An Empirical Study On Pragmatic Disfluency In Chinese EFL Learners’ Conversations

In second language acquisition,such disfluencies as pauses and repairs in second language conversations have often been considered to be a sign of L2 learner’s poor oral performance.Nevertheless,just as disfluency is normal in the mother tongue,some cases of disfluency in L2 are not always incurred by lack of adequate L2 competence.Relevant studies indicate that disfluency in a certain context can be a communicative strategy adopted by the speaker to help develop their speeches.Hence,the present dissertation refers to those disfluencies which occur in consideration of pragmatic factors as pragmatic disfluency.The present dissertation makes a thorough and systematic study of disfluency from the pragmatic perspective so as to have an overall examination on the forms and functions of pragmatic disfluency and its implication on English teching and learning.The main research questions are as follows:(1)What are the forms of pragmatic disfluency that occur in Chinese EFL conversations?How can pragmatic disfluency be classified?Compared with native English speakers,what are the similarities and differences in the classification and frequency of pragmatic disfluency?(2)What are the commucative functions pragmatic disfluency can perform in Chinese EFL conversations?Compared with native English speakers,what are the similarities and differences in the types and frequencies of pragmatic disfluency?(3)How pragmatic disfluencies are distributed in the EFL learners’ conversations of different sexes and different L2 levels?What are reflected on L2 learners’pragmatic acquisition?This dissertation first examines various forms of disfluency and classifies it into informational disfluency,linguistic disfluency and pragmatic disfluency according to the dimensions of language use.Informational disfluency refers to those delays and repairs that appear due to abrupt thinking barriers when communicators express their ideas or convey information.Linguistic disfluency points to those interruptions or pauses due to difficulty in a certain linguistic level(phonetic,lexical,syntactic or semantic)or because of their efforts to find the correct forms of some words.Pragmatic disfluency relates to those hesitations or repairs that are used by the speakers in an effort to make their utterances appropriate in a certain context.As for the learners,in order to achieve their aims or intentions,there could be delays or repairs in their conversations due to their consideration of pragmatic factors,such as face and politeness.Then,the present dissertation makes a detailed analysis of pragmatic disfluency with large naturally occurring data from both native speakers and Chinese EFL learners.The main corpora come from the recorded conversations and discussions in and outside of class,i.e.,in the English corner.The participants are the undergraduates of Grade 1 and Grade 3 from two universities in Nangjing and one in Luoyang.This study adopts recorded interviews and 3-rator judgment to ensure a reliable classification and identification of pragmatic disfluency.In order to examine the pragmatic development indicated by the use of pragmatic disfluency,this study adopts contrastive and comparative analysis.That is,this study compares the occurrences of pragmatic disfluency in Chinese EFL learners with those in American native speakers in Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English.Chi-square test is used to judge whether there are significant differences in pragmatic disfluency between the two groups of users.This dissertation,following a discursive pragmatic approach and combining some classic pragmatic theories of context,face as well as politeness,constructs an analytical framework of pragmatic disfluency,which adopts conversation analysis as its main analytical tool.This study examines pragmatic disfluency in L2 Chinese learners’ conversations along three dimensions:the marker forms,classifications and functions of pragmatic disfluency.It demonstrates the relationship between the occurrences of pragmatic disfluency and L2 pragmatic development.This study also discusses the influence of gender and L2 proficiency on the occurrences of L2 pragmatic disfluency.(1)The marker forms of pragmatic disfluency can be classified into two kinds:pure flow delays,such as pauses,fillers and repetitions,and utterance amendments,such as interruptions,insertions,deletions and substitutions.For both American native speakers and Chinese learners,the frequency of pure flow delays is significantly higher than that of utterance amendments.Regarding the causes of pragmatic disfluency,it can be classified into difficulty-induced disfluency and strategy-oriented disfluency.There are significant differences in the frequency of these two types of pragmatic disfluency.The Chinese learners’ frequency of difficulty-induced disfluency is significantly higher than that of American native speakers,while the Chinese learners’ frequency of strategy-oriented disfluency is slightly lower than that of American native speakers.(2)As a strategic resource,pragmatic disfluency can implement not only the function of gaining time,but also such communicative functions as regulating information communication,adjusting discourse organization and modulating interpersonal relations.Statistic analysis indicates that there are no significant differences in the frequency of the three functions.However,Chinese learners use pragmatic disfluency to regualate information communication less frequently than American native speakers,while they use more frequently pragmatic disfluency to adjust conversational organization and modulate interpersonal relations.What’s more,there exists great difference between learners and native speakers in the frequency of some specific sub-functions of pragmatic disfluency.(3)This dissertation shows that the proper use of pragmatic disfluency is a reflection of L2 learners’ pragmatic competence.The features of pragmatic disfluency markers,i.e.,sound fragments without lexical meaning and discourse markers,are themselves the signs of pragmatic competence.From the perspective of one of the norms to measure pragmatic proficiency,i.e.,pragmatic fluency,pragmatic disfluency is not just disfluent,and it can also be positive in developing L2 conversations.What’s more,the use of difficulty-induced disfluency and strategy-oriented difluency,is also an indication of pragmatic competence.Neither L2 proficiency nor gender exerts significant influence on the learners’ use of pragmatic disfluency genearlly.However,on the micro-level,learners of different sexes and L2 proficiency show great differences in the occurrence frequency of specific disfluency markers,different causes of disfluency and certain sub-functions.The present dissertation makes a thorough and systematic study of pragmatic disfluency in terms of form markers,classifications,functions as well as relevant influencing factors,which provides a basic analytical framework for examining pragmatic disfluency.Taking pragmatic disfluency as one of the norms of pragmatic proficiency and the idea that the proper use of pragmatic disfluency is a reflection of pragmatic competence,construct a theoretic framework to research pragmatic disfluency deeper in the future work.What’s more,based on the previous studies,the present dissertation shifts the research perspective of disfluency from linguistic to pragmatic dimension,from focusing on the linguistic problems caused by disfluency(negative influence)to pragmatic strategies(positive role).This shift is of great significance to future research on disfluency.