The issue of teaching pragmatics in foreign and second language classrooms has received a lot of attention in the recent years. Its origins can be dated back to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSRAP) led by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) and the research on interlanguage speech acts that followed (for a comprehensive…

The paper discusses World Englishes (WEs) in relation to English as an International Language (EIL) and Applied Linguistics. Taking into account Kachru's interesting but at the same time controversial debate about the status of English in its varieties, which are commonly called WEs and the opposing ideas presented by Quirk, it is aimed to present…

Because the appearance of the passive construction varies cross linguistically, differences exist in the interlanguage (IL) passives attempted by learners of English. One such difference is the widely studied IL pseudo passive, as in "*new cars must keep inside" produced by Chinese speakers. The belief that this is a reflection of L1 language…

Firth and Wagner (1997) questioned the dichotomies nonnative versus native speaker, learner versus user, and interlanguage versus target language, which reflect a bias toward innateness, cognition, and form in language acquisition. Research on lingua franca English (LFE) not only affirms this questioning, but reveals what multilingual communities…

Using role play and verbal-report data, this study investigates the sequential organization of politeness strategies of 24 learners of Spanish and whether the learners' ability to negotiate and mitigate a refusal was influenced by length of residence in the target community. Refusal sequences were examined throughout the interaction head acts,…

Presents a multi-targeted model of interlanguage variation. Advanced learners handle variation differently than native speakers. The establishment of pedagogical norms or classroom replicas of the target language which reflect actual behavior of native speakers, appropriate for foreigners, is stressed. Two variable features of French illustrate…

Discusses politeness strategies used by native and Dutch speakers of Spanish, contrasting the act of making requests by these two groups of speakers. One of the article's conclusions states that native speakers of Spanish are more direct in their requests, and that nonnative speakers attempt to sound less face-threatening and less offensive. (23…