Investigating Young Learner's L2 Pragmatics Competence in Telling Uncomfortable Truths

Abstract

L2 pragmatics knowledge is regarded as a key factor in the development of language learners’ communicative competence. Despite abundant literature in interlanguage pragmatics worldwide, past studies have primarily addressed adults, leaving young learners underrepresented. As pragmatics, or knowledge of contextual language variation, is especially difficult to master in foreign language acquisition, the onset of L2 pragmatics instruction should be investigated. In response to this lack of research in younger learners’ L2 pragmatics, this study investigated English pragmatic strategies for “telling uncomfortable truths” with three elementary-age learners. The results raise the question of the suitable age for incorporating pragmatics into language programs. Furthermore, while some pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence was observed, the learners failed to derive intended meanings from implicatures, suggesting an order of emergence in pragmatic development.