EDITORIAL

Corpus Pragmatics and Second Language Pragmatics:A Mutualistic Entente in Theory and Practice

Jesus Romero-Trillo1

Received: 29 January 2018 / Accepted: 13 February 2018 / Published online: 26 February 2018

� Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract Ten years after the publication of the volume ‘Pragmatics and corpus

linguistics: a mutualistic entente’ (Romero-Trillo, in: Romero-Trillo (ed) Prag-

matics and corpus linguistics: a mutualistic entente, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin,

2008), this article intends to delve into the mutualistic relationship between Corpus

Pragmatics and Second Language (henceforth L2) Pragmatics. The underlying

hypothesis is that to master an L2 a learner needs to adopt a new social, cultural and

linguistic identity, and that the difficulty during the process is that the pragmatic

features of the L2 do not necessarily match those of the first language (henceforth

L1). This is the reason why, in the process of L2 learning, speakers may reach the

state of pragmatic fossilisation, with a near-to-native grammatical and lexical

competence but with a limited range of pragmatic resources (Romero-Trillo in J

Pragmat 34: 769–784, 2002). Recent studies have benefited from the support of

corpora to investigate L2 learners’ pragmatics as an invaluable tool to test the

constructs of pragmatic theories with real data (Romero-Trillo in Corpus Pragmat 1:

1–2, 2017); Maguire and Romero-Trillo, in: Kecskes, Assimakopoulos (eds) Current

issues in intercultural pragmatics, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2017). The present

study has three objectives: (1) to describe the theoretical concepts behind the notion

of L2 pragmatics with a critical survey of the current literature; (2) to describe how

corpus pragmatics has an overarching function in L2 pragmatic development; and

(3) to analyse some essential insights of L2 pragmatic development, with particular

reference to the role of prosody. The final section will offer suggestions for future

research with practical implications for both theoretical and applied linguists.

& Jesus Romero-Trillo

jesus.romero@uam.es

http://www.jesusromerotrillo.es

1 Departamento de Filologıa Inglesa, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

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Corpus Pragmatics (2018) 2:113–127

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-018-0031-5

Keywords Corpus pragmatics � Pragmatic fossilisation � Prosody � Pragmatic

competence � Adaptive management

Introduction

Corpus pragmatics has been defined as ‘the science that describes language use in

real contexts through corpora’ (Romero-Trillo 2017: 1) and the fast revolution of

this relatively recent discipline shows that linguistics is up-to-date with the

evolution of society. In my opinion, the use of computerised data, the web-as-corpus

data (Kilgarriff and Grefenstette 2003; Fletcher 2012; Biber et al. 2015), the

pervasiveness of social networks, and the use of the big data in linguistics, will

determine the future of pragmatics in the next few years.

What is the role of corpora in L2 pragmatics? Although I will approach this

question from various perspectives, there is a premise in any L2 learning: it is

impossible to master a language with full competence without being exposed to the

corpus of real-life language use. In other words, we should consider corpus

pragmatics not as a tool for analysis, but as an essential element in L2 development.

This intricate relationship between L2 development and the target language as a

corpus is linked to the notion of pragmatic competence, as defined by Thomas

(1983: 92): ‘the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific

purpose and to understand language in context’. Therefore, when we look at corpus

pragmatics and L2 pragmatics, we should investigate, in the first place, the real-life

language that L2 learners use (output), but always in relation with the language that

they are exposed to (input). As a result, the object of corpus pragmatics and L2

pragmatics is to bridge the gap between the language that L2 learners listen to and

the language that they produce.

Learner corpora research started in the late 1980s as a response to the static

analytical approach to investigating how L2 learners express their ideas in a new

linguistic code without paying attention to the linguistic context. Unlike the static

approach, corpus linguistics in L2 studies takes a dynamic approach as it goes

beyond the analysis of what L2 learners produce based on the lexical and

grammatical elements and extends its scope to the analysis of how the real-world

linguistic context influences their production. For this reason, I argue that the

combination of corpus linguistics and L2 pragmatics opens new perspectives

because it focuses on the target language of the real world and L2 learners’ language

in the real world. The contrast between the target and the learners’ language

becomes the basis of analysis to verify whether there are essential differences in the

pragmatic realisations between the two languages.

