Motivation and Second Language Pragmatics: A Regulatory Focus Perspective

This study investigates how learners’ chronic motivational characteristics, that is their regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997), can account for differences in L2 pragmatic production in general and across situations with different levels of power, social distance, and imposition. One-hundred-twenty-one L1-Mandarin learners of English as a second language completed a regulatory focus questionnaire and a discourse completion task focusing on two types of speech acts: request and opinion. Multiple regression results showed that learners’ promotion focus, concerned with advancement, growth, accomplishments, positively predicted their pragmatic production in general, and especially in situations where the learner is subject to a higher degree of imposition, has lower power and is socially distant from the interlocutor. On the other hand, the prevention focus, which is concerned with safety, security, and calmness, negatively predicted pragmatic production, especially in those situations. The findings provide support for the role of motivational dispositions in the level of learners’ L2 pragmatic competence. Theoretical and instructional implications are discussed.

Interlanguage Pragmatic Motivation in EFL Context

This research sets out to explore the Interlanguage pragmatic motivation in EFL to their pragmatic production. This research is focus on the construct and impact of Interlanguage pragmatic motivation in EFL to their pragmatic production. The participants of the study were the university students chosen randomly from among intermediate EFL learners. There are three instruments in this study; there will be different types of analyses. Both general and speech-act-specific motivation questionnaires will be analysed by using factor analysis on a five-point Likert scale (1-5). Skewness and kurtosis will be calculated to investigate whether the questionnaires and the WDCT items fell within the normal range. Regression analysis will be done to measure how well general pragmatic motivation and Speech-act-specific motivation could predict pragmatic production. Several conclusions can be drawn from the resent study. First, language learners possess a specific type of motivation for the acquisition of interlanguage pragmatics, called pragmatic motivation, which refers to two interrelated types of motivation: general pragmatic motivation and speech-act-specific motivation. Second, EFL learners are strongly motivated to acquire and develop English pragmatic features, i.e. their pragmatic motivation is high; however, they do not have the necessary pragmatic knowledge. Third, predicting EFL learners’ pragmatic production based on their speech-act-specific motivation is somehow possible since both pragmatic production and speech-act-specific motivation focus on learners’ illocutionary competence, i.e. language functions and speech acts.