Theoretical Foundation

Abstract

Within the domain of L2 pragmatics, investigations are often conducted to address a research topic, which then refers to existing theories. The theoretical underpinning for pragmatic competence of routines will be reviewed in this chapter from many angles, including L2 pragmatics, second language acquisition (SLA), and the socio-cognitive approach.

3.1 Second Language Pragmatics

3.1.1 L2 Pragmatics

Selinker (1972) defined the terminology “interlanguage” as a standard SLA term, referring to “the systematic knowledge of an L2, independent of both these learners’ L1 and the target language” (Ellis, 2013: 968). Interlanguage pragmatics, a covered interface term synonymous with “second language (L2) pragmatics”, primarily refers to “a later-learned language both in a naturalistic environment and instructional settings” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 27). It is classified as a branch of SLA by Kasper and Dahl (1991: 216) because it focuses on non-native speakers’ “comprehension and production of speech acts, and how their L2-related speech act knowledge is acquired”. It is under the purview of pragmatics and SLA. Kasper and Schmidt (1996: 150) defined it as the “study of the development and use of strategies for linguistic action by non-native speakers”. Then, Kasper and Rose (2002) developed a dual-aspect model that included research on L2 use (the way non-native learners produce and comprehend in the host environment) and L2 learning (the development of productive and comprehensive abilities in the L2 community). According to Bardovi-Harlig (2010), interlanguage pragmatics applies acquisition research to this blend of structure and use.

To conclude, the fundamental focus of L2 pragmatics is now on two levels: “L2 learners’ knowledge and use of language in social interaction” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 18), which provided a solid theoretical basis to develop the model for L2 pragmatic competence of routines in the present study.

3.1.2 L2 Pragmatic Competence

Pragmatic competence is widely defined as “the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context” (Thomas, 1983: 92), with three aspects: (1) “knowledge of linguistic forms and their functional meanings”; (2) “sociocultural knowledge”; and (3) “the ability to use these knowledge bases to create a communicative act in interaction” (Taguchi, 2018: 126). The emphasis of this study, pragmatic knowledge, has been broadly described as “accurate and appropriate comprehension and production of pragmatic meaning” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 225).

According to Leech (1983, 2014) and Thomas (1983), L2 pragmatic competence can be further subdivided into two major subsections: sociopragmatic competence and pragmalinguistic competence. Based on Kasper and Roever’s (2005: 317–318) definitions, pragmalinguistic competence consists of “the knowledge and ability for use of conventions of means and conventions of form”, whereas sociopragmatic competence is defined as “knowledge of the relationships between communicative action and power, social distance, and the imposition associated with a past or future event, knowledge of mutual rights and obligations, taboos, and conversational practices”. Both sides of L2 pragmatic competence are strongly intertwined and “pragmalinguistic meanings need to be mapped onto sociopragmatic values to enable culturally appropriate pragmatic performance” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 282).

L2 pragmatic competence generally consisted of “both productive pragmatic competence and receptive pragmatic competence” (Ren, 2015: 20) from the standpoint of L2 pragmatic task modality. Productive pragmatic competence is defined as the ability to vary one’s language uses appropriately according to the context to achieve a specific purpose (Ishihara, 2006), whereas receptive pragmatic competence includes pragmatic comprehension and pragmatic perception (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001). Specifically, pragmatic comprehension is defined as the ability to interpret meaning as intended (Schauer, 2009), whilst pragmatic perception is described as the ability to discern the appropriateness of utterances in a given situation (Tada, 2005).

A holistic “construct of L2 pragmatics for measurement” (see Roever, 2011: 472–473 for details) includes the production and comprehension of “monologic: extended monolog”, “dialogic: participation in interaction”, and “routine formulae”, as well as comprehension of “implicature” When related to L2 pragmatic competence of routines, productive pragmatic competence of routines is primarily divided into two major categories: 1) competence in initiating and responding to utterances, indicating the capability to launch and react to (the interlocutor’s) utterances using routines in various communication circumstances;

Receptive pragmatic competence of routines is separated into three main parts: (1) routine recognition denotes the ability to select the most appropriate routine expression to meet and satisfy the requirement of contextual information inherent in designated communicative scenarios; (2) routine comprehension entails both the capacity to detect meanings and the ability to illumine their precise functional usage conditions that cannot be inferred from context or utterance individually (slightly updated and different from Taguchi’s, 2013 denotation); (3) perception of routines is newly operationalized as two interrelated aspects: a. pragmatic awareness of routines; and b. distinguishing the nuances of use conditions in specific actual situational contexts in two paired routines expressions with close meaning or similar syntactic structure (also appreciably modulated and adapting from Ren’s (2015) and Bardovi-Harlig (2014)’s survey to pragmatic awareness).

