending to use in English. Interactional lingerings: physical distance (e.g., getting too close to someone), hugging, kissing, other elements of greeting (e.g., approaching a baby to take a good look). Perceptive lingerings : feeling of being overwhelmed by all the inputs -- a form of attention deficit disorder; easily distracted by all that is going on. Reverse culture shock about necessity vs. waste -- things you need and those you don't, such as a new winter coat. In all cases these were experiences that were noticed and not consciously selected. They regretted having left a part of them behind -- a personal sense of loss upon repatriation.

Spencer-Oatey, H. & _egarac, V. (2002). Pragmatics. In N. Schmitt (Ed.), An introduction to applied linguistics (pp. 74-91). London: Arnold.

Pragmatic perspectives on language use, pragmatic meaning: assigning reference in context, assigning sense in context, inferring illocutionary force, working out implicated meaning. Explaining the impact of social factors, conversational patterns and structures, the role of context, pragmatic research: paradigms and methods. Implications for language teaching, learning, and use: the importance of context, the complexity of meaning construction, the impact of speech act theory, the possibility (or likelihood) of pragmatic transfer, people's sensitivities to face.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2003). Understanding the role of grammar in the acquisition of L2 pragmatics. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 25-44). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

This is an expansion of the AAAL 2002 presentation, stressing that pragmatic development cannot advance independent of grammatical development. She draws on examples from monoclausal vs. biclausal structures: natives use the biclausal, "I was wondering if you could..." and the nonnatives use the monoclausal, "would you Verb." She demonstrates differences in future expression and modality. Learners show early and dominant use of the "will" future to the virtual exclusion of the "going-to" future. What she demonstrates is that learners are not using the formulaic structures that natives use but rather their own linguistic expressions -- those available to them.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1999). Exploring the interlanguage of interlanguage pragmatics: A research agenda for acquisitional pragmatics. Language Learning, 49 (4), 677-713.

Argues that in the study of cross-cultural pragmatics, interlanguage itself has been largely ignored. Although grammatical competence may not be sufficient condition for pragmatic development, the author would contend that in many cases it may be a necessary condition. She poses a research agenda that gives the study of interlanguage more prominence in the study of interlanguage pragmatics. SLA pragmatic studies have tended to be cross-sectional or one-shot, rather than longitudinal, B-H contends. Part of the reason is because subjects in studies have tended to be advanced learners rather than beginners at all levels. Length of stay in the country in which the language is spoken has been found to be a key factor in sensitivity to pragmatic infelicities. High grammatical competence does not guarantee high levels of pragmatic competence. The contextual paraphrase problem: NNS not getting that "I was thinking of taking syntax" is another way of saying "I will take syntax" (pp. 694-5). Part of developmental interlanguage is getting beyond one form-one meaning. B-H in her review even mentions the role of prosody (e.g., intonation) in interlanguage pragmatic development (697-8). The Cohen (1997) study on interlanguage pragmatic development in Japanese is one of only two that B-H cites, indicating that such studies are few.

Beebe, L. M. (1994). Notebook data on power and the power of notebook data. Unpublished manuscript.

Looks at the strengths and weaknesses of using notebook data for recalling events in a lengthy trial. She contrasts hand recorded vs. tape recorded data, natural spontaneous vs. elicited data, as well as the immediacy or delay in recall. Strengths of notebook data: broader variety of data, settings where can't tape record, gathering of unexpected data, avoiding observer's paradox, saving time not having to listen to long tape recordings, no need to ask for permission to record. Weaknesses: accuracy decreases with delay of recall, long utterances hard to capture, bias towards certain utterances (those said to researcher, those from friends and acquaintances, those salient to researcher, extraordinary utterances). Some suggestions for overcoming weaknesses: memorization of the core act and background info, use of shorthand, memorization of pragmatic force.

Brown, J. D. (2001). Pragmatic tests: Different purposes, different tests. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper, Eds. Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 301-325). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Describes the variety of testing instruments available for testing interlanguage pragmatics, then analyzes what is known about each, and finally recommends which types of tests should be used for each testing purpose (aptitude, proficiency, placement, diagnosis of level, progress, and achievement). The tests considered were: written discourse completion test (reading a written description of a situation and writing what they would say in that situation), multiple-choice discourse completion task (reading a written description of a situation and selecting what would be best to say in that situation), oral discourse completion task (listening to a description and saying aloud what they would say in the situation), role-play (given a situation, playing a role with another person), self-assessment (given a situation, they rate their own ability to perform in that situation), role-play self-assessment (rating own pragmatic performance in a previously performed role-play). Brown compiles insights gained from studies on the development of these tests.

Cohen, A. D. (1996). Developing the ability to perform speech acts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18 (2), 253-267.

This paper calls attention to an increasingly prominent field of interest within second language acquisition research and pedagogy, namely, that of pragmatic ability. It focuses on an area within pragmatics, that of speech acts, considers the processes underlying the performance of such speech acts, and looks at the effects of explicit instruction in this area. The paper starts by asking what speech act ability entails. Several basic distinctions are made in the description of speech acts, such as that between sociocultural and sociolinguistic ability. Second, direc-tions of previous research describing speech acts are indicated and directions yet to be taken are pointed out. Difficulties in researching oral speech act performance are noted, and verbal report is recognized as one of a limited number of research tools available for investigating cognitive processes involved in speech act production. The paper then reviews four studies that utilize verbal report to gain at least some access to the underlying processes. Finally, the paper looks at previous research on the tutored and untutored acquisition of speech acts and provides suggestions for future research.

Cohen, A.D. (1996). Investigating the production of speech act sets. In S.M. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language (pp. 21-43). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

This chapter discusses both theoretical and applied issues regarding the researching of speech acts, drawing in part from the Cohen and Olshtain (1993) speech act production study in an effort to describe the processes involved in producing speech act utterances. The chapter ends with some illustrative findings from that study.

Cohen, A. D. & Olshtain, E. (1994). Researching the production of speech acts. In Tarone, E., Gass, S. M., & Cohen, A. D. (Eds.), Research methodology in second language acquisition (pp. 143-156). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

This chapter starts by discussing the empirical validation of speech act sets, then focuses on studying speech act production and on methods for collecting speech act data. Mention is made of using verbal report as a tool in understanding speech act production. The chapter ends by looking at the role-play interview as a research method, with retrospective insights provided through verbal report.

Enochs, K. & Yoshitake, S. (1996). Self-assessment and role plays for evaluating appropriateness in speech act realizations. ICU (International Christian University) Language Research Bulletin, 2, 57-76.

This study reports on the reliability, validity, and practicality of the same three measures of cross-cultural pragmatic competence that were developed by Hudson et al. (1992, 1995) and used in the Japanese FL study by Yamashita (1996). The current study administered these tests to 25 first-year Japanese EFL learners. There was a self-assessment test with 24 situations, 8 requests, 8 refusals, and 8 apologies, with varying degrees of power, social distance, and imposition. Respondents rated themselves on a 5-point scale as to how appropriately they would respond. A role-play self assessment test -- performing 8 scenarios for the speech acts, described in English and Japanese. After performing the role plays, they had to rate themselves on a 5-point scale. Role-play test -- with native speakers of English (as in previous), videotaped and rated by three native speakers on a 5-point scale. All three tests proved to be both reliable and valid in assessing pragmatic competence. In addition, the TOEFL subtest scores did not correlate with the pragmatic measures. A limitation was that this was a homogeneous group of students.

