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The contribution seeks to apply the principles of J. L. Austin's speech-act theories to the study of local business segregation in the Jim Crow South. In particular, it borrows the notions of illocutionary and perlocutionary force when examining the seemingly bland and prosaic statements that are often used to normalise segregation within the business of commercial entertainment. For purposes of expanding the complexity of typical Manichaean (i.e., Black vs White) ethnic studies, this analysis was developed within the context of tri-racial segregation as applied to rural moviegoing within Robeson County, North Carolina during the first half of the twentieth century. Notably, the development of Robeson's historical cinema-exhibition spaces eventually resulted in a highly unusual venue -- i.e., the three-entrance theatre -- whose physical architecture reflected tensions between local ethnic demographics and desired social hierarchies. Yet even in the face of these unusual physical constructs, this study contends that seemingly everyday objective/descriptive and non-demonising language remained an essential component in enforcing segregation.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate how culture impacts recipients' perceptions of the effectiveness of a public apology (Netflix apology). Data were collected through a survey instrument that included both Likert Scale items and short response items. A selected number of participants from each group were also interviewed. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of data were conducted. The study also aimed to identify specific verbal and non-verbal cues that correlate with students' evaluations of this public apology. Overall, the participants evaluated the Netflix apology as ineffective in terms of verbal as well as non-verbal strategies used. Findings show that cultural variations regarding the appropriate non-verbal cues significantly affected the participants' evaluations of the apology. Chinese emphasized the importance of a formal setting, professional dress, bowing posture and remorseful facial expressions, whereas Americans emphasized the importance of eye contact and body posture embodying attentiveness. The majority of the participants commented that the apologizer should have offered compensation as a means of taking responsibility for the offense. The study has teaching implications for raising intercultural competency among the students and business leaders, particularly regarding the use of online speech events in teaching scenarios.

The present study examined the apologies of 18 study abroad (SA) students during a short-term SA experience in Madrid, Spain. Apologies were assessed with a discourse completion task (DCT) consisting of five vignettes that varied across three variables: relative social status of the interlocutor, relative social distance, and seriousness of the offense. Based on performance ratings assigned to them by two native Spanish speakers, the students made significant gains in pragmatic appropriateness from pretest to posttest, on two out of the five individual vignettes, and on the five combined vignettes. Examination of the students' apologies before and after SA further revealed that they increased several strategies during their time abroad. Despite these gains, other aspects of the SA group's performance remained the same or, in some cases, moved in the opposite direction of the target norm. Moreover, the students also demonstrated continued overreliance on routine, formulaic expressions on the posttest DCT while underusing some important target-like mitigation strategies. Given the study's findings, the researcher offers recommendations for teaching pragmatics before and during the SA experience.

Corporate mission, a core part of corporate culture, plays an important role in the development and competition of companies. The study of mission statements is beneficial to both companies and stakeholders. This paper explores corporate mission from the perspective of linguistics on the basis of speech act theory and adaptation theory and reveals that assertives account for a large proportion with a small proportion of commissives and zero proportion of directives, expressives and declarations. Some skills can be used to polish the language of mission statements, like pun, personification and parallel structures. And some high frequency words are summarized. Several characteristics and writing skills are summarized about mission statements. The criteria of judging whether the mission statements are good or not are given in this paper.

This paper aims at detecting Iraqi EFL students' ability in recognizing and producing the speech acts of warning and prohibition, finding the reasons behind their failure and attempting to find possible solutions. The data are responses of 60 fourth year Iraqi EFL college students who participated to answer a two-part test of recognition and production. It is hypothesized that the Iraqi EFL learners commit more errors in producing SAs of warning and prohibition than recognizing these two SAs, they find more difficulty in handling the SA of prohibition than of warning, they show a tendency towards using a particular strategy to express the SAs of warning and prohibition, and they also confuse the SAs of warning and prohibition with other relevant SAs at the recognition and production levels. The paper concludes that Iraqi EFL learners recognize warning expressions better than those conveying prohibition. They also show sufficient awareness in issuing warning strategies in various situations. By contrast, they display a poor awareness of using various strategies in performing the SA of prohibition. Furtherly, the students' level in recognizing the SAs of warning and prohibition is higher than their level in producing these SAs. Correspondingly, in producing the SAs of warning, Iraqi EFL learners show a higher preference for using negative imperative, modals and if-conditional strategies more than other types in most of the situations, whereas in communicating the SA of prohibition, they employ negative imperatives and modals more than any other construction.

The present study aimed at investigating the influence of social power, as a social hierarchy, on perception of speech act of apology by 40 Jordanian second language speakers (JL2Ss) compared to that of 40 Jordanian non-English speakers, those whose English proficiency is low (JNESs) and 40 English native speakers (ENSs). Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) were used to elicit data from the three groups of participants. For data analysis, one way ANOVA, post hoc pair comparisons statistical tests were employed. Similarities and differences between Jordanian Arabic and British English cultures were detected. Social power found to have an impact on Jordanian participants perception significantly higher than ENSs. Moreover, significant mean differences among the three groups regarding their perception of the four context-internal variables were also found. Further, results showed that although JL2Ss are highly proficient in English they still lack the required sociopragmatic competence which consequently led to negative sociopragmatic transfer. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications, findings could benefit EFL course designers and teachers to develop EFL curricula in Jordan which may remedy the JL2Ss lack of pragmatic knowledge of the target language and reduce pragmatic failure across cultures.

