ILP

Introduction
Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), a branch of second language acquisition (SLA),
examines second language (L2) learners' knowledge, use, and development in
performing sociocultural functions. L2 learners need linguistic forms and skills to
perform everyday social functions in the target language. At the same time, because
our way of speaking is determined by context – to whom we are talking and under
what circumstances, learners need to know which forms are appropriate to use in what
situations. Hence, linguistic knowledge and sociocultural knowledge of social
conventions, customs, and norms of interaction are two layers of pragmatic
competence. The process of learning these knowledge bases, individual variation
between learners in the process, and factors affecting the process are the focal objects
of inquiry in ILP research. The original definition of ILP goes back to Kasper and
Dahl (1991: 216), who stated that ‘interlanguage pragmatics will be defined in a
narrow sense, referring to nonnative speakers’ (NNSs’) comprehension and
production of speech acts, and how their L2-related speech act knowledge is acquired’.
This definition has since evolved to reflect a more holistic concept of language use in
social interaction. Kasper and Rose (2003), for instance, claim that ILP examines how
nonnative speakers comprehend and produce actions in a target language, and how L2
learners develop the ability to understand and perform actions in a target language.
More recently, Bardovi-Harlig (2010: 219) underlines that pragmatics and pragmatic
acquisition in ILP encompasses both form and use . She writes: ‘[pragmatics] bridges
the gap between the system side of language and the use side, and relates both of them
at the same time. Interlanguage pragmatics brings the study of acquisition to this mix
of structure and use’Corresponding to the increasing body of definitions of ILP, the
scope and number of empirical studies in the field has expanded over time. This
article surveys major findings from the 1980s to 2015. It first describes changes in the
theoretical construct of pragmatic competence and illustrates the shift in the
conceptualisation of pragmatic abilities from an individual- to an interaction-oriented
view. This section concludes with a new conceptualisation of pragmatic competence,
which reflects the notion of the intercultural speaker. Following this, a historical
sketch of ILP research since the 1980s is presented by surveying common research
topics across time periods. I will explain in this section how cross-linguistic studies
dominated the field in the 1980s and 1990s, and how the research focus in the 1990s
shifted to the instruction and assessment of pragmatic competence. In the same period,
the body of longitudinal studies directly addressing acquisitional pragmatics expanded
and moved away from the dominant practice of cross-sectional investigation
prominent up to that time. The first decade and a half of this century saw a further
growth of instructional, assessment, and acquisitional research, characterised as a
more explicit application of mainstream SLA theories to ILP studies. These changes
will be illustrated by summarising key studies in each period, and the paper will
conclude with directions for future research.
Interlanguage pragmatics
Definitions of pragmatic competence
This section describes how the conceptualisation of pragmatic competence has
evolved over time, shifting from the individualistic view to more interactional and
intercultural understanding of that competence. Pragmatic competence in models of
communicative competence
The concept of pragmatic competence originated in Dell Hymes’ theoretical model of
communicative competence. Hymes (1972) claimed that language knowledge entails
both grammatical knowledge and sociocultural knowledge that determine the
appropriateness of language use in context. Drawing on Hymes’ insight, several
models of L2 communicative competence emerged in the field in the 1980s and 1990s
(Bachman 1990; Bachman and Palmer 1996, 2010; Canale and Swain 1980). These
models emphasised the multidimensionality of language ability, and situated
pragmatic competence as a requisite component within the model.
Canale and Swain’s (1980) model was a forerunner in this trend, maintaining that
successful communication entails an efficient integration of grammatical,
sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competencies. Canale and Swain’s model,
however, did not sufficiently distinguish between sociolinguistic and pragmatic
competence, nor did it explicitly articulate pragmatic competence within the model.
Pragmatic competence was part of sociolinguistic competence, which involves the
ability to interpret and produce an utterance in context. Bachman (1990) and
Bachman and Palmer (1996, 2010) more fully developed pragmatic competence as a
competence in its own right. In Bachman and Palmer's (1996, 2010) framework,
language knowledge consists of organisational knowledge and pragmatic knowledge.
Organisational knowledge in this framework dealt with formal aspects of language
(grammar and textual aspects), whereas pragmatic knowledge concerned language use
in relation to language users and language use settings. Two types of pragmatic
knowledge were distinguished, namely functional knowledge, which enables us to
interpret relationships between utterances and the communicative goals of language
users (e.g., knowledge of how to perform the speech act of request), and
sociolinguistic knowledge, which enables us to interpret or create utterances that are
appropriate to specific language use settings (e.g., which forms to use to make a
request in situation).
Pragmatic competence in interaction
A characteristic of these early models of communicative competence is that they
treated pragmatic competence as a psycholinguistic ability that exists within
individuals as a stable trait, independent from context. In later research, pragmatic
competence has been incorporated into a broader conceptual framework that focuses
on the dynamic and dialogic aspects of communication. Most notable in this trend is
the emergence of interactional competence as an alternative to the traditional models
of communicative competence (Young 2011). Interactional competence views
language knowledge and ability as locally situated and jointly constructed by
participants in discourse. To this end, ability and context are connected. Learners’
resources are not set in advance but are dependent on the specifics of the dynamic
social context.
