Applied Linguistics Review 2017; 8(1): 101–129

Veronika Timpe-Laughlin* Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics: What do we know?

DOI 10.1515/applirev-2015-2005

Abstract: Language pedagogy designers are faced with the challenge of engi- neering learning experiences that are in harmony with how second and foreign languages (L2s) are developed. In the field of L2 pragmatics learning and teaching, this challenge has sparked a considerable amount of research on instructional methods, facilitative interventions, and input enhancements. To a lesser degree, researchers have also investigated L2 pragmatic learning progressions that might inform L2 instruction. This review paper canvasses empirical research into the acquisitional sequences of interlanguage prag- matics (ILP) in adult L2 learners conducted after 2002, the year in which Kasper and Rose’s seminal book, Pragmatic Development in a Second Language, was published. The paper synthesizes the findings of 16 system- atically identified empirical studies. Based on this synthesis of findings, new insights and tendencies in L2 pragmatic development are discussed, and areas in need of further research are identified.

Keywords: L2 acquisition, pragmatics, learning trajectories

1 Introduction

In recent years, the field of second and foreign language (L2) pragmatics teaching and learning research has witnessed a considerable upsurge in pub- lications providing suggestions and implications for L2 pragmatics instruction (for a detailed overview see Taguchi 2015). Several studies have examined the teachability of pragmatics, yielding results that support the effectiveness of L2 pragmatics instruction in different environments (e. g., Jeon and Kaya 2006; Kasper 1997; Takamiya and Ishihara 2008). Other research has provided evidence that pragmatics teaching has positive effects on the pragmatic devel- opment of L2 learners at all proficiency levels, from beginner to advanced (e. g., Alcón Soler and Safont Jorda 2008), and that explicit pragmatics

*Corresponding author: Veronika Timpe-Laughlin, Center for English Language Learning and Assessment, Educational Testing Service, 660 Rosedale Rd, Princeton, NJ 08540-2218, USA, E-mail: [email protected] 102 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin instruction tends to result in more L2 pragmatic development than implicit pragmatics instruction (Jeon and Kaya 2006; Salazar Campillo 2007). Moreover, different types and lengths of pedagogical interventions have been found to yield different degrees of L2 pragmatic development (Bataller 2010; Cohen and Shively 2007). In contrast, research investigating the order of L2 pragmatics acquisition are still rare. Kasper and Schmidt (1996) and Cohen (1996) were among the first to emphasize the need to investigate the development of L2 pragmatics. Cohen (1996: 263), for instance, asked whether “adults go through developmental sequences in their acquisition of speech act ability in the same way as they have been found to do in the acquisition of morphemes and syntactic structures such as negation”. While several seminal studies have been published since 1996 (e. g., Kasper and Rose 2001), there is an ongoing need for L2 pragmatics research that focuses on “identifying and accounting for stages of development” (Bardovi-Harlig 2012: 159). The purpose of this article is to review studies conducted in the area of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) development after 2002, the year in which Kasper and Rose’s seminal book, Pragmatic Development in a Second Language, was published. Following Kasper and Rose (2002: 1), this article will report on the findings of 16 systematically identified, empirical investiga- tions into “acquisitional processes, conditions, and sequential patterns” in L2 pragmatics in order to provide a state-of-the-art overview of what we know about receptive and productive ILP development in adult L2 learners.

2 L2 pragmatics

Crystal (1997) described pragmatics as “the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encoun- ter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication” (p. 301). This description characterizes pragmatics as focused on the language user in a particular con- text, encoding and decoding utterances in relation to a number of sociocultural factors. That is, a pragmatically competent language user has “the ability to control the complex interplay of language, language users, and language use contexts” (Taguchi 2008c, p. 204). Mastering the pragmatics of communication poses a challenge to all language users, and for L2 learners this challenge is particularly demanding. Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 103

When L2 learners do not fully comprehend the relationship between an utterance’s propositional meaning (i. e., the apparent meaning) and its intended illocutionary meaning (i. e., the intended effect), pragmatic failure may occur, leaving the hearer offended or making the speaker appear unin- telligent, rude, or impolite (Thomas 1983; Washburn 2001). In order to prepare L2 learners for pragmatic challenges in L2 contexts, researchers have called for increased L2 pragmatics instruction (Ishihara and Cohen 2010; Kasper 1997; Timpe 2013). Studies in the domain of L2 or interlanguage pragmatics have primarily investigated the use of pragmatic phenomena rather than the development of pragmatic abilities. Given the preponderance of language use studies, Bardovi-Harlig (1999) has suggested distinguishing between interlanguage pragmatics and acquisitional pragmatics. While ILP refers to the domain which “examines how nonnative speakers comprehend and produce action in a target language” (Kasper and Rose 2002: 5), acquisitional pragmatics describes the sub-domain of ILP dedicated exclusively to investigating how the L2 pragmatic system develops. Studies that focus on acquisitional pragmatics adopt a predominantly SLA-oriented perspective, focusing on L2 pragmatics learning progressions and (individual) learning trajectories. Thus, to borrow Bardovi-Harlig’s(2013:69)words:“[a]ll studies of L2 pragmatics belong to interlanguage pragmatics, but not all interlanguage pragmatics studies are acquisitional”.

3 L2 pragmatic development patterns

A large number of L2 pragmatic research claims to be developmental in nature. Studies oftentimes report an increase in pragmatic competence as measured at two different points in time by means of data collection instruments intended to assess a given pragmatic phenomenon. Although these studies may account for the outcomes of pragmatic development, they rarely provide insight into the process(es) of L2 pragmatic acquisition, as they were not designed to investigate development. Kasper and Rose (2002: 61), for instance, argue that many studies only consider developmental sequences in “post hoc explanations of findings rather than serving as the motivating force of a study”. Thus, this review sought to identify works – both cross-sectional and longitudinal – whose original, primary focus was to explicitly investigate learning trajectories and levels of adult L2 pragmatic development. 104 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

3.1 Methodology

Following Timpe-Laughlin et al. (2015), this study employed a systematic biblio- graphic search1 to identify a body of empirical studies that investigated L2 pragmatic development. Five key terms – pragmatics, learning, acquisition, L2, and development – were employed in Boolean AND-OR search combinations across the following indices and databases, primarily selected from In’nami and Koizumi’s (2010) list of frequently used databases in applied linguistics: Academic Search Complete, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsychInFO, and Google Scholar. Studies were selected for inclusion in the analysis based on the following four criteria: 1) The study was published between 2002 (the year of Kasper and Rose’s seminal publication) and March 2015 (when the present review was conducted). 2) The study had a clear developmental focus; it was conceptualized to observe and document stages and/or developmental aspects. 3) The study investigated the development of one or more L2 pragmatic phenomena. 4) The study observed adult (i. e., post-critical period) L2 learners.