Learner corpora start following the intuition that it is impossible to investigate

the variety of L2 learners’ production unless a large computerised dataset is

employed (Granger 1994). This intuition was supported by Biber and Conrad

(2010), who argued for the use of corpus data when teaching grammar and

vocabulary to L2 learners. However, as Romer (2011) pointed out, research on the

efficient use of learner corpora is still in its infancy in comparison with the

development of corpus linguistics as a full-fledged discipline.

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Learner corpus studies began with first consistent steps in the early 1990s as an

attempt to understand L2 production in comparison with L1 data (Granger

1993, 1994). One of the significant turning points in the compilation and use of

learner corpora was the research led by Sylviane Granger and her team, who

compiled several written and spoken learner corpora (cf. Granger et al. 2015). Their

seminal work allowed researchers to observe significant differences between the

target language and L2 data, which became evident with the Contrastive

Interlanguage Perspective (Granger 2015). This methodology employs a fine-

grained analysis of L2 speakers’ language patterns in comparison with those of

native speakers, as well as in comparison with L2 speakers of different L1’s.

Following this approach, Gilquin et al. (2008) conducted a contrastive interlanguage

analysis in L2 English in which they compared linguistic patterns in native speaker

corpora with comparative data from multilingual corpora.

Two of the most well-known L2 corpora of English, both directed by Granger,

are the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) (Granger et al. 2009) (which

marked the start in the now established compilation of written learner corpora) and

the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (henceforth

LINDSEI) (Gilquin et al. 2010). These two corpora include data from L2 speakers

of English worldwide, and both were compiled with comparable features and

guidelines. All participants filled out a learner profile questionnaire with relevant

information about their linguistic background, and, in the case of the ICLE, all the

participants contributed with either an argumentative essay or a literature exam

paper. The corpus contains data of students from over 25 countries. The LINDSEI

corpus involved spoken data of advanced learners of English from over 20 different

countries. The data came from three tasks: a topic-based discussion, a free

discussion, and a picture description.

To investigate the development of the L2 from a pragmatic perspective, Romero-

Trillo and Llinares-Garcıa (2008) compiled notable learner corpus is the Univer-

sidad Autonoma de Madrid-Learner English Spoken Corpus (UAMLESC). This

corpus consists of a longitudinal video-recorded corpus of classroom interaction of

school children learning English as a foreign language in different types of

educational contexts in Madrid. The recordings took place between 1998 and 2006

and started when the children were 5-years-old. The kinds of school programmes

ranged from full-immersion English schools and bilingual schools to schools that

offered English as a second language. Socio linguistic and socio-economic

characteristics of the participants were recorded during the corpus compilation

process.

The Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, based at Universite Catholique de

Louvain, has updated information about learner corpora that have been completed

around the world. The long list of projects shows the development of corpus

linguistics as research tools for analysing L2 written and spoken data. Nowadays

students and teachers are already making use of real corpora in their daily tasks if

we consider web-searchers as valid elements of corpus-search. In my opinion, the

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real challenge is to collect and systematise the L2 speakers’ production into more

accessible corpora to compare L2 and L1 pragmatic competence.

Theoretical and Methodological Benchmarks of Corpus Pragmatics in L2Research

At an early stage, the objective of learner corpus research was mainly concerned

with the identification of the linguistic elements that were either overused or

underused by learners in comparison with those of native speakers (Granger 2002).

Obviously, this objective called for a quantitative analysis of the learner and native

speaker linguistic output by considering the native speaker usage as the norm. The

researcher’s aim was to look for the deviations of L2 patterns from the norm without

considering any contextual or pragmatic features. However, this approach offered a

pessimistic view of the learners’ performance and did not consider the complexity

of L2 learners’ language use and development in context. In fact, some scholars like

Ishihara and Cohen (2010) claimed that learner corpora were not informative

enough for the study of L2 pragmatic development without the information of

contexts and speakers’ backgrounds. This concern was also shared by Callies and

Paquot (2015), who described learner corpora research as interdisciplinary work,

attending to different areas of linguistic analysis to have a full picture of the L2

development process.

From a methodological perspective, Callies (2013) contrasts the use of learner

corpora with L2 data elicitation techniques. Learner corpora consist of authentic,

systematic and representative collections of spoken and written language produced

by L2 learners. This methodology contrasts with the traditional data elicitation

techniques that are based on task-oriented questionnaires (e.g., discourse completion

tests) or heavily context-bound exercises that limit the learners’ freedom of

expression (e.g., closed role plays).

