Why Do Second-Language Learners Misunderstand Conversational Implicatures?

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  • なぜ第二言語学習者は会話の含意を汲み取れないのか

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Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory experiment on interpretation of conversational implicatures in light of discovering possible causes of its misinterpretation in a second language. In the experiment, six candidate elements were investigated as potential risks: misunderstanding of lexical meanings (MEANING), lack of knowledge of the target language's culture (CULTURE), lack of hearer's ability to read contextual relativity (CONTEXT), unawareness of the pragmatic function or meaning (FUNCTION), misunderstanding the meanings in negative forms (NEG), and overall proficiency of the learner. In order to reveal the effect of MEANING, an original instrument was developed for the purpose of measuring perception of six scalar expressions: few, several, good, excellent, easy and difficult. This instrument was combined with an implicature test based on a format implemented by Bouton (1988), in which all test items were designed to incorporate one of the six expressions. Participants were 40 native speakers of American English and 40 Japanese intermediate learners of English. The experiment results suggest that lack of knowledge of cultural norms, differences in pragmatic function or meaning between the target language and native language, and learner proficiency interfere with learners' inference of conversational implicatures.

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