The Reasons Pragmatic Is Harder Than You Imagine

Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal factors CLKs' awareness of the need to be pragmatic and the relationship advantages they were able to draw from were important. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as a major factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid criticising a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all locally published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on the most important pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion (DCT) is a widely used instrument in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but also a few disadvantages. The DCT, for example, does not take into account individual and cultural differences. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before it is used in research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations the DCT is a valuable tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. The ability of the DCT in two or more stages to influence the social variables that are related to politeness can be a strength. This ability can aid researchers understand the role of prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In 프라그마틱 체험 of linguistics, the DCT is now one of the primary instruments for analyzing learners' behaviors in communication. It can be used to analyze numerous issues, like manner of speaking, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate the phonological difficulty of learners speaking.
Recent research has used the DCT as an instrument to test the skills of refusal among EFL students. Participants were presented with various scenarios and were asked to select an appropriate response from the choices provided. The authors found that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures, including a questionnaire and video recordings. However, they cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other types of data collection methods.
DCTs can be designed with specific linguistic criteria, such as the form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test developers. They are not necessarily accurate, and they may incorrectly describe the way in which ELF learners actually refuse requests in real-world interaction. This issue calls for more investigation into alternative methods of testing refusal competence.
A recent study compared DCT responses to requests made by students through email with the responses gathered from an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally-indirect request forms and used less hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also required to provide reflections on their assessments and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors: their personalities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants' actual choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared their selections with their linguistic performance using DCTs to determine if they were indicative of pragmatic resistance. The interviewees were asked to explain their choice of pragmatic behavior in a particular situation.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. The CLKs were found use euphemistic terms such as "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack of experience with the target languages, leading to an inadequate knowledge of korean's pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preference to diverge from L1 and 2 norms or to be more convergent towards L1 varied depending on the DCT situations. In Situations 3 and 12, CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms - and L2-pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 CLKs preferred a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed that CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis in the space of two days of the participants completing the MQs. The RIs, which were recorded and transcribed by two independent coders, were then coded. Coding was an iterative process in which the coders discussed and read each transcript. The results of coding were contrasted with the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how well the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behaviors.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do certain learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? Recent research sought to answer this question using various experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. They were asked to perform the DCTs in their native language and complete the MQs in either their L1 or L2. Then they were invited to a RI where they were asked to reflect on their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that CLKs on average, did not adhere to the norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they were able to create patterns that closely resembled natives. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal factors like their personalities and multilingual identities as well as ongoing lives. They also referred to external factors, like relational affordances. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors helped facilitate an easier performance in relation to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concerns about the social pressures and punishments they could be subjected to if they strayed from the local social norms. They were worried that their native interactants might consider them "foreigners" and believe that they are unintelligent. This concern was similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. However, it is prudent for future researchers to reconsider their usefulness in particular situations and in various cultural contexts. This will allow them to better comprehend how different environments could affect the practical behavior of students in the classroom and beyond. This will also help educators improve their methods of teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor for Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a strategy that utilizes intensive, participant-centered research to investigate a specific topic. It is a method that makes use of various sources of information to help support the findings, such as interviews, observations, documents, and artifacts. This type of investigation is ideal for studying complicated or unique subjects which are difficult to assess using other methods.
In a case study, the first step is to clearly define the subject as well as the objectives of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject are important for research and which can be omitted. It is also helpful to study the literature to gain a better knowledge of the subject and put the issue in a wider theoretical context.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], and its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that L2 Korean learners were particularly vulnerable to the influence of native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of the prompts, thereby ignoring the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed an inclination to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing their response quality.
The participants in this study were L2 Korean students who had attained level four on the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third year of university and were hoping to achieve level six on their next attempt. They were asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness and understanding and perception of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their co-workers and were asked to choose one of the strategies below to employ when making demands. They were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. The majority of participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personalities. TS for instance stated that she was difficult to talk to and was hesitant to inquire about her interlocutor's well-being when they had a lot of work, even though she thought native Koreans would.