In this sense one example of a systematic collection of L2 spoken data is the

Corpus of Language and Nature (Romero-Trillo 2013) in which the participants

describe 24 photographs showing natural landscapes. The corpus has been compiled

to investigate L2 English speakers’ linguistic responses to the perception of natural

landscapes and, for that purpose, the corpus collection methodology is based on the

theoretical tenets of landscape ecology and on their interpretation in linguistic terms

(Romero-Trillo and Espigares 2012). The combination of landscape variables in the

selection of (e.g., humid vs. dry, and domesticated vs. undomesticated landscapes),

with the biographical, linguistic and geographical origin of the participants that

were recorded via questionnaire, is the basis of the analysis of the descriptions of

photographs. The corpus data (i.e., audio and video recorded) is later subjected to

statistical analyses to examine the relationship between the linguistic characteristics

of the data and the other variables. Results generate interesting insights both for L2

pragmatics and landscape ecology (Romero-Trillo and Espigares 2015).

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Adaptive Management in L2: the Polyhedric Pragmatic Model

To gain a full perspective on pragmatic development, we need to consider L2

pragmatics research from two perspectives—pragmalinguistics and sociopragmat-

ics, which do not necessarily run parallel but are complementary to each other.

Following Leech (1983) and Thomas (1995), Schneider (2014: 114) states that

‘pragmalinguistics deals with the linguistic resources of a language which can be

employed to serve a specific communicative function’ and ‘sociopragmatics…examines the social circumstances under which a particular speech act can be

performed’. In other words, to understand the whole array of pragmatic nuances that

are present in the L1 and L2 of any speaker, we need to make a pragmalinguistic

and sociopragmatic investigation combined, which constitutes the essence of L2

pragmatic research.

In addition to pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, we need a comprehensive

model that captures the process of communication from a pragmatics perspective.

To illustrate the relationship between what is said and what is meant in a given

interaction, which is the essence of pragmatics, we must emphasise that the origin of

a communicative act is in the speaker’s intention to say something, which is then

realised in different ways by different speakers depending on the specific linguistic,

cognitive, contextual and social parameters of participants in an interaction. This

relationship is represented in Fig. 1, which represents what I have described as the

polyhedric pragmatic model, in which the speaker takes into account all the factors

that intervene in a communicative act in the course of milliseconds.

The polyhedric pragmatic model illustrates how pragmatic competence is

circular and multidimensional, in a sense that all the elements in it are mutually

informative. The most important factor is that the information provided by each

Inten�on

Linguis�c conven�ons

Cogni�onContext

Social conven�ons

Fig. 1 The polyhedric pragmatic model for L1 speakers

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component has positive feedback and cumulative effect on the other elements, as

they all play a mutually essential role and contribute to the final communicative act.

In the case of L2 learners, the polyhedric pragmatic model has a different

structure as it follows a continuum that starts from the pragmatic competence of

learners’ L1 and evolves towards the native-like competence. This development

incorporates in each of its stages the richness of all the parameters that are specific

to L1, as illustrated in Fig. 2.

While in L1 pragmatics the process from intention to the production of the

intention is rather straightforward, in L2 pragmatics, the learners’ L1 affects the

communication process. Therefore, L2 speakers must adjust their communicative

intention to a new (target) language and must frame the message within a new

linguistic, cognitive, contextual, and social scenario. This process presents several

challenges to L2 learners, as pragmatic information is not always represented in

linguistic forms, but is often contextually encoded. In fact, it is noticeable that

the development of grammatical, lexical, and phonological knowledge in the L2

does not usually make progress in unison with the development of pragmatic

competence in L2. This phenomenon has been described as ‘pragmatic

fossilisation’ (Romero-Trillo 2002), and results from the absence of exposure

to authentic target language input. Corpus pragmatics can serve as an essential

tool to compensate for the limited exposure to the target language because it

provides genuine, representative, and contextualised discourse for language

instruction (Romero-Trillo 2017).

