Empirical Studies of Young L2 Learners’ Pragmatic Development

This chapter reviews empirical research on the pragmatic development of young second language (L2) learners. It first examines studies of young L2 learners’ (YLLs) pragmatic competence, covering both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic dimensions and distinguishing between research involving Chinese YLLs and studies conducted in other L2 contexts. It then reviews studies of pragmatic production, with particular attention to requests, while also considering developmental work on other speech acts. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are discussed to illustrate patterns of development in YLLs’ requestive behaviour. The chapter also surveys research on pragmatic perception, including studies of requests, multiple speech acts and metapragmatic awareness. It ends by summarising the main findings of previous research, identifying key limitations in the literature and establishing the rationale for the present study.