Metapragmatic discussion in interlanguage pragmatics

The present study investigates the effects of two types of consciousness-raising instruction—problem-solving tasks with metapragmatic discussion (PTW) and problem-solving tasks without metapragmatic discussion (PTO)—on learners’ recognizing and producing English request downgraders. The results demonstrated that the PTW and PTO groups performed significantly better than the control group on the unplanned written-production and the unplanned written-judgment tests. There were no statistically significant differences between the two experimental groups on the unplanned written-judgment test. However, a comparison of those learners in the two treatment groups in the unplanned written-production test indicated an advantage for the PTW and implied that metapragmatic discussion proved effective for learning sociopragmatic distinctions. The analysis of results showed that the participants in the PTW group had additional metapragmatic information about the target pragmatic features during metapragmatic discussion, and that the PTW group was more motivated and attended to the target linguistic forms, its functional meanings, and the relevant contextual features more intensively thereby developing more firmly established and thus more easily and rapidly accessible knowledge about the target features.

► The results indicated that metapragmatic discussion proved effective for learning sociopragmatic distinctions.
► Metapragmatic discussion allowed the participants to obtain additional metapragmatic information of the target request forms.
► Metapragmatic discussion led the participants to attend to the pragmalinguistic and the sociopragmatic features intensively.