For proper assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of language disorders in Mandarin children, it is important to have measures that closely track the course of normal development. The current study uses a large collection of spontaneous conversational language samples to track the developmental course of five language measures: mean length of…

We investigated the effect of part of speech adoption on the utterance length of Mandarin-speaking children. A total of 209 typically developing Taiwanese children aged 3-6 years participated in the study. They included 90 boys and 119 girls recruited from preschools in Miaoli City, New Taipei City, and Taipei City. We collected children's…

This article aims to analyze discourse about professional development in preschool, represented by knowledge movements in meta-conversations about peer counseling. Empirically, this article presents a case study based on audio recordings of focus group discussions on peer counseling. The underlying study highlights findings in the form of various…

The significance of producing socially appropriate utterances, not just linguistically correct ones, has given rise to a plethora of studies on speech acts. In this regard, the performance of second and foreign language learners against the norms of the target language and the factors affecting them have yet to be thoroughly investigated. To…

Pragmatic identity has received much attention in pragmatic studies. However, few studies have examined teacher's pragmatic identity construction in the "shuoke" context. "Shuoke" is a teaching activity in which a teacher explains the teaching design and process to colleagues or experts for feedbacks. To address this research…

Health professionals who come from different cultural backgrounds are required to interact competently and at the most acceptable communication level that meets the demands of the multicultural context in which English is the medium of communication. Lack of proper communication in such contexts can establish a hostile work environment. Thus,…

Numerous language-learning variables play a crucial role in students' pragmatic competence development. However, amongst many of these variables, factors like age, gender, and proficiency level have not been extensively researched. Specifically, domains like Motivation and its role in pragmatic development are understudied. This study aims to…

This study investigates the three speech act strategies of request, suggestion and apology in Libyan Arab EFL undergraduate students (AREFLUS) and Amazigh EFL undergraduate students (AMEFLUS). It also examines their linguistic and pragmatic competence in these strategies. Two Libyan universities (Sebha and Zwara) are selected for the study, which…

The main aim of the present study is to build knowledge and understanding regarding the linguistic use of hedging by Malaysian speakers of English in academic spoken discourse and, more specifically, doctorate students presenting their thesis in the candidature defense. It looks not only to describe the specific nature of spoken academic hedging…

This article examined salutation as a valued and nuanced socio-cultural practice that serves the purpose of socially positioning interactants and impacting on face negotiations in interaction in Nigeria. This was done with the aim of demonstrating its significance in the shaping and ordering of naturally occurring interaction. The data for the…

The study focuses on the strategies English as a foreign language (EFL) learners choose to take on in requests without evaluating them against the norm of a native speaker, as the concept of native speaker is ideologically problematic in the time of super-diversity. The study uses cultural scripts proposed in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics…

A growing body of literature has investigated impoliteness in many domains. Nevertheless, little research has examined impoliteness done by foreign language learners. Impoliteness used in interlanguage complaints by English as a foreign language learners was observed. The effects of interlocutors' different status levels and social distance on the…

This study is an attempt to explore the frequency of pragmatic content occurrence represented as three speech acts of requesting, refusing, and apologizing in global and local English Language Teaching (ELT) textbooks. Three global elementary ELT textbooks, namely "Interchange, Top Notch," and "American English File" along with…

The main objective of this study was to investigate the refusal speech act among Omani EFL college students. It examined how they refused in various situations and whether their responses were appropriate in terms of culture and accurate in terms of language. Forty-one English as foreign language (EFL) learners completed a Discourse Completion…