Relevance-theoretic Approach to Characteristic Grammatical Constructions and Usages in 50-Word English Essays by Japanese Students

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze some characteristic grammatical constructions and usages in 50-word essays written by L2 Japanese university students and high school students in the framework of Relevance Theory. First, we will give an outline of theoretical framework and will refer to some crucial notions of Relevance Theory. Second, we will consider some characteristics in 50-word essays affected by the first language of the authors L1 the Japanese language. Then, we will discuss some effective elaborations with an emphasis both on the notion of explicature and on the four pragmatic processes contributing to the formation of explicatures.