Bidialectal Practices and L2 Arabic Pragmatic Development in a Short-Term Study Abroad

Abstract

Abstract The current study takes a bidialectal perspective for the conceptualization of pragmatic competence and its development through illuminating the need for the field to move forward and overcome the standard language ideology in research on L2 pragmatic competence. To this end, it brings bidialectal practices to the forefront to investigate L2 Arabic pragmatic development in a short-term study abroad programme. In particular, bidialectal practices, or the ability to use one or more spoken varieties alongside Modern Standard Arabic, are explored in this study in relation to appropriateness and pragmatic strategies in the production of apologies, refusals, and requests. A spoken discourse completion task that included scenarios with varied power and social distance combinations were utilized to collect data from 36 participants (21 L2 Arabic learners and 15 L1 Arabic speakers) in an eight-week study abroad sojourn. Findings indicated an overall improvement of pragmatic competence over the period of eight weeks. Specifically, significant developments were demonstrated in appropriateness scores and learners’ use of bidialectal practices in pragmatic strategies. Moreover, the qualitative analysis of strategies development identified areas in which learners converged towards or diverged from L1 speaker norms. Methodologically, the study shows that utilizing bidialectal practices to measure L2 Arabic pragmatic competence development is key to understanding learners’ developmental trajectories.