Session 4D

The present study focuses on the pragmatic production of language learners as far as email communication is concerned. Existing studies have either contrasted learners' performance to that of native speakers (Alcón, 2015; Lorenzo-Dus and Bou-Franch, 2013) or they have examined students' messages in their L2 (Félix-Brasdefer, 2012; Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2018). Results from these analyses show status incongruent behavior involving a variety of forms of address, a preference for direct forms such as imperatives, blunt questions and unmodified request strategies across languages irrespective of their politeness orientation. Nevertheless, none of the aforementioned studies has adopted a multilingual perspective in their analyses, and more research is needed that examines multilingual learners' by tackling all their languages.
Recent contrastive analyses involving students' L1 and L2 emails (Schauer, 2021) point to the importance of examining individual students' emails. In an attempt to contribute to this line of research and confirm previous results, we have examined 90 undergraduate students' email messages written in their L1, L2 and L3 to 2 professors. The pragmatic formulas examined were address forms and requests produced in Catalan, Spanish or English. Our main goal was to confirm whether students' email requests would devoid politeness markers and whether they would show a lack of netetiquette (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007; Yus, 2011, 2016). We were also interested in identifying the extent to which the impositive nature of the request would influence the pragmatic forms chosen and whether these would be in line with the politeness orientation of the language involved. Results are in line with previous studies as far as netiquette patterns are concerned and they add interesting information on the way multilingualism is displayed in email interaction. In a nutshell, our findings confirm previous research from an IL pragmatics perspective while they also point out the peculiarities of multilingual pragmatics.



Alcón, E. (2015) Instruction and pragmatic change during study abroad email communication. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 9: 34-45.
Biesenbach-Lucas, S. (2007)  Students writing emails to faculty: An examination of e-politeness among native and non-native speakers of English. Language, Learning and Technology, 11, 59-81
Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2018) "Mr Paul, please inform me accordingly" Address forms, directness and degree of imposition in L2 emails. Pragmatics, 28: 469-816.
Félix-Brasdefer, C. (2012) Email openings and closings. Pragmalinguistic and gender variation in learner-instructor cyber-consultation. In E. Alcón-Soler and P. Safont (eds.) Discourse and language learning across L2 instructional contexts (pp.223-248). Leiden: Brill.
Lorenzo-Dus, N. and Bou-Franch, P. (2013) A cross-cultural investigation of email communication in Peninsular Spanish and British English. The role of (in) formality and (in)directness. Pragmatics and Society, 4: 1-25.
Schauer, G. (2021) Email communication in English and German. In Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (Ed.) Email Pragmatics and Second Language Learners (pp.179-202). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Yus, F. (2011) Cyberpragmatics. Internet-mediated communication in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Yus, F. (2016) Towards a cyberpragmatics of mobile instant messaging. In Romero-Trillo (Ed.) Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics (pp. 7-26). Basel: Springer.

Communication strategies (CSs) have been widely used in second language learners' conversation when they encounter communicative difficulties due to their deficient linguistic competence. The factors that may affect learners' use of CSs include proficiency level in the target language, influence of the native language, personality and interlocutor's role. This study focuses on the impact the interlocutor can exert on Chinese English learners' CSs use in English immersion classroom settings during their overseas study. 

Participants were randomly assigned to one of 15 simulated classroom discussion triads, with two Chinese participants and one non-Chinese participant in each. The transcripts of the participants' conversations were analysed based on the CSs taxonomy created by Dornyei and Scott (1997). Nakatani's Oral Communication Strategy Inventory (OCSI) questionnaire also provided a self-report of the participants' CSs application during their discussions (Nakatani, 2006).

Findings in learners' discussions revealed that strategy types such as self-repetition, verbal strategy marker, use of all-purpose words, and approximation were more frequently used in a non-Chinese interlocutor (NCI) group than in its Chinese counterpart (CI). In other words, the NCI condition can stimulate more strategies use related to learners' own performance problems and resource deficits. These findings, however, were only partially consistent with their self-report in the OCSI questionnaire, the t-test results of which resulted in significant differences in message abandonment strategy, fluency-maintaining strategy, scanning strategy and word-oriented strategy. In the NCI group, learners appeared to be more reliant on reduction strategies to avoid further interactions and more inclined to focus on only a specific part of a speaker's utterance when they cannot completely comprehend the message.

The distinctions between the two types of interlocutors were examined to explore learners' strategy use stimulated by non-Chinese interlocutors. These emerging strategies in the context of study abroad are not available in the domestic English teaching system in China and therefore the findings of this study can be particularly emphasised in the CSs training for the improvement of Chinese English learners' communicative competence. 

References
Dörnyei, Z., & Scott, M. L. (1997). Communication Strategies in a Second Language: Definitions and Taxonomies. Language Learning, 47(1), 173–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.51997005
Nakatani, Y. (2006). Developing an Oral Communication Strategy Inventory. Modern Language Journal, 90(2), 151–168.