Bridging ‘what I said’ and ‘why I said it’: the role of metapragmatic awareness in L2 request performance

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study that investigated the role of metapragmatic awareness of L2 learners in Hong Kong, and the impact it has on language choices when addressing requests in English. Simulated open role-plays and retrospective interviews were used to explore the ways in which mainland Chinese undergraduates assess, plan and produce their utterances. The results show that participants’ self-monitoring of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge may contribute to metapragmatic awareness; their oral performance in target language pragmatics depends on these two types of knowledge, as well as on self-evaluation of mediating factors such as cognitive task demand and learner subjectivity. By bridging the gap between what learners say and why they say it, this article demonstrates how metapragmatic awareness mediates the process of real-time L2 pragmatic performance and how it emerges from such a mediated process.

KEYWORDS:

• Metapragmatic awareness
• L2 requests
• self-monitoring
• self-evaluation

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Shanghai International Studies University research grant (20161140007). We are also very grateful to the editors and two anonymous reviewers who helped us improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Shanghai International Studies University research grant [grant number 20161140007].

Notes on contributors

Citing Li

Citing Li is an associate professor at the School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University (China). Her research interests include intercultural communication, L2 pragmatics and learner/teacher identities.

Xuesong (Andy) Gao

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is an associate professor at the School of Education, the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests include language leaner strategy, learner autonomy, language policy and language teacher education.