Enochs, K. & Yoshitake-Strain, S. (1999). Evaluating six measures of EFL learners' pragmatic competence. JALT Journal, 21 (1), 29-50.

This study reports on the reliability, validity, and practicality of the same six measures of cross-cultural pragmatic competence that were developed by Hudson et al. (1992, 1995) and used in the Japanese FL study by Yamashita (1996). The current study administered these tests to 25 first-year Japanese EFL learners. Four of the tests were highly reliable and two less so, and the tests distinguished those with substantial overseas experience from those without any -- a distinction which the TOEFL did not show. The two less reliable tests were the Open Discourse Completion Test (24 descriptions of speech act situations to provide written response and rated on 5-point scale) and Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Test (same as OPDCT but MC responses from among 3). Both were take-home tests.

Escandell-Vidal, V. (2004). Norms and principles: Putting social and cognitive pragmatics together. In Márquez Reiter, R. & Placencia, M. E. (Eds.), Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 347-71). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing.

This article presents an integrative pragmatic model that incorporates socio-cultural and cognitive approaches. In doing so, the author explores the main tenets and practices of each approach and discusses why socio-cultural and cognitive approaches should not, and cannot, be reduced to one domain. However, they should not be viewed as contrastive either. Thus, in order to understand the true nature of pragmatics, it is necessary to combine the two areas and explore how they compliment one another. Using the notions of “computation” and “representation,” the author provides a preliminary look at this complex area and the model of co-existence.

Gass, S. M. & Mackey, A. (2000). Stimulated recall methodology in second language research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Retrospective reports are considered synonymous with stimulated recall. They are also called postprocess oral observation. In the first chapter they look at the different types of verbal report, before fixing just on stimulated recall, the focus of this book. They then give examples of topics that have used stimulated recall methodology as part of the investigations: knowledge types, knowledge structures, cognitive processes and learner strategies. Ch. 2 gives examples of how introspection has been used in L2 research. Ch. 3 characterizes stimulated recall in terms of areas of study using it: reading vocabulary, writing, pragmatics. Ch. 4 (57-104) constitutes the heart of their contribution, where they discuss the uses of stimulated recall -- giving recommendations for how to do it: data collection, data analysis (interrater reliability, rater training example, data layout and coding, procedural pitfalls -- timing (length of recall support, allocating time for the recall procedure, for set up and equipment; verbalization), recall questions, language of the recall session. Analysis of stimulated recall data -- sampling the recall data, preparing the data for coding, developing a coding scheme, analyzing and describing the data. Ch. 5 deals with reliability and validity, possible uses for stimulated recall: IL phonology (comprehension of learner speech, change over time), classroom interaction, oral production, IL pragmatics, comprehension, input and input processing (reading, amount and type of exposure), L2 reading comprehension, oral interaction (dialogue, negotiation), syntactic processing, vocabulary (incidental vocabulary learning, acquisition of words in an unknown language).

Hudson, T. (2001). Indicators for pragmatic instruction: Some quantitative tools. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 283-300). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Points out that researchers need to be concerned with two contributors to variability in performance on pragmatic measures: (1) variability associated with the social properties of the speech event and the speaker's strategic, actional, and linguistic choices for achieving communicative goals, and (2) variability resulting from the instruments and data collection procedures. He describes their multiple measures approach to assessing interlanguage pragmatics. He notes that three types of tests were constructed: indirect, semi-direct, and self-assessment measures with two types of each, on a scale of cued or free examinee response. The focus was on requests, refusals, and apologies, with attention given to power relationships, relative social distance, and degree of imposition.

Hudson, T., Detmer, E., & Brown, J. D. (1994). Developing prototypic measures of cross-cultural pragmatics. Technical Report #7. Honolulu, HI: NFLRC, U of Hawaii.

Reviews the first phase of their research project – to construct measures for assessing pragmatic ability – and then gives a detailed description of the instrument development process. They chose measures that were not totally free nor totally cued, but rather along a continuum. They took requests, refusals, and apologies. The coding scheme for analyzing refusals was a revision of both the CCSARP and the Beebe et al. schemes. They encountered three kinds of problems – elicitation of the wrong speech act (14), opting out, and misinterpreting the relationships of relative power, social distance, and absolute ranking of imposition. NSs and NNSs generally showed similar use of the more commonly used strategies. They developed a manual for rating pragmatic competence (38, Appendix). They call attention to other problems such as not wanting to test for acting ability (49). Finally, they indicate dissatisfaction over the NS standard against which NNS performance is judged.

Kasper, G. and Rose, K. R. (1999). Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 19, 81-104.

Article focusing just on those pragmatics studies dealing with language development or SLA. The paper first lists those 18 that were cross-sectional in nature. Many fewer are longitudinal in nature -- she includes 9, such as Schmidt's (1993) study of Wes and then of himself, written up with Frota (1986), Siegal (1994) of five women in Japan, and then Cohen (1997) learning Japanese in Hawaii. Only one deal with comprehension -- of implicature by 30 ESL learners (Bouton, 1992, 1994). Much of this paper reappeared in Kasper's chapter, "Classroom research on interlanguage pragmatics" (33-60), in the Rose & Kasper CUP volume (2001).

Kasper, G., & Dahl, M. (1991). Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13 (2), 215-247.

Reviews the methods of data collection employed in 39 studies of interlanguage pragmatics, defined narrowly as the investigation of nonnative speakers' comprehension and production of speech acts, and the acquisition of L2-related speech act knowledge. Data collection instruments are distinguished according to the degree to which they constrain informants' responses, and whether they tap speech act perception/comprehension or production. The validity of the different types of data is questioned, with regard to their adequacy to approximate authentic performance of linguistic action. They provided a taxonomy of measures from the perceptual side (ratings, MC, interview tasks) to the production side (discourse completion, closed and open role play, and authentic discourse as observed).

Kasper, G. (1999). Data collection in pragmatics research. University of Hawai'i Working Papers in ESL, 18 (1), 71-107.

Reviews the types of data collection most commonly used in pragmatics up to that point -- types of spoken interaction: authentic discourse, elicited conversation data; survey methods: role-play data, production questionnaire, multiple-choice, scaled-response data (on judging of appropriateness and politeness in utterances of others); type of spoken interaction +/- structured: interview data; narrative producing self-report: diary data; narrative-producing online verbalizations: think aloud protocol data. Kasper includes in the discussion of think aloud protocols the Robinson (1992), Cohen & Olshtain (1993), and Widjaja (1997) studies as examples of work probing the processing side of pragmatic production. She notes that studies often combine two or more methods. She notes, for instance, that in ethnographic studies, a multi-method approach is standard, using participant observation, interviews, audio- and videorecordings of interactions, and collection of documents.