How do L2 learners overcome pragmatic fossilisation and develop pragmatic

competence? This can be achieved through a mechanism that I call ‘adaptive

management’. Adaptive management has been defined as follows:

Inten�on

Linguis�c conven�ons

Cogni�onContext

Social conven�ons

L1 P

ragm

atic

Com

pete

nce

L2 Pragmatic C

ompetence

Fig. 2 The polyhedric pragmatic model for L2 learners

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The capacity of a speaker to adapt the grammatical, lexical and pragmatic

parameters of discourse through a series of remedial elements and a principled

process, to comply with the demands of a new cognitive stage in a

conversation via a cognitive standardised process. (Romero-Trillo 2007: 83).

In other words, adaptive management can be described as the linguistic mechanism

used by participants in an interaction to prevent misunderstanding and to establish

remedial mechanisms with the aim of liaising the speaker and the listener’s

cognitive status in the case of communication failure.

More specifically, adaptive management allows the interlocutors to communicate

successfully through a revision, adaptation, and contextualisation process that

allows them to understand the speaker’s communicative intention. In this

framework, the interpretation of possible meanings in a given situation is carried

out through the process of ‘contextual sifting’, which is defined as the ‘process of

cognitive filtering that leaves out the incorrect assumptions in a given communica-

tive situation, and sieves through the correct elements to guarantee successful

communication’ (Romero-Trillo and Lenn 2011: 234).

As can be seen in Fig. 3, adaptive management is always functioning in L2

speakers to feed the necessary polyhedric information into the new pragmatic

system. The pragmatic, discursive, and social interpretation of reality by L2

speakers is always different from that of L1 speakers. Therefore, L2 speakers need

to use adaptive management to avoid misunderstanding and to encode/decode all

elements of a message.

Corpus Pragmatics enables L2 learners and teachers to identify the pragmatic

factors that can facilitate adaptive management to avoid misunderstanding and

Adap�ve Management

Inten�on

Linguis�c conven�ons

Cogni�onContext

Social conven�ons

L1 P

ragm

atic

Com

pete

nce

L2 Pragmatic C

ompetence

Fig. 3 Adaptive management and pragmatic competence for L2 speakers

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pragmatic fossilisation. For example, using the UAMLESC corpus, Romero-Trillo

(2015a) investigated the use of specific pragmatic markers, and of their prosodic

realisation, as turn-starters in the conversation of L1 English speakers and how they

contribute to adaptive management. He found that the appearance of topic starters (a

type of pragmatic markers) in the native English speaker corpus contrasted with

those produced by native English teachers regarding frequency and distribution.

Corpus Pragmatics, therefore, can help compare patterns of pragmatic language use

between the classroom and real-life settings. Similarities and differences gleaned

from the comparison can be applied to L2 instruction. We can identify critical

pragmatic elements that promote adaptive management and reduce pragmatic

fossilisation in L2 speakers. Adaptive management is, therefore, the mechanism that

adapts the original pragmatic competence to the new pragmatic competence in the

target language.

Empirical Findings

When analysing L2 learners’ language use from the corpus pragmatics perspective,

researchers typically follow an analogous methodology to that employed in L1

corpus pragmatics by combining a quantitative analysis of a large amount of data

and a qualitative study of a small dataset. Since it is beyond the scope of this article

to review all available findings in L2 pragmatics, the primary concern in this section

is to trace important synergies that have gradually emerged between L2 pragmatics

and Corpus Pragmatics, and that have fostered new research trajectories.

Traditionally, a drawback of the pragmatic analysis using corpora resided in the

fact that there is often a lack of sufficient amount of tagged information about social

and textual contexts, and thus, it was not always easy to infer the real contextual

features of the texts. However, in recent years, this drawback has been addressed in

many corpora that include detailed descriptions about the social, geographical and

personal backgrounds of participants. Including such contextual information is

fundamental to the credibility of the analysis conducted quantitatively and

qualitatively.