Based on these criteria, 16 studies were identified for analysis.2 The studies fell into three general categories: (a) receptive skills, (b) awareness, and (c) produc- tion. While Kasper and Rose (2002) only distinguish between the two categories of “pragmatic comprehension” and “pragmatic and discourse ability,” the latter category seems to combine pragmatics production, discourse ability, and meta- pragmatics awareness/knowledge. While the research available in 2002 may not have allowed for further parsing of this large category, Kasper and Rose high- lighted that “we also need to probe learner knowledge [i. e., meta-pragmatic awareness]” (134). At present, several studies have focused on production and knowledge, respectively, allowing for the more fine-grained and distinct cate- gorization employed in this review.

1 Note that, similar to Kasper and Rose (2002), this paper does not claim to provide an exhaustive review. The first 100 search results for each keyword combination were screened for relevance, and studies that met the criteria outlined above were included in the review process. Given this systematic approach, there may be some empirical studies that were not captured. Nevertheless, this approach was adopted in an attempt to reveal, in a more objective fashion, studies that show the main tendencies in the field of L2 pragmatic development. 2 The studies identified and included in the analysis are marked with an asterisk in the reference section. Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 105

In the sections that follow, each will begin by outlining the relevant prag- matic skill. Findings of the reviewed studies will then be compared to explore patterns of development, variability, and inconsistencies in the order of acquisi- tion of elements of L2 pragmatic ability that emerge among the three domains.

3.2 Development of receptive L2 pragmatic abilities

Pragmatic comprehension involves both understanding the literal meaning of an utterance and the implied meaning, or illocutionary force, behind it. Thus, a hearer needs to process an utterance at two levels. This entails “the ability to understand implied speaker intention by using linguistic knowledge, contextual clues, and the assumption of relevance” (Taguchi 2005: 544), competencies which can be particularly challenging for L2 learners because of the frequent discrepancy between literal and intended meaning. As outlined in detail in Taguchi (2012), the mechanisms of pragmatic infer- encing have been explained by two theories: Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle and Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) Relevance Theory. When engaging in discourse, language users share “certain presumptions about how people should (linguis- tically) behave in a given sociocultural context” (Timpe-Laughlin et al. 2015: 14). Grice subsumed these presumptions under the label cooperative principle (CP). The CP is described as a universal norm of human communication which holds that interlocutors behave in a conversationally (not necessarily socially) coop- erative manner in order to achieve mutual conversational goals. That is, when a speaker makes an utterance, the listener automatically assumes that the linguis- tic message is truthful, clear, concise, and relevant to the discourse at hand (for a detailed overview see Grice 1975). Based on these shared assumptions, and with reference to context, the listener is able to infer the speaker’s intended meaning. Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) Relevance Theory (RT) expands on Grice’s CP, outlining in more detail the cognitive mechanisms involved in inferential pro- cessing. RT holds that the recognition of interlocutor intentions is fundamental to communication. In order to infer a speaker’s intention, a listener conducts two successive steps: (a) decode the linguistic stimuli and (b) interpret contex- tual clues. While Grice relegates contextual clues to the external (i. e., physical) situational context, relevance theory treats all assumptions an interlocutor may have as contextual cues – for example, “expectations about future, scientific hypotheses or religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general cultural assump- tions, [and] beliefs about the mental state of the speaker” (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 15). The entire set of a language user’s assumptions are involved in the 106 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin process of inferring meaning, and this set of assumptions is referred to as “cognitive environment” (Wilson and Sperber 2012: 87; italics in the original). Searching for relevant information in the cognitive environment comes with a cost in the form of mental processing effort. Listeners achieve efficiency by selecting only the most relevant from among the many possible assumptions in their cognitive environment, expending the smallest possible processing effort to arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning. Processing effort, as Taguchi (2012: 29) explained, is determined by “utterance complexity, size of context and accessibility of the context”. While these inferential processes have been investigated extensively in cognitive psychology (e. g., Fiske and Taylor 2013), comprehension of pragmatic meaning is still “the most underrepresented domain in ILP research” (Taguchi 2012: 30). In 2002, Kasper and Rose described a handful of L2 pragmatic comprehension studies that were conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s (Bouton 1988, 1992, 1994; Carrell 1981; Kerekes 1992; Koike 1996). While Kasper and Rose (2002) criticize the studies for not “illuminat[ing] the develop- mental process” (2002: 119) and “not actually document[ing] development in pragmatic comprehension” (2002: 123), they point out findings in these studies that shed some light on pragmatic development, such as the lack of a significant correlation between proficiency and the ability to interpret implicatures – a finding which was supported by later L2 pragmatics research (e. g., Garcia 2004; Taguchi 2005). Thus, Kasper and Rose (2002) argued that proficiency is a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for pragmatic comprehension. Moreover, they concluded that L2 learners seem to develop the ability to com- prehend assertiveness markers in sentence-final position before understanding them in sentence-internal positions, and that the ability to decode implicatures that contain culture-specific aspects tend to be acquired at later stages of L2 development. However, based on their review, they concluded that the limited number of studies on the development of L2 pragmatic comprehension did “not describe, let alone explain, the process with any real specificity” (Kasper and Rose 2002: 124). Since the time of Kasper and Rose’s review, the field has made modest progress. Among the longitudinal and cross-sectional studies identified in this review, only five – all conducted by the same researcher – have focused directly or indirectly on developmental aspects of L2 pragmatic comprehension processes (Table 1). In several longitudinal studies, Taguchi (2007, 2008a, and 2008b) examined the development of Japanese English language learners’ ability to understand indirect refusals and indirect opinions. She administered a lexical access test, the TOEFL ITP English language proficiency test, and a computer-based English listening test with 48 multiple-choice items featuring short dialogues with Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 107

Table 1: Empirical studies on the development of receptive L2 pragmatic abilities.

