| The paper suggests an integrated model of L2 pragmatics that claims that L2 pragmatic competence is grounded in L2 learners' agency, whereby they employ discursive practices to define and redefine their identities. Grammar is subordinated to the role of tool to express pragmatic messages in an L2. The framework builds on the notion of agency based on poststructuralists' idea of language practices and a Bakhtinian perspective on language use. It seeks to integrate, or rather reconcile, two major approaches to the notion of L2 pragmatics in the modern SLA theory (Firth and Wagner, 2003). The cognitive approach, inspired by the Chomskyan view of L2 pragmatics as an area of communicative performance rather than competence, is found to lack a way of incorporating possible non-linguistic influences on L2 pragmatics. The other, social-anthropological, approach, focusing primarily on learners' individual differences and stemming from Hymesean views developed by Canale and Swain (1980), is seen to pay little attention to the linguistic-system internal dimension of L2 pragmatic ability. To support the model, the proposal reports on a pilot study that shows that participants with similar grammatical competence but different agencies may demonstrate different L2 pragmatic abilities. Inspired by the results of the initial pilot study, the dissertation undertakes a second study, which incorporates concepts from the social psychology research and builds on authentic linguistic data. It involves highly proficient learners of English, who despite their similar grammatical competence show different levels of L2 pragmatic proficiency. The differential success of the participants is explained through the notion of agency and other related components of the suggested integrated model of L2 pragmatics. |
