High-level requests: A study of long residency L2 users of English and French and native speakers

详细信息	查看全文 | 推荐本文 |

• 作者：Fanny Forsberg Lundell^a ; ¹ ; ^{fanny.forsberg@fraita.su.se}  ; [Author Vitae] ; Britt Erman^b ; ^{britt.erman@english.su.se}  ; [Author Vitae]
• 关键词：Requests ; L2 acquisition ; Pragmalinguistic ; Formulaic language ; Situation-bound utterances ; Socio-pragmatics
• 刊名：Journal of Pragmatics
• 出版年：2012
• 期刊代码：79_03782166
• 类别：cp
• 出版时间：May, 2012
• 卷：44
• 期：6-7
• 页码：756-775
• 文件大小：324 K

摘要

With few exceptions the field of L2 pragmatics has focussed on intermediate and advanced learners and there is little knowledge to date regarding highly proficient, immersed L2 speakers鈥?pragmatic performance. This study concerns L2 speakers having been immersed culturally and professionally for a considerable length of time. Our focus is on-line production of the request sequence by Swedish speakers of L2 English and L2 French having lived and worked approximately 10 years in the L2 country against matched native controls. The task is a role play between an employee and her/his boss implying high demands on the pragmatic knowledge of the participants. Our main results indicate that both groups of L2 users significantly underuse lexical and syntactic downgraders. It is argued in this paper that this underuse is not due to a lack of pragmalinguistic resources, i.e., they use the same types as the native speakers, but is of a socio-pragmatic nature, i.e., they do not downgrade to the same extent. Furthermore, L2 users significantly underuse 鈥榮ituation-bound鈥?routinized formulaic sequences for expressing the Head act. This result, in contrast, points to a lack of pragmalinguistic resources.