Study Pragmatic N Participants’ Target Measures Study design phenomena L language length

Taguchi Longitudinal Implicatures  Japanese English MC listening  weeks () (refusals/ items, opinions) Lexical Access Test, TOEFL ITP Taguchi Longitudinal Implicatures  Japanese English MC listening  weeks (a) (refusals/ items, opinions) Lexical Access Test, TOEFL ITP Taguchi Longitudinal implicatures  Japanese English MC listening  months (b) (refusals/ items, opinions) Lexical Access Test, TOEFL ITP Taguchi Cross- Implicatures  Japanese English MC listening n.a. () sectional (refusals/ items, opinions) Lexical Access Test, TOEFL ITP Taguchi Longitudinal Implicatures  Japanese English MC listening  months () (refusals/ items, opinions) Lexical Access Test, TOEFL ITP

Note: Taguchi (2012) was categorized under multiple review sections (i. e., receptive, awareness, and/or productive) as it provides insights into the development of multiple skills.

indirect refusals (k = 24) and indirect opinions (k = 24). The learners’ listening test responses were analyzed for two types of processing load encoded in the implicatures: comprehension speed (the average time taken to answer all items) and accuracy of comprehension (the number of items answered cor- rectly). Taguchi’s findings across the three studies suggest differences in the development of accuracy and speed in comprehending implied meaning, thus providing evidence that comprehension accuracy and comprehension speed exist as two separate facets of receptive pragmatic ability. In her 2007 study, for example, Taguchi found that her sample of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners made significant gains in accuracy and 108 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin comprehension speed over a 7-week period of instructional intervention. However, the students’ gains in comprehension accuracy were much larger than their gains in comprehension speed. In her 2008a study with ESL leaners, she found the opposite pattern. Over a 5-week period, English as a second language (ESL) learners showed gains in both comprehension accuracy and speed, but the effect size of the gain in speed was considerably larger. Comprehension speed and accuracy were not correlated, suggesting different cognitive processing loads that do not develop simultaneously over time. Additionally, the pace of development of comprehension speed and accu- racy seems to differ depending on the learning environment. For example, in the ESL context, Taguchi (2008a) found exposure to target-language input corre- lated significantly with comprehension speed, but not with accuracy. In con- trast, EFL students showed a much smaller gain in comprehension speed, but larger gains in accuracy (see Taguchi 2007). Given that pragmatic comprehen- sion requires the coordination of linguistic, sociocultural, and cognitive pro- cesses which need to be automatized to achieve speedy comprehension, Taguchi (2012) hypothesized that these processes may take longer to develop in EFL environments. ESL learners’ greater gains in comprehension speed may be the result of their having more incidental opportunities in the target language (TL) environment for practicing, and thus automatizing, form-function mappings. However, even ESL learners may lack the feedback necessary to develop higher accuracy. For all learners, balanced development appears to require both abun- dant exposure to input (to provide opportunities for processing practice) and guidance or feedback regarding accuracy. Taguchi’s studies also provide insight into English language learners’ (ELLs) development of ability to comprehend refusal and opinion speech acts when encoded with different degrees of directness. Building on earlier research (e. g., Bouton 1992 and 1994), Taguchi (2008a: 34) hypothesized that “[i]mplicatures conveyed through conventional forms are easier to comprehend, once the con- ventions are learned or they are shared between the first language (L1) and L2. Nonconventional implicatures, on the other hand, are difficult to comprehend because they require extensive inferential processing”. She argued that indirect refusals can be regarded as conventional, as they follow a “common, routinized discourse pattern” (2008a: 35), while indirect opinions are less conventionalized because the meaning is not connected to particular routinized, linguistic expres- sions. Confirming her hypothesis, Taguchi (2007, 2008b, and 2012) found that, regardless of the learning context, comprehension of indirect refusals preceded the development of ELLs’ ability to decode indirect opinions. In line with findings from earlier research (e. g., Bouton 1992), Taguchi’s (2012) results lend support to the argument that pragmatic comprehension is Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 109 mediated by conventionality. In instances where conventions were shared between the L1 and the target language, Taguchi found a steady increase EFL learner’s comprehension of indirect refusals over the course of nine months. However, for culture-specific conventions, comprehension development was found to be slower. These findings indicate that conventionalized response patterns require less processing because adult ELLs can draw on their inferential skills and pragmatic knowledge from their L1 in order to interpret the speech act in their L2. Hence, these learners’ development needs would lie in the domain of linguistic knowledge rather than pragmatic knowledge, a supposition that seems to be substantiated by Taguchi’s (2012) finding that EFL learners’ comprehension of conventional implicatures correlated significantly with their scores on the TOEFL listening section. She concluded that comprehension of conventional implicatures “develops naturally with the increase in general listening skill” (2012: 243). Conversely, Taguchi (2012) found that the development of ability to decode less conventional implicatures, such as indirect opinions, is quite different. She reported that learners exhibited “lower accuracy scores and slower response times when comprehending non-conventional implicatures than conventional implicatures” (2012: 99), hypothesizing that the comprehension of indirect opi- nions demands more inferential processing. That is, when interpreting non- conventional implicatures, ELLs need to rely more on word-level processing and bottom-up strategies to arrive at the intended meaning. The ability to decode non-conventional implicatures appears to be a higher-order inferential processing ability, developing more slowly than the ability to decode conven- tional implicatures. Thus, the conventionality of implicatures seems to mediate learners’ development of comprehension ability. To summarize, Taguchi’s findings both confirm and expand upon earlier research, providing additional insights into the development of L2 pragmatic comprehension. First, her results show a clear distinction between the acquisi- tion of comprehension accuracy and speed in reference to different L2 learning contexts. While Kasper and Rose (2002) concluded that an “acquisition-rich context and sufficient time [aid] learners’ ability to interpret implicatures” (Kasper and Rose 2002: 121), Taguchi shows that different conditions and envir- onments impact different dimensions of receptive L2 pragmatic development. Second, Taguchi’s findings confirm Kasper and Rose’s (2002) observation that general L2 proficiency constitutes a necessary-but-not sufficient prerequisite for understanding implicatures, with ‘conventionality’ as the mediating factor in the development process. While comprehension of direct and implied meanings conveyed through highly conventionalized forms seems to develop along with general L2 listening skills, less conventionalized utterances (such as indirect 110 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin opinions) seem to require higher-order inferential processing, which tends to develop later in the SLA process. Hence, Taguchi refines Kasper and Rose’s observation, which only allowed them to distinguish between early and “late- acquired implicature types” (p. 124). Adult L2 learners can utilize their L1 knowl- edge and draw upon already learned conventions and discourse patterns, trans- ferring them from the L1 to assist comprehension in the L2. Knowledge about culture-specific, non-conventionalized forms, however, seems to take longer to develop, given that the forms need to be newly learned and exposure may not be as frequent. While Taguchi’s research yields important first insights into the develop- ment of L2 pragmatic comprehension, it needs to be emphasized that the find- ings reviewed in this section are based on a relatively homogenous sample of L1 Japanese learners of English. Thus, it may be premature to generalize the findings beyond the cross-cultural context of English-Japanese. Moreover, Taguchi’s research has focused on implicatures regarding only two different speech acts – refusals and opinions. Given that she found differences in the development of L2 learners’ reception of both speech acts, it is likely that there are idiosyncrasies in the development patterns of other speech acts as well. Expanding research on the development of implicatures and other pragmatic phenomena, such as the development of interpreting assertiveness in the L2 across different languages and groups of L2 learners, is crucial in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of how L2 learners’ receptive pragmatic abilities develop.