In a nutshell, it can be firmly concluded that the model for “pragmatic competence of routines” in this study, as indicated in Fig. 3.1, is equivalents to the sum of productive (including initialing and responding) and receptive (recognition, comprehension, and perception) pragmatic competence of routines, as well as learners’ cognitive processes when completing diverse task modalities. This model is also considered the foundation of task-oriented pragmatic competence evaluations in this study.

Fig. 3.1

Model for pragmatic competence of routines

3.1.3 Speech Act Theory

Austin (1962), a British philosopher, proposed the speech act theory, which was later expanded by Searle (1969, 1975, 1976). Above all, the constative and performative are differentiated. According to the new pattern, “the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action” and comprises three types of acts at the same time: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. The locutionary force is defined as “the utterance of certain noises [the phonetic act], the utterance of certain words in a certain construction [the phatic act], and the utterance of them with certain meaning in the philosophical sense of that word, i.e., with a certain sense and with a certain reference [the rhetic act]” (Austin, 1962: 94), and represents the literal meaning of an utterance itself. Furthermore, this act cannot be considered verbal communication. The illocutionary force, defined as “asking or answering a question, giving some information or an assurance or a meaning” (Austin, 1962: 98), refers to the force or intents behind the literal words, such as warning. A locutionary act contains an illocutionary act. The perlocutionary force denotes “saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of an utterance, or of the speaker, or of other persons” (Austin, 1962: 101), such as warning the listener with words. Furthermore, perlocutionary acts may not always occur, resulting in communication failure.

Searle, on the other hand, perceives it as a theory to explain human verbal communication, and he recognized a link between propositional content and illocutionary acts. Austin's proposed locutionary acts were similarly separated into two sections: Utterance act and propositional act. Austin (1969: 66–67) further classified the rules for enforcing speech acts into four conditions: Propositional content (proposition occurring alongside the act that the speaker is about to do), preparatory condition (both sides knowing the speaker does not generally do it), sincerity condition (the speaker subjectively hoping), and essential condition (the utterance making the speaker take responsibility).

Following Austin’s taxonomy of speech acts, distinctions in speech acts are primarily evident in three areas: Illocutionary point, direction of fit, and expressed psychological state. Furthermore, Searle (1976, 1979) distinguished five separate illocutionary acts, which included representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Representatives have been instructed to “commit the speaker (in varying degrees) to something’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition” (Searle, 1976: 10) by assertion, statement, or guess. Directives are described as “attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something” (Searle, 1976: 11), and include requests, recommendations, orders, and demands. Commissives are acts that are to “to commit the speaker to some future course of action” (Searle, 1976: 11). Expressives, such as apologize, thank, regret, and congratulate, are used to “express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs specified in the propositional content” (Searle, 1976: 12). Declarations, such as name, declare, and appoint, allude to “the correspondence between the propositional content and reality” (Searle, 1976: 13).

Routines can be illocutionary acts such as expressives such as I’m sorry I’m late, or Thanks for having me, and so on. As a result, the speech act theory should primarily be employed to explicate the pragmatic competence of such routine expressions.

3.1.4 Indirectness

Language indirectness is closely connected to speech act theory and serves as the theoretical foundation for the study of L2 pragmatics (Jiang, 2013). According to He (2000), one common interpretation of indirectness is that it results from the contradiction between form and language function. The second argument for linguistic indirectness is the distinction between literal (compositional) and utterance (functional) meaning. Whereas the former focuses solely on the grammatical/syntactic form of the sentence and disregards the binding influence of context on utterance interpretation, the latter is more extensively employed than the former, which is also the theoretical focus of this present study.