Pragmatic competence is considered one of the principal elements of second/foreign language learners' communicative language ability. However, in comparison to other components of communicative language competence, learners' pragmatic competence is far less researched. Of many components of this ability, ample research studies have been centered upon developing instruments in the field of interlanguage pragmatics that are mostly informed by the speech act framework. However, the assessment of conversational implicature, as other component of pragmatic ability, is under researched. In order to address this gap, the aim was to construct and validate a conversational implicature test. According to Grice's (1975) conversational maxims and Goffman's (1967) face management insights, a hypothesized model for conversational implicature was offered and examined. The procedures for validating the instrument included gathering information relating to content and construct validity of the test. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) through structural equation modeling (SEM) and differential group study were employed in support for the empirical evidence of construct validity. The developed test with 34-multiple-choice-item was distributed among 385 EFL university students who were at different proficiency levels. The results showed that the hypothesized model was fitted properly to the indexes based on CFA analysis. Furthermore, students with different English proficiency differed significantly in their comprehension of implicatures.

This paper examines the employment of pragmatic empathy as a grand strategy in business letter writing. To account for the realization of pragmatic empathy in business letters, we make a corpus-based manual analysis of four types of business letters. It is found that (1) the choice of deixis is a major concern in most letters: while second person is often used in competitive letters, first or third person frequently appears in other three types of letters; (2) conventionalized indirectness strategy is often used in competitive business letters while mitigation strategy is preferred in conflictive business letters; (3) the employment of different strategies is an adaptation to various empathetic concerns in business letter writing. It is concluded that different types of business letters are characterized by different pragmatic strategies to achieve empathy. This paper, which is an attempt to investigate business letters from the empathy perspective, sheds light on business discourse research in general and business letter writing in particular.

The aim of this study is to investigate the pragmatic language behavior of Turkish learners of English in formal complaint situations through the comparison of their speech act performances to those of native speakers. The data was collected from a total of 276 participants, 132 Native Speakers (NSs) and 144 Turkish Learners (TLs) of English. Three different data collection methods were used: a) Discourse Evaluation Task (DET); b) video-recorded role plays; and c) open-ended oral interviews. The results indicate that native English speakers' and Turkish learners' production of complaints reflects a significant difference with respect to the linguistic components and the pragmatic choices made in complaining. A significant contribution of the current study to the literature is the Discourse Evaluation Task (DET), which is both a data collection tool and a term used for the first time in this paper.

This paper argues that in interpreting literary pieces, language and literature should team up for their mutual benefit. Based on this assumption, this study explores the interface between language and literature by examining along stylistic lines the flash fiction piece "When It's A Grey November In Your Soul" written by Cristina Pantoja Hidlago, a renowned Filipino author. Using Leech and Short's (2007) schema, the present study attempts to decipher the language code of the said literary text in terms of the following features: lexical categories, grammatical categories, figures of speech, and context and cohesion. The analysis proves that specific textual features could lend themselves well in interpreting the text. Among the lexical categories are group of words that indicate confusion (i.e., semantic field); predominant use of concrete nouns, special use of proper nouns, and abstract nouns referring to social and psychological states; adjectives denoting sense perceptions (visual descriptions, mostly colors); and specific verbs indicating speech acts. On the other hand, these grammatical features contribute to text interpretations are interrogative sentences and minor sentences (i.e., sentence fragments); predominant use of simple sentences; use of the literary present in general, and punctuations (i.e., em dash and ellipsis). Lexical repetition and alliteration are found to be effective figures of speech in comprehending the flash fiction piece. As for context, the flash fiction piece employs the first-person narration with Direct Speeches (DS), one Free Direct Speech (FDS), Free Direct Thoughts (FDT), and one Indirect Thought (IT). Repetition, recurring motif, and linkage as cohesion elements help elucidate the effects and meanings the writer intends to evoke in the story. The implications of the present study for literature and language teaching are also discussed.

The aim of this study was to examine, in a comparative way, formulaic expressions used in textbooks of Turkish as a foreign language and to determine in which contexts and how often they are included in these textbooks. Survey model was used to obtain data from three textbooks of Turkish as a foreign. Formulaic expressions in these books were collected then analyzed in terms of their structural, functional, semantic and contextual features. 193 expressions that met criteria of being formulaic expressions were determined as sub-categories in the textbooks and workbooks and linked to 21 speech acts that were grouped as main categories. Results showed that textbooks may have difficulties in providing a balanced representation of interrelated formulaic expressions, a number of formulaic expressions cannot be included in textbooks although they are frequently used in everyday life and informational contents about speech acts and formulaic expressions in textbooks can be represented being carried into workbooks but they are not reinforced as they are less used in workbooks. Based on these results, suggestions were made both for authors of future textbooks and workbooks of Turkish as a foreign language and authors of future studies concerning formulaic expressions and Turkish as a foreign language.

In this year-long qualitative case study of literacy teaching and learning, we utilized Bakhtin's ideas on speech genres in social contexts as a theoretical base for the analysis of a storybook read-aloud event. We first discuss Bakhtin's theories on language and literature and then apply the theories to a read-aloud activity in a kindergarten class. This classroom event involved the kindergarten teacher reading aloud, and the kindergarten children orally responding spontaneously during the reading. The teacher allowed the voices of the children and echoes of social language to enter into her performance as the class participated in a dialogic relationship.

