Volume 13, Issue 6 (2023)
LRR 2023, 13(6): 461-510 |
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Shakki F, Neaini J, Mazandarani O, Derakhshan A. A Meta-Analysis on the Instructed Second Language Pragmatics for the Speech Acts of Apology, Request, and Refusal in an Iranian EFL Context. LRR 2023; 13 (6) :461-510
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-56323-en.html
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-56323-en.html
1- Department of English Language Teaching, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran
2- Department of English Language Teaching, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran ,naeini.j@gmail.com
3- Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran
2- Department of English Language Teaching, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran ,
3- Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran
Abstract: (3229 Views)
Considering one of the earliest calls for applying pragmatics in the second language, Kasper and Rose’s (2002) study “Is Pragmatic Teachable?”, pragmatic features have been analyzed during the last 20 years in EFL/ESL contexts. The amalgamation of studies has been conducted on many speech acts around the world within the two decades, among which request, apology, and refusal are considered as the most-appreciated speech acts in Iran. The purpose of the present paper is to unravel the overall effectiveness of the intervention on the speech acts of request, apology, and refusal in an Iranian EFL context. To this aim, out of a total number of 80 studies, 57 papers were chosen based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, which were coded for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the instruction of request, apology, and refusal is effective and generated a mean of (g = 1.43) which is significant, reflecting a quite large gain of instruction. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies.
It is about four decades that pragmatics has been at the center of constant theoretical and empirical attention among the theoretician and practitioners around the world (Derakhshan & Shakki, 2021). In order to appropriately construct and reconstruct the meaning of spoken and written utterances, speakers need to have shared background knowledge. Hence, it may be a burden for a person to convey what she/he intends to communicate in a way that enables the interlocutors to find out it in the way that it was intended.
In a nutshell, teaching and assessing pragmatics are justified on the ground that language learners may encounter difficulties to produce and comprehend language appropriately due to cross-cultural mismatches regarding the linguistic and social appropriacy of target language norms, and negative pragmatic transfer from their L1 to L2, to just name a few (Shakki et al., 2021). More importantly, among those studies which have investigated pragmatic instruction (Derakhshan, 2014; Derakhshan & Arabmofrad, 2018; Derakhshan & Eslami Rasekh, 2015, 2020; Derakhshan & Shakki, 2020a; Derakhshan et al., 2020; Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Kasper & Rose, 1999, 2002; Kasper & Roever, 2005; Martínez-Flor & Alcón-Soler, 2005; Plonsky & Zhuang, 2019), none of them thoroughly synthesized the empirical studies on pragmatics to find the lacuna regarding teachability of the pragmatics.
The amalgamation of mentioned studies has been conducted on many speech acts, among which request, apology, and refusal are recognized as the most-appreciated speech acts in Iran. Due to the lack of adequate meta-analyses on the effectiveness of L2 pragmatic instruction (Derakhshan & Shakki, 2021; Shakki et al., 2021), which is under-researched in an Iranian EFL context, this study aimed to meta-analyze the body of research in L2 pragmatic instruction to check its effectiveness. Considering the substantial prominence of ILP in learning and teaching in EFL contexts, the purpose of the present study, as far as meta-analysis is concerned, is to summarize the magnitude and directions of the effects obtained in a series of empirical studies. The aim is to identify the effectiveness of teaching methods in the instruction of pragmatics in an Iranian context.
Apology, request, and refusal are the speech acts that were investigated in the present study. More specifically, the present study was an attempt to pursue the effectiveness of teaching L2 pragmatics, particularly the speech acts of request, apology, and refusal to EFL learners in an EFL context like Iran. Following a comprehensive search, 80 studies were found to be coded based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria, and in the aggregate, 98 effect sizes reported from the 57 original studies generated a mean of (g = 1.43) which is significant, reflecting a quite large gain of instruction.
Despite the fact that this study may divulge several findings and implications in the field of teaching, and learning of pragmatics, like any other study undertaken so far, the present study is not exempt from limitations as well as delimitations which are enumerated as follows: One limitation is the lack of transparency and subjectivity inherent in this approach. Various reviewers might use different criteria to decide which studies should be included in their review, they may come to contradictory results and opposite conclusions. The second limitation is that the process of the analysis becomes hard and eventually untenable as the number of studies increases whereas a reviewer may be able to synthesize data from a few studies in his/her head. Some of the important studies may be ignored during the data collection, and it can be considered as another limitation. A common limitation of meta-analysis is that researchers combine different sorts of studies (apples and oranges) in the same analysis, so it leads to the argument that the summary effect will ignore possibly important differences across studies. There are still some unpublished studies lying dormant in the researchers’ filing cabinets contributing to the use of the term file drawer problem for meta-analysis which were not included in the current study.
The first delimitation refers to those dimensions of pragmatics that were not included in this investigation. Since pragmatic knowledge includes many more dimensions in each component like speech acts, politeness principles, deixis, conversational structure, presupposition, implicatures, routines, and so on. The present study tried to include the most influential components in ILP which are speech acts, among which request, apology, and refusal were selected to be investigated in this study. Though there appears to be a large amount of research in ILP, the studies which were published between 2000 and early 2020 were included in the present study. One conspicuous delimitation is the number of studies in which instruction was employed and the ones which do not implement instruction were removed from the study. The primary subcategories based on which the current study was conducted can also be extended and other moderator variables can be scrutinized.