Murillo, E. A., Aguilar, H., & Meditz, A. (1991). Teaching speech act behavior through video: Apologies. Unpublished paper. Athens, Ohio: Linguistics Department, Ohio University.

The paper and videotaped material documents the difficulties of setting up naturally occurring apology situations. Students were planted outside faculty members' doors so that when they emerged, they would hit the student and would need to apologize. The method was time-consuming since the faculty members did not emerge quickly, and too often there was no audible apology or some mumbled apology that was not captured on the videotape. So much for staging speech acts!

Roever, C. (2001). A web-based test of interlanguage pragmalinguistic knowledge: Speech acts, routines, implicatures. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i.

Roever raises the issue of whether there is aptitude for pragmatics. To learn sociopragmatic ability, learners would need perceptual acuity, the ability to pay attention to one's environment and be sensitive to verbal and non-verbal cures. Also being open and trying new role behaviors (p. 8) would be preferred. Criticism of the DCT (15-16): (1) DCTs distort the uses of directness/indirectness so that they are culturally inappropriate, (2) the written mode distorts subject responses, (3) they are inauthentic because extensive negotiation is lacking, (4) the prompt info is too limited, (5) there are possible rejoinder effects. On the other hand, in Roever's estimation, the DCT comes out ahead in practicality. In the main study, 316 ESL learners took the test, 267 taking the standard version, 333 the multimethod version, 10 provide oral responses to speech act and routines items, and 6 produced concurrent verbal reports during individual testing sessions. For comparison, 6 NS of American English provided verbal reports and 15 NS took the standard version of the test. The sample included HS students in Germany, Japanese college students in Japan, ESL students at the U of Hawai'i. The test was set for 50 minutes. The findings were that the test did measure pragmalinguistic knowledge of English with reasonable accuracy. The standard test is in the appendix with the following sections: implicature, routines, speech acts. Also, the multiple choice version is included.

Rose, K. R. and Ono, R. (1995). Eliciting speech act data in Japanese: The effect of questionnaire type. Language Learning, 45 (2), 191-223.

This article reports the results of a study addressing methodological validation in speech act research. Discourse-completion tests (DCTs) and multiple-choice questionnaires designed to elicit requests (direct, indirect, hinted) were administered to two groups with 36 Japanese female undergraduates randomly assigned to one group and 36 to the other. There were significant differences in 11 of the 12 situations, with those completing the multiple-choice version (e.g., "I would say..." or "I would do...") choosing to opt out or hint more frequently than those completing the DCT. The fact they were females may have made a difference since the opting out happened in the four MC situations in requesting of a higher status interlocutor. There was also a preference for indirectness over directness. They see these findings as indicating that the DCTs are problematic in that participants may respond with the desired speech act while they would avoid doing so in actual interaction. They would conclude that while DCTs provide a lot of data quickly, the results may not reflect reality if the respondents are being unnaturally direct or responding when in reality they would opt out.

Uehara, E. (1993). The role of uptake in speech acts. The Journal of the Tokyo International University, 47, 73-83.

Austin (1962) defined uptake as the understanding of the meaning and the force of the locution. So while perlocutionary force is whether or not the speech act achieved its purpose, uptake is not just understanding the meaning but also understanding the intent of the speaker. The hearer may understand the message (uptake) but reject it, misunderstand the message (unsuccessful uptake), or not understand it at all (no uptake).

Wolfson, N., Marmor, T., & Jones, S. (1989). Problems in the comparison of speech acts across cultures. In S. Blum-Kulka et al. (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 174-196). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Points up some of the limitations from DCT data. They note the difficulties in trying to establish similar situations – minus social distance and equal dominance. The study found that differences arose in other variables. They also found gender bias in their data. While they point up the advantages of the questionnaire approach, they make an appeal for more observational work.

Yamashita, S. O. (1996). Six measures of JSL pragmatics. Technical Report #14. Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Investigates differences among test formats for measuring the cross-cultural pragmatic competence of English-speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (N=34) and as a foreign language (N=13). The focus, as in Hudson and Brown’s work, was on control over degree of imposition, power, and distance in requests, apologies and refusals.

I. Self-assessment of performance on situations, with the description given in English and the respondents asked to think about what they would say in Japanese in each situation and rate themselves on a five-point scale.

"You are shopping for your friend's birthday and see something in a display case. You want to look at it more closely. A salesclerk comes over to you."

Rating: I think what I would say in this situation would be

very unsatisfactory 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 completely appropriate

II. Listening lab production test: participants listened to brief tape-recorded descriptions and then tape-recorded their responses. The responses were rated by three natives on scales for (a) the appropriateness of the speech act for the given situation, (b) the use of formulaic expressions (typical speech, gambits), (c) the appropriateness of the amount of speech and/or information for the given situation, and the appropriateness of (d) the level of formality, (e) degree of directness, and (f) level of politeness for the given situation.

III. Open discourse completion test: the respondents wrote out what they thought they would say in a given situation. These responses were also rated by three natives with the six categories used for the oral production test.

IV. Video-taped roleplays: specific descriptions about who, when, where, and with whom were listed under the scenario label. Also, the sequence of the contents of the scenario was listed in numerical fashion so the participants would know what they were to say next. Some key words were listed in Japanese. Role-plays were conducted with a native speaker of Japanese and 2-3 minutes of preparation time were given. Three native raters rated each role-play response on a five-point scale from very unsatisfactory to completely appropriate.

E.g., "You go to apply for a new job in a small company at 11:30.

(1) You see and greet the personnel manager but accidentally startle him and he drops some papers on the floor.

(2) You need to schedule an interview in a morning because you currently work in the afternoons.

(3) After arranging a morning interview, the personnel manager suggests you come with him on a tour around the company now. But you have to go back to work by 1:00 today."

V. Self-assessment of the video-taped roleplay: participants rated their own roleplay videotape immediately upon finishing the roleplays to rate the appropriateness of each situation on the same five-point scale.

VI. Multiple-choice discourse completion test: the respondents selected their answer from three possible responses for each situation. This measure was administered last so as not to give respondents ideas for how to answer the other subtests. (The subtest was not included in the book.)

a. low reliability only on the Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Test. Several of the Japanese native speakers had reported to the researcher "that they were very frustrated because there seemed to be no correct answer to select in many situations" (Yamashita, 1996: 57) -- e.g., a native may have used the strategy of showing dismay ("What do I do?") or hinting ("Uh, well, there is more to be said but ...").

b. problems: inappropriate options due in part to translation effect -- the Japanese version had short sentences, similar to the English one, which was not found to reflect the pattern of data in the minus-power and plus-imposition situations in the open DCT and in the Listening Lab production test.