3.3 Development of L2 meta-pragmatic awareness

Before turning to pragmatic production, it is relevant to consider L2 learners’ recognition of pragmatic phenomena, also referred to as meta-pragmatic aware- ness (see Table 2 for the studies included in this review). Pragmatic comprehen- sion and meta-pragmatic awareness are similar insofar as they both deal with the receptive part of pragmatic ability. However, meta-pragmatic awareness – the ability to identify L2 pragmatic phenomena – is broader in scope, including the ability to recognize “pragmalinguistic forms and their contextual require- ments” (Taguchi 2012: 35). It requires knowledge and orchestration of linguistic form, Gricean maxims, semantic strategies, sociocultural conventions, and situa- tional requirements (see also Taguchi 2012). Although Kasper and Rose (2002) did not identify meta-pragmatic aware- ness as an independent category of pragmatic ability, they did highlight it as distinct from pragmatic production, primarily in reference to individual learner Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 111

Table 2: Empirical studies on the development of L2 pragmatic awareness.

Study Pragmatic N Participants’ Target Measures Study design phenomena L language length

Bardovi- Cross- Routine  Various English Discourse – Harlig sectional formulae Completion ()* Tasks (DCTs) Barron Longitudinal Requests,  Irish English German Discourse  ()* offers, Completion months refusal Tasks (DCTs); role-plays; retrospective interviews; pre- and post- questionnaires Hassall Longitudinal Address  Australian Indonesian Written pre-post – () terms tests, weeks interviews, journal entries Hassall* Longitudinal Address  Australian Indonesian Written pre-post  () terms tests, weeks interviews, journal entries Matsumura Longitudinal Advice  Japanese English MC  () questionnaire months Shively Longitudinal Requests &  English Spanish Audio-  ()* address recordings, weeks terms interviews, journal entries

Note 1: Studies marked with an asterisk were categorized under multiple review sections (i. e., awareness and productive) as they provide insights into the development of multiple skills. characteristics and knowledge. For example, in reference to DuFon’s (1999) study on the acquisition of Indonesian address terms, Kasper and Rose pointed out that “the learners’ journal entries showed more knowledge about address terms than was apparent from their production” (Kasper and Rose 2002: 133). Thus, they argued that “learner’s [sic.] pragmatic knowledge may not be accu- rately represented in their production” (134). With regard to the development of meta-pragmatic awareness in relation to attention and noticings of L2 pragmatic forms, they speculated that L2 proficiency most likely did not constitute a primary factor that impacts development. Instead, they argued that individual learner characteristics, such as intrinsic motivation to learn the L2, may result in 112 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin higher levels of meta-pragmatic awareness, especially for L2-specific features such as idiomatic expressions which, for example, were found by Takahashi (2000) to be noticed more often by highly motivated L2 learners. Thus, Kasper and Rose (134) highlighted the “need to probe learner knowledge” and investigate aspects that contribute to the development of L2 meta-pragmatic awareness – something several studies have done to date (Table 2). The first confirmatory evidence for Kasper and Rose’s speculation that meta- pragmatic awareness and production constitute two distinct dimensions in L2 pragmatic development was provided by Barron (2003). Using retrospective interviews, she probed the meta-pragmatic awareness of 33 Irish learners of German who studied abroad in Germany for one year. Particularly with regard to offer-refusal exchange structures, she found that the “level of awareness of cross-cultural differences was actually higher than the production data” (Barron 2003: 165). That is, although the learners’ awareness of German pragmatic norms increased over the course of their study abroad, they insisted on follow- ing their L1 norms in offer-refusal exchanges. Although Barron used these findings primarily as a means of interpreting the learners’ L2 pragmatic produc- tion and did not focus on the development of meta-pragmatic awareness, she did confirm the distinction between meta-pragmatic awareness and pragmatic production, further reporting that the longer the time spent abroad, the more pragmatically aware the students seemed to be, even though her participants never reached L1-speaker level. A possible explanation for this finding is that the learners may have had limited opportunities to interact with L1 German speak- ers. They may not have been exposed to the necessary input that would have allowed them to notice and acquire target pragmatic norms. It has been argued in ILP research that the recognition of pragmatic phe- nomena in a given target language is a prerequisite for their use by L2 learners. For example, in her 2009 study, Bardovi-Harlig investigated the relationship between recognition and production of conventionalized expressions among 122 ESL learners at four proficiency levels ranging from low-intermediate to low- advanced. Although it is unclear how Bardovi-Harlig selected the conventional expressions included in her study (e. g., Nice to see you, Thanks for your time, or You’re welcome), she found four different patterns of routine development across all learner levels with regard to the relationship between recognition and pro- duction: (a) high recognition and high, target-like production of a routine; (b) low recognition and low production; (c) high recognition and high, over- generalized production (i. e., overuse of one routine across contexts in which L1 speakers would not use it); (d) some recognition with varying production across learner proficiency levels. With regard to patterns b and d, in which in which recognition and production rates were not parallel, Bardovi-Harlig observed that Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 113

