Pragmatic accent: Sociolinguistic and pragmalinguistic examples

Abstract

In this chapter, it is postulated that foreign language users develop a pragmatic accent, which refers to the systematic occurrence of selected pragmatic features in their performance of communication functions in the target language. In the specification of this term, I refer to two related conceptualizations, one by Scarcella (1992) and the other by Yule (1996). I apply the expression coined by Yule to refer to a phenomenon which is parallel to Scarcella’s discourse accent. In order to substantiate this concept, in later sections of this chapter, first, a summary of the interlanguage pragmatic competence research which I conducted is presented. This empirical endeavour showed that even advanced Polish EFL speakers do not fully approximate the native speaker model and instead retain in their pragmatic output a set of pragmatic features which enables their easy identification as nonnative users. In the subsequent sections, the title concept is further exemplified by means of evidence coming from research reports offered by other researchers or coming from other languages.