Traditionally, research in pragmatics assumed a one-to-one correspondence between
an utterance and force. For instance, the speech act of request is often associated with
conventional forms, such as ‘could you’ and ‘may I’. Traditional ILP practice has
been to identify those linguistic forms and semantic moves that convey illocutionary
force in a particular language, and compare these with learners’ forms in order to
determine a learner’s level of pragmatic competence. An Interlanguage pragmatics
example of this trend is seen in the popularity of the discourse completion test (DCT)
used to assess pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig 2010, 2013). In the DCT,
participants read a situational scenario and produce a speech act (e.g., request) given
in the scenario. Hence, the DCT can elicit participant’s knowledge of normative
speech act expressions, but it does not tell us much about their speech act
performance.

In contrast to what is assumed in the DCT task, in reality, a speech act is not a
pre-planned action, nor does it occur in isolation from discursive context. It arises in
the course of conversation through participants' mutual understandings of the topic
and through reactions to each other's contribution to the ongoing discourse. Indeed,
the conventional forms of request may or may not appear in the speech act, depending
on how a conversation unfolds. Instead, non-linguistic forms (e.g., facial expressions,
intonation and pause) may convey the request intention. Or the intention may be
negotiated among participants over multiple turns and jointly constructed in
interaction. Traditionally, ILP has disregarded the interactive and dynamic nature of a
speech act that emerges from the interplay of context, action and linguistic resources.
In general, learners’ pragmatic competence has been examined only in predictable
contexts by using an instrument such as DCT, with the focus only on the linguistic
forms used to convey a particular illocution. Learners’ ability to adapt and reciprocate
in a changing context has been simply discounted.
The notion of a changing and sequential context is, however, fundamental to the
understanding of interactional competence. Interactional competence involves a
variety of resources that learners bring to the joint construction of discourse and
meaning making. These resources include knowledge of rhetorical scripts, lexis and
syntax specific to the practice, the turn-taking system, topic management, repair and
recognition and production of boundaries between speech activities (e.g., Kasper 2006;
Young 2011).
The contribution of interactional competence to ILP is evident in the recent use of
Conversational Analysis (CA) to study action, meaning and context. CA utilises the
emic approach to analyse talk-in-interaction to reveal how participants co-construct an
action sequentially in turns, and design their turns to jointly accomplish the activity at
hand (Kasper 2006). CA has started to make inroads into ILP, as seen in a growing
number of studies that have analysed L2 pragmatics behaviour from a CA perspective
(e.g., Al-Gahtani and Roever 2014; Flores- Ferrán and Lovejoy 2015; also see Ross
and Kasper 2013, on assessment of L2 pragmatics in interaction).
Indeed, the concept of interactional competence closely aligns with contemporary
definitions of pragmatics, the other parent discipline of ILP besides SLA. For instance,
LoCastro (2003: 15) defines pragmatics as ‘the study of speaker and hearer meaning
created in their joint actions that include both linguistic and non-linguistic signals in
the context of socioculturally organised activities’. This definition points to the
primary object of study in pragmatics – speaker-hearer interaction in a
socioculturally-bounded act. Interactional competence compliments this practice by
providing concrete frameworks and empirical means to analysing a pragmatic act in a
situated interaction.
Pragmatic competence in intercultural communication
Up to this, I have discussed pragmatic competence within SLA, focusing on the origin
of the theoretical construct and its evolution from ‘pragmatics-within-individuals’ to
‘pragmatics-in-interaction-in-context.’ However, the more recent view of pragmatic
competence in social interaction also has a synergy with the field of intercultural
communication, which studies intercultural interaction as a cultural practice (Kecskes
2014) (for a review, see Taguchi and Roever, 2017). In intercultural interaction,
communication is always a dynamic process wherein collaboration and negotiation
constantly take place to the goal of mutual understanding among speakers from
different cultures. Interactants’ interactional competence is at stake, and conversation
skills including knowledge of turn-taking and adjacency pairs, topic management,
repairs, and paralinguistic activities are directly related to the goal of mutual
understanding.
The complexity of intercultural interaction lies in the fact that these skills are often
culturally specific, and speakers bring their own norms to communication. Recent
research on lingua franca communication has revealed that participants constantly
negotiate interactional norms, standards of politeness and directness, communication
styles and cultural conventions as interactions unfold (e.g., Kecskes 2014, Cogo and
House this volume). Participants either interpret others based on their own L1
conventions or create a whole new standard of communication.
Intercultural competence is broadly defined as ‘a complex of abilities needed to
perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are
linguistically and culturally different from oneself’ (Fantini 2006: 12). Some models
of intercultural competence focus on stages of development by defining intercultural
competence as the ability to move from an ethnocentric to an ethnorelative worldview
(Bennett and Bennett 2004). Others emphasise a specific set of elements that form the
basis of one’s potential to succeed in intercultural encounters. For example, Byram
(1997) proposes five aspects of intercultural competence: attitudes, knowledge, skills
of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural
awareness.
