GO MATSUDA (RYUKOKU UNIVERSITY)

JAPANESE EFL LEARNERS’ PRAGMATIC SUBJECTIVITY IN ADVICE-GIVING SITUATIONS: DIVERGENCE FROM AND CONVERGENCE INTO NATIVE-SPEAKER NORMS : INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND GLOBAL COMPETENCIES

The latest version of the Course of Studies, the national guideline of education in Japan, incorporates pragmatic learning into its essence. Kasper (1997) gave a plenary talk entitled “Can Pragmatic Competence Be Taught?”, inspiring the discussion regarding the teachability and learnability of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). Previous studies in ILP have conventionally focused on the convergence and divergence in relation to native-speaker norms. Some define the former as pragmatic development and the latter as negative transfer, which I find skeptical. Given the previous studies, I wonder (1) how the convergence and divergence occur to English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Japan and (2) what the meanings of those phenomena are. To address these questions, I explored Japanese 1st-year university students’ pragmatic subjectivity in advice-giving situations in EFL. Data collection consists of two phases. In phase 1, participants completed a multiple-choice questionnaire, while articulating their thoughts and feelings. The initial section of the questionnaire prompted them to choose an expression they believe natives are likely to say in a given context; the subsequent set elicited their own preferences, with the aim of identifying occurrences of convergence and divergence. In phase 2, I conducted semi-structured interviews to delve into their pragmatic subjectivity and sources of the convergence and divergence. Using thematic analysis, I found that their awareness of the idea of English as a Lingua Franca is intertwined with their pragmatic subjectivity, being the source of the convergence and divergence. Implications for instructional pragmatics are given.

Mr. Go Matsuda is a MA student at Ryukoku University, Japan. His research interests encompass Interlanguage Pragmatics, Second Language Learning and Teaching, and World Englishes/English as a Lingua Franca. He is a pre-service teacher who holds teaching licenses for junior and senior high schools.