THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS'PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN BELF COMMUNICATION

GENG Wen-wen

Department of Foreign Languages,Harbin University of Science and Technology,Rongcheng,China

Email:hustrc2012@163.com

DAI Jing-yan

Department of Foreign Languages,Harbin University of Science and Technology,Rongcheng,China

Email:daisyswallow@163.com

[Abstract] Since pragmatic competence is crucial to the success of BELF communication,it is necessary and significant to probe into its development in language learning.To fulfill the task,by adopting a mixed-method approach the current research focuses on the students'attitudes to pragmatic competence and the development of their ILP competence.It is found that learners haven't fully realized the importance of pragmatic competence.Moreover,though progress has been made in their overall performance in BELF communication,communicative failures,especially in the construction of identity and politeness,remain at a high level.

[Keywords] pragmatic competence;interlanguage;business English as a lingua franca (BELF);multimodal semiotics

Introduction

To learn a language is by no means equal to the acquisition of pronunciation or vocabulary,but associated with the appropriate and efficient use of the language in various contexts.In Hymes's words "a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences,not only as grammatical,but also as appropriate"(1972,p.277).Although considered to be indispensable to communicative competence (Chomsky,1980;Bachman,1990),pragmatic competence seems to ob⁃tain less attention than linguistic competence in language learning (Beltrán-Planques &Querol-Julián,2018).In this respect,what distinguishes nonnative speakers from native ones turns out to be their level of pragmatic compe⁃tence rather than that of grammatical competence (Bardovi-Harlig &Hartford,1990).Therefore,the necessity and effects of instruction of pragmatic competence in language teaching and second language acquisition (SLA) have been repeatedly testified and confirmed (e.g.,Schmidt,1993,2001;Kasper,2001;Jung,2002).Turning to the con⁃text of business English as a lingua franca(BELF),the current study aims to depict the development of the students'pragmatic competence at the first year of their university life.

Theoretical Backgrounds

In the process of learning a new language,interlanguage serves as a bridge between the learners'native lan⁃guage and the new one.Such a dynamic language system has its own rules,linguistic and pragmatic,which may re⁃sult in pragmatic failures in fulfilling their communicative tasks.Meanwhile,BELF communication is not confined to utterances but the combination of a series of semiotic modes like intonation,gestures,and smell.In what follows,the⁃oretical backgrounds on the notion of interlanguage pragmatic competence and the nature of BELF communication are presented.

Interlanguage pragmatic(ILP)competence

ILP competence refers to foreign language learners'ability to comprehend and develop pragmatic knowledge(Kasper &Blum-Kulka,1993).While the performance of such speech acts as request (e.g.,Ren,2019),apology (e.g.,Masaeed et al.,2018)and refusal(e.g.,Chang,2009)are among the most popular topics.Roever(2011,p.467)ar⁃gued that those were merely "isolated aspects of language learners'pragmatic competence" and much attention should be paid to their"ability for use in social interaction".In Roever's construct,ILP competence covers four com⁃ponents:extended monolog,participation in interaction,routine formulae and implicature.Furthermore,Li (2019)supplemented paralinguistic interaction into the frame,which facilitates a more comprehensive description of ILP competence.Now that pragmatic competence constitutes communicative competence,ILP contributes to the foreign language learners'communicative ability.

ILP competence is supposed to be correlated with language proficiency in a positive way (Hoffman-Hicks,1992;Su,2021).However,some researchers(e.g.,Youn,2014)are skeptical of the assertion and declare that the re⁃lationships between the two are of great complexity.Language proficiency is thus perceived as"a necessary but not a sufficient condition"for ILP competence(Bardovi-Harlig,1999,p.686).Besides the differences in participants and procedures,various instruments adopted in measuring ILP account for the discrepancies in their conclusion to a great extent.Although Discourse Completion Test(DCT)is among the most popular ones and still widely used nowa⁃days (e.g.,Chang,2009;Masaeed et al.2018),it has many limitations in comparison with role play,which is more likely to elicit natural,interactive performances in the defined context,thus"particularly suitable for assessment pur⁃poses" (Roever,2011,p.473).What's more,only by role play can paralinguistic interaction be realized and exam⁃ined.

Business English as a lingual franca(BELF)

BELF refers to English used as"a neutral and shared communication code"(Louhiala-Salminen et al.2005,p.403).To achieve their goal in business communication,BELF users need not only to learn to appreciate different English variants,but also to adopt appropriate pragmatic strategies to build rapport with the other party.The success and efficiency of BELF communication seems to lie more in the grasp of "business-related issues" than "grammati⁃cal and idiomatic correctness"(Kankaanranta&Louhiala-Salminen,2010,p.207).In contrast,failures are attribut⁃ed to the following three aspects,namely,"lack of comprehensibility,cultural differences and stereotyped associa⁃tions"(Gerritsen&Nickerson,2009,p.182).In terms of research scope,BELF covers"a rich area"via"a variety of different methodological approaches" (ibid.,p.181).Research on BELF joins with that concerning ILP competence in that both emphasize communicative competence and witness a discursive turn in recent decades.

With the continuous deepening of the opening-up policy,China has been witnessing a dramatic increase in in⁃ternational trade,which casts high demands on the quantity and quality of practitioners who are by and large gradu⁃ates of economic management or business English.They are supposed to be equipped with the ability to construct meaning,identity and politeness with their counterparts from different culture backgrounds (Li &Li,2018).Corre⁃sponding adjustments should be made in language teaching so as to meet the requirements.To address this realistic problem,the current research aims to obtain a comprehensive view of students'pragmatic competence in BELF com⁃munication during their first year at university.