Language competence is recognised as the core of intercultural competence, as shown
in its explicit mention in many of the models. Fantini (2012), for instance, stresses the
importance of language proficiency in intercultural competence, arguing that
developing intercultural competence with language competence promotes full access
to a new culture. Similarly, under the term intercultural speaker, Byram (2012: 89)
emphasises that being and acting interculturally involves ‘both intercultural
competence and linguist/communicative competence, in any task of mediation where
two distinct languacultures are present.’Despite this recognition, curiously, the fields
of intercultural studies and linguistic studies have developed separately. None of the
models of intercultural competence provide detailed descriptions or linguistic
analyses of intercultural interaction to point out what linguistic abilities are needed for
successful intercultural communication. Similarly, despite the extensive literature on
the models of communicative competence, the concept of intercultural competence is
largely absent from linguistic research. Recent literature has noted this separatism and
called for more explicit integration of linguistic and intercultural competences in
research and teaching (Byram 2012; Fantini 2012; Spencer-Oatey 2010). As
Spencer-Oatey (2010) argues, the study of intercultural competence is clearly an area
to which pragmatics research can contribute. Pragmatics research into intercultural
interaction and lingua franca communication has revealed characteristic
communication patterns in intercultural exchanges. Pragmatic studies can provide
authentic interaction data to illustrate a successful cross-cultural interaction. At the
same time, the framework of intercultural competence can be useful for ILP in
advancing our conceptualisation of pragmatic competence. The characteristic of
pragmatic competence (e.g., ability to interact and perform language functions in
context) can be situated within some of the core constructs of intercultural
competence such as communicative awareness and intercultural empathy. Such a
conceptualisation would go beyond the traditional scope of pragmatic competence
focused on how learners perform a pragmatic act in the L2 and extend the concept to
an understanding of how learners successfully participate in intercultural interaction.
Situating ILP in a broader scope of intercultural studies is timely, because in today’s
multilingual society, the goal of language learning is not to become a native speaker,
but to become an intercultural speaker who is linguistically and interculturally
competent – a person who is sensitive to other cultures and aware of his/her own
cultural position to mediate across linguistic and cultural boundaries (Byram 2012;
Wilkinson 2012). Pragmatic competence can serve as a resource that assists in this
process of mediation. Reconceptualising pragmatic competence to reflect this notion
of the intercultural speaker will elevate the practice of ILP research from SLA matters
alone to the area of global citizenship. At the same time, pragmatic insights into
intercultural interaction will help move beyond the current practice of description of
intercultural competence to the analysis of acquisition of that competence. We look
forward to future interdisciplinary research in this area.
Historical sketch of ILP research
This section presents a walkthrough of ILP studies from the 1980s to 2015. By
reviewing the field chronologically, I illustrate changes in primary research topics
over time. My focus is on cross-linguistic analyses of pragmatic behaviours,
longitudinal studies, and instructional studies in ILP.
Cross-linguistic and cross-sectional comparisons of pragmatic behaviours
Without question, cross-linguistic studies of pragmatics dominated in the early years
of ILP as seen in a bulk of studies produced in the 1980s and 1990s that analysed
pragmatic behaviours across languages. Such studies were based on a premise that
different cultures have different ways of encoding pragmatic notions of politeness or
directness into linguistic behaviours. Although in principle all aspects of pragmatics
are subject to cross-cultural comparisons, scholarly interest in this area has
concentrated on two areas, namely speech acts and politeness. Studies compared
linguistic expressions used in speech acts, and variation in the use of these
expressions corresponding to the contextual parameters of interlocutor relationships,
power and degree of imposition. A milestone project that set a trend in this practice
was the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Project (CCSARP) by Blum-Kulka,
House and Kasper (1989). The CCSARP analyzed requests and apologies in seven
languages using the discourse completion test (DCT). By categorising speech act
expressions across languages using a single coding framework, the researchers were
able to reveal culturally specific features of speech acts by investigating Interlanguage
pragmaticscontrastively how many types of expressions exist in a language, which
expressions are considered direct or indirect and how they vary in different situations.
The coding framework and DCT instrument facilitated many replication studies,
which provided empirical descriptions of speech acts across cultures. This trend
continues today (cf., e.g. Chen 2010; Netz and Lefstein, 2016). These cross-linguistic
findings were informative for interlanguage pragmatics analysis because they
identified areas in which L1 (first language) pragmatic behaviours differ from L2
behaviours. In fact, a major contribution of the CCSARP was that it collected data
from multiple L2 groups and analysed similarities and differences between L2
patterns and those of native speakers. Results revealed that learners were more
verbose and direct in making a request, and used fewer syntactic downgraders than
native speakers. The findings highlighted potential areas of pragmatic failure
stemming from L1-L2 differences, but also revealed a nuanced picture of L1 transfer,
showing learners also to avoid transferring language-specific patterns to the L2
(Blum-Kulka, et al., 1989).Following this practice, subsequent studies in this period
described differences between native speakers and L2 learners in speech acts, many of
which appeared in seminal books and review articles in the 1990s (e.g., Kasper and
Rose 1999). In the same period, this comparative-descriptive practice expanded to
include L2 groups of different levels of proficiency, length of formal study and
duration of residence in a target country. These in turn contributed to the popularity of
cross-sectional inquiries into pragmatic development, cross-sectional studies
contrasting data from two or more groups based on differences in proficiency level or
length of residence. Any differences between groups were attributed to ‘changes’ that
the learners exhibit at different stages of their L2 learning and thus provide
developmental insights. Findings generally suggested a positive effect of proficiency
and length of residence on increased pragmatic competence (see Kasper and Rose
1999 for a review of these studies). The scope of cross-sectional investigation has
expanded over time with an addition of pragmatic features other than speech acts, e.g.
formulaic expressions (Bardovi-Harlig 2009), interactional discourse markers (Wei
2011) and the sequential organisation of argumentative discourse (Dippold 2011).