Successful communication requires "Pragmatic Competence" or abilities to use appropriate language in transferring one's needs while maintaining a positive relationship with the interactant (Thomas, 1995; Leech, 1983). This study was an attempt to investigate the pragmatic competence of Thai Engineering students when making complaints and apologies through twelve sessions of a pragmatic consciousness-raising approach (PCR). Perceptions toward the innovative teaching activities were also examined. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data from forty-five engineering students (n = 45) at a university in Thailand. Pre-test and posttest written discourse completion tests (WDCTs) were administered and a semi-structured interview was conducted. Three native speaker raters scored the performances through WDCTs using assessment criteria from Hudson (2001) and Duan (2008). For data analysis, paired-samples t-test was employed to compare the mean scores of students, while the researcher employed a Grounded Theory's color coding technique (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to generate the findings on students' perceptions about the innovative methods implemented. The results revealed significant development of students' pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic abilities in both complaints and apologies. Furthermore, participants perceived the PCR class to be beneficial in four areas: having more awareness of the impacts of social factors in language use, realizing the favor of indirect strategies, more understanding of nonverbal communication, and provision of motivating class atmosphere. However, some participants concerned about three aspects: inadequate confidence to use expressions learned in class in real communication, insufficient endeavor to develop grammar knowledge, and the test abilities of the roleplay test. The results confirm the teachability of pragmatic and the benefits of PCR in EFL contexts; whereas, students' concern about learning through the approach might be helpful for further teaching practices.

This research examined how a teacher's discussion of the strands of scientific proficiencies changed over the course of an inquiry cycle as students engaged in a complex, technology-enhanced inquiry learning environment called "PlantingScience" (PS). Our research is descriptive in nature and attempts to deconstruct the complexity of teacher talk in the classroom as related to the strands of science proficiency. For this study, we used an exploratory sequential mixed methods design. First, the research team watched twenty recorded PS science lessons, transcribed the teacher's comments about inquiry, and identified each class/lab's phase of inquiry. Then, the research team coded the teacher's transcribed inquiry comments. By using both the scientific proficiency and inquiry lenses to examine one teacher's orchestration, our findings detail the art of teacher talk for promoting the four strands of scientific proficiencies through the phases of inquiry. As students transitioned through each phase of inquiry, the teacher emphasized the strands of scientific proficiency differently, but all strands were present. Since teachers play a vital role in developing students' understanding of science as both content and practice, this research helps recognize and describe strategies promoting greater scientific proficiency in students.

This quasi-experimental study adopted a pretest/posttest design to investigate the effect of instructional intervention in teaching polite refusal strategies explicitly on Iranian EFL learners' performance of the speech act of refusing. The participants, consisting of 24 male elementary EFL learners aged 12-18, responded to a discourse completion task (DCT) prior to and after they had been provided with explicit instruction concerning the polite performance of refusals in English. Adopting Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory and Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz's (1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies, the researchers found that the participants' refusal semantic formulas in the pretest contained a variety of impoliteness markers including directness, lack of mitigation, and terseness of responses. The pedagogical instruction was directed at eliminating these inappropriacy elements, addressing the lengthening and intensification of refusal semantic formulas, use of adjuncts to refusals, titles, honorifics, apologizing, etc. The participants' responses to the DCT in the posttest showed a high level of appropriacy in the semantic content of refusal utterances compared to their responses in the pretest. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that significant differences existed in terms of the content, frequency and types of both refusal strategies and adjuncts to refusals between the pretest and posttest phases. In conclusion, the study revealed the positive effects of instructional intervention on the development of the pragmatic competence of learners with low linguistic proficiency levels.

This paper reports a study on politeness strategies of Brazilian Portuguese speakers and American English speakers regarding their responses to compliments. The aim of this research is to gain an insight into the politeness characteristics of Brazilian Portuguese speakers by analyzing how Brazilian students react when receiving compliments. It also aims to investigate how politeness from Brazilian Portuguese speakers differs from politeness of American English speakers when receiving compliments. The population for this research consists of 12 students with intermediate and upper-intermediate levels of EFL from the "Cooperative de Trabalho Magna," a private school in Brazil. The study followed a descriptive and interpretive qualitative research method, where 133 answers were analyzed and then contrasted with Chen's (1993) study of politeness strategies between American English and Chinese speakers. This study shows that, unlike American English speakers, Brazilian Portuguese speakers need to justify and give reasons for the compliment received.

In an era where higher education institutions appear increasingly committed to what Sara Ahmed calls 'speech acts' whereby declared goodwill, through stated commitments to diversity, equity, and increasing Indigenous student enrolment and completion have been made; it is undeniable that Indigenous academics are in high demand. With fewer than 430 Indigenous academics currently employed here on the continent now commonly referred to as 'Australia', and 69% of that cohort identifying as female, what does it look like to experience this demand as an Indigenous academic woman? Drawing on data collected from a Nation-wide study in 2019 of 17 one-on-one, face-to-face interviews with Indigenous academic women, using Indigenous research methodologies and poetic transcription, this paper explores the experiences and relational aspects of Indigenous academic women's roles in Australian higher education.

