This research explores a new method of establishing situation-bound utterances (SBUs) through situational elicitation as well as its application to second language (L2) research.  SBUs are expressions, such as “Welcome aboard!”, that are strongly associated with specific, conventionalized situations of use for native speakers (Kecskes, 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2003, 2010). Previous research on SBUs has focused on the ability of English speakers, both native and non-native, to produce target utterances through the use of scenarios designed to simulate situations in which they occur, such as Bardovi-Harlig (2009). In keeping with Mey’s (2006) perspective on how SBUs derive meaning from situational contexts, these production studies use scenarios that simulate situations to elicit conventionalized expressions. However, relatively few studies have explored the perspective offered by Kecskes (2010) that meaning is co-constructed for situations from SBUs themselves by eliciting information about situations of use from the target utterances. Kecskes (2000a, 20002) attempted to have speakers identify meaning through initial associations for SBUs, and results were mixed but indicated strong associations with situationally bound interpretations for SBUs. Bardovi-Harlig (2014) had native and non-native English speakers construct short conversations using these expressions, and results indicated that some could perform the task while others could not. The current study contributes to the second language (L2) pragmatics literature by exploring the ability of speakers, both native and non-native, to identify potential situations of use through situational elicitations. This method of situational elicitation attempts to elicit the information typically used to construct scenarios (e.g. context, speaker(s), location, meaning, and alternative expressions) (DiPietro, 1987; Bardovi-Harlig, 2013) for SBUs (e.g. ‘Buckle up’) and other conventional multiword expressions. SBUs were selected from the literature (Kecskes, 2000, 2010) and also identified by the researcher from a corpus of conventional multi-word expressions taken from Wheel of Fortune answers, a la Jackendoff (1995). Participants included 20 native, 3 bilingual, and 19 non-native English speakers, all undergraduates at a large Midwestern university, and each was independently interviewed to elicit knowledge about SBUs. Native speaker results confirmed the use of this method to establish SBUs as eliciting responses clustering around specific situations of use separate from other conventionalized multi-word expressions, which showed a lack of situational clustering. Many non-native speaker responses showed a similar lack of situational clustering for both SBUs and other multi-word expressions; however, length of stay may affect a non-native speaker’s knowledge of SBU usage.

 

References

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2009). Conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource: Recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Language Learning, 59, 755–795.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2013). On saying the same thing: Assessing the production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. In T. Greer, D. Tatsuki, & C. Roever (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning: Vol. 13 (pp. 191-211). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2014). Awareness of meaning of conventional expressions in second language pragmatics. Language Awareness, 23, 41-56. doi 10.1080/09658416.2013.863894

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Kecskes, I.  (1998). Situation-bound utterances from an interlanguage perspective.   In Jef Verschueren (Ed.), Pragmatics in 1998: Selected papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference: Vol. 2 (pp. 299-310). Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association.

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Kecskes, I. (2000b). Conceptual fluency and the use of situation-bound utterances in L2.  Links & Letters, (7), 143-158.

Kecskes, I. (2002). Situation-bound utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Kecskes, I. (2010). Situation-bound utterances as pragmatic acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2889-2897.

Mey, J. (2006). Pragmatic acts. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 5-12). Elsevier, Oxford