Focusing on L2 Russian learners, this paper explores the impact of a short-term study abroad (SA) sojourn on the development of sociopragmatic variation patterns realised in the speech acts of request, apology and offer. By means of a pre- and post-SA written discourse completion task (WDCT), it examines the acquisition trajectory of strategies and linguistic devices deployed to realise the speech acts in paired scenarios differentiated in terms of social distance, imposition and respect for the interlocutor. Specifically, it aims to answer the following research questions:
• How does a short-term SA impact on sociopragmatic variation patterns?
• To what extent are changes informed by social variables?
This paper adds to the small body of research (e.g. Dubinina & Malamud, 2017; Krulatz, 2012; Owen, 2001; Shardakova, 2005) into the development of interlanguage pragmatics in L2 Russian speakers.
The participants consist of a cohort of 18 third-level learners of Russian who self-reported belonging to three proficiency levels – beginner, intermediate and advanced. The sojourn lasted eight weeks. The learners attended daily lessons and lived together in student accommodation. A WDCT was compiled using four paired scenarios differentiated in terms of social variables laid out above. The WDCT was administered at the beginning of the sojourn, before classes started, and at the end, when the course had finished. The data were analysed following an adapted version of the cross-cultural speech act realisation tool developed by Blum-Kulka & Olshtain (1983) taking into account the strategies of head act, IFID, adjuncts, modifiers and nominal address terms (NATs). The final strategy is particular to Russian, and, to the researcher’s knowledge, has not previously been studied in interlanguage pragmatics. The system of NATs in Russian is highly complex, and choices carry sociopragmatic weight (Offord & Gogolitsyna, 2005).
Results indicate that all levels of learners enact sociopragmatic variation to varying degrees before SA. After SA, differential patterns were found, unconnected to proficiency level, mainly within the strategies of modifiers and NATs. Learners used modifiers and NATs to a significantly higher degree after SA and deployed both differentially according to the social constraints of the scenario. We posit that this happened due to increased attendance to the variable of respect and, to a lesser extent, imposition.