Dippold (2011) compared the sequential organisation of argumentative discourse
between three L2 German groups of different lengths of study. Learners of lower
proficiency levels used a short, two-or three-turn discourse structure including only
one adjacency pair of an opinion followed by an agreement or disagreement. In
contrast, higher-proficiency learners were able to engage in an extended discourse by
relating each turn to the preceding turn.
Longitudinal investigations in ILP
While cross-sectional studies have some interesting insights to offer to researchers
interested in the development of pragmatic competence, true development can be
observed only through a longitudinal design that traces the same participant(s) over an
extended period of time. Despite its importance, longitudinal investigation remains
relatively unexplored in the field. In fact, the first longitudinal study in ILP was
Schmidt (1983), and it was almost a decade later before the second study appeared in
the field (Ellis 1992). Schmidt conducted a case study of a Japanese artist, Wes, who
was naturalised in Hawaii. He analysed Wes’ development on four sub- Interlanguage
pragmatics competencies of Canale and Swain’s communicative competence model
over a period of three years and found a marginal development in Wes’
sociolinguistic competence, as seen in an increased use of formulaic expressions and
lexical items to convey intentions (e.g., ‘please’ for a request and ‘maybe’ for a
suggestion). Ellis (1992), on the other hand, examined two ESL learners’
developments in performing requests in a classroom setting. He observed change in
three stages: (1) A pre-basic stage where learners conveyed a request intention in a
context-dependent, minimalistic manner; (2) A formulaic stage where learners
performed requests with unanalysed formulas; And (3) an unpacking stage where
formulas were incorporated into productive language use with the use of conventional
request forms.Although in documenting changes in L2 pragmatic acts, these early
studies established a model for longitudinal investigation, only a small number of
studies followed this lead, resulting in a general consensus that ILP research has
primarily focused on pragmatic use, rather than on acquisition (Bardovi-Harlig 2000;
Kasper and Rose 2003; Taguchi 2010). Indeed, Kasper and Rose’s (2003) review of
development in ILP listed only nine longitudinal studies. A subsequent overview of
development by Bardovi-Harlig (2000) listed less than a dozen. The most recent
review by Taguchi (2012) found 23 unique studies over five languages (11 English, 4
Japanese, 3 French, 3 German, and 2 Indonesian) in three areas: comprehension of
implicature (4 studies), perception/recognition of pragmatic features (5) and
production of pragmatic functions (14). In the area of implicature comprehension,
findings largely support the notion that learners progress from the stage where implied
meaning is marked via strong signals (e.g., universal or shared conventionality
between L1 and L2) to the stage where meaning does not involve those signals and
thus requires more extensive inferencing (e.g., Bouton 1994; Taguchi 2012). Taguchi
(2012), for instance, examined the comprehension of indirect refusals (conventional
implicature) and indirect opinions (non-conventional implicature) among Japanese
learners of English. Learners’ comprehension was tracked over two semesters using a
multiple-choice listening test. Comprehension was faster and more accurate, and
development more profound for conventional indirect refusals than for
non-conventional indirect opinions.In the area of pragmatic perception, all studies
were conducted in a study abroad context (e.g., Kinginger 2008; Matsumura 2001).
They reveal learners’ gains over time but also find individual variation due to
different qualities and quantities of experience. The area of pragmatic production
reveals a slow development of L2 pragmalinguistic forms. Research shows that
learners usually begin with overgeneralisation of a few forms over a range of
functions. They gradually expand their pragmalinguistic repertoire by adopting new
form-function mappings into their systems. These findings are illustrated in studies in
two major categories: form-to-function studies and function-to-form studies. The
former studies examine how a particular form becomes target-like in function over
time, by tracking changing (or expanding) functions of one form over time (e.g.,
Hellermann 2009; Ishida 2011), while the latter examine how a particular function
becomes target-like in form over time, by analysing changing forms in performing the
same function (e.g., Barron 2003; Nguyen 2011).An example of a form-to-function
analysis is Hellermann’s (2009) study of one L2 English learner’s use of the word no
over 50 weeks. Video recordings of the learner’s classroom Interlanguage pragmatics
interaction showed that the learner first used the unmitigated no in direct correction,
but later she expanded the function of no, using it in repair and humor. She also
started to mitigate no with hesitation and hedging (e.g., well) to demonstrate her
orientation toward dispreferred response. In a function-to-form analysis, on the other
hand, Nguyen (2011) examined an L2 English learner’s change in the function of
response over five weeks. Videotaped student-professor meetings showed that as the
student’s role shifted from a passive meaning receiver to an active meaning
contributor, her response action changed from using minimal responses in a delayed
manner to using expanded responses in an immediate manner, and eventually to
initiating a topic herself.While these longitudinal studies summarised above have
primarily analysed changing patterns in the pragmatic system, a recent trend in the
longitudinal practice is to present a more context-oriented account of learners’
changes in conjunction with individual and contextual factors. This practice
corresponds to the current epistemological shift in SLA to focus on the dynamicity
and complexity of language development in a social context. Dynamic Systems
Theory (Verspoor, de Bot and Lowie 2011) and chaos/complexity theory
(Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2009) are major proponents of this new
epistemological trend. They share the following views:
1. Language development is a non-linear, non-static process shaped by socially
co-regulated interactions of multiple influences;
2. Language development is inseparable from context. Language emerges via
interactions between agents (individuals) and with their environments;
3. Language development entails intra- and inter-variability. Variability data
provide idiosyncratic details of individual learners’ developmental trajectories that are
otherwise masked out in the analysis of group-level means.

