Learning to interact in Spanish as a second language: An examination of mitigation and participation in conversational arguments

• Main Author: Lovejoy, Kelly G
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Communication; Linguistics; Modern language; Sociolinguistics
• ISBN: 9781339228105; 1339228106

Arguments arise in the course of everyday interactions when one speaker disagrees with something that another speaker has said. The argument discourse of native speakers of a language has been investigated extensively (Muntigl and Turnbull, 1998; Pomerantz, 1984; Schiffrin, 1985). However, only a limited number of empirical studies have examined argument interactions produced by second language (L2) learners, and L2 Spanish in particular is under investigated (Beebe and Takahashi, 1989; Cordella, 1996; Salsbury and Bardovi-Harlig, 2000, 2001). This dissertation addresses the extent to which L2 Spanish learners are able to approximate native speakers in their argument discourse. It focuses on practices that are integral to one's ability to successfully negotiate arguments: linguistic mitigation and participation behaviors. In order to address this problem, conversational data were collected from 46 participants who completed two quasi-experimental protocols that were designed to elicit arguments: a prompted ranking conversation and a cooperative film narration. The analysis of the conversational data employed a mixed methods approach. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were triangulated with data generated by a metalinguistic protocol. The study revealed that L2 Spanish learners are able to fully participate in conversational arguments, employing a variety of mitigating devices, but that they are not entirely target-like. That is, the analyses revealed that the L2 learners are felicitous in their use of mitigation to downgrade negative statements, but they tend to use a single mitigating device redundantly, whereas the native speakers draw on a broad repertoire of linguistic forms to fulfill most mitigating functions. The significance of the study lies in advancing our knowledge of interlanguage pragmatics research by examining argument discourse in L2 Spanish, a problem that is largely under investigated. It sheds light on the patterns and tendencies that emerge among distinct L2 learner and native speaker groups in the context of arguments produced in a university-institutional setting.