Exposure to the pragmatic marker ‘like’ in US vlogs and its pedagogical implications on L3 English learners

Abstract

The paper discusses the effects of watching American vlogs on L3 English learners whose L1 is Romanian and L2 German, as it aims to determine whether the use of L2 has any influence on the use and understanding of the pragmatic marker ‘like’ after contact with informal exposure coming from vlogs. In order to approach this issue, the study first presents the concepts of multilingualism and translanguaging and focuses afterwards on pragmatics in teaching, including media use and extramural contexts. The participants of the study were 20 English users with the aforementioned linguistic background and the instrument used was a three-part questionnaire meant to collect sociolinguistic data and to measure the subjects’ understanding and use of ‘like’. The results confirmed previous studies, showing that both higher watch-time and higher degree of informality associate to higher competence when using the marker.