L1 Pragmatic Transfer

The need for communication with people from other cultures was behind the increasing desire to learn a second language. Thus, the increasing need for better communication is what initiated the studies of cross-cultural differences. Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization project (CCSPARP) was one of the earliest major research projects investigating pragmatics across cultures. In 1982, it began to analyze the speech acts of request and apology of native speakers and nonnative speakers of western languages by using discourse completion tasks (DCT). Consequently, similar studies continued to be published for a number of years (e.g. Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984, 1986). Despite the enormous contributions of this project to the field of pragmatics,

Accordingly, these studies resulted in three preliminary findings; some considered L1 pragmatic transfer as a facilitating factor in L2 acquisition, others believed that L1 pragmatic transfer hinders the progress of L2 acquisition that is resulted in low proficiency, and there are also extreme views that disassociate pragmatic transfer from L2 proficiency and find it as an irrelevant factor in the study of L2 acquisition. This part of the chapter will elaborate these three different

Interestingly, Takahashi and Beebe (1987) have another study that examined the developmental pragmatic competence of 20 native speakers using Japanese and 20 native speakers using English, in comparison with 40 Japanese students speaking English. They found that transfer of Japanese refusal strategies was greater among EFL than ESL learners. On that account, they argue that as learners’ proficiency develops, their L1 negative pragmatic transfer decrease. In a study of cross-linguistic influence in the production of the target language by Blum-Kulka (1982), adult native speakers of Hebrew, English-speaking learners of Hebrew, native English speakers were administered a discourse-completion test to investigate the influence of native language on L2 acquisition. Blum-Kulka’s findings lend support to the claim that learners will transfer their native pragmatic knowledge and expect to find equivalent pragmatic guidelines in the target language, which will eventually lead to pragmatic failure. Gass & Neu (1996) took a middle-ground position by suggesting that as a function of proficiency, advanced learners are less likely to rely on their native speaker forms for transfer. Therefore, when they are faced with situations which they have little experience, they tend not to rely on their native strategies,