Exploring International Students' Pragmatic Choices And Social Networks In The Study Abroad Context In China

The past few decades has witnessed a rise of interest in the development of second language(L2)pragmatic competence in the study abroad context.While L2 pragmatic development in the study abroad context has been identified as a non-lineal and multifaceted process that involved the complex interplay between various contextual and individual dynamics,how it is mediated by the interactions between learners' social networks and their pragmatic choices remains a desideratum.To address this gap,the study drew on language socialization theory(Ochs & Schieffelin,1984)and adopted an egocentric network perspective(Halgin & Borgatti,2012)to examine how L2 Chinese learners' personal networks intersect with their choices of request strategies.The study was conducted at an internationally recognized university in the east of China.Eight international students enrolled in different programs with varied national backgrounds,length of stay,and Chinese language proficiency were recruited.Multiple data sources were collected from participants at three time points over a year,including Study Abroad Network Questionnaire,role-plays,retrospective verbal reports,ethnographic interviews,observational field notes and social media posts.Data analysis indicated that students demonstrated a general tendency of convergence towards the native speaker norms regarding the directness level of requests but divergence in choices of external modification and internal modification strategies.Data analysis also showed that students developed personal networks of different compositional and structural features,which could be categorized into homogeneous and dense network,heterogeneous and loose network,and balanced network in terms of heterogeneity and density.Finally,based on three representative cases,the study revealed that learners' pragmatic subjectivity mediated the interactions between pragmatic choices and social networks and that these three constructs were interconnected in the pragmatic socialization process in the study abroad context.Based on the above findings,the study provided implications for education practitioners,researchers and study-abroad learners and made suggestions for future research on L2 pragmatic development in the study abroad context.