Yamashita, S. O. (1997). Self-assessment and roleplay methods of measuring cross-cultural pragmatics. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning. Volume 8 (pp. 129-162). Urbana, IL: Division of English as an International Language, Intensive English Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Compares three different language measures of cross-cultural pragmatics (videotaped role-plays and two self-assessments), as developed by Hudson, Detmer, and Brown (1992, 1995). The Japanese version was administered to 47 native speakers of American English from beginners to advanced level, who were learning Japanese as a second language in Japan. The subjects were first asked to think about a questionnaire containing 24 situations and rate how well they might respond in each situation in Japanese. Then they were asked to do eight short role-plays each of which contained three different speech acts, with a native speaker interlocutor. Right after the role-plays, they were asked to rate their own video-recorded role-plays on a five-point scale. Each subject's role-play videos were rated by native Japanese speakers using the same rating sheet. These instruments were found to be reliable and valid so they can be used with learners of Japanese. The self-assessment measures only took 10 minutes and were reliable. The role-plays took longer and were less reliable. Yet they are more revealing of behavior. The respondents were volunteers. The author is not certain of the results if the measures were used in a testing situation.

Zuskin, R. D. (1993). L2 learner interpretations of a video discourse completion test: Sociolinguistic inferences generated from context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Focuses on the perception of speech act realizations by native and nonnative speakers. Zuskin (1993) noted that while the communicative objectives of the DCT were in line with pragmatic principles, the method needed to better reflect clear pragmatic criteria. She contended that the contextual aspects of DCTs required better development in order to convey more about the interlocutors' relationship (status and positional identities). The situations were contextualized through videotaped vignettes which served as prompts in place of written prompts. A modified version of the Discourse Completion Test, one supplemented with audio-visual cues via video-based prompts, was used for testing second language sociolinguistic knowledge. Subjects were asked to interpret the messages in 12 vignettes involving apologies, requests, refusals, and complaints. Subjects rated each vignette according to three sociolinguistic criteria: 1) the degree of status inequality between the main two characters in the scene, 2) the degree of formality designated by the situation, and 3) the degree of imposition on the interlocutor who was expected to produce a specific speech act. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 103 nonnatives of American English and from 63 natives. The study examined the overlap between grammatical and sociolinguistic proficiency and the extent to which male-female subcultural norms influence perceptions about politeness.

A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance showed that sociopragmatic processes between gender-designated groups of NS and linguistically heterogeneous NNS subjects generally did not differ significantly. However, on three of the twelve vignettes gender was a significant factor and contributed more variance than the effect of proficiency level or the interaction between gender and proficiency level. The imposition scale was the most sensitive to differences between the NS and NNS groups. Hence, the study found gender differences on three of the vignettes and significant differences between natives and nonnatives on the imposition scale for several vignettes. The more grammatically skilled L2 students did not prove to be more or less sociolinguistically skilled. The NNS who were Spanish speakers did not have responses that were different from the mixed NNS group. The researcher concluded that "By enriching the test with cues more effectively delivered with video technology – cues such as gestures, facial expressions, pitch changes and stress patterns – the crucial connection of past L1 sociocultural experiences with L2 communicative interactions in the here and now can be made...The video based version DCT used in this work offers viewers more information on which to base their sociolinguistic judgments" (87, 88).

Written Speech Acts

Cohen, A. D. & Tarone, E. (1994). The effects of training on written speech act behavior: Stating and changing an opinion. MinneTESOL Journal, 12, 39-62.

Compares the effects of training on the written speech act of stating and changing an opinion among nonnative and native speakers of English. A small-scale experiment was conducted to determine if skills could be taught to a nonnative Treatment Group, using another group of nonnatives as a Control Group and a group of native English speakers as a baseline to determine the components of the speech act. The Treatment and Control groups were comprised of graduate students in an advanced reading and writing summer course in the ESL program at the University of Minnesota. Persons in all three groups read two opposed articles on differences on the male and female human brain, then were instructed to role play a professor taking one of the two positions in the articles. Respondents then had to change their stance in favor of the other position, as presented in the articles, and write an essay for a journal or professional newsletter about their change of opinion. After five weeks, respondents in the Treatment and Control Groups underwent a similar procedure with articles that took sides on the greenhouse effect. Additional data on the process was obtained from verbal protocols with three nonnative participants in their native language. Overall, training did have a positive effect, with some differences in the kinds of strategies employed by nonnatives versus natives and in the use of logical connections indicating concession. Verbal report data provided retrospective insights into how respondents approached the task, as well as into the basis for their decisions during the process.

James, C., Scholfield, P., & Ypsiladis, G. (1994). Cross-cultural correspondence: Letters of application. Occasional Papers. Dublin: Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College.

[For abstract, see "Letters of Application" below.]

The Teaching and Learning of Speech Acts

Arrives at the conclusion that untutored learners diverge from the others in pragmatic production and perception (although she notes there are fewer of these studies), suggesting that instruction may be beneficial. The question is what to teach and how. Empirical studies are needed to determine this. She notes the ways that NSs and NNSs may differ in speech act performance: the choice of speech act (giving the example from Cohen & Olshtain, 1993, of a student not apologizing but attacking), semantic formulas, content, and form (e.g., NSs use downgraders). Bardovi-Harlig gives as factors deterring L2 pragmatic competence the following: input, the influence of instruction, proficiency, length of exposure, and transfer.

Boxer, D. (2003). Critical issues in developmental pragmatics. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 45-67). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

Boxer focuses on difficulties in teaching pragmatic competence. Materials currently lack contextual/interlocutor information. She notes the role of social identity in language learning and the development of relational identity (DRI) -- when individuals perceived each other as valid interlocutors, since the classroom has the potential of becoming a community of practice. She refers to her work on complaining and on how Japanese speakers had difficulty knowing what American speakers were trying to accomplish by griping. They gave only a minimal response, as if to acknowledge the complaint, while Americans expected commiseration or some kind of agreement. Japanese see talk as potentially problem-making, and see Americans as going on and on.

Cohen, A. D. (1997). Developing pragmatic ability: Insights from the accelerated study of Japanese. In H. M. Cook, K. Hijirida, & M. Tahara (Eds.), New trends and issues in teaching Japanese language and culture. (Technical Report #15) (pp. 137-163). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.

This self-study was intended to describe the development of pragmatic ability of an adult learner of Japanese in a four-month accelerated course. The focus of the paper is on foreign-language learning, in which the context for learning was almost exclusively that of a classroom in an academic setting. In addition, over half of the instructional focus was on the learning of structure, and to a large extent on more formal language rather than on plain or vernacular Japanese. The paper sets out to describe the experience, the perceptions of the learner about the development of his ability to use pragmatic rules, and to relate the learner’s motivation, learning style, and learning strategy preferences to his efforts at developing pragmatic ability.

DuFon, M. A. (2003). Gift giving in Indonesian: A model for teaching pragmatic routines in the foreign language classroom of the less commonly taught languages. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 109-131). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

Data from group discussions and dialog journals are used to identify points of confusion that lead learners of Indonesian to question the meanings associated with particular expressions and actions used in gift-giving such that this routine might need to be taught in the classroom. Among teaching techniques she includes frame analysis, critical incidents, and interviewing native speakers. She notes that teachers of Indonesian may not be natives and their intuitions may be inaccurate -- hence, the need not to set themselves up as authorities but as learners as well. In this instance, the data are from a six-month study abroad experience in Indonesia. She reports on the experiences of six learners, 4 native speakers of English and two of Japanese. They kept diaries which contributed to discussion in identifying "rich points" in sorting out the problematic aspects of a routine such as gift giving. They would look at critical incidents and use a frame analysis. Such activities would provide learners with strategies for dealing with other "rich points" they might encounter. Frame analysis entails making a list of what happened in chronological order, so as to see the structure of the routine or the sequence of frames, the presence or absence of frames, the content of frames, and so forth. What was the occasion? What was the gift? Was it wrapped in gift paper? Was it opened in the giver's presence? What was the relationship of the participants?