This study deals with speech acts addressed to Hadza infants in Tanzania, a group that has traditionally lived off hunting and gathering. Three research questions are addressed: How do Hadza speech acts compare with those found in previous studies in other cultures? Are there differences between child and adult speakers? And do speech acts differ with camp livelihood patterns? Speech acts are seen as a part of language socialization, which reflects overarching cultural values and socialization goals. The results indicate that Hadza infants experience many requests for action/imperatives--a way of expressing hierarchies--more than the infants in the comparative cultural communities, in spite of the fact that hunter-gatherers have been described as egalitarian in the past. Children's and adults' speech acts differ in several ways: adults use more requests for action and information (questions) with infants, while children use more assertives. Finally, the comparison of camp livelihoods revealed differences mainly between camps living off tourism and those that are more isolated from outside influence. The former use more imperatives, the latter more vocatives. The results are discussed in terms of cultural change toward more hierarchical structure related to livelihood activities, particularly tourism, and different activities that children and adults engage in when interacting with infants.

In recent years, the removal of monuments which glorify historical figures associated with racism and colonialism has become one of the most visible and contested forms of decolonisation. Yet many have objected that there is educational value in leaving such monuments standing. In this paper, I argue that public monuments can be understood as speech acts which communicate messages to those who live among them. Some of those speech acts derogate particular social groups, contributing to their marginalisation in much the way that slurs do. Comparing derogating monuments to slurs is also productive in suggesting morally appropriate responses to their harms. I explore the limits of the use-mention distinction in relation to the harmfulness of slurs and apply this to show that attempting to recontextualise harmful monuments in situ--by, for example, changing the text on an accompanying plaque in order to retain the monument for its educational value--will not solve the problem in most cases. I conclude that the removal of slurring monuments, or their relocation to museum exhibitions dedicated to presenting a more critical view of history, is a more robust and reliable way of protecting against harm, and that this consideration outweighs any purported educational value in leaving monuments in place.

The way we ask for something, or "request," is hardly the same across all contexts. The degree to which we show politeness in these instances is closely related to a number of contextual factors (Brown & Levinson, 1987), manifested in the linguistic features that we employ (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989; Searle, 1975). However, the issue becomes particularly thorny when evaluating perceived pragmatic transgressions among English language learners (ELLs). Is the issue their misunderstanding of social expectations (i.e., "sociopragmatic") or the language used (i.e., "pragmalinguistic")? Past research in second language assessment (SLA) has focused on how learners develop the ability to perform requests (e.g., Kasper & Rose, 2002). However, what has been left under-addressed is the emergent ability among ELLs to request in a manner considered polite and contextually appropriate. With that issue in mind, this article reviews the literature on second language (L2) developmental patterns in the performance of requests with an eye for evidence of emergent awareness of politeness. The article begins with a discussion of the theoretical and empirical foundations for this question then proceeds into a review of studies among ELLs at three different proficiency levels, concluding with a discussion of the implications that this research has for language teaching and testing.

A good mastery of a range of formulaic sequences appears to be an important component of successful language learning (Wood, 2015; Wray, 2002). Certain formulaic sequences, known as pragmatic formulas, play a vital role in developing second language pragmatic competence, as they are crucial for successful speech act realization (Bardovi-Harlig, 2012). However, this category of formulaic language has been rather neglected in ESL pedagogy. To date, approaches to teaching formulaic language and pragmatics mainly use awareness-raising techniques; this approach, however, lacks potential for retention of formulaic sequences in learners' long-term memory (Boers & Lindstromberg, 2009). This article reports on a 6-hour course that was taught to 4 intermediate ESL students enrolled in one of the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) programs in Ontario. The course followed a refined approach to teaching pragmatic formulas that went beyond awareness-raising and consisted of three teaching phases: awareness-raising, deep cognitive engagement, and practice. Results of the final assessment showed that 2 participants expanded their repertoires of both refusal and thanking pragmatic formulas, while the other 2 participants improved their performance in the thanking speech acts.

This study investigates pragmatic development among Chinese EFL learners, with reference to accuracy improvement in grammar. Sixty college students in mainland China were pre- and post-tested on their pragmatic and grammatical comprehension and production over one academic year. Their test results were compared with those of 14 native English speakers. Quantitative results show that these Chinese EFL learners developed signifcantly in both pragmatics and grammar over time. Qualitative analysis reveals that they differed from the native speakers in terms of contents and address forms in realizing certain speech acts.

The full text of the speech given by President Barack Hussein Obama in Chicago after he won a second term in office as US President has been broken into its minimal communicative speech acts. This strategy has been used to analyse and understand how the whole speech is consistent with the cooperative maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner. Being a corpus-based work the study goes through the Rhetorical Criticism Approach with the Textual Analysis as the method at hand. The resulting interpretation shows that President Obama's speech fascinated and positively affected his listeners' emotions because it was highly consistent with all the four maxims of Cooperation, that is, the speech was cooperative in design. With these results we can confirm that the cooperative quality of a political speech is crucial to the audience's appreciation of the speaker and the value of his public talk.