The standard model of corpus research in L2 pragmatics consists of what is

labelled as the comparative method, i.e., identifying a pragmatic function and

searching for linguistic and non-linguistic elements (e.g., words, phrases, interjec-

tions, and silences), which are used to realise the particular function. Specific

software is frequently employed to illustrate the contextualization of the pragmatic

elements or pragmatic functions in the corpora. Researchers can also carry use

inferential statistics to determine whether L2 speakers overuse, underuse or

maintain the patterns of the pragmatic elements and functions under study in

comparison with L1 speakers, or between different groups of L2 learners. For

example, using five L1 spoken English corpora and three L2 English corpora,

Glabasova et al. (2017) tried to account for the statistical reliability, comparability

and representativeness of the comparative method by exploring alternative methods

to frequency-based analysis, with particular attention to interspeaker variation. In

other studies, several mathematical models such as specificity indexes have been

used explicitly for pragmatic analysis by combining qualitative and quantitative

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information obtained from the corpus data (Romero-Trillo 2001, 2015b). These

mathematical models have an advantage over frequency counts because they

interpret the reliability of the pragmatic data vis-a-vis their representation within a

corpus and, sometimes, across corpora.

Corpus Pragmatics approach to L2 pragmatics research has proved fruitful as

seen in an increasing number of studies in this area, as in the case of pragmatic

markers in L1 and L2 corpora. Pragmatic markers perform different communicative

functions in speech and have different frequency distributions across languages.

Buysse (2015) carried out a comparative analysis of the pragmatic marker ‘well’

among L2 learners of English in the Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Chinese

sections of the LINDSEI corpus. He compared her findings with Aijmer’s (2011)

findings for the Swedish component of LINDSEI and a reference native speaker

corpus, where she found that the pragmatic marker ‘well’ was more frequent in the

learner corpora than in the native speaker corpus, except for learners with L1

Chinese background. Amongst the reasons for these results, the author emphasises

the L2 speakers’ limited repertoire of pragmatic markers, their extensive exposure

to well, L1 interference, and the linguistic context.

Other studies examined the use of general extenders, such as ‘and stuff’, ‘or

something’ in L2 speakers. Buysse (2014), for instance, investigated their use in the

speech of Dutch learners of L2 English by comparing learners’ use with native

English speaker’ use. The study explored how Dutch learners of English use general

extenders such as ‘and stuff’ and ‘or something’ in comparison with the use of these

elements by native speakers of English. The results revealed the quantitative

similarity between the two groups of speakers, but also discrepancies from a

qualitative perspective. The suggested reasons for this difference were L1 transfer,

the intensity of exposure to the target language, and the learners’ restricted

repertoire of pragmatic devices.

Diskin (2017) investigated the pragmatic marker ‘like’ in the speech of Polish

and Chinese migrants in Dublin. The study investigated the frequency of ‘like’ and

its position within the clause in relation to its pragmatic function. Results showed

that the length of residence had a more significant impact on in the similar

frequency of the marker in the two groups, while proficiency in English was not the

significant factor, suggesting the essential role of L1 exposure.

In the case of Spanish as an L2, Campillos and Gozalo (2014) analysed the use of

discourse markers among learners of L2 Spanish of different L10s in a spoken

corpus compared to the use of the markers in a corpus of L1 Spanish speakers. Their

analysis investigates the use of the most frequent markers in the two groups and

compares the influence of the linguistic competence of the learners (they had A2

and B1 levels according to the European Framework of Reference) with the

realisation of the markers by the Spanish speakers. Their results show it is not only

the linguistic competence but also the influence of the learners’ L1, what determines

the use of discourse markers in the L2.

While pragmatic markers and discourse markers have dominated the literature,

speech acts have also been the object of L2 corpus pragmatics research. For

instance, Carretero et al. (2014) investigated the use of expressive speech acts in

online task-oriented interaction by L2 speakers of English. Their data comes from

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an e-forum history online collaborative writing corpus, and their results confirm the

importance of expressive speech acts in online communication.

As regards the relationship between pragmatic markers and adaptive manage-

ment, some studies have shown that markers such as ‘you know’, ‘I mean’, and ‘you

see’ prototypically realise adaptive management in native speakers of English, as

they prefer using overt adaptive management expressions such as ‘Do you see what

I mean?’ and ‘Do you understand what I mean?’ to check understanding, especially

when misunderstanding appeared during the conversation (Romero-Trillo and Lenn

2011).

