Interlanguage pragmatics—the study of nonnative speakers' use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge—has hovered on the fringes of SLA research thus far. In theories of 12 acquisition, pragmatics may figure as a constraint on syntactic knowledge, for instance, but pragmatics is not usually recognized as a knowledge component whose development deserves theoretical consideration in its own right. There is thus a tension between SLA as a theoretical (in the sense of “nonapplied”) discipline and the theory and practice of second or foreign language pedagogy. In theories of communicative competence in L2 teaching and testing, pragmatic competence figures prominently (e.g., Bachman, 1990). Curricula and materials for L2 teaching developed in recent years include strong pragmatic components or even adopt a pragmatic approach as their organizing principle.

Unlike other areas of second language study, which are primarily concerned with acquisitional patterns of interlanguage knowledge over time, most studies in interlanguage pragmatics have focused on second language use rather than second language learning. The aim of this paper is to profile interlanguage pragmatics as an area of inquiry in second language acquisition research, by reviewing existing studies with a focus on learning, examining research findings in interlanguage pragmatics that shed light on some basic questions in SLA, exploring cognitive and social-psychological theories that might offer explanations of different aspects of pragmatic development, and proposing a research agenda for the study of interlanguage pragmatics with a developmental perspective that will tie it more closely to other areas of SLA.

This paper investigates the nature of input available to learners in the institutional setting of the academic advising session. The advisory session, an unequal status encounter that by nature is a private speech event and cannot be observed by other learners, provides a starting point for the investigation of real and perceived availability of input. Evidence for the realization of speech acts as well as appropriate content and form, positive evidence from peers and status unequals, the effect of stereotypes, and limitations of a learner's pragmatic and grammatical competence are factors that may influence the course of development of interlanguage pragmatics in the institutional setting.

This study examines the transferability of five Japanese indirect request strategies to corresponding English request contexts. Pragmatic transferability was operationally defined as transferability rate. This rate was established through the summation of the perceived contextual appropriateness of a Japanese request and the perceived similarity in contextual appropriateness between a Japanese request and its English equivalent. The Japanese request strategies were found to be differentially transferable. The learners' transferability perception was influenced by their L2 proficiency; however, there was no definite tendency for a positive correlation nor for a negative correlation between L1 transfer and proficiency. Furthermore, the transferability of each L1 request strategy seemed to be determined by the interaction between the politeness and conventionality encoded in each strategy and the degree of mitigation required in each imposition context.

This study explores whether pragmatic fluency can best be acquired in the classroom by provision of input and opportunity for communicative practice alone, or whether learners profit more when additional explicit instruction in the use of conversational routines is provided. It is hypothesized that such instruction raises learners' awareness of the functions and contextual distributions of routines, enabling them to become more pragmatically fluent.

Two versions of a communication course taught to advanced German learners of English for 14 weeks are examined, one version providing explicit metapragmatic information, the other withholding it. Samples of tape-recorded conversations at various stages of the courses are used to assess how students' pragmatic fluency developed and whether and how the development of fluency benefits from metapragmatic awareness.

This paper calls attention to an increasingly prominent field of interest within second language acquisition research and pedagogy, namely, that of pragmatic ability. It focuses on an area within pragmatics, that of speech acts, considers the processes underlying the performance of such speech acts, and looks at the effects of explicit instruction in this area. The paper starts by asking what speech act ability entails. Several basic distinctions are made in the description of speech acts, such as that between sociocultural and sociolinguistic ability. Second, directions of previous research describing speech acts are indicated and directions yet to be taken are pointed out. Difficulties in researching oral speech act performance are noted, and verbal report is recognized as one of a limited number of research tools available for investigating cognitive processes involved in speech act production. The paper then reviews four studies that utilize verbal report to gain at least some access to the underlying processes. Finally, the paper looks at previous research on the tutored and untutored acquisition of speech acts and provides suggestions for future research.