Research Design

According to the research purpose mentioned above,we put forward three questions and take 43 freshmen ma⁃joring in business English at a university located in the north of China as the subjects.In this section,what would be specified includes the research questions,the collection of data and the methods adopted in the process.

Research questions

The two questions to be answered in this research are:1)What are the language learners'attitudes to pragmatic competence?2)How does their ILP competence develop over time?

Data collection

To answer the above questions,two types of data have been collected twice at the interval of one semester(Dec.2020-Jul.2021).The first type is about questionnaires which are distributed to find out the respondents'opinions about pragmatic competence at the beginning and end of the semester.The second one pertains to video recordings of students'role plays,transcribed and annotated,so as to detect the overall development of the students'ILP compe⁃tence in BELF communication.All the data have been double checked by the two authors of the paper.

Procedure

The whole procedure consists of four steps:First,the designed questionnaire is piloted and modified before for⁃mal release.The results of reliability analysis (Cronbachα=.886,p.=.007)and validity analysis(KMO=.833,p.=.000)indicate that the questionnaire is acceptable.Next,specific tasks for the participants in pairs are described in detail,covering ten scenarios of business communication including business negotiation,banquet,offer and coun⁃ter-offer,etc.Third,the two sets of recordings are transcribed following Recktenwald's (2017) transcription conven⁃tions and then scored by two sophisticated teachers(with no significant differences as p.=.879 and.604 respectively),who would further annotate and double-check the pragmatic failures committed by the students.Finally,the scores of the students'performances are compared and specific examples would be analyzed to illustrate the development of their ILP competence within a semester.

Results and Discussion

The results of the questionnaires show that over 80% of the respondents perceive pragmatic competence as an important part of language learning,which doesn't see great changes during the period.Furthermore,as Figure 1 il⁃lustrates,in spite of the increase in the number of respondents who rate their pragmatic competence as"above moder⁃ate",from 4.76%to 14.28%,those who describe their use of language as"moderate"account for 64%of the total at the end of the semester compared to 80.95%at the beginning,thus a falling trend in general.Meanwhile,the end of the semester sees a rise in the number of students who describe their use of language as"not good"and"very bad",rising from 4 and 2 to 6 and 3 students respectively.Last but not least,compared with pronunciation,grammar,and vocabulary,about one third of the students consider that great efforts should be made in language use at first,which maintained at a similar level half a year later.

Figure 1:Self-assessment of pragmatic competence

Therefore,the answer to our first research question could be put in the following way.On the one hand,an over⁃whelming majority of students are aware of the significance of pragmatic competence and the necessity to improve that in the process of language learning.On the other hand,for most respondents,their self-assessment of pragmatic competence does not necessarily get higher,but instead declines slightly in general as they proceed with their study.

Then,is their self-assessment accurate? How does their ILP competence develop? The following statistics and examples drawing from the elicited data may give us a clue to the second research question.

First,the result of the paired sample test indicates that there are significant differences between their scores be⁃fore and after the semester(p.=.001<.05,df=42,t=3.473).In other words,progress has been made in their role-play of business scenarios as the average score rises from 63.48 to 68.49,yet with a greater standard deviation,9.228 com⁃pared to 5.529.Thus,in spite of a larger gap emerges among the students,it can be noticed that their overall perfor⁃mance has been improved after half a year.

Second,a closer look at their performance(as shown in Table 1)reveals that although there are less meaning-re⁃lated failures after one semester's study,communication failures concerning the participants'identity and politeness don't see any decrease:while the proportion of the former doubles in the post-test,that of the latter remains at the same level as in the pre-test.

Table 1 :The proportion of meaning-related,identity-related and politeness-related failures

Third,a wide range of grammatical and phonological mistakes result in meaning-related failures,whereas iden⁃tity-related failures are generally on account of the confusion of their role with their partner(s) in the task.In terms of politeness-related failure,improper body language is among the most common problems.Take the following turn as an example.

(Scenario:A,the Chinese supervisor of the sales department,is introducing their work to a new comer,B who comes from India.)

A:...WORK often put a lot of(..)plea-sure on us{look at elsewhere}(..)but lei-sure can re-lease us(..)from the pleasure[of work=]

B:[Oh,I] DON'T agree with you {leaning forward}.(..) In my opinion (..) I er (..) I (..) think (..) we SHOULD learn to...

In this context,what A intends to say is the"pressure"rather than"pleasure"of work,thus committing a gram⁃matical mistake that is meaning-related.Besides,neither B's way of expressing disagreement nor A's eye contact with B seems to be polite based on their relationship.Meanwhile,B appears not to be clear about his/her identity as it is not advisable for a new comer and subordinate to talk to the supervisor in such a direct and aggressive way.

In brief,the students'self-assessment of pragmatic competence is reasonable but not comprehensive since in comparison with their progress in meaning-related problems,communication failures that are not grammatically-re⁃lated remain at a high level after a semester's study.

Conclusion

From the above results and discussion,it can be concluded that despite of their serious attitude towards prag⁃matic competence,most Chinese learners still lay more emphasis on grammatical competence in language learning.Consequently,with continuous study,pragmatic failures concerning grammatical mistakes diminish in business com⁃munication,whereas those not grammatically-related keep steady or even increasing,which influences the extent of improvement on their overall performance.Meanwhile,the polarization of their self-assessment about pragmatic com⁃petence gets more serious along the time.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Heilongjiang Philosophy and Social Science Program:Pragmatic Research on Vio⁃lent Language in Online Interaction[grant number 20YYB021].

Appendix:Transcription conventions adapted from Recktenwald(2017).

TEXT Emphasis or Higher Volume

. Falling Final Intonation

- Word Cut Off

{} Physical Actions by the Streamer

(..) Brief Pauses within an Intonation Unit

= Latching

[] Overlap in Speech