In this sense, several corpus-based studies have generated implications for

teaching pragmatics, emphasising the need to raise L2 learners’ (meta) pragmatic

awareness using corpora. For example, Ifantidou (2013a: 93) proposes a revision of

the notion of pragmatic awareness ‘in terms of an open-ended array of pragmatically

inferred implicatures rather than a fixed set of routines (e.g. speech acts) or isolated

implicatures’. Her approach is further developed in Ifantidou (2013b: 116) by

highlighting the difference between pragmatic awareness, ‘the ability to retrieve (or

produce) pragmatically inferred effects in the form of implicated conclusions’, and

metapragmatic awareness (Ifantidou, 2013b: 117), i.e., ‘the ability to meta-represent

the link between pragmatic effects retrieved and relevant linguistic markers used as

a guide into pragmatic meaning by means of appropriate metalinguistic terms’. In

this sense, metapragmatic awareness would be an essential element in L2 instruction

as a tool to identify how pragmatic information is realised in the L2 in contrast with

the L1. In the same vein, Llinares-Garcıa and Romero-Trillo (2008) carried out a

detailed analysis of the function of the English discourse markers used by native and

non-native teachers in history classes of a CLIL programme in Madrid and

compared the results with the markers used by native teachers of Spanish in history

classes. The corpus results show that L2 teachers in a CLIL context use more

markers than in their L1 teaching and, also, a higher number (three times on

average) than CLIL English native teachers. These results have clear implications

on the language input that students taught by non-native English teachers receive,

represented in this case in the frequency, diversity and distribution of pragmatic

markers and of the functions that they realise.

Corpora can be essential to raise pragmatic awareness both in teachers and in L2

learners because they help to obtain a direct and multifaceted representation of the

use of real language in the L1 context. In fact, I agree with Taguchi and Roever

(2017) when they state that formal teaching environments constitute the best second

language learning environments to date, so there is an urgent need to promote a

sociopragmatic-cum-pragmalinguistic approach in the class and the teaching

materials.

For example, Furniss (2016) suggests that one of the critical questions in L2

development is the difficulties that learners have in the identification of the

formulaic phrases that can realise several pragmatic functions, because in many

cases these may be different from those in their L1. The underlying idea is that

repetition of spoken formulae is not enough to enact (meta) pragmatic awareness as

formulaic expressions can appear in different contexts with various functions.

Corpus linguistics can help teachers and learners in the systematic identification and

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use of these formulaic expressions, so they can be introduced in pedagogic materials

and can even be tailored to students’ needs according to proficiency levels.

Another crucial element in the pragmatics of the L2 is the use of accurate

prosodic awareness and production. In my opinion, prosody is a fundamental tool

for the understanding and the creation of context. Prosody is a dynamic component

in conversation that conveys the necessary pragmatic information to identify the

speaker’s emotions, attitudes and communicative intention. The mismatch between

grammatical and prosodic choices often results in anomalous communication and,

even, in deficient social rapport.

For this reason, the appropriate use of prosodic information guarantees fluent

communication regarding adaptive management and is essential to avoid misun-

derstanding or clarification requests. In this sense, L2 speakers must pay particular

attention to the use of differing-and sometimes multiple-prosodies of the target

language in comparison with their L1. Research on the pragmatics of prosody is

critical for the development of teaching materials and teacher training (Riesco-

Bernier 2012).

Prosodic pragmatics research in learner corpora can help L2 learners not only to

acquire native-like competence in speaking but also to avoid miscommunication or

any ‘performance insecurity’ when interacting with native speakers. Furthermore,

understanding prosody can help L2 speakers to process information correctly when

prosodic cues are monitored and understood correctly. For example, Riesco-Bernier

and Romero-Trillo (2008) investigated the relationship between the assignment of

tonicity and the identification of ‘‘given’’ and ‘‘new’’ information in the UAMLESC.

Specifically, the study investigated if tonic elements only convey ‘‘new’’

information in the classroom context and if the duration and fundamental frequency

of the tonics corresponded to different degrees of information. The results showed

that 42.8% of the tonics conveyed ‘‘given’’ information in teacher talk. This changes

the traditional notion of tonicity and introduces the genre aspect by which it could

be said that tonics will also convey ‘‘given’’ information in pedagogic discourse. In

the case of the realisation of tones in question tags, Ramırez-Verdugo and Romero-

Trillo (2005) proved that non-native speakers use rising tone similarly to native

speakers when the tag questions express uncertainty. However, they overgeneralize

this rising tone also to tags where a falling contour would be required to accomplish

the intended message. The result, therefore, is that pragmatic meaning differs in

native and non-native discourse in the use of falling-tone question tags.

