Second Language Learners and Speech Act Comprehension

Author: Thomas Holtgraves

Presenter: Caparzo Lee

Intro Language is used for performing various

actions. Recognizing the actions that others perform

with their utterances is a critical component of successful language use.

To what extent do second language (L2) learners quickly recognize the action a speaker is performing with an utterance?

Examined whether the online comprehension of speech acts that occurs for native speakers of English also occurs for nonnative speakers of English.

Pragmatic Comprehension in L2

Takahashi and Roitblat / their experiment was designed to test competing models of indirect request comprehension.

In sum, although L2 participants took longer than L1 participants to comprehend the requests, they were no less accurate at doing so, and the process by which the indirect meaning was recognized appeared to be the same for L1 and L2 participants.

Pragmatic Comprehension in L2

Taguchi (2002) examined L1-L2 differences in the comprehension of a different type of indirect meaning.

For example, the reply “It’s hard to give a good presentation” following the query “What did you think of my presentation?” indirectly implicates a poor opinion of the presentation.

Taguchi reported relatively successful (over 70%) L2 comprehension of indirect meanings.

The purpose of the study was to extend research on pragmatic comprehension in L2 by examining possible L1-L2 differences in speech act comprehension.

Speech Act Theory

locutionary act （亦稱「話語行為」）：就是話的字面意思； (2) illocutionary act ( 亦稱「話語施事行為」）：是話語的力量或功能； (3) 言效語式行為(perlocutionary act) ：是“說話”所獲取的實際效果。

For example, 如果你說“ By the way, I have a CD of AKB48; would you like to borrow it?” 這句話的locutionary force 就是一句問句 ; 但它的 illocutionary function 是一種 offer, 而它的 perlocutionary effect 則是要討對方歡心 , 或爭取好感。

Speech Act Theory

The ability to recognize the speech acts that others perform with implicit speech acts is clearly an important component of pragmatic competence.

The present research was designed to examine whether nonnative speakers recognized online speech act occurred.

Method

Participants Native language participants were students at Ball State

University (N = 18; 7 males and 11 females). All of these participants were native speakers of English and their mean age was 19.72 years.

L2 participants (N = 16;7 males and 9 females) were recruited from various campus organizations. Their mean age was 25.25 years. China (5), Taiwan (4), Japan (1), Burma (1), Philippines (1), Kazakhstan (1), Ukraine (1), Lebanon (1), and Brazil (1). These students had been in the United States for a mean of 11.85 months (range = 3–48 months). Their mean length of time speaking English was 9.18 years (range = 1–22 years).

Method Materials Materials for this experiment consisted of a set of scenarios. Each

scenario (two to six sentences) described a situation between two people and was followed by a remark or remarks that were said by these people. The last remark was always the target utterance that either performed a specific speech act (speech act version) or did not perform that speech act (control version).

Method An attempt of speech act version was made to include

a large and varied set of speech acts and to use utterances that were generated by participants.

Control versions were created in four different ways (a) by switching the tense of the utterance (e.g.,

Promise: I swear I will be neater after the weekend vs. I swear I was neater after the weekend)

(b) by switching the sentence subject (e.g., Apologize: I’m so sorry that I ruined your shirt vs. Ed is so sorry that he ruined your shirt),

(c) by negating the speech act (e.g., Offer: If you need some help just give me a call vs. If you need some help don’t give me a call)

(d) by performing a different speech act (e.g., Agree: You’re right. It’s wrong to experiment on animals vs. That’s right. It’s wrong to experiment on animals)

Method Procedure The experiment was conducted on a personal

computer using the Eprime software. Participants read the scenarios at their own pace and pushed the Enter key to proceed. A probe (string of letters) was presented in the middle of the screen. Participants were instructed to indicate, as quickly as possible, whether or not the letter string was a word.

Immediately after making a judgment, feedback (correct/incorrect and response time) was provided on the screen in order to increase participant task motivation.

Results Lexical decision accuracy and speed for the probe

word were analyzed with a 2 × 2 (Speech Act Activation: Speech Act vs. Control X Language: L1 vs. L2) analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results Levene’s test indicated that these differences were significant-

speech act version:p < .01; control version:, p < .05. Follow-up tests indicated that L1 participants were significantly

faster at verifying the probe word when it followed the speech act utterances (−.19) than when it followed the control utterances (−.026), p<.05, an effect that did not occur for L2 participants (−.077 vs.= −.116).

Correlation between reading times for the target utterance and reaction times were not correlated (r= .049; n = 432, p > .3); that is, regardless of how long it took them to read the target utterance, L1s were still significantly faster following the speech act utterances than following the control utterances. L2 participants were significantly correlated with lexical decision speed (r = .289, n = 384, p < .001)

The correlation between priming score and years speaking English was large and significant (r = .61, p < .05). Hence, the longer an L2 participant spoke English, the greater their degree of speech act activation.

Discussion The most crucial finding here is the reaction

time difference for targets following the speech act and the control utterances that occurred for L1 participants but not for L2 participants.

Speech act recognition might be an automatic process for L1 but not L2 individuals.

Limitations: Sample size in this experiment was relatively

small. Language background and degree of English

proficiency have been demonstrated to influence L2 pragmatic processing.

Discussion For L1 participants, speech act recognition is automatic

because they have acquired pragmatic knowledge regarding the linguistic means by which speech acts are performed.

L2 participants, on the other hand, do not have this capability and, hence, must attend more closely to the context in order to interpret the speaker’s meaning.

Future L2 research: Is it possible for nonnative speakers to ever achieve true

automaticity in speech act recognition? Are L2 learners more likely to develop automaticity for

some types of indirect meaning than for other types? (e.g., “It’s warm in here” as a request to open a window)?

For native speakers, speech act activation occurs very quickly and perhaps automatically. This component of language comprehension did not occur for the L2 participants in this study.