The acquisition of pragmatics in Spanish as a foreign language: Interpreting and giving advice

Different languages have different ways of communicating the same ideas or speech acts and what may be appropriate in one language may not be so in the other. How learners of a second language acquire not only the linguistic forms, but also the cultural knowledge to conduct themselves appropriately in different social situations is a theoretical issue of interest to applied linguists. The present study investigates if students of Spanish as a foreign language develop the appropriate pragmatic knowledge needed to interpret and give advice. Learners of Spanish at three different levels of language proficiency participated in this study. The learner data are compared to parallel data from native speakers of Spanish from Spain and North American speakers of English.; In order to investigate this speech act, two instruments were created. A written questionnaire in the form of a metapragmatic judgment task was used to collect perceptions of appropriateness for six strategies that can be used to give advice. Role plays were used to collect information about production. The different strategies used to give advice were collapsed into three major categories that represented three levels of directness: direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect. Data were analyzed through statistical procedures and also examined qualitatively.; The findings of this study suggest that native speakers of Spanish and native speakers of English have slightly different views of the three levels of directness and this may affect the learners. Beginning learners of Spanish presented a profile similar to that of native speakers of Spanish in terms of directness, but intermediate and advanced learners showed a profile with more differences. The main differences between learners and NS of Spanish were found in the perception and use of hints or non-conventionally indirect strategies, which seems to be due to transfer from the learners' native language, English.