Finally, corpora can be an excellent tool to improve L2 prosodic competence

(Trouvain et al. 2017), if proper instruction is given to language teachers. As regards

L2 teacher training possibilities, Ramırez-Verdugo (2008) investigated the prosodic

realisation of directives and its pragmatic effects in classroom discourse by native

and non-native teachers of English. She analyses the intonation patterns used in

scripted dialogues in comparison with the patterns used in natural classroom

discourse in the UAMLESC. The results reveal the existence of prosodic differences

in the choice of intonation patterns produced by the two language groups in reading

aloud and naturalistic speech, and hence, variations on the pragmatic meaning

transmitted in similar communicative contexts. These results can confirm the

essential role of prosody in L2 pragmatics and the possibilities of using the language

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class production as a corpus to improve teaching practices and materials (Romero-

Trillo 2012).

Conclusions: What’s Next?

Pragmatics was defined in its early steps as ‘the science of language use’ (Haberland

and Mey 1977: 1). Nowadays the discipline has evolved significantly and can boast

well-established research domains like cognitive pragmatics (Schmid 2012),

developmental pragmatics (Kasper and Rose 2003), intercultural pragmatics

(Kecskes 2014), or clinical pragmatics (Cummings 2017), inter alia. (cf. Huang

2017 for a comprehensive overview of pragmatics). In this sense, I think that the

discipline is witnessing the start of a new epoch featured by corpus pragmatics that

is bound to have an overarching impact on all subfields of the discipline.

As the article has shown, current corpus L2 research is now delving into ground-

breaking aspects of pragmatic communication, and the results show that many

pragmatic intuitions can be proven in L2 contexts with the aid of corpora. The five

research avenues that I envisage are the following:

1. There is a need to establish a close relationship between L2 pragmatics research

and second language teaching. Currently, L2 pragmatics research is gaining

scientific stature as it emphasises the relationship between communicating in an

L2 and the contextual parameters modelling the interaction. It seems to me that

second language teaching can benefit from the current findings and, at the same

time, become an essential input in the development of teaching materials.

2. Theoretical pragmatics and L2 pragmatics must engage in more intense active

collaboration to try and apply the theoretical constructs of the former on the

theoretical and practical practices of the latter. In this sense, L2 pragmatics can

surely be a source of information for theoretical pragmatics as some of its

current tenets may have to be modified when discussing L2 pragmatic

development.

3. Up to now most statistical tests in L2 corpus pragmatics are based on hypothesis

testing and typically employ parametric tests for normal distributions and non-

parametric tests for non-normal distributions. However, advances in statistics

have shown that Generalised Linear Models (GLM) techniques allow for more

accuracy in the analysis of non-parametric data, as they can explain better the

changes of response variables by a variety of explanatory variables that do not

need to conform with a normal distribution. GLM techniques are becoming

more frequent in corpus pragmatics and will undoubtedly be important in the

future evolution of L2 corpus pragmatics too. However, the availability of the

big data will always have to be parallel to the detailed inspection on the use of

language in context, which is at the core of the pragmatic analysis.

4. I think that the fourth research avenue is the extensive implementation of

prosody and multimodality in L2 pragmatics. Corpus pragmatics is increasingly

improving annotation techniques in L1 corpora to be able to identify both

prosodic and multimodal features that constitute essential tools in

124 J. Romero-Trillo

123

communication. The application of these annotation techniques to the L2

corpora, with the difficulties that this process convey due to the lack of accuracy

of the L2 speakers in many respects, will undoubtedly lead to fascinating results

on how L2 pragmatic performance compares with that of L1 speakers.

5. The last research avenue relates to the expression of emotions in the L2 as a

fundamental element of pragmatic performance. Most of the information load

that we convey in our L1 is filtered through our emotions. In other words, we

can say that language is ancillary to our emotions and feelings, and vice versa.

The question is: how do L2 speakers realise emotions through pragmatic

marking? Are L2 speakers able to express their feelings with the same force as

they do in their L1? Is the pragmatics of emotions teachable? This is an open

question that will inevitably need interdisciplinary collaboration with other

sciences such as psychology and neurobiology that will surely provide new

evidence on how corpus pragmatics is at the forefront of L2 research.

Funding This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economıa y Competitividad (Spain) under Grant

FFI2016-75160-R.

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