This article reports on findings of a small-scale study by a group of three teacher educators from the Bachelor of Teaching, Primary (BTP) at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) in Hawke's Bay in 2016. The project began as a replication of a previous study from 2014 in which mentor teachers (MTs) from EIT's partner schools were interviewed about their experiences with transcripts analysed thematically. Analysis of the 2016 interviews generated four themes. Two of these, 'relationship' and 'communication', were identical to the previous study, suggesting MTs continue to value these aspects of partnership. The two other themes 'commitment' and 'collaboration', when compared with the themes of 'investment' and 'interdependence' from the earlier study, appeared to show a maturing and bedding in of the partnership. The project also expanded on the original design with a second level of analysis using positioning theory. Transcripts were analysed for linguistic markers related to positions, storylines, and speech acts, particularly the use of the word 'we'. The positioning analysis found participants offered 24 different categorisations of MT role activity, with only seven of these mentioned more than three times, suggesting these MTs conceptualise the role as complex and open to interpretation. Each MT adopted a distinct stance in describing their approach to candidate teacher support, drawing on metaphors as they did so. Four overarching storylines were identified, covering the benefits of the partnership model (particularly the value of feeling involved in programme design), the demands of being an MT, the challenges of working with candidate teachers and a sense of growing confidence and autonomy within the MT role. As for speech acts, five MTs used the word 'we' to denote personal alignment with their school, two used it to align with EIT or teacher educators (specifically in reference to programme development) and none used it to align with candidate teachers. The findings of this study reinforced the teacher educators' existing understandings about the importance of relationship and communication in the partnership and offered new insights into how these MTs conceptualise their role and operate in their own settings. The findings have been used to inform planning for ongoing MT support at EIT and may be of interest to other Initial Teacher Education programmes, particularly those involving partnerships and mentors.

This study explores ways of using Facebook as a tool to improve the pragmatic competence of students of German as a foreign language in Japan. Nine students of a textbook-based German class (CFER level A2) voluntarily participated in this blended learning approach, in which they were assigned weekly online tasks aimed at eliciting speech acts commonly used in online interaction. The tasks required the students write posts concerning their daily routines onto the timeline of a dedicated Facebook Group page and to comment on each other's posts. In order to find out what difficulties learners face when producing certain speech acts, the students' posts and comments were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively by determining the frequency, accuracy, and appropriateness of speech acts performed per task. The results suggest that the tasks developed seemed to be appropriate for eliciting a large number of speech acts, while types, frequency, and appropriateness of the speech acts produced varied significantly. As was revealed, difficulties in task performance did not only stem from a lack of L2 (socio-pragmatic) knowledge, but also from inexperience in the use of the network itself. For task performance, students strongly relied on the expressions provided in pre-task activities. As the results of a post-course students' survey indicate, most students agreed that using Social Networking Sites (SNS) is an appropriate tool for language learning, and that they were able to increase their knowledge and use of German speech acts significantly during this course. However, only those students who frequently used SNS in their everyday lives seemed to be able to reap the full benefits of the project.

This study aims at investigating compliment responses of Turkish and Chinese EFL learners by collecting data via a Discourse Completion Test. The participants of the study are Lower-Intermediate and Intermediate Level Chinese and Turkish EFL learners and native English speakers. The first purpose of the study is to compare Turkish and Chinese EFL learners' responses and find whether their cultures have an effect on their use of compliment responses. Another purpose of the study is to compare Turkish EFL and Chinese EFL learner data with native English speaker data. The participants were given a discourse completion test that consisted of 10 different compliment situations related to appearance/attire, possession and performance/ability and they were asked to write suitable compliment responses. The data were analyzed according to Chen & Yang's (2010) categorization by calculating the responses, finding their frequencies and coding every category in SPSS. Findings revealed some similarities and statistically significant differences between the responses of Turkish EFL learners and Chinese EFL learners. When Turkish and Chinese EFL learner data were compared with native English speaker data, it was found that in using some strategies Turkish and Chinese learners transferred some formulaic expressions, jokes and cliches they used in their native language. However, in using some other strategies they can be said to approach native English speaker norms.

I examine whether teaching formulaic language raises English as a foreign language learners' awareness of pragmatic resources when expressing requests. To carry out this research I adopt a qualitative self-reflective approach which encourages students to use formulaic language when making requests. By responding to discourse completion tasks, learners were given the opportunity to reflect on whether the use of formulaic language enhances their ability to come across in acceptable and appropriate ways. Results indicate that by developing learners' knowledge and via the use of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources, students at all levels have a much greater chance of achieving their communicative objectives and of becoming more pragmatically competent in the target language when making requests.

This paper addresses educators' responsibility for the discourse (including their own and others') that circulates in educational settings. This issue tends to arise especially with hurtful language and other discursive acts that have negative effects, and that require an apology, correction, or some other kind of remedial discourse. The paper frames this "discursive responsibility" as particularly contingent on location, arguing that when educators address their own or others' discourse, the response needs to be at a level of publicity that is the same as, or as similar as possible to, the discursive act it responds to.

Pragmatic competence, or the ability to use language appropriately in a variety of contexts, is a critical skill for communication in a second language (L2). Thus, teaching that focuses on developing students' abilities to communicate effectively in an L2 must also include a focus on developing students' pragmatic competence. This article discusses issues related to pragmatics in general as well as specific pragmatic challenges one group of English as a second language (ESL) students in the United States faced when complaining in their L2. Next, activities for teaching the pragmatics of complaining are suggested. It is hoped that by highlighting specific problems with one group of students and presenting ways to address these issues, this article will encourage teachers to examine their own classes, discover their own students' pragmatic issues, and incorporate activities to teach pragmatics into their own classes.

