Abstract:

Increasing attention has been granted recently to the learning and instruction of pragmatic issues in a second/foreign language (L2/FL), i.e., L2 pragmatics, as reflected in current European trends that search for innovation and development in L2/FL teaching and learning (García-Pastor, 2009, 2012). L2 pragmatics in this study refers to the linguistic resources for conveying communicative acts and relational or interpersonal meanings in a second/foreign language coupled with the socio-cultural perceptions underlying interlocutors’ interpretation and performance of communicative action (Kasper & Rose, 2001). Similarly, the use of corpora in English language teaching (ELT) has been encouraged in the past few years in an attempt to foster new advances in the field (cf. Bellés-Fortuño et al., 2010; Gregori-Signes & Alcantud-Díaz 2012; O’Keeffe et al., 2011; O’Keeffe & Clancy, 2012). This study aims to emphasize the importance of considering L2 pragmatics and the adoption of a corpus-based approach in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom by exploring the interlanguage features of Spanish L1 learners’ disagreements in EFL, and their perceptions of these communicative acts. To this end, disagreements in a corpus of 28 EFL face-to-face conversations of approximately 30 minutes duration each were analysed, and then used in the EFL classroom to examine learners’ perceptions of these communicative acts in the target language and generate discussion. In general, a different use of mitigation devices in EFL disagreements was observed in contrast with English native speakers’ production of these communicative acts (García, 1989; Kreutel, 2006). Learners therefore showed lack of awareness of the linguistic resources commonly employed for voicing disagreement in the target language. As regards their perceptions and discussion of EFL disagreements in the classroom, learners viewed these communicative acts in the target language as adequate and polite at a social level on the whole, which can be said to reflect somehow their L1 pragmatic assumptions on disagreement performance (cf. Cordella, 1996). However, they mostly perceived EFL disagreements as inadequate and impolite at an individual level, thereby evincing pragmatic assumptions typically associated with these instances of communicative action in L1 English (see Locher, 2004; Pearson, 1986; Pomeranz, 1984). These findings suggest that a closer look at learners’ productions and perceptions of target language behaviour using learner corpora in the classroom can be useful to achieve a better understanding of our students’ L2 pragmatics, and help them in their development of target language proficiency.

Keywords:

EFL teaching and learning, disagreements, L2 pragmatics, learner corpora.