García, C. (1996). Teaching speech act performance: Declining an invitation. Hispania, 79, 267-79.

The author explores the teaching of speech acts through inviting and declining an invitation. The author advocates that instructing about frames of participation, underlying preferred politeness strategies, and linguistic strategies is essential to pragmatic development. The importance of using empirical data for instruction is discussed and pedagogical suggestions are made based on Cohen & Olshtain (1991) and DiPetro (1987). Examples of each of the five stages of pragmatic instruction are given—(1) Diagnostic Assessment, (2) Model Dialogue, (3) Evaluation of Situation, (4) Role play Activities, and (5) Feedback, Discussion, Conclusion.

García, C. (1997). Using authentic reading texts to discover underlying sociocultural information. In Heusinkveld, P. R. (Ed.), Pathways to Culture: Readings on Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Class (pp. 303-26). Yarmount, ME: Intercultural Press.

This chapter provides a practical exploration of teaching socio-cultural information in the classroom by using authentic reading texts. It describes the process used as well as the results of a unit entitled "De la cuna a la tumba" in which students read various authentic materials (birth announcements, wedding invitations, and obituaries) in order to glean important socio-cultural information. Twenty-one third semester university students participated in the unit. Suggestions are given for pre-reading, reading, and post-reading activities that focus on socio-cultural information. Results show a number of advantages. Students were able to reflect on their own culture and discover a greater underlying understanding of a different culture by making comparisons. The author also gives suggestions for future units (e.g., time, entertainment, church, political). Overall, the students participating in this unit made a positive step towards cultural understanding.

House, J. (1996). Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18 (2), 225-52.

Examines the problem of whether to teach pragmatics explicitly with a population of advanced FL learners. One group of advanced German learners of EFL (14 weeks) received explicit metapragmatic information and not the other group (N=32). Samples of tape-recorded conversations at various stages of the courses were used to assess how students' pragmatic fluency developed. House asked whether students' awareness of the functional and contextual distribution of routines might improve their pragmatic fluency. Using an experimental-control group design, data of different conversational activities were collected during classroom lessons, and students' progress was measured through role-plays before, during, and after instruction. While the "explicit" group profited more from the communication course, neither group displayed much improvement in offering appropriate responses to their interlocutors' initiating acts.

House, J. (2003). Teaching and learning pragmatic fluency in a foreign language: The case of English as a lingua franca. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 133-159). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

House calls attention to the need to teach the pragmatics of English as a lingua franca (ELF), noting the benefits of contrastive studies, and recognizing the likelihood of negative transfer into the target language. She notes that ELF talk has been largely ignored in the research literature. She ends with suggestions for the classroom: 1) teaching a broad ELF, not based just on American, British, or Canadian norms; 2) re-thinking norms to include bilingual or multilingual speakers and to see ELF as a hybrid variety of English where successful NNS-NNS communication may not be based on native norms; 3) successful EFL communication can entail drawing on other languages that the speakers know through code-switching or borrowing; 4) speakers need to stay true to their own personalities and individual discourse styles so pragmatics instruction must be sensitive to this and work with learners on practical communicative-linguistic skill such as the following: teaching gambits, discourse strategies, and phase-specific speech acts; ability to initiate topics and change them using appropriate routines; ability to "carry weight" in conversations; ability to show appropriate uptaking, and replying/responding behavior (anticipation of end of turns via latching and overlapping); appropriate rate of speech, types of filled and unfilled pauses, frequency and function of repairs); 5) need to practice relevant routines with explicit focus on the forms and functions of these routines; 6) engage the learners in collaborative talk because it encourages learners to notice the gaps; 7) despite ability to manage in ELF interactions without pragmatic competence, House advocates instruction in interactional phenomena so learners are better at turn taking, lubricating and modifying discourse with gambits and discourse strategies, being polite -- increasing their metapragmatic awareness; 8) having the teachers and learners in such courses be both researchers and subjects at the same time.

Judd, E. L. (1999). Some issues in the teaching of pragmatic competence. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 152-166). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Raises a series of legitimate questions regarding the teaching of speech acts -- to provide detailed information on speech acts is time-consuming and takes time away from studying other features of the language. In teaching speech acts, Judd indicates three areas: cognitive awareness, receptive skill development, and productive use. Each is presented and analyzed in terms of its benefits and shortcoming for both ESL and EFL language learners. This may call for access on the part of the instructor to this pragmatic information, may not transfer to real-life situations (research not definitive on this -- p. 155), whether students can incorporate knowledge from research into their speech act realizations partly because of possibly limited linguistic proficiency. Also, students need to transfer from knowledge base to actual language use. Also in question is whether native informants actually perform speech acts the way the say they do or model in role plays. Materials may not be available that allow students to be exposed to the range of occurrences of a given speech act. If instructors create their own materials, learners may overgeneralize from one instance to others. Suggested productive activities in class: close-type conversation with speech acts deleted; situation role-play. The problems: students may never actually need to assume those roles, language used in such role plays may not be accurate for the actual situation, teachers may not be knowledgeable enough to provide meaningful feedback. Then Judd questions whether NS pragmatic knowledge is necessary. Judd provides a framework for teaching pragmatics in the classroom: 1. teacher analysis of the speech act, 2. cognitive awareness skills, 3. determining if students have the receptive skills to recognize the speech act, 4. controlled productive skills, 5. free integrated practice.

Kasper, G. (1997). The role of pragmatics in language teacher education. In K. Bardovi-Harlig & B. Hartford (Eds.), Beyond methods: Components of second language teacher education (pp. 113-136). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Notes that knowing how a community acts and interacts linguistically in different contexts is not enough. It is also necessary to know how L2 learners go about acquiring pragmatic competence, what kinds of L2 pragmatic info are easy or difficult to learn, to what extent learners rely on their L1 pragmatic knowledge, the success of transfer from L1, and the developmental paths in acquiring pragmatic competence. Then the function and organization of the teaching process itself is another issue. She starts by looking at pragmatic knowledge as a component of communicative competence, and considers goals and process in the development of pragmatic competence. Then she gives a pragmatic view of language teaching.

Kasper, G. and Rose, K. R. (1999). Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 19, 81-104.

[For abstract, see "Research methods" above.]