Advanced computer technology has transformed the way instruction is designed and delivered at all education levels including college. However, today's younger "digital-native" generation may often take their computer skills for granted, which impacts their interaction patterns with university professors who often encourage electronic communication when communication is required. This appears to put strain on students who are not accustomed to composing formal emails. The deficiency in students' skills may also have undesirable effects on their professors. The situation can be even more serious for students studying in a foreign language. Given the significance of requestive emails, the current study investigated how the request speech act set is realized by both native speakers of English and Arab university students in an English-medium university in the UAE, as well as whether or not instruction in formal email writing improves students' pragmatic competence. Data were collected using a discourse completion task requiring the participants to write an email to their professors requesting feedback. Findings revealed that there were some significant differences between the data sets from native speakers of English and Arab learners of English in terms of discourse structure, strategy type, and modifiers employed. It was also found that teaching email conventions in the context of an academic environment has a significant impact on students' pragmatic competence. The results are discussed, and recommendations are made.

A growing body of literature has investigated impoliteness in many domains. Nevertheless, little research has examined impoliteness done by foreign language learners. Impoliteness used in interlanguage complaints by English as a foreign language learners was observed. The effects of interlocutors' different status levels and social distance on the use of impoliteness were analyzed. Empirical data were elicited by means of oral discourse completion tasks from 50 Indonesian English as a foreign language learners in Central Java, Indonesia. The overall direction of the findings showed trends that status levels and social distance between interlocutors prompted different frequencies and strategies of impoliteness. The frequent use of impolite complaints was instigated by a number of factors such as the learners' understanding about the speech act in question, their perceptions on the social distance and status levels of interlocutors, and the nature of the research instrument.

This study examines the apology strategies used by 30 Saudi EFL teachers in Najran, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), paying special attention to variables such as social distance and power and offence severity. The study also delineates gender differences in the respondents' speech as opposed to studies that only examined speech act output by native and non-native speakers of English. To this end, the study employs a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) that consists of 10 situations designed to test how the respondents would react if they imagine that they belong to different types of social status whether higher, lower or equal. In addition, social distance and power have been taken into consideration in designing the ten situations included in the test used in this study. The results reveal that Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) is the most used apology strategy by the Saudi respondents followed by downgrading responsibility (DR), upgrader, offer of repair, taking on responsibility and then verbal redress. The results also reveal that gender has a great impact on the use of apology strategies in various ways. For instance, the IFID strategy and the upgrader strategy are used by males more than their female counterparts, whereas females use the DR strategy more than their male counterparts. It has been argued that some of the respondents' answers to the test were influenced by their mother tongue, as reported in previous studies conducted on apology strategies. The study discusses the results elicited via the DCT and compares them with those of previous studies on apology strategies and other speech acts. Finally, the study concludes with recommendations for further research.

This study aims at describing the directive speech acts in the verses that contain the stories in the Qur'an. Specifically, the objectives of this study are to assess the sub directive speech acts contained in the verses of the stories and the dominant directive speech acts. The research target is the verses ("ayat") containing stories in the Qur'an. This study emphasizes the problem of finding the meaning of verses pragmatically. The data in this study are all expressions of verses about the stories in the Qur'an that contain directive speech acts. In addition, the data in the form of contexts behind the emergence of the verses in the Qur'an story also included. Data collection technique used is the reading and record techniques. The data analysis was conducted using content analysis. Analysis of the data by classifying directive speech acts into 6 (six) categories of Bach and Harnish theory namely; requestives, questions, requirements, prohibitive, permissives, and advisories. The result is that the requestives speech act consist only 1 (one) paragraph, namely subdirective asking for patience. In sub-directive questions, there are 4 (four) questions that have meaning to ask about what, question tag, why, asking for permission, who, where, which, possibilities, and offering. For sub-requirements directive there are 60 (sixty) types of command. Pray command is the most number (24 verses) and command for giving attention is the second position with 21 verses. About sub-directive prohibitives, we found 19 kinds of restrictions. As for permissives, there is only one (1) verse that allows punishment. In advisories that there are 2 kinds of advises, they are 1 verse that counsel for fear of punishment of God, and advise to be humble (1 verse). Thus it can be said that the stories in the Alquran really contain messages, including a message to the people to carry out the commands of God and away from His prohibition. The purpose is to crystallize the basic principles of the movement of human history. Those principles later we call the laws of God. He continues to invite people to reflect His guidance in life.

The development of speech-act theory has provided the hearers with a better understanding of what speakers intend to perform in the act of communication. One type of speech act is apologizing. When an action or utterance has resulted in an offense, the offender needs to apologize. In the present study, an attempt was made to compare the apology strategies employed by Iranian EFL learners and those of English native speakers in order to find out the possible differences and similarities. To this end, a discourse completion test (DCT) was given to 100 male and female Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The respondents were supposed to complete the DCTs based on nine situations, which varied in terms of power between the interlocutors and level of imposition. This study employed Cohen and Olshtain's (1981) model to classify various types of apology strategies. The obtained results revealed some similarities along with some (statistically insignificant) differences between EFL learners and American English speakers in terms of their use of apology strategies. Furthermore, it was found that the illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), such as request for forgiveness and an offer of apology were the strategies mostly employed by the Iranian EFL learners while taking on responsibility such as explicit self-blame, and expression of self-deficiency were found to be the strategies mostly used by English native speakers. In terms of gender, the male and female respondents more or less used the same apology strategies in response to the situations. The findings of the present research can be used by language teachers as well as sociolinguists.

