Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics: Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context: 108 (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series) - Hardcover

Barron, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027253501 ISBN 13: 9789027253507

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2003

Synopsis

Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics provides readers with a much-needed insight into the development of pragmatic competence, an area of research long neglected in interlanguage pragmatics. The longitudinal investigation which provides the basic material for this book consists of a corpus of requests, offers and refusals of offers elicited from Irish learners of German over a ten-month study abroad period using production questionnaires and a variety of metapragmatic instruments. The analysis focuses on developments in these learners’ knowledge of discourse structure, pragmatic routines and internal modification. Findings present valuable information pertaining to the process of acquisition of pragmatic competence. They also point to the favourable but imperfect nature of the study abroad context for the development of pragmatic competence. A comprehensive discussion of theoretical and methodological issues, an in-depth analysis and an extensive bibliography make this book of interest to both researchers and students in interlanguage pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics, German as a foreign language and study abroad research.

About this title

Synopsis

This study reports on an investigation designed to, in some way, meet the need for acquistition research in L2 pragmatics - in particular in the form of longitudinal studies - and also to meet the need for research into the acquisition of L2 pragmatic competence in German. Specifically, it concerns a longitudinal study in which the development of the L2 pragmatic competence of a group of 32 Irish learners of German is investigated over ten months spent studying in the target speech community, Germany. The study is anchored in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, and the approach taken is speech-act based - interest focusing on productions of requests, offers and refusals of offers. The study also draws on research from discourse analysis in the investigation of offer-refusal of offer exchanges. The objective of this study was to record any developments - whether towards or away form the L2 norm - in the L2 pragmatic competence of the current group of learners over time spent in the target community.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027253501
• ISBN 13: 9789027253507
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416