Kasper, G. (2001). Classroom research on interlanguage pragmatics. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 33-60). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Reviews the small body of data-based research on pragmatic learning in the second or foreign language classroom and to propose some guidelines for future research on the topic. She looks at what we know about actual classroom learning of L2 pragmatics, the issues that research in this area has addressed, the theoretical perspectives adopted, the research approaches and techniques, and the main outcomes of this research. The paper examines how pragmatics is learned in the L2 classroom and the instructional options that appear most effective. She focuses on the issues that research on instruction in L2 pragmatics have examined, the theoretical perspectives adopted, the research approaches and techniques used, and the main outcomes of the research. She first reviews observational studies -- namely, those the focus primarily on classroom processes. Then she looks at interventionist studies which examine the effect of a particular instructional treatment on students' acquisition of the targeted pragmatic feature. She further classifies observational studies into non-developmental ones and developmental ones. The former include studies examining speech acts and discourse functions, discourse organization and management, discourse markers and strategies, repair, and politeness. The studies include both classroom and non-classroom contexts and both experiments and non-experiments, where the latter illustrate language acquisition and language socialization research. The Ellis (1992) study of the acquisition of requests by two elementary-school children and Cohen's (1997) study of his own Japanese learning in an accelerated course fall under developmental language acquisition research, for example. In concluding remarks about these studies, she notes that the studies are informed by different theoretical orientations -- pedagogically oriented models of discourse-pragmatic competence, SLA theories, language socialization, and socio-cultural theory. And this, in turn, impacts the selection of topics and issues for study, their treatment, methodological choices, and evaluation of outcomes. She then cites seventeen (!) interventionist studies. She notes that a number of studies found an advantage for explicit metapragmatic teaching. She raises the issue of focus on form vs. focus on meaning. She endorses the provision of metalinguistic information that is embedded in purposeful activities, triggered by an actual learner problem, and teachable at the learners' current stage of interlanguage development. That intervention would be termed "FonF." When pragmatics is involved then, interventionist studies may well reflect FonF -- focus on form and function. She also raises the issue of length of intervention and notes other variables associated with that. Kasper makes a plea for further research, especially of observational studies. She would also like to see observational data associated with interventionist studies.

Kasper, G. & Rose, K. R. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp.1-9). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Defines pragmatics and then speak to the issue of pragmatics in language teaching. They end by asking whether pragmatics can be taught. They indicate differential results. The chapter ends by briefly considering the assessment of pragmatic ability.

Kasper, G. (2001). Four perspectives on L2 pragmatic development. Applied Linguistics, 22 (4), 502-530.

The paper deals with four approaches to pragmatic development in a second language: pragmatics and grammar (the relationship between control over grammatical features and pragmatic performance), cognitive processing perspectives (the issue of noticing and of the value of explicit instruction in pragmatics -- with explicitness advantageous according to research), sociocognitive theory (interactionist, Vygotskian, developmental), language socialization perspective on pragmatic development (both implicit and explicit socialization in the classroom).

Kubota, M. (1996). Appropriacy planning: Speech acts studies and planning appropriate models for ESL learners. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 12 (2), 53-70.

Considers the issue of appropriate language in the teaching of English to nonnatives. The study looked at 23 studies which were empirically based, involved American English, used adults, and were published after 1980. Gender was looked at and it was noted that much of the data are pitched at female speech norms. Studies do not necessarily indicate the age of the informants. Often the respondents are involved in higher education. The author feels this leaves out norms for business or industry. Regional variety was not specified in these studies. He cites two studies where speech acts were taught -- both at U Penn, the Billmyer (1990) study and then a study by King and Silver (1993) on refusals. Kubota would suggest an alternative which is that nonnatives develop speech styles which are not like those of natives but comfortable for them.

Lorenzo-Dus, N. & Meara, P. (2004). Role-plays and the assessment of oral proficiency in Spanish. In Márquez Reiter, R. & Placencia, M. E. (Eds.), Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 79-98). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing.

The use of role plays is analyzed as a means for measuring language proficiency. The case study examines the opening sequences (first five minutes) of ten closed role plays between an examiner and an examinee (intermediate-level), performed in Spanish. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that the examiners tended to use over 50% more vocabulary words (number and type) than the examinees. A qualitative analysis also revealed that the examiners played a crucial role in the interactions in terms of conversation management and topic shift. Furthermore, this role had an impact on the examinees’ abilities to perform. Overall, the researchers conclude that there are advantages and disadvantages to using role plays in oral proficiency assessment. The advantages include the ability to incorporate ‘micro-contexts’ of interaction, demonstrate discourse competency (openers, closings, pre-closings, etc.), and allow examinees to apply rhetorical scripts to the task. On the other hand, both design and implementation can have a negative impact as well. Roles must be assigned to examinees to give them ample opportunity to display their interactional competence. In addition, the role of examiner is critical to contextually framing the interaction. This should remain consistent for all examinees. Since the context is simulated, and therefore cannot always be inferred, it is essential that examinees are provided sufficient contextual information in order to perform the task successfully.

Meier, A. J. (2003). Posting the Banns: A marriage of pragmatics and culture in foreign and second language pedagogy and beyond. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 185-210). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

Meier picks up on the House (1999) case for pragmatics in English as a lingua franca. Her question is how culture might be included in language teaching without contaminating it with an undue amount of linguacultural imperialism. She argues for a culture general approach -- getting beyond one's singular world view.

Niezgoda, K. & Röver, C. (2001). Pragmatic and grammatical awareness: A function of the learning environment. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 63-79). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Compares 48 ESL learners in a private language school in Honolulu with 124 university-level EFL learners in the Czech Republic. The two independent variables for the study were learning environment and learners' proficiency and the dependent measures were awareness of pragmatic and grammatical errors. The respondents had to judge the appropriateness and grammatical correctness of utterances in a school environment (classrooms, hallways, teachers' offices). They found that environment had little effect except that ESL learners had higher pragmatic than grammatical awareness. They included that contact alone was not the explanation but rather attention to the pragmatic features of the input. For the ESL sample, higher proficiency and a longer stay in the target country meant less awareness of pragmatic errors. The higher proficiency EFL learners found more grammatical errors than did the lower proficiency ones. They concluded that the effect of proficiency was best attributed to the interaction of individual learner characteristics and environment.

Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A. D. (1990). The learning of complex speech behavior. The TESL Canada Journal, 7 (2), 45-65.

The study reported in this article concerned itself with the learning and teaching of the more subtle and complex features of the speech act of apology in English. Based on available knowledge about apology speech act behavior, the authors addressed themselves to questions relating to the efficacy of teaching such elements as: choice of semantic formula; appropriate length of realization patterns; use of intensifiers; judgment of appropriacy; and students' preferences for certain teaching techniques. In order to attempt to answer these questions the authors carried out a training study with 18 adult learners of English, speakers of Hebrew. The study consisted of: a) a pre-teaching questionnaire aimed at assessing the subjects' use of apologies, b) a teaching materials packet covering three classroom sessions, and c) a post-teaching questionnaire. The findings suggested to the researchers that although they did not find clear-cut evidence of quantitative improvement in the learners' speech act behavior after the given training program, there was an obvious qualitative approximation of native-like speech act behavior with respect to types of intensification and downgrading, choice of strategy, and awareness of situational factors. The authors concluded that the teaching of speech act behavior was a worthwhile project even if the aim is only to raise the learners' awareness of appropriate speech act behavior.

