The Interplay of Action, Context, and Linguistic vs. Non-linguistic Resources in L2 Pragmatic Performance: The Case of Requests and Refusals

Despite the critical relationships among pragmatic action, context, and linguistic vs. nonlinguistic resources for producing various adjacency pairs in foreign or second language (L2) exchanges, their interplay has not been adequately investigated. Therefore, the present study examined these relations in the production of requestrefusal adjacency pairs. The needed data were collected from 108 upperintermediate to advanced EFL learners. Three hundred conversations were audiorecorded from learners’ roleplays that involved making requestrefusal adjacency pairs. MAXQDA software was used for data transcription, codification, and analysis. Data analysis revealed that requestrefusal adjacency pairs were coconstructed in discursive contexts through multiple turns using both linguistic and nonlinguistic turn construction units (TCUs). Learners significantly used more linguistic rather than nonlinguistic TCUs and more sentential and clausal TCUs than phrasal and lexical TCUs. Moreover, the use of pauses and continuers was significantly more than laughter, facial expression, and body language. These findings have some pedagogical implications for teachers to raise learners’ awareness of context, action, and linguistic and nonlinguistic TCUs in the production of speech act adjacency pairs.