Pragmatic Development in Early Bilinguals: Comprehension of Indirect Requests and Production of Requests

Unprecedented interest in pragmatic abilities of competent speakers of language has raised some questions regarding the nature of pragmatic competence in different languages. Acquisition of pragmatics in early bilinguals has the advantage of illuminating the similarities and differences of pragmatic competence across languages. The purpose of this study was to investigate the comprehension of indirect requests and the production of requests in early bilinguals which is underrepresented in literature on pragmatic acquisition. At the same time the secondary purpose of the study was to tackle another gap in similar studies of first language acquisition, that is, reflecting on the implications of research findings for teaching pragmatics. The participants of the study were two bilinguals aged 3.5 and 2.4 at the start of the study which lasted for 8 months. The data comes from diary notes and recordings of the children‟s interaction with their mothers and in some cases their peers as well as their responses to indirect requests made by the researchers. The data were analyzed both qualitatively (using Straus and Corbin‟s (1998) model) and quantitatively (using chi-square tests). The analysis revealed that their comprehension of indirect requests did not differ significantly in the two languages and their production of requests was similar regarding the types of requests in the two languages. The findings suggest that there might be one pragmatic competence for both of the languages which bilinguals draw upon in production of requests and comprehension of indirect requests. The implications for teaching pragmatics are also discussed.