Rose, K. R. (1999). Teachers and students learning about requests in Hong Kong. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 167-180). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Deals with the nature of pragmatic competence and pragmatic consciousness-raising (PCR). Rose offers some techniques for PCR based on activities focusing on requests that were carried out with students in Hong Kong. He defines PCR as an inductive approach to developing awareness of how language forms are used appropriately in context. The aim is not to teach explicitly the various means of performing a given speech act (request, apology, compliment) but rather to expose learners to the pragmatic aspects of language (L1 and L2) and provide them with the analytical tools they need to arrive at their own generalizations concerning contextually appropriate language use. A caveat is that very little is known about the effects of such consciousness-raising activities. Teachers can start by giving examples of pragmatic failure -- anecdotes. Then an area is presented, such as requests, with description of its various components. Then the EFL students have a worksheet and collect data on requests in their L1. From the Hong Kong data the students learned about conventionally indirect requests.

Rose, K. R. & Kwai-fun, C. Ng (2001). Inductive and deductive teaching of compliments and compliment responses. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 145-170). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Compares the effects of inductive and deductive approaches to the teaching of English compliments and compliment responses to university-level learners of English in Hong Kong. While the deductive group (N=16) was provided with metapragmatic information through explicit instruction before engaging in practice activities, the inductive group (N=16) engaged in pragmatic analysis activities in which they were expected to arrive at the relevant generalizations themselves. Three measures of learner performance were administered in a pretest/posttest design: a self-assessment task (from Hudson et al. and asking respondents to indicate what they believe to be the level of their ability to respond appropriately in the 18 scenarios), a discourse completion task (DCT) (with respondents providing both the compliment and the response for the 18 scenarios), and a metapragmatic assessment task (where they had to rank-order four possible responses from the most to the least appropriate for the same scenarios). The DCT and metapragmatic assessment task were also administered to natives speakers of English and native speakers of Cantonese. Results were mixed, indicating no effect for instruction on learner confidence or metapragmatic assessment of appropriate compliment responses. However, the results from the DCT showed a marked increase in the use of compliment formulas by both treatment groups, with no similar increase for the control group (N=12). Results for compliment responses revealed a positive effect only for the deductive group, indicating that although inductive and deductive instruction may both lead to gains in pragmalinguistic proficiency, only the latter may be effective for developing sociopragmatic proficiency.

Safont Jordà, M. P. (2003). Instructional effects on the use of request acts modification devices by EFL learners. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 211-232). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

While the use of modification devices in requesting was not explicitly taught in her study, the investigator found that awareness-raising and pragmatic production tasks favored the use of peripheral modification devices by 160 female learners of EFL. The categories were "softeners," "attention getters," "hesitation," "grounders," "disarmers," expanders," and "please." She used a discourse completion test in a pretest/posttest design over one semester. She used a 5-point continuum of politeness in requests in her treatment. She found that while at pretesting few modification devices were used, at posttesting the learners largely modified their requests. In posttesting, the learners began to use attention getters, a bit of grounding, and many instances of "please."

Salazar Campillo, P. (2003). Pragmatic instruction in the EFL context. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 233-246). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

The researcher did her study with 14 English NNS 2nd-year law students (12 F, 2 M), and set out to increase the students' pragmatic awareness by means of tasks to enhance politeness and indirectness. She gave a pretest of requesting with a DCT with 5 production situations and also rating of politeness. Then the next session she taught request strategies (from the most indirect to the most direct) and then focus on lexical downgraders. Then they had a posttest. Three weeks later she gave another, delayed posttest. She found a qualitative increase in the use of requests for on a DCT immediately after instruction (e.g., the use of some mitigation) but this effect was not maintained in delayed tasks (back to ability strategies and the use of "please," as in the pretest). Her conclusions were that the effects of instruction were only for the short term.

Sameshima, S. (1998). Communication task ni okeru nihongo gakusyusha no tenkei hyougen/bunmatsu hyougen no syuutokukatei: Chuugokugo washa no "ira" "kotowari" "shazai" no baai (‘The acquisition of fixed expressions and sentence-ending expressions by learners of Japanese’). Nihongo Kyouiku (‘Journal of Japanese Language Teaching’), 98, 73-84.

This paper examines speech act performance of request, refusal, and apology by Chinese speakers of Japanese in Taiwan. Three levels of learners, high-beginners, low-intermediate, and high-intermediate, took a discourse completion test that included 3 situations eliciting the three speech act performance. The results were analyzed in terms of the linguistic form of each core speech act and the language use in the opening and closing of the dialogue. The author also compares the learners’ performance with the expressions included in their textbooks. Generally learners’ linguistic performance approximates that of native speakers as their levels became more advanced, although all level learners tended to oversimplify opening and closing statements.

Takahashi, T. & Beebe, L. M. (1986). ESL teachers' evaluation of pragmatic vs. grammatical errors. CUNY Forum, 12, 172-203.

Studies ESL teachers' reactions to pragmatic errors as compared with their corrections of grammatical errors -- specifically, how they reacted to refusals that contained grammatical and pragmatic errors. A questionnaire was prepared to elicit ESL teachers' reactions to 18 refusals -- 6 made by intermediate ESL students, 6 by advanced, and 6 from native American English data. Half were refusals of invitations, other half refusals of requests. They varied as to the nature of the mistake(s). The AE responses were doctored to include grammatical errors. 15 teachers graded according to classifications for grammar, style, spelling/punctuation, and pragmatics. This study did not yield clear indications as to whether grammatical or pragmatic errors were attended to more. So, a second study was conducted where the number of grammatical mistakes was controlled for in each item -- one per item. The sequence and content of pragmatic features in each refusal was left unchanged. A new group of 15 teachers was used. Here they found an increase in attention to the pragmatic level, with each higher proficiency level of student rated higher, because grammar errors were controlled. The first study had more corrections and comments per item. In the first study teachers were unable to provide many comments on sociolinguistic appropriateness due, they argue, to preoccupation with grammatical errors. In the second study when minimum attention to grammar was required, ESL teachers' awareness of sociolinguistic appropriateness became well manifested.

Takahashi, S. (2001). The role of input enhancement in developing pragmatic competence. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 171-199). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Examines the effects of input enhancement on the development of English request strategies by Japanese EFL learners at a Japanese university, using four input conditions -- explicit teaching (N=27) (detailed info on requests + a composition exercise packet with J-E translation exercises, hi-lo status and social distance noted), form-comparison (N=25) (respondents to compare their utterances with those of NSs and determine differences), form-search (N=24) (comparing NNS with NS utterances, but not their own), and meaning-focused (N=31) (reading transcripts of interactions and having to answer comprehension questions addressing the content) conditions. The researcher was interested in both success at learning requests and at level of confidence. An open-ended DCT and a measure of confidence in selecting request forms were administered pre-post. Written immediate retrospective verbal report data were also collected to gain information about the subjects' conscious decisions during their request performance. The degrees of input enhancement were found to influence the acquisition of request forms, with the explicit teaching having the strongest impact, then form-comparison, form-search, and meaning-focused in that order. Explicit instruction helped develop both proficiency and confidence to a greater extent than the other three conditions. The form-search and meaning-focused conditions both failed to draw the learners' attention to the target forms in the input.