The analysis of raters' comments on pragmatic assessment of L2 learners is among new and understudied concepts in second language studies. To shed light on this issue, the present investigation targeted important variables such as raters' criteria and rating patterns by analyzing the interlanguage pragmatic assessment process of the Iranian non-native English speaking raters (NNESRs) regarding the request speech act, while considering important factors such as raters' gender and background teaching experiences. For this purpose, 62 raters' rating scores and comments on Iranian EFL learners' requests based on six situations of specified video prompts were analyzed. The results of the content analysis of raters' comments revealed nine criteria, including pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic components of language, which have been noted by raters differently through six request situations. Among the considered criteria, politeness, conversers' relationship, style and register, and explanation were of great importance to NNESRs. Furthermore, t-test and chi-square analysis of raters' assigned rating scores and mentioned criteria across different situations verified the insignificance of factors such as raters' gender and teaching experiences on the process of EFL learners' pragmatic assessment. In addition, the results of the study suggest the necessity of teaching L2 pragmatics in language classes and in teacher training courses.

Attitude toward accepting target language culture or maintaining heritage culture referred to as acculturation attitude can determine language learners' pragmatic gains during an educational sojourn. To this end, the current study investigated the relationship between language learners' acculturation attitudes during an educational sojourn and the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. Participants of the study were 52 Iranian postgraduate students of English education at a university in Australia. A discourse completion task was used to assess language learners' level of pragmatic competence. The adapted version of Berry's (2001) East Asian Acculturation Measure (EAAM) was also used to assess language learners' level of acculturation attitude toward Australian culture. The analysis of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between acculturation attitude and effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested encouraging and providing opportunities for language learners who are on an educational sojourn to immerse in target language culture to be able to develop their pragmatic competence to an optimal level.

Background: Cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) presents a rather complex challenge that requires understanding beyond biological or clinical perspective. Even though inaccuracies in speech articulation are the common consequences of CL/P, individuals with repaired CL/P are likely to experience other language-associated issues. Studies on social interaction have generally reported the children to be passive interlocutors, despite having their surgical treatment at the early stages of life. Aims: This study aims to describe the linguistic strategies that parents employ when interacting with their repaired CL/P child. How parents allocate the next turn of speaking to their repaired CL/P child will be specifically examined. Methods & Procedures: Three parent-child pairs with each child having repaired CL/P were selected to participate in the study. Guided by the principles of Conversation Analysis, their everyday interactions in their homes were video-recorded and transcribed according to the Jefferson System of Transcription Notation (2004). The transcriptions were subsequently analysed in order to highlight the linguistic strategies. Outcomes & Results: Three main linguistic strategies are identified in the parents' turns when they allocate the next turn of speaking to their repaired CL/P child. Specifically, parents' turns are constructed through interrogative sentences in addition to using emphasis words and repeated elicitation of responses from their child. Conclusion & Implications: Parents' linguistic strategies are found to be restrictive as they limit children's active participation. Consequently, the interaction becomes asynchronous rather than synchronous, which could otherwise benefit children's language development. Findings provide information on how parents can be supported in order to foster a positive growth of the children's language development through everyday interactions.

The reigning orthodoxy in writing centres has been to avoid directive approaches and embrace non-directive approaches to tutoring. Although this 'myth has been debunked by various writing centre scholars since the late 1990s, many guidebooks on tutoring still adhere to it. We believe that theory-led empirical research on tutor approaches and actions is necessary to demonstrate the situation-dependent efficacy of directive approaches, and thereby dispel the myth that a peer role is preferred to a teacherly role. This paper starts addressing the need for theory-led empirical research on directiveness by applying theories of linguistic pragmatics to analyze writing centre consultations, and assist writing centre tutors to develop a critical awareness of both their actions and students' responses. First, an overview is given of the description of directiveness in the writing centre literature. This is followed by an overview of micro- and macropragmatic theories on speech acts in linguistics, and suggestions on how they may be applied to better understand the role of directiveness in writing centre consultations. This is followed by an overview of present research project, and an analysis of two excerpts (speech events) from a particular consultation. The article is concluded by a reflection on the findings, and suggestions are made on how to apply them towards improving writing centre pedagogy at the institution where the research was conducted.

This article examined salutation as a valued and nuanced socio-cultural practice that serves the purpose of socially positioning interactants and impacting on face negotiations in interaction in Nigeria. This was done with the aim of demonstrating its significance in the shaping and ordering of naturally occurring interaction. The data for the study comprise naturally occurring interaction of 30 participants whose interactions were collected using linguistic ethnographic tools of recording, note taking, and observation while micro discourse analysis, with emphasis on notions of face negotiations as interaction strategies was used for the analysis of the data. The study revealed that students who failed to salute the teachers were offered varying face negotiations based on their gender differences. The study also found that both the office context and the power position of the teachers impacted variously on face negotiations. From the Nigerian sociolinguistic context and interpersonal pragmatics, salutation is viewed as a social solidarity and social positioning strategy especially in contexts where age, gender, and power are sensitive components of the context as such its observation or failure to observe it could easily affect the outcome of the entire interaction.