When the literal and functional meanings of an utterance are incompatible, the use of language must be indirect. For one thing, conventional rhetorical tactics like irony (a nice friend may suggest a bad guy), exaggeration (having not seen someone for ages), and metaphor will result in the formation of indirectness. Furthermore, linguistic forms on certain occasions or idiomatic and or inferential theories might cause indirect phenomena of language. For example, on hearing I’m tired, if the speaker means to convey to the listener that his body is fatigued, then the use of this language is direct. Nevertheless, if the speaker’s aim is more than just mentioning this information, such as asking for a massage or proposing that he stop working and go home, this type of usage might be called indirect.

When combined with the investigative tasks in this research, the indirectly idiomatic phenomena and the use of routines constitute possible barriers to the development of L2 pragmatic competence. In fact, it is difficult to explain how the listener might distinguish between these two meanings and interpret the meaning of the speaker’s utterances from the literal meaning. For example, the lexical core having in Thanks for having me does not connote possessing but rather inviting, thereby making its compositional meaning lose its transparency due to the divergence from its functional meaning. As a result, if non-native speakers do not know the distinction between the two meanings ahead of time, their pragmatic performance will be directly hampered. In conclusion, the above explanations of indirectness (such as the idiomatic theory and inferential theory) offer a pragmatic theoretical perspective for developing learners’ pragmatic competence.

3.2 Acquisitional Theories in L2 Pragmatics

3.2.1 The Two-Dimensional Model

The “two-dimensional model” (Bialystok, 1990, 1993) originally appeared in Kasper and Blum- Kulka’s (1993) co-edited book as one of the cognitive theoretical methods to accounting for L2 pragmatics. Bialystok (1993: 48) distinguished two cognitive aspects of language processing: “analysis of knowledge” (denoting “the process of making explicit or analyzing, a learner’s implicit knowledge of a domain”) and “control of processing” (referring to “the process of controlling attention to relevant and appropriate information and integrating those forms in real time”). The former refers to a person’s capacity to utilize their linguistic resources, whereas the latter is concerned with cognitive representations of linguistic knowledge and how they evolve during language development. The latter, on the other hand, relates to learners’ ability to process this kind of knowledge. It has been established that the knowledge and processing aspects are not intertwined.

This distinction also pertains to the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge (knowledge for appropriately performing target form-function-context mappings) and automatic control in pragmatic processing (fluency in accessing and processing such mappings). In terms of pragmatic knowledge, this model supports the assumption and mechanisms underlying adult pragmatic acquisition, namely that “for adult L2 learners who already possess rich representations of pragmatic knowledge in their L1, this process involves learning a new set of representations while controlling pre-existing pragmatic representations” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 50). Furthermore, pragmatic processing is not the focus of this present study, despite being an important component of L2 pragmatic competence.

The analytical process also includes three distinct levels of representation: conceptual representation, formal representation, and symbolic representation. “Language is organized only around the meanings it represents” (Bialystok, 1993: 49) throughout the conceptual representation process. Formal representations, which are analogous to “metalinguistic knowledge”, are viewed as “explicit knowledge of language structure” (p. 49). In terms of symbolic representation, it is characterized as “an explicit accounting of the way in which language refers” (p. 49).

In accordance with L2 pragmatic competence, it is almost independent of formal representations but, to some extent, relies on symbolic representations. In essence, contextualized interpretation of meanings has strong links with relational representations, resulting in two major sections: linguistic forms and meanings conveyed by these forms in specific situations. Furthermore, contextual reminders and social considerations are required criteria for selecting the suitable form. Their mapping is based on mappings between form and social context rather than traditional semantic connections. As a result, according to Bialystok (1993), the difficulty for pragmatics is to build a reservoir of counterparts from which selections might occur. That is, “the richer the repertoire, the greater would be the pragmatic competence” (p. 51).

3.2.2 Skill-Acquisition Theories

The dichotomy between declarative and procedural knowledge is often reflected by skill-acquisition theories of language acquisition (Anderson, 1983), but its applicability to pragmatics has been limited (Taguchi & Roever, 2017).

Anderson’s (1983, 1993) Adaptive Control of Thought Model and Anderson et al.’s (2004) Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational Model are skill acquisition theories that rely on the basic differentiation between declarative and procedural knowledge. The former refers to knowledge of “facts we know”, while the later refers to knowledge of “skills we know how to perform” (Anderson, 1983: viii). The former is cognizant and can be expressly verbalized or abruptly possessed in an all-or-nothing fashion. In contrast, the latter, which is partially possessed, is unconscious, with a progressive acquisition process.