“[o]f 2,716 reports by learners that an expression had been heard, 1,458 (54 %) did not result in corresponding production of the expression in an appropriate context; in contrast, of 165 reports of not having heard an expression, only 12 (7 %) resulted in a corresponding production” (2009: 774). Hence, while her results seem to suggest that recognition of pragmatic form is a prerequisite for production, they are also indicative of other factors impacting development, providing evidence that the trajectory is U-shaped. That is to say, learners can “only use a conventional expression favored by NSs if they recognize the expression and they interpret the relevant context as requiring a speech act of the same illocutionary force, the same pragmatic strategy, and the same content” (2009: 782). Thus, the recognition of pragmatic phenomena can be viewed as an intermediate step necessary to integrate the diverse knowledge bases needed for successful form-function mapping in both the decoding and encoding of mean- ing. However, whether learners actually use a given conventionalized routine or pragmalinguistic form in production may be influenced by additional factors, such as sociopragmatic knowledge or even personal preference. While Bardovi-Harlig’s (2009) cross-sectional study provides snapshots of developmental stages, Matsumura’s (2003) structural equation modelling (SEM) study, as well as Shively’s (2011) and Hassall’s (2013 and 2015) longitudinal investigations, shed further light on factors that influence the actual acquisition of L2 pragmatic awareness. Employing SEM to investigate the effects of L2 exposure and proficiency on the development of L2 pragmatics, Matsumura found L2 exposure to be more important than proficiency. While she reported a “persistent effect of pragmatic competence on itself” (2003: 465), she found the direct effect of proficiency on pragmatic recognition to be “very weak and non- significant” (2003: 485) – a result that seems to support Takahashi’s (2000) findings that TL proficiency was not a main factor in the development of L2 pragmatic knowledge (Kasper and Rose 2002: 287). However, she observed an indirect effect of proficiency on pragmatic awareness via exposure. Thus, she concluded that “amount of exposure can be seen as a cause of pragmatic development” (2003: 484). Shively (2011) and Hassall (2013 and 2015) conducted longitudinal studies that lend support to Matsumura’s conclusions regarding the relationship between proficiency, exposure, and pragmatic awareness, while providing more insight into individual learner characteristics that impact the development of L2 pragmatic awareness. Triangulating requests made by L2 learners of Spanish in naturally occurring service encounters during an 11-week study abroad in Spain with journal entries made by the same learners, Shively (2011) observed that L1 transfer, overgeneralization, and explicit and implicit feedback impacted students’ development of L2 pragmatic awareness. Moreover, she 114 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin pointed out that participants in her study “all had high standards for their own L2 proficiency” (p. 1833), an observation that may hint at relatively high levels of intrinsic motivation to approximate L1 speaker norms and behavior. While observing that the majority of students progressed from more indirect to more target-like, direct request realizations during the study abroad, she found that individual learners differed considerably in their levels of awareness and “understanding of the social meanings of the request forms” (p. 1832) – an observation that was also reported in Hassall (2013). Expanding DuFon’s (1999) earlier line of research, Hassall (2013) used a multi-method approach to explore L2 learners’ acquisition of Indonesian address terms during a short study abroad. By means of pre- and post-tests, oral elicita- tion tasks, written tests, interviews, and diaries, Hassall found that some lear- ners acquired knowledge about Indonesian vocatives very rapidly, while others took longer. In addition to observing great variability in the learners’ amount and speed of acquisition, Hassall (2015) also identified a number of factors that influenced their development of meta-pragmatic awareness, including amount of formal training, L1 transfer, amount of exposure to different types of address forms, and corrective feedback. Although the number of studies in the area of meta-pragmatic development is still quite limited, the studies reviewed here not only expand the limited literature base available to Kasper and Rose (2002), but they also provide new evidence that supports many of the authors’ original conclusions, while also contributing new insights. For example, studies that investigated the acquisition of both meta-pragmatic awareness and production confirmed higher levels of knowledge than oftentimes apparent in production data, thus underscoring a clear distinction between L2 pragmatic production and meta-pragmatic aware- ness or knowledge. Additionally, L2 proficiency seems to influence the develop- ment of L2 meta-pragmatic awareness only indirectly, insofar as it is necessary to notice and understand specific pragmatic phenomena. Finally, research has identified individual characteristics such as amount of exposure, intrinsic moti- vation, L1 transfer, formal instruction, and corrective feedback as contributing to the development of L2 meta-pragmatic awareness. While these factors were identified as influencing the development of L2 pragmatic awareness, more research is needed to explain their potential interrelatedness, as well as their impact on individual variations found in developmental processes. Hence, the overall development of pragmatic awareness, triggered primarily by exposure to target language input, seems to occur via interactive and dynamic processes that are shaped by a variety of variables, resulting in individual, non-linear learning trajectories reminiscent of the developmental paths described by dynamic sys- tems theory (de Bot 2008; Ellis 2008; Larsen-Freeman 2012). Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 115

3.4 Development of L2 pragmatic production

Kasper and Rose (2002) surveyed the longitudinal and cross-sectional literature in L2 pragmatics development. Based primarily on the longitudinal findings of Achiba (2002), Ellis (1992), and Schmidt (1983), they proposed a five-stage process of global L2 request development (Table 3). In this process, L2 learners begin with a very limited range of pragmalinguistic forms, oftentimes using one

Table 3: Stages of L2 request development.

Stage Description Characteristic Example

Pre-basic Learners are dependent upon Highly context “Me no blue”/ the context and a few lexical dependent, no syntax, “Sir.” items. no relational goals Formulaic Learners have specific phrases Reliance on unanalyzed “Let’s have and formulaic chunks that they formulas and lunch.”“Don’t rely on to make the request. imperatives look!”“Pass the They have not developed the salt!” linguistic means to freely manipulate pragmalinguistic elements. Unpacking Learners begin to analyze and Formulas incorporated “Can you pass understand the components of into productive the salt formulaic expressions and language use shift to please?” manipulate the phrases in conventional relation to context. This phase is indirectness characterized by an increase in use of indirect strategies. Pragmatic Learners add new Addition of new forms “Can you pass expansion pragmalinguistic forms to their to pragmalinguistic the pen please repertoire. They can moderate repertoire, increased so I can write the force of their utterance by use of mitigation, more this down?” using downgraders or upgraders complex syntax and making use of more complex syntax. Fine-tuning Learners have considerable Fine-tuning of control over pragmalinguistic requestive force to features of their requests, and participants, goals, and they use this control to convey contexts their understanding of the demands of the situation.

Source: Adapted from Kasper and Rose (2002). 116 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin form or a particular formula for a range of functions. Thus, the early stages of L2 request development are often characterized by overgeneralizations. Moreover, learners in the early stages rely heavily on context and extralinguistic resources, such as repetition or laughter, to communicate their intent. As their general L2 proficiency increases, they first shift to using formulaic expressions and then gradually expand their pragmalinguistic repertoire by adopting new form-function mappings. This gradual expansion allows L2 learners to use the target language creatively, to mitigate the force of their utterances, and to encode requests in ways appropriate to the socio-cultural and linguistic conven- tions of a given language use context. Given the increasing complexity hypothesized in these stages, Kasper and Rose (2002) highlighted a strong interconnection between grammatical and pragmatic development, arguing that grammatical limitations may pose limita- tions on pragmatic realizations. For instance, they observed that learners seem to contribute more in conversations as their grammatical and pragmatic compe- tence grows, given that increasing grammatical and pragmatic proficiencies allow for higher levels of conversational involvement. While most of their observations were based on beginner-level learners, they noted that even among higher-level learners mitigation seems to remain challenging. Thus, they concluded that mitigation of speech acts develops later in L2 pragmatic production – a supposition that can also be supported by the more complex linguistic structure involved in the downtoning or softening of pragmalinguistic force. As shown in Table 4, several studies have provided further evidence for Kasper and Rose’s (2002) development structure across a range of pragmatic phenomena, such as requests and other speech acts (e.g., Al-Gahtani and Roever 2012; Bardovi-Harlig 2009; Barron, 2003; Bella 2012; Chang 2010; Pearson 2006; Shively 2011; Taguchi 2012) and discourse markers (Polat 2011), showing that L2 learners progress through a number of stages on the way to multifunctionality, using more external modifications, supportive moves, and intensifiers as their proficiency and sociopragmatic awareness increase. Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012), for example, employed conversation analysis to investigate requests made by 20 ELLs in role-plays. Focusing particularly on the pre-expansion stages (i. e., stages before the level of pragmatic expansion), they explored if the learners, subdivided into four proficiency groups, used supportive moves to introduce their requests in dyadic interactions. The authors reported that, in beginner- and low-intermediate-level ELL role-plays, supportive moves almost never occurred. Instead, students immediately uttered their requests, as in the following example (2012: 50): Table 4: Empirical studies on the development of L2 pragmatic production skills.