In my view,only a few ILP studies conform to some of the methodological principles

of dynamic, complexity systems research. Those studies are Ohta (2001), Barron
(2003), Kinginger (2008) and Taguchi (2012). Using naturalistic recordings of
classroom interactions, Ohta investigated two L2 Japanese learners’ development of
acknowledgement and alignment expressions. She identified developmental patterns
of these expressions and revealed classroom-specific experiences (e.g., teacher input,
peer-to-peer talk) that affected the patterns. Barron (2003) examined the development
of the speech act of requests, offers and refusals of offers in L2 German over a
14-month study-abroad program. DCT data revealed only modest progress in
learners’ ability, which was closely related to individual experiences. Kinginger (2008)
examined the development of the awareness of sociolinguistic forms (e.g. address
terms, colloquial expressions) in L2 French during a semester abroad in France.
Pre-and-post test comparisons revealed considerable individual variation in learners’
changes. Qualitative data from interviews, journals, and diaries showed the variation
to come from differences in the amount and intensity of the sociocultural contact
learners experienced. These three studies are all book-length longitudinal studies that
used a mixed methods approach – the combination of qualitative and quantitative
methods. By collecting the individual- and contextual-level data, these studies
illustrated how the developmental paths converge or diverge across individuals.
Taguchi (2012) attempted a more explicit application of the complex, dynamic
systems perspective to pragmatic development. The study showed that Japanese ESL
students’ production of high-imposition speech acts (making a high-stake request of a
teacher or expressing an opinion to a teacher on a serious matter) showed little
progress after a year. This was displayed in the students’ interaction styles with native
speaker instructors. In the real-life pragmatics of expressing disagreement with their
teachers about course assignments, students often used strong modals (e.g., ‘should’)
and used an explicit expression of dislike (‘I don’t like X.’). The interview data
revealed that teachers were often so keen on getting students’ feedback that they did
not care much about the direct manner of speech, either neglecting to correct students’
misuse of pragmalinguistic forms or feeling no need to correct them.
These findings are in line with the dynamic, complexity systems’ views of language
development. The restricted improvement with high-imposition speech acts was a
product of the intricate interaction among the subsystems, elements, agents, and
processes. Agents (teachers, students) and elements (learning expectations, bilingual
context) in the environment co-adapted to each other, giving rise to students’ slow
progress toward sociolinguistic norms of interaction in formal speech acts. These
findings emphasise the strength of longitudinal design in understanding pragmatic
development. Longitudinal studies that combine systematic data collection on
quantitative change with qualitative analyses of context and individuals can provide
an account of the intricate relationship between pragmatic change, individual
differences and context. A mixed methods approach can shed light on the complexity
and dynamicity of pragmatic development in which multiple factors – learners’
subjectivity, stance, affect, resources and interaction in the target language – are
interconnected and jointly influence the evolving pathways toward increased
pragmatic competence.
Instructional studies in ILP
In the final sub-section of the historical sketch, I outline key findings in instructional
studies in ILP. Similar to cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, instructional studies
are concerned with change and factors affecting the change, but more precisely, they
focus on direct teaching as the independent variable and measure its impact on
learning outcomes. In other words, they focus on changes in pragmatic knowledge
from pre- to post-test. Studies are largely quasi-experimental, comparing learners who
received instruction to those who did not, or examining two or more groups under
different treatment conditions. Some studies almost give rise to longitudinal research
by examining instructional effects over an extended observation period (Alcón-Soler
2015).
Instructed ILP is a growing area of research, supported by mounting empirical studies
published since the 1990s, as well as edited volumes focusing on instructed
pragmatics (Taguchi and Roever, 2017). Jeon and Kaya (2006) located 34
instructional studies, of which 13 were subjected to a quantitative meta-analysis.
Takahashi (2010) found a total of 49 studies. The most recent review, Taguchi (2015)
found 58 studies over six target languages (38 English, 4 Spanish, 9 Japanese, 3
French, 2 German, and 2 Chinese) in a range of pragmatic targets (e.g., speech acts,
implicature, routines, reactive tokens, discourse markers, address forms, hedging and
epistemic markers).
Studies in the 1990s revealed that most pragmatic features are teachable, meaning that
instruction helps boost learners’ pragmatic development. The next decade evolved
around a question of efficacy: what instructional methods best promote pragmatics
learning? This question was taken up by a line of intervention studies that compared
the effects of certain teaching methods over others by measuring the degree of
learning from pre- to post-instruction. The comparison between explicit and implicit
teaching has generated by far the most empirical findings. The former typically
involves explicit metapragmatic explanation followed by focused practice, while the
latter withholds explanation but tries to develop learners’ implicit understandings of
the targets through consciousness-raising tasks and implicit feedback. These studies
were motivated by Schmidt’s (2001) Noticing Hypothesis which claims that learners’
attention to linguistic forms, their functions and relevant contextual features, is
necessary for pragmatic input to become intake, leading to acquisition.
Explicit/implicit teaching is a way of promoting this awareness of the target
form-function-context mappings and subsequent internalisation of them.
An example of the explicit-implicit comparison is found in Fordyce’s (2014) study.