The essential component of this declarative-to-procedural transitional mechanism, in which skill acquisition is gradually proceduralized from a controlled to an automated process, is extensive practice in using the L2. Practice, in turn, must be “skill-related” (Ellis, 2013: 480). The acquisition of skills occurs in three stages: declarative, associative, and autonomous (Anderson, 1993). The declarative stage, in which information is stored as facts in the absence of any existing activation methods, includes the implementation of rules, resulting in chunks of declarative knowledge. The associative stage follows, in which the informational rules are sorted and rehearsed through composition and progressive proceduralization. At this point, mistakes are likely to be observed. Continuous skill improvement can reach the point where procedures become increasingly fluent and automated in the final autonomous stage. Learners’ minds continue to generalize and narrow down the domain-specific situations in which distinct production sets can be utilized. According to Anderson’s observation, in spite of proceduralization via extensive practice, non-native or ELF learners can only reach the associative level before establishing full autonomy.

In terms of L2 pragmatic learning, form-function-context mappings and how they improve proceduralization have received much greater attention and are described by skill-acquisition theories. Traditional pragmatics defines initial declarative knowledge as “the knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and their functional meanings, and contextual features associated with the form–function mappings” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 62). This mapping process may be defined as the automatic use of pragmalinguistic forms when a certain function must be accomplished. In contrast to the little mention of procedural knowledge, L2 pragmatics research has highlighted the only declarative feature of L2 pragmatic ability. The activation by substantially repeated practices results in a qualitative change and effective mapping of original declarative knowledge into automatized procedural knowledge, and is therefore regarded as an approach to building L2 pragmatic competence.

To conclude, pragmatic competence includes knowledge and processing elements that develop concurrently and draw on declarative (accuracy) and procedural (fluency) knowledge. As the primary focus of this study, pragmatic knowledge is typically represented by exact application into the form-function-context mapping, whereas pragmatic processing is represented by fluency in accessing the mapping, which is not included in this study. Furthermore, the difference between declarative and procedural from the SLA perspective differs significantly from the socio-cognitive approach, which is also used in the current study as described in Sect. 3.5.

3.2.3 Language Socialization

Language socialization is defined as “the practice by which novices in a community are socialized both to the language forms and, through language, to the values, behaviors, and practices of the community in which they live” (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) and by “taking on the appropriate beliefs, feelings and behaviors, and the role of language in this process” (Leung 2001: 2). Language socialization research, which is conceptually based in linguistic anthropology (e.g., Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986), claims that cultural knowledge and language knowledge are interdependent in the sense that they are learned together and support reciprocal growth throughout socialization (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984).

To be more exact, L2 socialization consists of three primary dimensions: access and involvement in social activities, as well as affordances of learning contexts: 1) the acquisition of indexical information (represented by the interaction of language and culture), 2) the contingency and unpredictability of learning, and 3) the multi-directionality of socialization effects, all of which are particularly pertinent to L2 pragmatics learning (see the summary by Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 81). The indexical link between language and social meanings may be conveyed to L2 learners through repeated exposure and participation in daily intercultural communication with local residents. Furthermore, this approach is likely to produce both improved communicative behaviors and deviating consequences. The development of L2 learners’ socialization will undoubtedly be aided by frequent interactions with proficient speakers in the host environment. Experts’ viewpoints, on the other hand, might be impacted by the cultural values and practices that L2 learners bring to their prior experiences.

Language use in a given community is determined by conventions, norms, beliefs, and expectations, as well as understanding the preferred ways of saying things and formulating thoughts (Kecskes, 2007). Non-native speakers can only learn all of these cultural patterns through socialization with other competent local residents (see Kecskes, 2015). In the L2 pragmatics realm, learners can be socialized into using certain pragmalinguistic forms and their related sociopragmatic meanings through contact with members of the local community. Learners who have mastered the mappings between these forms and meanings are expected to become qualified members of the target speech community.

Pragmatic knowledge is based on the interdependence of linguistic and sociocultural knowledge, because L2 pragmatics includes “knowledge of linguistic forms and their social functions in context” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 81). On the one hand, it is explicitly transformed into pragmatic socialization by proficient membership of a particular speech community modeling, correcting, and supplying meta-pragmatic information. Observing their pragmatic performance also reveals the underlying indoctrination into pragmatic language use. This approach results in socialization into the local community through language use” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 88). Using a certain language and belonging to a specific speech community, on the other hand, implies having preferred methods of stating things and structuring thoughts (Kecskes, 2007). Language socialization is heavily reliant on “the acquisition of what is expected to be said in particular situations and sociocultural frames, and what kind of language behavior is considered appropriate in the given speech community” (Kecskes, 2015: 428; Kecskes, 2019b: 33).

