Pragmatics in English as a lingua franca. An analysis of request modifiers

Abstract

This PhD dissertation aims at contributing to the body of research in English as a Lingua Franca regarding pragmatic awareness and production by, (a) examining how 104 English non-native speakers' awareness of pragmatic and grammatical infelicities and grammatical and pragmatic production of request acts and request act modifiers is affected by proficiency level; and, (b) comparing how awareness of pragmatic and grammatical infelicities and grammatical and pragmatic production of request acts and request act modifiers is affected by different lengths of stay abroad. According to our results, we may state that both proficiency level and length of stay abroad have effects on the awareness and production of appropriate and correct request acts and request act modifiers. Regarding proficiency, it seems that advanced participants in our study performed better at assessing pragmatic and grammatical failure than intermediate participants. Advanced participants also performed better at producing accurate and appropriate requests and request act modifiers than the intermediate ones. With regards to length of stay abroad, our findings indicate that the first 6 months of the stay abroad were decisive in developing an awareness of pragmatic infelicities, compared to longer periods of time in the target language country. However, no statistically significant differences were observed with regards to length of stay and accurate evaluation or request acts. The results also suggested that all learners in the study abroad context increased their pragmatic repertoire of internal and external modifiers at later stages of their stay in the UK and thus we could come to the conclusion that exposure to authentic language use is a crucial element in the language learning process.