He compared the effect of explicit and implicit treatment on Japanese EFL learners’
use of epistemic stance markers (modal expressions that convey speakers’
psychological states). This study is unique in two aspects. First, it examined the
long-term instruction effect by giving a delayed posttest five months after the
treatment. Second, the study compared the effects among three L2 groups of different
proficiency to see if they benefit from instruction differently. Explicit treatment in this
study involved teacher explanation of epistemic markers, along with exposure to the
targets via enhanced input (forms in bold type or in a larger font),
consciousness-raising activities, feedback on students’ epistemic forms and a quiz. In
contrast, implicit treatment did not attempt to draw learners’ attention to the forms:
rather students were exposed to texts that contained epistemic forms. Both groups
improved after the treatment, but the explicit group outperformed the implicit group
on the frequency and range of the epistemic forms they used in the posttest essays,
supporting the Noticing Hypothesis. There was no effect of proficiency: all groups
improved.Previous studies have generally confirmed the superiority of the explicit
over implicit method, although the length of instruction, types of pragmatic targets
and outcome measures moderated the observed learning benefits (Jeon and Kaya 2006;
Taguchi 2015; Takahashi 2010). However, the problem with the explicit-implicit
comparison is that studies have operationalised the explicit/implicit dichotomy
differently. While availability of metapragmatic explanation was one of the criteria in
many explicit treatments, operationalisation of implicit treatment differed across
studies: some studies used only input flood like Fordyce’s study, while others used
tasks to draw learners’ attention to the pragmatic targets via consciousness-raising
tasks (Derakhshan and Eslami 2015). As a result, the implicit condition itself formed
a continuum from absolute implicit to more explicit end of implicit treatment. In
addition, explicit treatment typically involved more than just metapragmatic
explanation, often combined with implicit activities such as consciousness-raising
tasks (Félix-Brasdefer 2008). As a result, we do not know whether the observed
benefits of explicit over implicit treatment are solely due to the explicit method.Glaser
(2014) recently reinforced this observation. She claimed that the explicit-implicit
opposition simplifies the approach to teaching pragmatics because the explicit
teaching is automatically equated with the provision of pragmatic explanation and the
implicit teaching with a lack of explanation. However, a further approach that
combines the explicit explanation with inductive rule discovery is also possible.
Glaser argued for the benefit of the explicit-inductive approach in which the instructor
provides language examples first, encouraging learners to discover regularities among
the examples, and later addresses underlying rules explicitly.
Another shortcoming of the explicit-implicit opposition is that findings are
inconclusive depending on the type of outcome measures. In Takahashi’s (2010)
review of 21 studies on explicit/implicit treatment, 11 studies reached mixed findings,
of which eight used multiple outcome measures. For instance, Fukuya and
Martínez-Flor (2008) revealed a contrast between online and offline tasks in
moderating the instructional effects of the speech act of suggestion. The explicit
group received metapragmatic information, whereas the implicit group did role play
with recasts. Results revealed an advantage for the explicit instruction. It
outperformed the implicit counterpart on the phone message task (a suggestion
recorded on the answering machine), but both groups gained in the email task (a
suggestion sent via email).While the Noticing Hypothesis and explicit-implicit
comparison have dominated the field for a long time, we have witnessed a gradual
expansion of intervention studies adopting different theoretical frameworks, including:
Li’s (2012) study using skill acquisition theory (DeKeyser 2007), Van Compernolle’s
study (2014) under the framework of socioculural theory (Vygotsky 1978), Taguchi
and Kim’s study (2015) within Swain and Lapkin’s (1998) concept of collaborative
dialogue, and Kim and Taguchi’s study (2015) using Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson,
2011) (for a review, see Taguchi 2015). It is hoped that this diversity in theoretical
backgrounds will continue with more empirical findings.

Conclusion and directions of future ILP research

In this review article, I have presented a summary of the rapid development of ILP
literature over the last few decades. I have illustrated the shift in the view of
pragmatic competence in ILP from pragmatic competence as an individual trait to
pragmatics as a co-construction of a socioculturally-bounded act in interaction and
pointed out that since such interactions are situated in intercultural settings, gains in
pragmatic competence contribute to intercultural competence and to interactants’
ability to function effectively and appropriately in a new culture. Parallel to such
changes in the conceptualisation of pragmatic competence in ILP, empirical interests
have also shifted over time, namely from cross-linguistic/cross-sectional studies that
primarily focus on pragmatic use to longitudinal studies that focus on acquisition. In
the same period, the field has fully embraced the instructional practice of ILP. After
surveying the literature I see five main directions for future research.Future direction
(1): Expanding the scope of pragmatic competenceTraditional models of
communicative competence define pragmatic competence as the ability to perform
language functions appropriately in a social situation, contending that learners need to
possess a range of linguistic forms and semiotic resources in their repertoire, choose
appropriate forms according to the situation, and use them effectively to achieve
communicative goals. Although the problem of the treatment of static contexts is
noteworthy in these models (see above on pragmatic competence in the models of
communicative competence), this definition collaborates with some of the often-cited
dimensions of multicultural competence and intercultural competence, namely
adaptability, flexibility and variability. For instance,
23 Interlanguage pragmaticsCanagarajah (2007: 932) states that, ‘[M]ultilingual
competence is open to unpredictability. It refers to the ability to find a fit or an
alignment between the linguistic resources they bring and the context of
communication’. The flexibility and adaptability aspect, however, has not been fully
incorporated into ILP research, because most studies assign fixed variables to context