Study Study design Pragmatic n Participants’ Target Data collection instrument(s) Study phenomena L language length

Al-Gahtani & Roever Cross-sectional Requests  Arabic English Role-plays – () Barron ()* Longitudinal Requests, offers,  Irish English German Discourse Completion Tasks  months refusal (DCTs); role-plays; learners Adult retrospective interviews; pre- and post-questionnaires Bardovi-Harlig* () Cross-sectional Routine formulae  Various English Discourse Completion Tasks – ’

(DCTs) pragmatics L2 in patterns acquisitional Bella () Cross-sectional Request strategies  Various Greek DCTs – Chang () Cross-sectional Apologies  Chinese English Written DCTs – Hassall* () Longitudinal Address terms  Australian Indonesian Written pre- and post-tests,  weeks interviews, journal entries Pearson () Longitudinal Directives  English Spanish Pre- and post-tests with  months written and oral DCTs Polat () Longitudinal Discourse markers  Turkish English Oral conversations  months Shively ()* Longitudinal Requests & address  English Spanish Audio-recordings, interviews,  weeks terms journal entries Taguchi ()* Longitudinal Refusals/opinions  Japanese English MC listening items, Lexical  months Access Test, TOEFL ITP

Note: Studies marked with an asterisk were categorized under multiple review sections (i. e., receptive, awareness, and/or productive) as they provide insights into the development of multiple skills. 117 118 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

[1] 1. P: ↑Excuse me:: 2. I: yes 3. P: I (.) want bread 4. I: Ok

In contrast, students with upper-intermediate and advanced English language proficiency all provided pre-expansions and supportive moves, as illustrated in the following excerpt (ibid.):

[2] 1. P: hi ((name)) 2. I: hi ((name)) 3. P:.hhh >actually< I wanna ask you something? 4. I: Su::re. 5. P:!.hhh today I have too many (.) assignments to do = 6. I: = Yeah 7. P:! “so I have no:: more time (.1) to do my shopp[ing 8. I: [.hh 9. P:! for today (.) a::nd I’m running out (.) the bread so could you (.3) buy 10. some bread for me? 11. I: su::re (.)

Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) argued that “pre-expansions showed clear differ- ences between proficiency levels, and [that] greater linguistic ability allowed higher level learners more control of the progress of their request” (2012: 53). Hence, in line with Kasper and Rose’s supposition, with increasing proficiency, learners tend to demonstrate ability to mitigate their requests, making them more indirect and less forceful. Bella (2012) reported similar results when investigating the request behavior of L2 learners of Greek as measured by a discourse-completion task. She recruited learners of three different proficiency levels (lower intermediate, inter- mediate, advanced), as well as a group of L1 Greek speakers, and explored the participants’ performance of requests in formal and informal situations, focusing primarily on external and internal modification devices. She found that, overall, lower intermediate learners hardly exhibited any modification devices, whereas intermediate-level participants used the highest number of external modifiers, followed by advanced learners, and finally L1 Greek speakers. Thus, learners gradually approximated L1 speaker behavior, substantiating the finding that the variety of modifiers used by the learners increased with proficiency. Bella’s overall findings support Kasper and Rose’s (2002) five-stage progression toward multifunctionality, while highlighting an additional, developmental aspect Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 119 which, although related to proficiency, is significantly different: strategic prag- matic behavior. In line with Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) and Pearson (2006), Bella (2012) reported that as her study’s participants’ L2 proficiency increased, so did the appropriateness and diversity of their use of pragmatic strategies, ranging from a preference for direct requests to an increasing use of (conventionalized) indirectness. All three studies found that learners with lower levels of target language proficiency used more direct strategies to articulate a given speech act, and they did not change their utterances to adapt their appropriateness when speaking to interlocutors with different power relationships. For example, Al-Gahtani and Roever and Bella both reported that low-proficiency learners predominantly used what Pearson (2006) referred to as “want and need state- ments” (2006: 479). Al-Gahtani and Roever’s example [1] above, and the follow- ing excerpts taken from Greek and Spanish learners (Bella 2012: 1929; Pearson 2006: 479), illustrate this type of statement:

[3] a) Παρακαλώ θέlω xρόνo για την εργασία περiσσότερο […] ‘Please I want more time for the assignment’ b) Θέλω να πληρώσεις εσύ παρακαλώ πολύ […] ‘I want you to pay please [very much]’ c) Quiero las aspirinas, por favor. ‘I want the aspirin, please.’ d) Mi amiga, la cocina está muy sucia. Quiero que limpie lo. ‘My friend, the kitchen is very dirty. I want you [formal] to clean it.’

Learners in the initial stages of L2 development appear to show a marked preference for direct request strategies regardless of the communicative context – a preference that may at least be partially explained by the fact that direct strategies tend to require fewer words and less complex morphosyntax. However, as can be seen in example [3], ELLs with lower proficiency do show an effort to use supportive moves to mitigate the force of their requests by means of politeness markers, such as παρακαλώ or por favor (please). These supportive moves indicate that L2 learners, even at lower levels of L2 proficiency, possess a certain level of sociopragmatic awareness (Bella 2012). Supportive and mitigating devices may be transferred from learners’ L1 repertoire, or they may constitute instances of repetitions of gambits and strategies that stem from interlocutor input (Barón and Celaya 2010). Hence, as Al-Gahtani and Roever (2012) concluded, “these competences are available to learners regardless of proficiency, but profi- ciency may affect whether learners can deploy them in real-time discourse” (2012: 59) – a supposition that is in line with Barron’s longitudinal findings. 120 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

