Hesitation markers among EFL learners: Pragmatic deficiency or difference?
(2008) Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente — ISBN: [978-3-11-019902-4], 119-149, published
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- In this article, corpus data are used to investigate the pragmatic function of hesitation in learner speech, in comparison with hesitation in native speech. Advanced French-speaking learners of English are shown to overuse non-lexical markers such as (filled and unfilled) pauses, drawls, truncated words and repetitions, but to underuse (and sometimes misuse) smallwords such as 'I mean', 'you know' or 'sort of'. Such behaviour does not normally lead to misunderstanding or communicative breakdown and could therefore be viewed as merely different from that of native speakers (following a basic tenet of English as a Lingua Franca). Yet, it will be claimed here that this behaviour is deficient, in that it produces an impression of non-fluency, detrimental to learners and the way they are perceived. The article will suggest that the function of hesitation should be incorporated into the (advanced) curriculum through awareness-raising activities, necessary to make hesitation markers emerge from the state of unconsciousness which characterises them.
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Gilquin, G. (2008). Hesitation markers among EFL learners: Pragmatic deficiency or difference? In Romero-Trillo, Jesús (ed.), Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente (pp. 119-149). Mouton de Gruyter. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/153997