Conducting this study brings some implications and suggestions for the researchers whose area of interest is L2 pragmatics. The results may have pivotal pedagogical implications for L2 pragmatics and future research. One of the tremendous implications of this study is that while searching for the speech acts, surprisingly, there were some speech acts that have received no attention such as congratulations, condolences, threats, and challenges, so the researchers may use these untouched areas of English pragmatic instruction for their future studies. The other implication is that the teachers would be able to utilize the most effective treatment types, which led to better performance, comprehension, and production, and they also should take care of other factors such as gender, age, and proficiency level of the learners to have better outcomes. The findings of the present study may be useful for researchers whose area of interest is pragmatics, particularly the speech acts to check the moderator variables which are helpful and predictor in teaching the speech act of request, apology, and refusal.
It is about four decades that pragmatics has been at the center of constant theoretical and empirical attention among the theoretician and practitioners around the world (Derakhshan & Shakki, 2021). In order to appropriately construct and reconstruct the meaning of spoken and written utterances, speakers need to have shared background knowledge. Hence, it may be a burden for a person to convey what she/he intends to communicate in a way that enables the interlocutors to find out it in the way that it was intended.
In a nutshell, teaching and assessing pragmatics are justified on the ground that language learners may encounter difficulties to produce and comprehend language appropriately due to cross-cultural mismatches regarding the linguistic and social appropriacy of target language norms, and negative pragmatic transfer from their L1 to L2, to just name a few (Shakki et al., 2021). More importantly, among those studies which have investigated pragmatic instruction (Derakhshan, 2014; Derakhshan & Arabmofrad, 2018; Derakhshan & Eslami Rasekh, 2015, 2020; Derakhshan & Shakki, 2020a; Derakhshan et al., 2020; Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Kasper & Rose, 1999, 2002; Kasper & Roever, 2005; Martínez-Flor & Alcón-Soler, 2005; Plonsky & Zhuang, 2019), none of them thoroughly synthesized the empirical studies on pragmatics to find the lacuna regarding teachability of the pragmatics.
The amalgamation of mentioned studies has been conducted on many speech acts, among which request, apology, and refusal are recognized as the most-appreciated speech acts in Iran. Due to the lack of adequate meta-analyses on the effectiveness of L2 pragmatic instruction (Derakhshan & Shakki, 2021; Shakki et al., 2021), which is under-researched in an Iranian EFL context, this study aimed to meta-analyze the body of research in L2 pragmatic instruction to check its effectiveness. Considering the substantial prominence of ILP in learning and teaching in EFL contexts, the purpose of the present study, as far as meta-analysis is concerned, is to summarize the magnitude and directions of the effects obtained in a series of empirical studies. The aim is to identify the effectiveness of teaching methods in the instruction of pragmatics in an Iranian context.
Apology, request, and refusal are the speech acts that were investigated in the present study. More specifically, the present study was an attempt to pursue the effectiveness of teaching L2 pragmatics, particularly the speech acts of request, apology, and refusal to EFL learners in an EFL context like Iran. Following a comprehensive search, 80 studies were found to be coded based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria, and in the aggregate, 98 effect sizes reported from the 57 original studies generated a mean of (g = 1.43) which is significant, reflecting a quite large gain of instruction.
Despite the fact that this study may divulge several findings and implications in the field of teaching, and learning of pragmatics, like any other study undertaken so far, the present study is not exempt from limitations as well as delimitations which are enumerated as follows: One limitation is the lack of transparency and subjectivity inherent in this approach. Various reviewers might use different criteria to decide which studies should be included in their review, they may come to contradictory results and opposite conclusions. The second limitation is that the process of the analysis becomes hard and eventually untenable as the number of studies increases whereas a reviewer may be able to synthesize data from a few studies in his/her head. Some of the important studies may be ignored during the data collection, and it can be considered as another limitation. A common limitation of meta-analysis is that researchers combine different sorts of studies (apples and oranges) in the same analysis, so it leads to the argument that the summary effect will ignore possibly important differences across studies. There are still some unpublished studies lying dormant in the researchers’ filing cabinets contributing to the use of the term file drawer problem for meta-analysis which were not included in the current study.
The first delimitation refers to those dimensions of pragmatics that were not included in this investigation. Since pragmatic knowledge includes many more dimensions in each component like speech acts, politeness principles, deixis, conversational structure, presupposition, implicatures, routines, and so on. The present study tried to include the most influential components in ILP which are speech acts, among which request, apology, and refusal were selected to be investigated in this study. Though there appears to be a large amount of research in ILP, the studies which were published between 2000 and early 2020 were included in the present study. One conspicuous delimitation is the number of studies in which instruction was employed and the ones which do not implement instruction were removed from the study. The primary subcategories based on which the current study was conducted can also be extended and other moderator variables can be scrutinized.
Conducting this study brings some implications and suggestions for the researchers whose area of interest is L2 pragmatics. The results may have pivotal pedagogical implications for L2 pragmatics and future research. One of the tremendous implications of this study is that while searching for the speech acts, surprisingly, there were some speech acts that have received no attention such as congratulations, condolences, threats, and challenges, so the researchers may use these untouched areas of English pragmatic instruction for their future studies. The other implication is that the teachers would be able to utilize the most effective treatment types, which led to better performance, comprehension, and production, and they also should take care of other factors such as gender, age, and proficiency level of the learners to have better outcomes. The findings of the present study may be useful for researchers whose area of interest is pragmatics, particularly the speech acts to check the moderator variables which are helpful and predictor in teaching the speech act of request, apology, and refusal.
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