In her longitudinal investigation, Barron (2003) reported that learners tended to transfer and overgeneralize politeness markers such as bitte (please) at earlier stages. This overgeneralization eventually gave way to more morpho- syntactically complex downtoners, followed by the move of bitte from sentence- final to an embedded, intra-sentential position. She attributed these changes to learners’ increasing automatization of processing, arguing that relatively easy syntactic structures require a lower cognitive processing load and become auto- matized prior to more complex structures. Thus, she concluded that “the overall increases in the complexity of the syntactic downgraders employed by learners would appear to relate to improvements in learners’ control of processing” (Barron, 2003: 213). However, even though she found an increase towards L1-like lexical and phrasal downgrading in offers, refusals, and requests, the downgraders that learners used in the post-test data were judged as non-native- like – a finding that seems to support Kasper and Rose’s proposition that mitigation develops rather late, potentially in the post-expansion phase. In contrast to low- and intermediate-level learners, more proficient L2 learners show a broader repertoire of pragmatic strategies, indicating that L2 proficiency and the ability to deploy pragmatic strategies in online communication develop in parallel (Al-Gahtani and Roever 2012; Bella 2012; Chang 2010). As showcased in Al-Gahtani and Roever’s (2012) example [2] above, the advanced learner poses a question to initiate the request and then provides an explanation, before using a conventionally indirect request strategy, appealing to the ability of the listener (i. e., could you (.3) buy some bread for me?). Similarly, Shively (2011) found that requests made by university-level learners’ of Spanish changed in their pragma- linguistic realizations over the course of a semester abroad from speaker- oriented to hearer-oriented, thus approximating local L1 speaker norms. Hence, as the linguistic resources in their L2 repertoire increase, learners seem to acquire an increasing breadth of pragmatic strategies and employ them in production. However, to say that grammatical or general L2 proficiency development and pragmatic strategy expansion are one and the same would be false. Even though more proficient L2 learners tend to show more “pragmalinguistic sophis- tication” (Taguchi 2012: 120), they do not necessarily communicate in ways that are pragmatically target-like or conventionalized. Taguchi (2012), for example, explored the pragmatic development of 48 ELLs at a Japanese university, inves- tigating individual differences in the students’ learning trajectories. She noted that her participants’ ability to appropriately navigate the logistics of a given event, such as an academic advising session, developed naturally over time. The pragmalinguistic resources, however, did not develop as quickly. For example, one of the learners, Yuko, was quite proficient in English. In a task in which the Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 121 participants were asked to share an opinion about a class with the professor, Yuko gave her opinion as follows: “I like your class, but I’m interested in French pop culture, so I’d like you to talk about present French culture” (Taguchi 2012: 171; italics in the original). In a follow-up interview, Yuko justified her choice of words: “I used ‘would like to’ because it is a professor. I thought ‘want to’ probably means the same thing, but ‘would like to’ is politer, so I used it instead. It was in the high school English textbook” (Taguchi 2012: 171). This explanation reveals that Yuko possessed a certain degree of socioprag- matic awareness, but was not able to use the more complex bi-clausal structure that tends to be used by L1 English speakers in high-imposition requests (i. e., I was wondering if + clause). After further questioning about the conventiona- lized form “I was wondering if…,” Taguchi noted that Yuko did in fact know some of the conventional request strategies and expressions related to the formula, but she was uncertain as to when to use it. Moreover, it was challen- ging for Yuko to quickly retrieve less conventionalized formulae in online com- munication – a finding that Taguchi observed across participants, with high- imposition speech acts in particular. While low-imposition speech acts seemed to develop incrementally across proficiency levels, high-imposition speech acts proved more challenging, with form-function mappings developing more slowly even among advanced L2 learners. Hence, the appropriate mapping of sociopragmatic meaning to form is a main concern even at higher levels of L2 proficiency. As Chang (2011) noted, L2 learners “often wrestle with the linguistic form-pragmatic force relationship and have difficulty appropriately demonstrating their sociopragmatic competence” (2011: 796) – an observation that underlines Barron’s (2003: 250) finding that the development of L2 prag- matic competence is oftentimes hindered by the level of acquisition of socio- pragmatic ability, that is, the lack of knowledge of appropriate pragmatic norms. In addition to form-function mapping, L2 learners – especially more advanced learners – need to practice controlling L2 pragmalinguistic represen- tations and automatizing retrieval processes, which Baron and Calaya (2010) call “pragmatic fluency” (2010: 38). In a longitudinal study, Polat (2011) found that students struggled with form-function mapping issues much like Yuko’s in the acquisition of L2 dis- course markers. Polat documented the use of three focal discourse markers (well, you know, like) in a developmental learner corpus produced over the course of one year by Alex, an L1 speaker of Turkish who lived in the U.S. and worked in a grocery store, but had not received any formal instruction in English. Polat reported great variation in Alex’s usage of the pragmatic markers. He used you know very frequently at the beginning of the year, but his usage decreased consistently over 12 months until it reached what Polat referred to as “a very 122 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin native-like frequency” (2011: 3753). Alex hardly used like in the beginning of the year, but his use of the marker increased exponentially towards the middle of the year and decreased again toward the end. Polat never observed Alex use well throughout the entire year, reporting that “[a]lthough Alex uses well frequently as an adverb, he does not appear to have recognized it as a discourse marker” (2011: 3753; italics in the original). Given the frequency with which well is used as a pragmatic marker in English, Alex must have been exposed to it in everyday communication. However, he neither noticed nor used it with target-language functionality. Hence, Polat concluded that “left completely to their own devices, learners may pick up on some discourse markers more readily than others, resulting in uneven distribution of these important pragmatic devices” (2011: 3754). Moreover, learners may use them indiscriminately across different func- tions, or they may not use them with all functions or in the same contexts as L1 speakers. In line with Taguchi’s (2012) findings, Polat’s study suggests that lexical items have to be learned before target pragmatic functions can be inferred from them – a process that tends to proceed according to non-linear, individualized trajectories. In fact, different researchers have observed a great deal of variation – within and across individuals – and U-shaped developmental paths in form-function mapping processes (Barron 2003; Hassall 2015; Polat 2011; Taguchi 2012). For example, Alex’s ability to perform each of the three discourse markers well, you know, and like in oral communication developed quite differently. Moreover, follow-up interviews revealed that at times he was not aware of the functional meaning or the frequency with which he used or did not use a given pragmatic marker. Presenting case studies of different ELLs, Taguchi (2012) confirmed different levels of awareness and great variability in learners’ developmental tendencies. While she observed a general trend of increasing productive prag- matic ability across learners, individual learners also showed considerable decreases and growth at different times of measurement. Moreover, Taguchi found developmental differences within individual learners between knowledge (as measured by appropriateness and grammaticality scores) and processing (as measured by planning time and speech rate). Knowledge and processing seem to be associated processes that develop independently and to different degrees in each learner, displaying non-linear growth with variations in pace and timing. Building on Taguchi’s (2012) findings, Hassall (2015) examined individual variation in L2 learners’ acquisition of Indonesian address terms, revealing factors that seem to influence the development of L2 pragmatic production. Hassall studied two Australian learners of Indonesian, Amy and Ross, in study abroad contexts. He found that the two learners’ investment in the foreign Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 123 culture, their experiences, and their identity construction vis-à-vis the target language and culture impacted their L2 pragmatic development. While both learners began their study abroad experience with a positive outlook, Amy had rather negative experiences, felt alienated, and eventually adopted a rather distanced stance vis-à-vis the L2 environment, which seems to have “greatly constrained […] her ability to learn L2 pragmatic norms” (Hassall 2015: 57). In contrast, Ross, who started his experience abroad with no prior knowledge of Indonesian, reported very positive experiences, which led to “striking pragmatic gains” (2015: 57). Hassall investigated contextual influences and variables that might have impacted the participants’ development, concluding that “low initial proficiency, prior foreign language learning experience, timing of formal instruc- tion, and the presence of peer L2 learners during naturalistic interactions” all aid L2 pragmatic acquisition (2015: 33). In contrast, Hassall identified distance between L1 and L2 norms, lack of integration into the target language commu- nity (i. e., L2 identity as foreigner), and perceptions of the target culture in the L1 culture as variables that made learners resist the adoption of L2 pragmatic norms, sometimes even deliberately avoiding target-language conventions in L2 communication in favor of L1 norms. Hassall even went so far as to conclude that “great individual variation resists attempts to explain it in terms of quantifi- able factors, such as amount of L2 exposure or L2 interaction during the sojourn” (2015: 34). To summarize, several studies have built upon and expanded Kasper and Rose’s (2002) research, providing further evidence for individualized and varied learning trajectories within the original five-stage development pattern. All studies highlighted that the development of L2 pragmatic production seems to be tied to learners’ overall L2 proficiency, thus substantiating Kasper and Rose’s original observation. With increasing target language proficiency, L2 learners tend to exhibit a broader repertoire of pragmalinguistic means to verbalize communicative intents appropriately. Thus, pragmatic aspects that are tied to L2 grammatical proficiency may be problematic for beginning learners. With increasing L2 proficiency, learners gain access to linguistic tools that enable them to perform multiple functions, use the target language creatively, mitigate the force of utterances, and encode meaning in ways appropriate to the socio- cultural and linguistic conventions of different language use contexts. However, the extent to which L2 learners deploy form-function mapping processes appro- priately depends on their awareness of speech conventions (i. e., their socio- pragmatic knowledge), their automatization of the retrieval process, and their investment in and willingness to actually use sociopragmatically appropriate representations. 124 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