(power, distance and degree of imposition), and draw a one-to-one correspondence
between context and forms, neglecting multiplicity and dynamicity of context. Future
research can be more creative in designing tasks that reveal learners’ ability to move
between multiple contexts and to adapt, align and reciprocate their pragmatic
behaviors in a dynamic, changing context. Future direction (2): Longitudinal studies
in a language other than EnglishIn the current landscape, the majority of longitudinal
and instructional studies are focused on L2 English (see Taguchi 2010, 2015). There
is no doubt but that the weighty influence of L2 English studies in the field needs to
be remedied in the future by looking at pragmatic development and instructional
treatment in languages other than English. To this end, the growing scope of
cross-linguistic analysis into rather under-studied languages (e.g., Arabic, Chinese,
Vietnamese) will be useful in the future. Correspondingly, future research might pay
more attention to features of pragmatics-specific-to-languages. Many previous studies
have applied a top-down procedure and employed previously existing speech act
categories and implicature coding schemes to investigate patterns of development or
to design instructional materials. However, future studies would benefit from a
bottom-up analysis, identifying pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features that are
unique to a specific language and crucial for learning that language. Individual
languages have different pragmatic devices in their structure and discourse. They use
different linguistic means to convey appropriate levels of politeness or to
communicate meaning indirectly. Future research should explore central
characteristics of the construct of pragmatic competence specific to individual
languages, and link these to empirical methods through which pragmatic development
can be observed.Future direction (3): Individual differences and instructional
outcomesFollowing the call in recent reviews (Takahashi 2010), a dynamic
interaction of learnability, pragmatic targets, instructional methods and learning
outcomes is needed in future instructed ILP research. So far, only Fordyce (2014)
compared learning outcomes among learners of different proficiency levels. Further
research should address what kinds of target features should be taught to what kinds
of learners (in terms of proficiency or individual difference factors) using what kinds
of methods (e.g., implicit or explicit; input-based or output-based). This line of
research will advance our understanding of the relationship between pragmatic
learnability and instructional intervention.Future direction (4): Advanced pragmatic
competenceA relatively under-explored area of research is the investigation into
advanced pragmaticcompetence. The majority of the previous ILP studies dealt with
L2 learners at low- to intermediate-levels enrolled in language courses for one to four
years. As such, the level of pragmatic competence targeted in these studies is limited
to the low- to mid-level pragmatic behaviours, such as production of speech acts in a
few utterances, comprehension of implicature in short, artificial dialogues, use of
basic turn-taking structure and minimum interaction devices and knowledge of one or
two forms of sociolinguistic variation. As a result, we do not know the types of
pragmatic tasks that very advanced speakers can handle or the types of challenges still
Interlanguage pragmaticsleft for them in their development of pragmatic competence.
Advanced pragmatic competence is an important concept in the current era of global
mobility, because language learning goes beyond the classroom and directly impacts
on career success in international assignments and participation in global virtual
teams. In these high-stake situations, advanced proficiency, characterised by the
ability to handle a variety of communicative tasks in formal and informal exchanges,
or the ability to cope with linguistic challenges stemming from unexpected turns of
events, is crucial. The ILP field can make a contribution to the understanding of
advanced proficiency and cross-cultural adaptability if it can find ways to
operationalise advanced pragmatic competence, and design methods to elicit and
examine the construct. There are several examples of advanced L2 pragmatics, such
as Ikeda’s (2009) study on Japanese honorifics and Dippold’s (2011) study on
argumentative discourse in German. Louw, Derwing and Abbott (2010) use a
pedagogical intervention on complex pragmatic skills in job interviews via simulation.
Future expansion is to be seen in this line of study.Future direction (5): Native
speaker variation in pragmatic behavioursOn the same topic of advanced pragmatics,
we have to be aware that native speaker variation typically exists in any pragmatic
behaviours, and the degree of variation might be large in advanced pragmatic
competence. Although to my knowledge no studies have empirically compared the
extent of native speaker variation over different pragmatic functions and tasks, it is
plausible that the more complex the pragmatic act is, the greater the variation
becomes among people who perform the act. An example is Japanese honorifics.
Honorifics systems are complex linguistically but more so socioculturally because
they reflect social actions that speakers accomplish with polite language. Speakers use
honorifics not just to conform to socially agreed norms in a situation, but they also use
them strategically in order to construct their social identity (e.g., Geyer 2013). In
other words, the degree of honorifics which speakers use is a reflection of the social
selves that they want to project – how polite or casual they want to sound in a certain
situation, which in turn leads to considerable situational and individual variation in
their use (cf. Van De Mieroop this volume).In today’s society, where multiple ethnic
groups and languages constitute the demographic make-up of one place, uniform
native speaker standards do not exist, nor are they relevant to the evaluation of
pragmatic competence (cf. Barron this volume). Yet using monolingual norms
remains the mainstream practice in traditional ILP research. A fruitful direction would
seem to be to investigate the degree of variation in pragmatic behaviours among local
speakers, and cultivate ways to incorporate variation into the analysis of interlanguage
pragmatics. For example, researchers might establish an assortment of acceptable
target pragmatic behaviours in a given community, rather than just single norms, and
interpret learners’ pragmatic behaviours in consideration of these variable
behaviours.These future directions will move ILP research forward and contribute to
the accumulated knowledge about L2 learning and development in the broader field of
SLA.