This study investigates the three speech act strategies of request, suggestion and apology in Libyan Arab EFL undergraduate students (AREFLUS) and Amazigh EFL undergraduate students (AMEFLUS). It also examines their linguistic and pragmatic competence in these strategies. Two Libyan universities (Sebha and Zwara) are selected for the study, which includes 50 AREFLUS and 37 AMEFLUS participants. To investigate the students' socio-pragmatic and pragma linguistic competence, two instruments are used: a questionnaire in the form of a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and a rating scale. The results reveal numerous similarities between the Libyan Arab and Amazigh participants in performing all the speech act strategies of request, suggest and apology. However, some significant differences regarding gender are found among Libyan EFL students. Overall, both groups appear to be more competent in functioning than in structuring the three mentioned speech act strategies.

Research suggests that metacommunication in young children's social pretend play is the most complex form of cooperation. In this study, metacommunication was examined using audio and video recordings during pretend play. Participants were 24 children in kindergarten average age 5.1 years. Utterances were coded for metacommunication, the narrative content and the social dimension of cooperation. Results show that while the use of metacommunication correlates with the complexity of the narrative, it does not correlate with the complexity of the social dimension. Implications for supporting metacommunication in social pretend play by teachers are discussed.

This study investigates second language (L2) interactional competence in Mandarin Chinese, with a specific focus on dispreference organization in refusals. Twenty-eight L2 Chinese learners at 3 proficiency levels (A2, B1, and B2) and 10 native speakers each participated in 3 role plays. We found that learners at different levels clearly differed in their ability to organize refusals as dispreferred and to fine tune their refusal to the initiating action. Lower intermediate (A2) learners either fronted negative responses or adopted a single dispreference marker (e.g., apologies, pauses, prefatory particles, etc.), whereas upper intermediate (B1) learners overwhelming delayed their refusals and never produced straightforward negations, also showing different organizations of refusals depending on the initiating action. Advanced learners combined sequential tools and linguistic devices to demonstrate a strong orientation toward affiliation, and clearly oriented to scenarios differentially. However, they lagged behind native speakers, who had more diversified interactional tools and systematically oriented to features of the initiating actions. We attribute the differences partially to L2 proficiency, though proficiency-independent increase in contextual sensitivity can be observed.

This paper investigates the relationship between multilingualism, code-switching, target language contact and pragmatic and grammatical awareness in learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Participants (N = 144) were university students enrolled in English language courses at a German university. The study employed a cross-sectional design with degree of multilingualism, frequency of code-switching and intensity of target language contact as between-subject factors. The linguistic measure of pragmatic and grammatical awareness was a written appropriateness and accuracy judgement test involving three speech acts: apologies, refusals and requests. In addition, participants completed two questionnaires assessing their language background, code-switching behaviour and the intensity of their contact with the English language. Regression analyses revealed that degree of multilingualism was a strong positive predictor of pragmatic awareness in an EFL learning environment. Frequent code-switching appeared to enhance pragmatic awareness in those participants who grew up with two languages, but not those who were monolingual in childhood and became bilingual through education. Moreover, the results demonstrated that intensity of target language contact emerged as the only predictor of both pragmatic and grammatical awareness in this study.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the impact of social networks on learning requests by Arab undergraduate EFL students. Design/methodology/approach: Furthermore, both types of requests (i.e. direct and indirect) have been compared under the same condition. A total of 40 Saudi EFL learners participated in this study. Their scores in the pre-test and post-test were compared. Findings: Results of the post-tests indicated that the experimental groups' performance significantly outscored the control groups. However, no significant difference was reported between the two experimental groups (i.e. direct and indirect). Originality/value: Requests, as a component of pragmatics, have been investigated extensively in the literature to aid second/foreign language learning. However, little is known about the manner by which social networks could foster learning requests.

Conversational interactants rely on each other to cooperate with ongoing actions and activities both structurally (alignment) and affectively (affiliation). They monitor one another's cooperative behaviors to detect any (potential) problems in alignment and affiliation. The present study describes one interactional strategy Japanese speakers use to deal with detected problems in three nonmain sequences (i.e., side, preexpansion, and postexpansion sequences). In the practice I call anchoring shared knowledge, the action (or activity) initiator uses the utterance-final "desho" to request ratification of shared knowledge from the recipient. Positioning of this request relative to the main action makes the "desho"-speaker's action interpretable to the recipient as seeking alignment to and affiliation with the main action. The study demonstrates (a) the interactants' constant attention to alignment and affiliation, (b) their orientation to the relevance of local practices to the main action or activity, and (c) the complex interrelationships between epistemics, actions, and social relations.

Using persuasion role-play data, this study examined the features of the persuasion by Japanese learners of English (JLE). The quantitative and qualitative comparisons between the JLE and the English native speakers (ENS) showed that (1) the JLE took turns 16-26% less and spoke 8-35% less, and they did not speak more than the interviewers; (2) they used first/second-person pronouns 19-86% less; (3) they overused fillers and "want," while they underused hedges, second-person pronouns, amplifiers, and semi-prefabricated phrases; and (4) they were divided into three subgroups (novice, lower-intermediate, and upper-intermediate) in terms of the use of high-frequency words, and the novice learners were characterized by talking about themselves, the lower-intermediate learners by generalizing their claims, and the upper-intermediate learners by making their persuasion more effective by utilizing their lexical and grammatical knowledge. These findings could be utilized for the development of new teaching materials and curriculums to enhance L2 learners' persuasion skills.