Indeed, the preferred ways of saying things in the local community are frequently represented in the use of routines, highlighting the crucial function of language socialization in routine interpretation. In addition to that, language socialization “highlighted the importance of prefabricated chunks in the socialization process both in L1 and L2 development” (Kecskes, 2015: 430). What is apparent is that “pragmatic competence in the L1 is the result of language socialization” (Kecskes, 2015: 421), but this is not always true of L2, especially when it comes to whether language socialization results in approximation to the native-speaker norms. L2 learners do not always mindlessly follow target norms, and “they sometimes exercise their agency and adopt differing L2 pragmatic options as a way to signal their identity” (Taguchi & Roever, 2017: 203).

To fully comprehend the impact of socialization in L2 pragmatics research, it is also critical to evaluate the social or personal identification, willingness, or motivation of individual learners participating in L2 pragmatics performance, as stated in the next section.

3.3 The Socio-Cognitive Approach

The socio-cognitive approach (SCA) (Kecskes, 2010, 2013) to L2 pragmatics provided solid theoretical guideline for this present study. The term “socio-cognitive” refers to “integrated cognitive and social properties of systems, processes, functions, and models” (Kecskes, 2013: 43). The SAC, which Kecskes and his students have applied to a broader range of research, stresses “the complex role of cultural and private mental models, how these are applied categorically and/or reflectively by individuals in response to socio-cultural environmental feedback mechanisms, and how this leads to and explains different meaning outcomes and knowledge transfer” (Kecskes, 2013: 47). The SCA model, which combines the cooperative view from pragmatics and egocentrism from cognitive viewpoint, is further presented and consists of the interaction of two columns of interconnected and mutually interactive individual and societal qualities, as shown in Fig. 3.2.

Fig. 3.2

The socio-cognitive approach model by Kecskes (2013: 48)

To be precise, individual and societal traits interact with each other from the top down, with each trait serving as a consequence of the other. For example, prior experience leads to salience, which contributes to egocentrism and then promotes increased attention. Similarly, the ultimate purpose is a cooperative activity motivated by relevance that (partially) relies on actual situational experience.

3.3.1 Prior Context Knowledge vs. Actual Situational Context Knowledge

The “narrow-version” definition of pragmatic competence is the capacity of language users (or learners) to grasp and express precise intents in the context of a given language using various knowledge and tactics (Han & Huang 2018). According to the aspects listed above, context is a fundamental pragmatic approach for both sides of interlocutors to enhance and change the literal meaning of utterances and helps to determine the construction and comprehension of the dynamic utterance meanings on both speakers and hearers (Zhou 2019).

According to Kecskes (2013), context entails two sides of world knowledge (slightly different from those discussed in the prior section): one is declarative knowledge (prior context, PC), and the other is procedural knowledge (actual situational context, ASC), dividing context knowledge into prior and actual situational context knowledge. The former refers to prior knowledge stored in the mind and represents the cumulative influence of prior experiences, whereas the latter pertains to real-world experiences of a given communication scenario. The two sides are strongly intertwined, with ASC perceived via PC and vice versa. Both sides are reflected throughout the communication process, and interlocutors collaborate by forming and constructing intentions that should be aligned with the provided ASC (Kecskes, 2013). Most importantly, the meaning of pragmatic routines is thought to be the result of the interplay of these two sides of contexts (Kecskes et al. 2018; Kecskes, 2019a), as both are essentially socio-cultural, and PC plays an important role in routine construction and comprehension as ASC (Kecskes, 2013).

PC conveyed in utterances interacts with ASC, and this interaction generates meaning, which is, therefore, the consequence of reciprocity between both sides' private ASC, as judged by the interlocutors. Speakers and hearers who are equally involved in the communication process produce routines that rely on their most accessible and salient knowledge, which is conveyed in their private contexts in production (Kecskes, 2010). A hearer often relies on prior experience to produce the target expressions (covering activity, relationship, practice, and so on) that s/he believes best align with the speaker’s purpose conveyed in her/his speech in the particular scenario (Kecskes, 2013). Individuals rely on the interaction of individual prior context knowledge and actual situational context knowledge (Kecskes, 2010) during the process of formulaic meaning construction and interpretation.