Interlanguage pragmatics
Interlanguage is the type of language(or linguistic system) used
by second-and foreign-language learners who are in the process of learning a target
language.Interlanguage pragmatics is the study of the ways in which non-native
speakers acquire, comprehend, and use linguistic patterns (or speech acts) in a second
language.Interlanguage theory is generally credited to Larry Selinker, an American
professor of applied linguistics, whose article "Interlanguage" appeared in the January
1972 issue of the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language
Teaching.
language acquisition?
incorrect interpretation of meaning in pragmatics can cause miscommunication and
reinforce stereotypes of people being rude, etc.
5 stages of Second Language Acquisition
There are 5 stages of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and developing fluency:
1. Pre-production OR Silent/receptive - At this first stage language learner has
minimal comprehension, they do not verbalize, nod answers in 'yes' and 'no' and
draw and point to objects.
2. Early production - At second stage verbal language output is in single words,
comprehension is limited, learner uses key words and familiar phrases and uses
present-tense verbs
3. Speech emergence - Learners starts to put words together in a sentence with some
grammatical and punctuation errors, although comprehension is good but
frequently students can misunderstand jokes.
4. Intermediate Fluency - At this stage, learner makes few grammatical errors and
has excellent language and vocabulary comprehension.
5. Advanced Fluency - Finals and last stage of a language learner where they
acquire near native level of speech comprehension
Second-Language Acquisition
Second-language acquisition (SLA), second-language learning, or L2 (language 2)
acquisition, is the process (and the study of that process) by which people learn a
second language. The field of second-language acquisition is a subdiscipline of
applied linguistics, but also receives research attention from a variety of other
disciplines, such as psychology and education.
Interlanguage
An interlanguage is the grammar that results from the language learning process. It is
created from the speaker's combined knowledge of the source and the target language.
It is an idiolect that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2)
which preserves some features of their first language (or L1), and can also
overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules. These two characteristics of an
interlanguage result in the system's unique linguistic organization.Learners are not
allowed to have a silent period. They are asked to produce when they are not ready. It
can "fossilize", or cease developing, in any of its developmental stages. The
interlanguage rules are claimed to be shaped by several factors, including L1-transfer,
previous learning strategies, strategies of L2 acquisition (i.e., simplification), L2
communication strategies (i.e., circumlocution), and overgeneralization of L2
language patterns.Interlanguage is based on the theory that there is a dormant
psychological framework in the human brain that is activated when one attempts to
learn a second language. Interlanguage theory is often credited to Larry Selinker, who
coined the terms "interlanguage" and "fossilization." Uriel Weinreich is credited with
providing the foundational information that was the basis of Selinker's research.
Selinker (1972) noted that in a given situation, the utterances produced by a learner
are different from those native speakers would produce had they attempted to convey
the same meaning. This comparison suggests the existence of a separate linguistic
system. This system can be observed when studying the utterances of the learner who
attempts to produce meaning in their L2 speech; it is not seen when that same learner
performs form-focused tasks, such as oral drills in a classroom.Interlanguage is the
result of interferences, errors that will happen not matter how many grammatical
explanation or corrections - The language has fossilized. Some interferences include
affective filters: - Motivation To study the psychological processes involved one can
compare the interlanguage utterances of the learner with two things:Utterances in the
native language (L1) to convey the same message produced by the learner.Utterances
in the target language (L2) to convey the same message, produced by a native speaker
of that language.It is possible to apply an interlanguage perspective to a learner's
underlying knowledge of the target language sound system (interlanguage phonology),
grammar (morphology and syntax), vocabulary (lexicon), and language-use norms
found among learners (interlanguage pragmatics).By describing the ways in which
learner language conforms to universal linguistic norms, interlanguage research has
contributed greatly to our understanding of linguistic universals in second-language
acquisition.
What is an idiolect
Idiolect is an individual's distinctive and unique use of language, including speech.
This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.Idiolect is
the variety of language unique to an individual. This differs from a dialect, a common
set of linguistic characteristics shared among some group of people.
What are paralinguistic features?
Paralinguistic features which is a feature of communication that doesn't involve words
but is added around an utterance to give meaning. Examples of paralinguistic features
include facial expressions, laughter, eye contact, and gestures.
What are prosodic features?
Prosodic features refer to the sound of someone's voice as they speak: pitch,
intonation and stress
What is an utterance?
In spoken language analysis, an utterance is the smallest unit of speech. It is a
continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a clear pause.
What are theoretical linguistics?
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics which inquires into the nature of
language itself and seeks to answer fundamental questions as to what language is;
how it works; how universal grammar (UG) as a domain-specific mental organ
operates; what are its unique properties; how does language relate to other cognitive
processes, etc. Theoretical linguists are most concerned with constructing models of
linguistic knowledge, and ultimately developing a linguistic theory.The fields that are
generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are phonology, morphology,
syntax, and semantics. Although phonetics often guides phonology, it is often
excluded from the purview of theoretical linguistics, along with sociolinguistics.
Theoretical linguistics also involves the search for an explanation of linguistic
universals, that is, properties that all, or many languages have in common.
What is Language Transfer?
Language Transfer is the influence that a source language (learned at birth) has on a
target language (the language that you are learning).
What is a discourse?
Continuous written or spoken speech larger than a sentence
What is parole?
Actual speech as opposed to langue
What is langue?
Underlying abstract system of language, a relationship of linguistic signs to one
another both in the lexicon and syntax of a language