Pragmatic failure revisited: Jaworski’s (1994) study in a new light

Abstract

In the current conditions of globalization and the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), the notions of pragmatic competence and appropriateness as well as pragmatic failure become of paramount importance to the language learners and instructors. The current article discusses these questions through an approximate replication of Jaworski’s (1994) study of pragmatic failure in responses to English greetings by Polish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. The need for the replication arises from the lack of studies addressing pragmatic failure of EFL learners and the need to approach pragmatic behaviour of EFL learners in the conditions of ELF. The replication duplicates the methods of data collection and analysis of the original study but alters the native language (L1) of the participants and expands the study through the analysis of responses and the ratings. The data consists of Russian EFL learners’ responses to the “How are you?” greeting question in the examination context. The results showed that Russian EFL learners achieve pragmatical success: the majority of the responses was rated as appropriate by the English native speakers. It is concluded that the original study’s concern with teaching pragmatics should be applied and investigated in greater details focusing on ELF. Additionally, the notions of pragmatic competence and pragmatic failure need to be reevaluated and applied in the context of ELF.

Keywords

• Pragmatic competence
• pragmatic failure
• greeting responses
• ELF
• EFL

Kaynakça

1. Arnaut, K., Blommaert, J., Rampton, B., & Spotti, M. (Eds.) (2015). Language and superdiversity. New York, NY: Routledge.
2. Barron, A. (2003). Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics: Learning how to do things with words in a study-abroad context. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
3. Beebe, L. M., Takahashi, T, & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R.Scarcella, E. Andersen, & S. D. Krashen (Eds.), On the development of communicative competence in a second language (pp. 55-73). New York: Newbury House/Harper Collins.
4. Berger, C. R., & Bradac, J. J. (1982). Language and social knowledge. London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd.
5. Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP), Applied Linguistics, 5 (3), 196-213, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/5.3.196
6. Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1986). Too many words: Length of utterance and pragmatic failure. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8 (2), 165-179.
7. Brown, A. (2003). Interviewer variation and the co-construction of speaking proficiency. Language Testing, 20 (1), 1-25.
8. Canagarajah, S. (2014). In search of a new paradigm for teaching English as an international language. TESOL Journal, 5 (4), 767-785.

9. Cohen, A. D. & Olshtain, E. (1993). The production of speech acts by EFL learners. TESOL Quarterly, 27 (1), 33-56.
10. Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 33 (2), 185-209.
11. Cook, V. (2016). Where is the native speaker now? TESOL Quarterly, 50 (1), 186-189.
12. Ebsworth, M. E., Bodman, J. W., & Carpenter, M. (1996). Cross-cultural realization of greetings in American English. In S. M. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures (pp. 89-107). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
13. Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2011). ‘‘Please answer me as soon as possible’’: Pragmatic failure in non-native speakers’ e-mail requests to faculty. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 3193–3215.
14. Edmondson, W. & House, J. (1991). Do learners talk too much? The waffle phenomenon in interlanguage pragmatics. In R. Phillipson, E. C. Kellerman, L. Selinker, M. Sharwood-Smith, & M. Swain (Eds.), Foreign/ second language pedagogy research: A commemorative volume for Claus Faerch (pp. 273-287). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
15. Eisenstein, M., & Bodman, J. W. (1986). I very appreciate: Expressions of gratitude by native and non-native speakers of American English. Applied Linguistics, 7 (2), 167- 185.
16. House, J. (1996). Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language: Routines and metapragmatic awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 225-252.
17. 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. Fernándes Guerra (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (p. 133-160). Castelló de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.
18. Gass, S. M. & Neu, J. (Eds.) (1996). Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a second language. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
19. Ishihara, N. (2018). Intercultural pragmatic failure. In J. I. Liontas, T. I. Association, & M, Delli-Carpini (Eds.), The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. John Wiley & Sons.
20. Ishihara, N. (2013). Teacher-based assessment of L2 Japanese pragmatics: Classroom applications. In S. Ross & G. Kasper (Eds.), Assessing second language pragmatics (pp. 120-148). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
21. Jakubowska, E. (1998). Greetings and farewells contrastively viewed. Linguistica Silesiana, 1 (1), 87-98.
22. Jaworski, A. (1994). Pragmatic failure in a second language: Greeting responses in English by Polish students. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 32, 41-55.
23. Kasper, G. (1998). Interlanguage pragmatics. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Learning foreign and second languages: Perspectives in research and scholarship (pp. 183-208). New York, NY: The Modern Language Association of America.
24. Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin (Utrecht), 8(3), 203–231. doi.org/10.1177/026765839200800303
25. Kecskes, I. (2000). Conceptual fluency and the use of situation-bound utterances. Links & Letters, 7, 145-161.
26. Kecskes, I. (2019). Linguistic creativity in ELF. In English as a lingua franca: The pragmatic perspective (pp. 45-68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27. Larina, T. (2009). Kategoria vezhlovosti i stil’ kommunikatsii. (Category of politeness and style of communication). Moskva: Rukopisnye pamyatniki drevnei Rusi.
28. Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
29. Malinowski, B. (1923). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C.K. Ogden & I.A. Richards (Eds.), The meaning of meaning (pp. 296-336). New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World.
30. McGee, P. (2019). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Training, Language and Culture, 3 (1), 73-84. doi: 10.29366/2019tlc.3.1.5
31. Murray, N. (2012). English as a lingua franca and the development of pragmatic competence. ELT Journal, 1-9. doi: 10.1093/elt/ccso16
32. Rakowicz, A. (2009). Ambiguous invitations: The interlanguage pragmatics of Polish English language learners. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing. (3346268)
33. Sacks, H. (1975). Everyone has to lie. In M. Sanches & B. G. Blount (Eds.), Sociocultural dimensions of language use (pp. 57-80). New York, NY: Academic.
34. Salsbury, T., & Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2001). “I know you mean, but I don’t think so:” Disagreements in L2 English. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning, Vol. 10. (pp. 131-151). University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Division of English as an International Language.
35. Schnurr, S., & Zayts, O. (2013). “I can’t remember them ever not doing what I tell them!”: Negotiating face and power relations in ‘upward’ refusals in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10, 593-616.
36. Shleykina, G. (2019). The interlanguage pragmatics of greetings. Beyond Words, 7 (1), 43-60.
37. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
38. Taguchi, N. (2017). Interlanguage pragmatics. In A. Barron, P. Grundy, & G. Yueguo (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of pragmatics (pp. 153-167). Oxford/ New York: Routledge.
39. Taguchi, N. (2009). Pragmatic competence in Japanese as a second language: An introduction. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), Pragmatic competence (pp.1-18). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
40. Taguchi, N. (2011). Rater variation in the assessment of speech acts. Pragmatics, 21 (3), 453-471.
41. Taguchi, N. & Ishihara, N. (2018). The pragmatics of English as a lingua franca: Research and pedagogy in the era of globalization. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 38, 80-101.
42. Taguchi, N. & Roever, C. (2017). Second language pragmatics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
43. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4 (2), 91-112.
44. Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
45. Walter, S. (2007). A conversation-analytic hermeneutic rating protocol to assess L2 oral pragmatic competence. Language Testing, 24 (2), 155-183.
46. Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.