4 Concluding Remarks

A considerable body of research has been added to what Kasper and Rose (2002) described as the “meager evidence of progression” that existed at the beginning of the millennium (2002: 157), providing support and further insights into the development of L2 pragmatics. Across all the studies reviewed above, supportive evidence was provided for the following propositions put forth by Kasper and Rose: (a) the ‘complexification hypothesis’, (b) the interconnectedness between grammatical competence and interlanguage pragmatic competence, (c) the influence of the learning environment, and (d) the assumption that learners’ pragmatic ability is not necessarily accurately reflected in their pragmatic production. Although the complexification hypothesis was originally proposed based on a very small number of empirical studies (n = 4) that only focused on the speech act of requests, almost every study since 2002 has provided supportive evidence for Kasper and Rose’s (2002) five-stage framework (see Table 3 above). Studies that focused on pragmatic phenomena such as apologies, refusals, opinions, and discourse markers (e. g. Bardovi-Harlig 2009; Polat 2011; Taguchi 2008a Taguchi 2008b, 2012) also found a tendency on the part of learners to gradually transition from pre-grammaticalized, routinized production toward overgenera- lization into a phase in which they have more command over a range of different functions, thus expanding Kasper and Rose’s sequence beyond requests. In contrast to Kasper and Rose, whose review focused primarily on beginning level learners, findings from newer studies suggest that even very proficient L2 speakers struggle and rarely become native-like at the level of fine-tuning. Thus, while the larger frame of the complexification hypothesis has been sup- ported by a continuously increasing research basis, less is known about the rather non-linear, individualized trajectories learners seem to take when journeying through the phases. Cutting across all studies, individualized trajectories seem to be mediated by a number of variables, such as conventionality and frequency of a given pragmatic phenomenon as well as individual learner variables. Among these variables, as hypothesized by Kasper and Rose (2002), lexico- grammatical competence and the learning environment seem to influence lear- ners’ individual progressions through the phases. For example, most studies reported a relationship between overall L2 proficiency and interlanguage prag- matic development, while also highlighting affordances of the given learning environments. Studies such as Matsumura (2003) found L2 exposure to be more significant than proficiency. Taguchi provided further insights into the advan- tages of different learning environments, highlighting that formal instruction Adult learners’ acquisitional patterns in L2 pragmatics 125 may be more conducive to the development of accuracy, while a second- language (non-formal) learning environment, providing exposure to TL input, may promote the acquisition of comprehension speed. Hence, comparative, long- itudinal investigations of the development of L2 proficiency and interlanguage pragmatics in relation to different (formal and informal) L2 learning contexts may provide even further insights into acquisional sequences – a call for further research that still remains to be answered (see also Kasper and Rose 2002: 311). Finally, research has substantiated Kasper and Rose’s assumption that pragmatic production does not necessarily constitute an accurate representation of learners’ L2 meta-pragmatic awareness or knowledge. Several studies have shown that learners, even though they were fully aware of the TL pragmatic norms, choose not to adhere to them for different reasons. However, despite the substantiation of original propositions and the new insights gained by the increasing body of research, we are still only beginning to understand how L2 pragmatics learning unfolds. Hence, the following aspects will need to be investigated in more detail to provide a more comprehensive picture of L2 pragmatic acquisition: 1. Although the number of longitudinal studies has increased since Kasper and Rose’s (2002) review, most research is still cross-sectional in nature and only investigates expertise or pragmatic knowledge at different stages of devel- opment. While longitudinal research demands considerable time and resources, it is critical if the field is to investigate causal relationships among variables related to pragmatic development, moving beyond the analysis of aggregated data in cross-sectional studies that only investigate expertise, or pragmatic knowledge at different, oftentimes randomly deter- mined stages of development. The studies reviewed in this paper focused on three L2 pragmatic skills without investigating them within the larger con- text of interactional competence. Microanalytic, fine-grained analyses of longitudinal interactional data, coupled with verbal report data, promises to advance our understanding of learning trajectories in productive prag- matic development, and their relationship to the superordinate ability to interact in real-world communication. 2. While learner factors have received attention in some development studies (e. g., Hassall 2013 and 2015), there is a clear need to investigate them in more detail. Synergistic effects of learner factors, for instance, could be explored to identify potentially effective constellations of variables that impact pragmatic learning. 3. The studies reviewed here all focus exclusively on verbal communication skills. However, as Savignon (2002) argued, the nonverbal dimension of 126 Veronika Timpe-Laughlin

communication needs to be considered as well in order to account for the multimodality of language use. Future developmental research may benefit from including non-verbal modalities (e. g., gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, posture, tone of voice etc.), investigating how learners acquire the ability to align different modalities to create meaning in communicative interaction (see also Timpe-Laughlin et al. 2015).

To conclude, this review paper has canvassed existing empirical research into the acquisitional sequences of interlanguage pragmatics in adult L2 learners. While L2 pragmatic development is an interesting area of research in its own right, the tendencies revealed here could also inform L2 pedagogy, insofar as these insights could be employed in engineering learning experi- ences that are in harmony with how second and foreign languages (L2s) are developed.

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