In summary, the SCA asserts that “lexical conceptual knowledge is the basis for prior context that is encapsulated in the lexical items whilst procedural knowledge, which is pragmatic, is triggered by the actual situational context” (Kecskes, 2013: 132). As a result, unlike the conceptualizations discussed above in the SLA field, PC knowledge in this framework, as a discrete line of traditional declarative L2 knowledge, specifically refers to previously accumulated knowledge about the target language, which consists of factual information about the target language, such as explicit knowledge of L2 grammatical rules. Meanwhile, ASC knowledge refers to the experience of a specific speech scenario in a real-world interaction as a representative of procedural knowledge in accordance with knowledge of available strategies that learners may adopt to take effective advantage of their L2 knowledge in communication. A PC-ASC mapping from the SCA perspective is thus used in the current study to depict learners' realization in their pragmatic competence of routines.

3.3.2 Conceptual Socialization

Conceptual socialization is described as the alteration of the conceptual system to accommodate the functional demands of the new language and culture (Kecskes, 2003, 2015; Kecskes & Papp, 2000). The bilinguals’ L1-dominated conceptual base is gradually reformed during the conceptual socialization process (Kecskes, 2015), and it is ready to evolve with new knowledge acquired from the L2 channel (e.g., Kecskes, 2003; Ortactepe, 2012).

Conceptual socialization has been rather different from language socialization, for the former has enlarged the paradigm scope of the latter which has purely focused on language developmental problems. Conceptual socialization, by comparison, underlines “the primacy of mental processes in the symbiosis of language and culture, and aims at explaining the bidirectional influence of the two or more languages” (Kecskes, 2015: 426). The common underlying conceptual base generally serves as the essential part in the process of conceptual socialization, which is employed for the transition across two or more languages (see Kecskes & Papp, 2000; Kecskes, 2010).

Language socialization differs from conceptual socialization in that the latter broadens the paradigm scope of the former, which is simply concerned with language developmental issues. In contrast, conceptual socialization emphasizes the importance of mental processes in the language-culture symbiosis, and seeks to explain the bidirectional effect of two or more languages (Kecskes, 2015). In general, the same underlying conceptual basis is an essential component of the conceptual socialization process, which is used for language transitions across two or more languages (see Kecskes & Papp, 2000; Kecskes, 2010).

Pragmatic competence in L2 is more sensitive to language socialization than conceptual socialization because it is embodied “in the functioning of the dual language system” (Kecskes, 2015: 426), whereas pragmatic competence in L1 is more responsive to language socialization rather than conceptual socialization. The differences between these two types of socialization may be classified as follows (see Kecskes, 2015: 427 for more information): 1) awareness; 2) age and attitude; and 3) direct or indirect exposure to the target language. Throughout this process, learners gradually develop a conscious knowledge of the distinguishing features of L1 (his/her own) and L2 (the target) culture, as well as the creative ways to convey such variations and an identity that represents the two sides of culture. According to the SCA, “exposure, quality, and quantity of input can be effective only as much as the individual learner allows them to be” (Kecskes, 2015: 428). Furthermore, because they reflect “socio-cultural patterns, cultural models and behavioral expectations in a speech community” (Kecskes, 2015: 430), conceptual socialization can make significant contributions to formulaic language, particularly SBUs.

To summarize, language socialization in the L2 might be insufficient at times to foster the internalization or conceptualization of routines for non-native speakers, despite the fact that it is accessible to some level. As a result, conceptual socialization has been employed again in this study to explain the pragmatic performances of routines among Chinese learners of English, particularly in the situation of the inconspicuous impact caused by pure language socialization. Chap. 6 will provide a full analysis and discussion.

3.4 Summary

The theoretical foundations of the current study were explored in this chapter from many perspectives. Initially, the scope of L2 pragmatics and L2 pragmatic competence were introduced. Following that, the theoretical foundation was separated into three major subsections: (1) the pragmatic viewpoint, (2) the L2 acquisitional viewpoint, and (3) the socio-cognitive approach. The relevant empirical research addressing the L2 pragmatic sphere of routine competence has been examined and demonstrated in detail in Chap. 2.