Robert Sauveur
— MA, The University of Texas at Austin
Assistant Instructor
Contact
- E-mail: robertsauveur@utexas.edu
- Office: BEN 4.102, Desk 20a
- Office Hours: W/F 2-3
- Campus Mail Code: B3700
Biography
Emergence of Comprehension of Spanish Second Language Requests
My dissertation examines the developmental trajectory of online processing toward second language (L2) pragmatic comprehension. While traditional research often approaches L2 pragmatics as the acquisition of discrete phenomena through progressive stages (for a review, see Kasper, 2009), the current study seeks to investigate the continuous and dynamic developmental process of L2 pragmatic emergence. More specifically, my dissertation studies the development of Request speech act comprehension by native English-speaking adult learners of Spanish as a second language in terms of accuracy and reaction time as measures of online processing across differing levels of directness. It follows the theoretical guidance of Dynamic Systems Theory (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008, de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2007; Ellis, et al., 2009; Verspoor, de Bot, & Lowie, 2011) and Continuity Psychology (Spivey, 2007). These data provide a richer view of L2 pragmatic knowledge and processing by detailing the unfolding cognition during a categorization decision. While previous work recorded speech act categorization in response to a stimulus and followed the change in mean accuracy rate (Bouton, 1994), reaction time data allow for a detailed analysis of the online processing concurrent to a response.
This study follows from a series of experimental L2 pragmatics studies conducted by Naoko Taguchi (2005, 2007, 2008a, 2008b), who focused on the English-Japanese language pairing. While the studies by Taguchi found consistent development over time and contexts, no consistent relationship was found or postulated between gains in accuracy and gains in comprehension time. Therefore, this is the main focus of the current study. An early, rudimentary analysis of the collected data shows a differential rate of change, favoring accuracy gains. The results of this relationship have implications for not only development, but also epistemology.
In keeping with the aim of studying the developmental trajectory of L2 phenomena, a repeated measures, five wave longitudinal design was employed along with multi-level growth modeling to trace the emergence of L2 pragmatics understanding over time. The cumulative results reveal the dynamic process of L2 pragmatic emergence in terms of nested levels of development along varying timescales according to the asymmetrical effects of L2 use and exposure.
