Abstract

Situation-bound utterances (SBUs) (Kecskes, 2003, 2013, 2016; Kecskes & Papp, 2000), as a particular type of formulaic language, are a store of conventionalized, culture-specific ways of referring to standardized situations in a speech community. SBUs more than any other linguistic element allow us to have an insight into the thinking of people who belong to a particular language community because through these commonly accepted conventionalized expressions the individual speaker may affirm his/her belonging to a socio-cultural group (Kecskes, 2003). They can be seen as the hallmark of a second language learner’s socialization as a socially functioning interactant.

 

This study assembles empirical evidence in demonstrating how the level of CSL learners’ conceptual socialization can be measured by their use of SBUs. In addition, this study explores the underlying factors that contribute to the developmental patterns of CSL learners’ use of SBUs. Three written tasks, a motivational questionnaire, and one semi-structure interview were utilized to collect quantitative and qualitative data from three experimental groups (an advanced CSL group, an intermediate CSL group, and a Chinese heritage group) and one control group (monolingual Chinese speakers).

 

One major finding of this study is that, in spite of between-group differences in their use of SBUs, all CSL learner groups followed an observable developmental pattern of conceptual socialization, which led to a three-stage developmental sequence in the acquisition of SBUs in terms of the pragmatic functions they perform:

Stage 1: Learners pick up the use of certain SBUs to perform the speech acts of leave-taking, thanking, and greeting.

Stage 2: SBUs of ordering, inquiring, requesting, and apologizing are added to learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmalinguistic repertoires. 

Stage 3: Learners acquire SBUs that fulfill the pragmatic functions of well-wishing, showing hospitality, promising and complimenting.

This hierarchy is a generalized reflection of CSL learners’ sociocultural experiences in the target community.

 

As shall be shown, various socio-cognitive factors are at play in the process of conceptual socialization: i.e. length of L2 learning, length of residence in the target community, quality of exposure, social contacts, cultural identity, social categorization, commitment to language learning and agency.

 

Overall, this study empirically confirms that L2 acquisition is not merely the taking in of linguistic forms by learners, but more of the constant adaptation and enactment of language-using patterns in the service of mean-making in response to the affordances that emerge in a dynamic communicative situations (Larsen-Freemen, 2012). The learning of L2 pragmatics is anchored in the interdependence between language, cognition, and context. I will argue that conceptual socialization in L2 is not simply a socio-culturally situated process where L2 learners are gradually socialized through exposure to and participation in social practice, but also a cognitive process where L2 speakers construct and negotiate their identities in and through the use of L2.

 

 

 

Keywords: Chinese as a second language; situation-bound utterance; conceptual socialization; L2 pragmatics

 

 

 

References

Kecskes, I. (2003). Situation-bound utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kecskes, I. (2013). Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kecskes, I. (2016). Situation-bound utterances in Chinese. East Asian Pragmatics, 1(1), 107-126.

Kecskes, I., & Papp, T. (2000). Foreign language and mother tongue. New York: Psychology Press.

Larsen-Freemen, D. (2012). Complex, dynamic systems: A new trans-disciplinary theme for applied linguistics? Language Teaching, 45(2), 202-214.