Tateyama, Y. (2001). Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 200-222). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Studies the effects of explicit and implicit instruction in the use of attention getters, expressions of gratitude, and apologies to beginning students of Japanese as a foreign language. The groups received treatments four times over an 8-week period, with the treatment for the explicit group (N=13) including explicit metapragmatic information, whereas that for the implicit group (N=14) withheld it. Participants engaged in role-play and multiple-choice tasks as well as two different forms of self-report (retrospective verbal report from the students and the raters' comments as well). There were no differences between the two groups in the multiple-choice and role-play tasks. However, close examination of the errors in the multiple-choice tasks indicated that the participants in the explicit group were more successful in choosing the correct answers in items that required higher formality of the linguistic expressions. It seems that these participants benefited from explicit teaching on how the degree of indebtedness in thanking situations, the severity of offense in the apology contexts, and such factors as age social status, and in-group/out-group distinction intricately influence the choice of routine formulas. This suggests that some aspects of interlanguage pragmatics are teachable to beginners before they develop analyzed second language knowledge.

Tateyama, Y., Kasper, G., Mui, L. P., Tay, H.-M., & Thananart, O. (1997). Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning. Volume 8 (pp. 163-177). Urbana, IL: Division of English as an International Language, Intensive English Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reports on a study on the teaching of pragmatics with 14 undergrads in Japanese class at the U of Hawaii. The material included three functions of the routine formula sumimasen – as attention getter, apology, and thanking expression. It was contrasted with other formulae filling those functions. Students had to learn the forms, discourse functions, illocutionary forces, and politeness values for these routines, as well as context factors constraining their use. In an explicit group, they discussed the different functions, followed by teacher examples and explanations. Students were given a handout that illustrated and explained the differences in the use of the routine formulae according to social context. Finally, students watched four short video clips from a Japanese TV program, Standard Japanese Course. They included the functions under study. The implicit group only saw the video and was prompted to pay attention to formulaic expressions. Both groups had only 50 minutes of such instruction. Instruments: questionnaire on students' motivation and goals for learning Japanese, one-paragraph narrative after class on "what did I learn from this lesson," worksheet with discourse completion items on the use of routine formulae. They administered a short questionnaire on the ease and difficulty of the DCT items, how the students selected routines, and whether they attended to context factors. Both the DCT and worksheet questionnaire were given as homework. One week later each student individually had to do four short role-plays with a NS Japanese, aimed at eliciting those routines. Each role-play was scored holistically by two Japanese NS instructors. After the role-play, students completed a 10-item MC questionnaire on routine formulae. This was followed by a questionnaire probing for item difficulty, the respondent's reasons for choosing a particular response, and self-assessment on the MC task. Finally, each student was individually interviewed about his/her role-play performance as well as views on the instruction and alternative suggestions for approaches and activities to learn pragmatic formulae.

The explicit group received higher ratings for the role-plays. It was concluded that in order to learn which pragmatic routines are appropriate in unfamiliar contexts or in contexts where factors have different values and weights, explicit teacher is beneficial and perhaps necessary for successful learning. There was a higher correlation between self-report and role-play in the explicit group. The verbal report data demonstrated how the students considered context variables in response planning. Students also gave feedback on the teaching -- both groups liked the video material, and both expressed a preference for explicit instruction.

Taylor, G. (2002). Teaching gambits: The effect of instruction and task variation on the use of conversation strategies by intermediate Spanish students. Foreign Language Annals, 35 (2), 171-189.

A study of the effects of teaching gambits with 16 intermediate students of Spanish being trained in openers, keeping the floor, linking (questioning, restating, counter-argument, redirecting), reactive listening (assent, giving in, dissent, disbelief, noncommital, expressing sympathy or empathy), business situations with a stranger (requesting info or service, disagreeing/disputing/insisting, expressing gratitude or appreciation, greetings and leave-taking). Compex study with complex findings -- 16 in two groups for role-playing, 9 and 7. Some positive pay off to instruction. Researcher makes the point that teachers are not teaching these pragmatic phenomena enough.

Trosberg, A. (2003). The teaching of business pragmatics. In A. Martínez Flor, E. Usó Juan, & A. Fernández Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 247-281). Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

Trosberg looks at the handling of customer complaints by business language students. She starts by giving a fascinating overview of all the reasons why someone may or may not transfer from the way they would do it in their native language. For example, they may not transfer because they do not know how to do it in their L1, are aware but lack the L2 equivalent, or have faulty knowledge of the L2 cultural expectations. Then she goes on to lay out how tricky it can be even if the learner has a sense of the L2 genre for the interaction. She provides an elaborate figure for how to respond to everyday complaints: opting out, evasive strategies (minimizing, querying pre-condition, blaming someone else), apology (direct or indirect -- acknowledging responsibility and explanation), remedial acts (offer of repair, concern for hearer, promise of forbearance). She gives the recipe for how to respond to a customer's complaint (p. 259), and gives a figure with possibilities (ritual acts -- thanking and explaining, or apologizing; attending to the complaint -- promise of immediate attention/correction & asking for information; remedial acts -- offer of repair, check customer satisfaction, prevent future mistakes). Trosberg then describes a study carried out by Shaw and Trosberg (2000) and a follow-up study, where learners acquired new pragmatic routines through both explicit and implicit teaching. She found with 15 students a slight advantage to explicit instruction -- she has an inductive group and a deductive group. The follow-up study results will appear elsewhere, but the main finding was the relative ease at teaching pragmatic routines. They found dramatic changes in the way the complaints were handled after very little teaching over a short time. Her conclusion was that pragmatic behavior is much more open to conscious modification than syntax or phonology. She felt that these routines were easier to learn because they had a clear purpose which was meaningful within the learners' own cultural repertoire. Also the values such as "the customer is always right" helped in giving clear guidelines. She points out that there is no equivalent in everyday complaints.

Ishihara, N. (2003, March). Identity and pragmatic performance of second language learners. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, Arlington, VA.

This qualitative study investigates influence of foreign language learners identities on their pragmatic use of the target language. Seven advanced learners of Japanese first performed speech acts of requesting, refusing, and responding to compliments through speech elicitation tasks (oral discourse completion and role play tasks) both in their L2 Japanese and L1 English. Subsequent individual retrospective interviews and e-mail correspondence identified specific instances in which the participants emulated perceived target language norms. Furthermore, evidence of their resistance to such norms was scrutinized in order to explore the extent to which the participants resisted emulating native speakers of the target language, not because of linguistic deficiency but due to a desire to maintain their sense of self. The participants’ convergence with or divergence from the norms seemed to be in flux, and often depended on the interaction between the pressure and expectations from the target speech community on the one hand and the learners’ subjectivity (i.e., cultural/national/ethnic identities, and a sense of moral, personal beliefs and principles deriving from their identities) on the other. Implications of the study call for reconsideration and sensitivity toward issues of learner subjectivity among second/foreign language educators. Also, the study poses a question as to the ways in which unique aspects of the language and culture (such as culturally specific pragmatic routines in speech act realizations) can be taught in formal instruction so that learners can arrive at an emic understanding of the target language and culture.